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This is true. I'm somewhat disconnected from FAANG and bay area behaviours. Before going wandering most of my career was in Sydney and Melbourne. I think in Australia early career engineers are not doing the interviewing, more tech leads and engineering managers (or whatever we're calling them now, staff and principle?).

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2 anni fadiscuss

But the brain teaser is also just an exercise in trying to get a discussion going. Okay so how could I possibly memorise the volume of a 747 and a ping pong ball, and even if you give me that it's a decent amount of complexity to calculate.

But are we accounting for their comfort and making sure they all have TV screens? Do we have to account for FAA regulations? Is it okay if some of the ping pong balls get damaged as we try to fill the aircraft? Are we completely emptying the aircraft or leaving the seats in? Does the plane still have to fly and if so which areas have to be accessible in FAA regulations? What is the weight of a ping pong ball and if you have enough of them does that come close to the allowed take-off weights?

Some of how you respond to these is an indication of how you will respond to challenges and frustrations in the team.

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2 anni fadiscuss

Yeah, these are my favourite types of interviews on both sides of the fence. A great way to just try to get inside someones thinking. I used to like pair programming interviews as well, where you just implement something together.

We used to do a take-home assignment (which probably LLMs have ruined now) and then extend it further in the pairing interview. There was no one right way to do the assignment. Different approaches (functional, object oriented, tdd/bdd) would all become part of the discussion.

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2 anni fadiscuss

20+ YOE.

I've never been fond of whiteboard technical interviews which used to be the norm, I really struggle to draw and talk at the same time. I do fine in interviews normally, I tend to be more of a delivering value for the business kind of developer and strongly emphasise this in my interviews.

I'm not writing operating systems and neither are most the other people I work with and hire.

These days, I don't do leetcode. If a company insists I walk away. I have better things to do with my time than memorise a bunch of useless information (for some value of useless).

I'm mostly on the other side of interviews now and am firmly in the belief that you can get a limited set of signals during an interview. The "Thinking Fast and Slow" view is that we're not very good at evaluating people from a gut feeling.

You might think this would push me towards leetcode and other quantitive measures, however I'm much more interested in working out whether you can be good on a team. The last thing I want is an asshole 10x engineer that makes everyone else unhappy. If you can't actually program I'm going to work that out by watching your PRs and you won't pass the probation. I'm not suggesting I do NO checking in the interview, just that I put limited stock in what can be read during this process.

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2 anni fadiscuss

I always thought Dixie Flatline was more a braindump than loading up all his "outputs"

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2 anni fadiscuss

Just load up a LLM with everything he ever wrote or said publicly and privately (◔_◔)

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2 anni fadiscuss

Dang going around saying, "no no apply anyway" says to me that even if it is in that state, that's not what they want.

As a unknown university dropout (2001) I wouldn't feel intimidated to apply, and may well go after the next batch (have just found a cofounder). I have to trust that they'll evaluate me on merits rather than prestige.

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2 anni fadiscuss

There is likely some level of selection bias to it as well. If I think it's unlikely to get in without that ivy/engineering school background I might not bother to apply.

I don't personally believe that -- I'm confident in my 23 years of experience. It's unlikely I'll apply this weekend, but I did find a cofounder through the YC dating app. Maybe next batch.

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2 anni fadiscuss

I dropped out of the University of Wollongong in ~2001 (points if you know where that is without looking it up), I've had a great 23 year career so far.

I agree that the cofounder dating was intimidating, and even some of the people fit into that category. Far more didn't though, and I've found an exceptional cofounder through it, which is one of the most exciting things in a very long career.

(I'll get around to doing YC at some point)

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2 anni fadiscuss

Assuming it's true/accurate it seems like the kind of research you should share (for free or otherwise) with YC, because it seems like the kind of bias that they would be interested in correcting for.

Not just from an equality perspective, but also that good ideas and founders can come from anywhere. Top Schools are going to produce one type of founder and idea. People that have walked different paths, another.

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2 anni fadiscuss

It's really easy to tell the difference between a democracy and a fake democracy. Democracies are messy, people never agree. Anywhere that get's consistent landslides for one person or party is not a democracy.

Take for example France vs Russia. In the 2022 election, Macron managed to get just ~30% of the voters that wanted him as President. In the second round where only two options remained, only 58%.

Without any serious opposition (with the murder of Boris Nemtsov and jailing/deregistration of Alexei Navalny), the 2018 was again a landslide for Putin with 76.69% of the vote.

There are of course other easy ways to tell, but this serves as a pretty easy heuristic.

This is, of course, a gross simplification, of everything that makes up a democracy. For example, the US is at best a flawed democracy because of all the lobbying, money and gerrymandering (and things like the Electoral College).

Disclaimer: Not American, I'm a Kiwi, so outsiders view of US politics.

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3 anni fadiscuss

I pay the Estonian accountant (xolo.io) ~100€ a month and that covers just about everything required to keep the company in good standing. Minor amounts of admin to sign off the annual report (all done with my smart card).

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3 anni fadiscuss

Various European democracies seem to have done fine, even if it is at times the coalitions become unstable.

Australia, even with a 2 party preferred, still often has smaller parties hold the balance of power. Often this is quite beneficial since the big party has to water down their ambitions.

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3 anni fadiscuss

Not forgetting that the government is ALSO taking money on the other side of the salary as well.

I much prefer Estonia's system of taxation. Flat 20% on share dividends. Any money that stays within the business (or gets spent on wages, other expenses) isn't taxed (aside: there are social and income taxes on wages).

Coming from Australia's system it's just so simple to be compliant. Feels designed to help businesses grow.

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4 anni fadiscuss

I'm part of the problem not part of the solution and I know it. I spend almost all of my time in AirBnBs and other short term accommodation and I will rarely if ever leave a negative review.

This is for several reasons. Firstly I stay in the places much longer than the average guest, so notice flaws more than someone that is there for a whirlwind visit. Some things are taste based as well.

But also because I understand that often it's a small business and by leaving negative reviews I'm fucking with someones livelihood (this varies from place to place and I'm far more likely to leave a review if it's company owned).

In the few times I have left negative reviews they have to be horrendously bad. Bad to the point that I can't stay (as the OP was).

Given how much I stay in AirBnBs I've also learned to read between the lines. Often you can tell more about the place by what is consistently not mentioned. If people consistently rave about everything it's a good sign. If people give half hearted positive reviews (one nice thing only maybe), that's probably a sign that you're going to want to give a negative review and bite your tongue.

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5 anni fadiscuss

I mean to strain the analogy it's more like feeding someone a sandwich and then having the ability to transmute the sandwich into a knife once they've already eaten it.

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5 anni fadiscuss

This is just a rip-off of Google Drive.

No-one creates anything original any more.

:troll:

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7 anni fadiscuss

A few years ago I got a ~$3500 Amazon bill when someone broke into my account (through keys I'd inadvertently added to GitHub)[1].

I had no expectation of that money being waived, but Amazon did anyway.

Since then I've had billing alerts turned on at about the $150 mark (which is about double what my personal monthly Amazon bill is).

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911908

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7 anni fadiscuss

I definitely agree with your reasoning about sending things back. I've been a vegetarian my whole life, but I don't see the point in making a stink if people didn't know or made a mistake.

I've eaten meat a few times just to avoid making a scene. Got invited out to dinner by colleagues on several different occasions (diff people) and they were sushi and steak places. No vegetarian options. Such is life.

I manage to have positive impact with 99.9%.

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