Dystopian SaaS idea: Integrate facial recognition and Yelp reviews. If someone shows up who gave you a negative review, send a text to staff and/or deny sale at POS.
Reddit frightens me way more than Facebook ever did. Reddit gives the impression of what ideas are popular with its rating and comment system. But those systems are remarkably easy to manipulate.
Imagine a Russian troll farm operation making a certain favored candidate look far more popular than he is, for example. Or a corporation rallying fake support around a piece of legislation.
Sock puppetry on an industrial scale could pose a serious threat to our democracy. Reddit needs to figure out how they could mitigate that threat.
It's not your fault that you missed the reporting on it, but FB actually DID respond in 2015. They closed the friends-posts permission way back in 2015. They had plans to do so even before the story broke. What C.A. did hasn't been possible since 2015. They responded appropriately at the time. Of course judging by the anti-FB media frenzy you wouldn't know it.
I accept it. Facebook is probably one of the better companies out there when it comes to security. They haven't had a true breach; the scandals so far have been small, mostly because the mores of society have shifted before FB can roll out changes to match them (and they always do).
I totally agree with (1) and (3). However, about (2), it obviously depends on the team and everything, but for me, I've asked that if someone has a question and I have my headphones on, ask me on slack. I'll respond quickly, and it's way less disruptive to me than verbal interruptions.
OP, I'm sort of curious why they're hiring a tech lead from the outside. Why hasn't someone taken that position from within the organization? Someone who's worked on the project, who understands it, who has the moral and political authority to lead? I worry that your task will be really, really tough. If you can, in the interview, try and understand the situation over there. Why do they need an outside lead?
> More broadly, the best and most creative work comes from a root of joy and excitement. If you lose your ability to feel joy and excitement about programming-related things, you'll be unable to do the best work.
This is probably true. If you're happy with what you're doing, you're probably (but not certainly) going to be better at it than someone who isn't happy with it, all else being equal.
However, being happy with one's job is not a reasonable goal for most people. Or, to phrase it a little more flagrantly:
The idea that we need to be happy with our jobs is bullshit.
Among the programmers I know, many of them claim to love programming enough that they're happy to do it full time (AND work on side projects!) -- and to them, earning a paycheck is almost an afterthought; it's a nice side effect. The amount doesn't even really matter to them all that much because programming is just so much fun. (This is not a straw man -- I've personally listened to employees at Facebook, Google, and various Silicon Valley startups express this very notion.)
These claims are not easily proven true or false, but I suspect that most of them are false. I think that if a programmer represents himself as anything other than absolutely in love with programming, then they lose a competitive edge.
The truth is, I think, that programming is just a job. It has it's ups and downs, and it's certainly less terrible than many other jobs. Like most jobs, you'll be given tasks that you can't get out of and you just have to learn to deal with.
Not being in love with your job is does not constitute a very serious situation. It's simply a necessary evil for most people.
Perhaps you're one of the lucky ones who likes his job that you do it from a "root of joy and excitement" on a daily basis. But I think such persons are quite rare.