michaelochurch

7 ms·

1.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Welcome to Haskell. No, seriously. We allow side effects. We have the STM monad, the ST (single-threaded) monad, and the IO monad if you really want to go wild. And almost no one seriously argues that the IO monad is "dirty" and s
2.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
I don't know why the fuck you were down-voted. That said, age is only a small part of the issue. I'm older and there's still a lot more that I don't know than there is that I do know. I don't expect that fact to cha
3.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Sounds like Marissa Mayer took Google's stack-ranking machinery and replicated, awful detail by awful detail. What a queynte. At Google, the bottom categories are rarely used and "Meets Expectations" is a huge window (3.0-3.4
4.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Except that the junior engineer's old company won't sue because he is just a junior engineer... True in practice, but there is risk. Plus, it's just a shitty conversation to be compelled to have when you're trying to c
5.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Non-competes aren't there to be enforced, but to make the person stinky to future employers. A decent company will cover legal expenses and, in the extreme outlier case, judgments-- and an indecent one will fire you, but you probably w
6.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
I'd love to hear Giles Bowkett do another dramatic reading, for this essay. The first one was an instant classic: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2015/06/let-other-95-of-rea...
7.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
There is... certainly a learning curve. The Haskell community is still tiny. Per capita, it's one of the best language communities out there. It just hasn't had the thousands or millions of person-hours necessary to make everythin
8.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
The 'thinking about money' is not at all the same as we in industry think. Its about survival on a shoestring, not about making it big. Absolutely correct. It also begets the False Poverty Effect, in which negative, antisocial,
9.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
I agree with your assessment of academia, but I don't think "startups", as HN defines the term, will improve anything. Academia's one imploded guild system, but venture capital is just as bad. The transition from a &quot
10.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
This is an interesting perspective. I didn't intend to "frame the academics as the bad guys" but I can see how it came off that way. To be blunt, I don't think that the current generation's academics are at fault a
11.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
I think the selectivity problem is less of one for programmers than screen actors. We can use code tests or Github for membership screening. Thus, we don't create the chicken-egg problem where (a) it's almost impossible to prove y
12.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Academia is a horrible industry and it's really just CTD (circling the drain) at this point. It's sad, because basic research is important and right now, there's far too little of it being done. Teaching the liberal arts to t
13.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
The false assumption is that you need to have 100 people under you to be a Director. It's a title, not an organizational role. Managers benefit from a seniority system at places like Google because you get automatic level bumps after s
14.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
I don't think a manager does either - Google will be dead before they can climb the hierarchy. You think so? Why do you think Google will be dead in the next few years? I'd bet on it being around, in some form, even 50 years fro
15.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
There were Senior Staff SWEs at Google NYC when I was there. It's not surprising that there's a Principal SWE now. You're talking about anecdotes with regard to those highly-compensated engineers. They exist, but I don't
16.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
FYI, SAG does set minimum compensation, working conditions, meal requirements, etc. It doesn't set upper bounds or demand that more senior people get the better jobs. Sounds like what we need in software: downside protection (especia
17.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Engineers, speaking generally, are more than happy to work with the business. Where there's divergence is that engineers don't want to work for the business as a subordinate , or for compensation that justifies working on somethi
18.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Well, if nothing else works, a programmer's union. I'd prefer something more like the Screen Actor's Guild, which provides support (legal assistance if you need it, access to talent agents) but doesn't regulate compensat
19.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Worth noting is that it's not just about titles. Titles matter, but they can also become a joke. It's easy to imagine a company, realizing that its best seniors are underpaid, inventing a new title to justify paying them only 10
20.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Very true. Engineering is the hard way up, because there's so much less of the ti
21.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Until engineering decides to do something about it, engineering will always be subordinate to management. There are no true parallel career paths. You nailed it. That is all. If we want respect, we have to fucking earn it by forcing b
22.
Picky Eating in Childhood Correlates with Depression and Anxiety in Adulthood(wsj.com)
4 points by michaelochurch 11y ago|0 comments
23.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
I have to commend Michael Stevens (VSauce) for the courage to take on Banach-Tarski at all. I was surprised that someone could make it that accessible inside of 20 minutes. I do agree that a "there is mathematical dispute [++] over whe
24.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
I have been there. There are three options here: Option A: get the fuck out. Option B: get the fuck out. Option C: get the fuck out. Your boss is a jerk and doesn't pay on time. He's hiding high-level information, which means that
25.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
If "young male quixotry" can't turn themselves into gold themselves Underestimating the power ratio between capital and labor, they're easily tricked into believing that hard work can overcome the massive social distan
26.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Google+ needed to establish a core group of users who (a) weren't associated with Google, and (b) liked their offering better than Facebook, and (c) were in a space that Facebook would have trouble taking over. Games was prime territor
27.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Facebook succeeded in a crowded space, full of mediocre but wealthy competition, because of where it started. It began at Harvard, moved out to the Ivies, then the top 100 universities, then all universities, then everyone. By this point, i
28.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
Well, not originally. Disruption isn't always a good thing. Established newspapers getting squeezed out by unreliable and biased sources like blogs isn't a good thing. Both sources of information have their place, but we don'
29.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
It's not that "business guys" are bad. There are a lot of good business people out there. Look at Warren Buffett or Bill Gates. The problem in the Valley is that the dominant culture is now set by the people who moved West to
30.
by michaelochurch 11y ago
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-travis-kalanick-founded-u... In this sort of context, "baller in San Francisco" (or any city) is code for "guy who plies women with alcohol until they can't say no&quo

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