skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What would that look like? So like, some chimps see a monolith and then start using bones as blunt weapons - fast forward some millions of years and we’ve got machine guns. What is the octopus breathing apparatus version of that? Maybe that they carry shells with water in them to extend their time on the surface ever so slightly? They’d design rigid exoskeletons somehow, yeah? Out of shells, barnacles, something like that? Rigid exoskeletons with little shell-cups of water for short periods on the surface.

After that, they’re pretty much on track, no?
Maintenance is thankless work - it's that way in just about every industry around, short of total disaster no one is going to congratulate you for making something work the way it was supposed to work.
This is how every big tech company operates.
Windows is more or less over and MS has been gradually coming to terms with it, helped along by inflection points that made it painstakingly clear that the Windows way was beyond outmoded, like containers and cloud. I don't think MS is even pretending otherwise anymore.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see MS give up on WSL, acquire CodeWeavers, and reimplement "Windows" as a proprietary desktop environment for a nix-ish OS with a super-souped-up WINE doing much of the legwork. At this point such a contraption would be less painful than some of Apple's recent transitions (e.g. from PPC to x86).

Selling software, as a general business model, is on the ropes and this is a great indication of that. The victory of open-source here is both blatant and decisive.

Had it not been for every major software company deciding they can subsist on a combination of a) rental fees and b) advertising/demographic data, we'd probably have another RIAA v. The Internet-style showdown to confront over the next decade. In this respect, I suppose we should be grateful for the opportunity to pay 6x more to be in "the cloud".

As an observer, it's a weird situation to see, and still trying to orient my feelings and understand what to make of it.
I was super happy with Amazon for 6 years or so. Compensated well, worked hard but fairly (and rarely more than 40-45 hours a week), great peers, good managers, and plenty of interesting work to do.

I eventually left because Amazon restricted building games in my spare time with my friends. I just wanted to jam on the weekends on something that would never ship as a creative outlet. Turns out they have a policy that says you cannot make games (even in your spare time) with people who are not Amazon employees and you have to be willing to give up a license (or ownership) of all games related IP you develop while employed.

The policy was separate from the open source policy, and applied specifically to games. I tried everything I could think of to change it, and ultimately made the choice to walk away.

Reading through this post, I see some stuff that I agree with from my six years, and some things I disagree with (or were likely just the result of landing on a bad team). But I'd still be there if I could make some stupid games side projects.
Its just too easy to setup your own mail server these days.

I moved to my own domain, and use emacs + mu4e and have had zero problems. I do still have my old gmail address forwarded to my mail server and can reply when needed.
I didn't realise that the laser's inherent inefficiency was the main loss in laser fusion, though it would make sense.
"its not about the problem" but if you cant correctly code one of these 200 algorithms on a whiteboard in sub 15 minutes while under extreme stress youre not getting an offer either.
When I get interview feedback about literally not having a coded complete solution despite strong communication skills, understanding of the solution and underlying cs concepts, i really cant help but conclude this as nothing but PR...

And then I read this >personal opinion

I'd rather take advice from /adv/
I was trying out GSuite last week and used the Google Admin console and had the exact same experience.

You click on options then you wait 2-5 seconds for the menu to load or the option to expand.

Coupled with the poor UX I'm surprised more people aren't complaining about the time they spend managing these systems, it's as bad as Office365 but it's damn close now.
Damn it. I didn’t know you can do this. I’m still not used to the new design. There is something odd about the new interface that isn’t pleasing to the eyes.
If you're looking for a real ETL-for-dummies, take a look at my EasyMorph (https://easymorph.com). We've made a number of simplifications that specifically target "dummy" users, e.g. columns may mix values of different types (text, numbers, etc.).
I've used React and Rails together. Unless your app is highly interactive, I would do the frontend in Rails. You can use helper methods to render the React / Vue / etc components alongside your regular markup. In some cases, you can even pass the data directly into the component avoiding an API call at all. To me, this is the best of both worlds. You let Rails do the heavy lifting and bring in framework components when you need to do something complicated / interactive in the frontend.
I wrote code in 1993 to deal with this in a DOS-based document-management system, PC DOCS. If users of the system created files with these names, it had to change them to some tokenised version that would then magically re-appear as the original name when requested. I don't remember the exact algorithm, but I remember it was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be when I got the assignment.
I love this:

“The same equipment he was working with in the computer tech industry was now getting trashed,” recalls Christian, a Brooklyn-based photographer. “It was basically a metaphor for him getting thrown out of his job.”

and this:

...in 2017, the US sold China almost 700,000 metric tons of copper, up from 11,000 metric tons in 1997.
Most of the products are cheap Private Label stuff. "Good" is very, very questionable here. PL'ing cheap Chinese stuff is the "git rich quick" of the 2010's. They have paid courses to teach prospective PL'ers how to game the review system.

All in all I have ditched Amazon and if I want cheap Chinese stuff I go directly to the source for a LOT cheaper.
Serverless for the Enterprise
Yet another "trust the system" message from the authority figure who enables the system. Similar:

- Police officer: Just follow our instructions, be cooperative.

- Car salesman: Just be upfront with what you want. Tell us about yourself, and we'll earnestly try to help you.

The message is the same; the authority "just wants to help," but in reality the relationship is adversarial to a larger degree than it is cooperative. On Blind, you know the real way to getting through the Google interview is LeetCoding like hell and not admitting you've seen the questions before.
That’s all fine and well if you have one or two broken dependencies from big popular libraries. This technique does not scale if you have a few dozen internal libraries and a few hundred internally deployed artifacts, or more. At that scale you need a more automated solution.
This is just an ad.
This article is irritatingly wrong in the numbers it gives. It says tesla will make 100k cars in the us and 500k in china. Tesla is already producing at the rate of 300k cars in the us, and it's increasing (200k m3, 100k s&x). The US battery factory isn't even at full size. This article says telsa is producing more batteries than all the rest of the world together - [0].

I'm sure the rest of the world can catch up and pass Tesla in battery production - but they have to try. According to info available from recent articles (see above), Tesla does have half battery production at least. There's nothing that stops Tesla from making more factories, or anyone else. They just have to spend the money to get started. The weakest auto company was able to do this (weakest in finances), so other ones can do it too if they want to. They don't want to because auto companies would lose all their expertise in drivetrains if they switch to evs. They are being reluctantly drug into it. see [1].

I do agree with the basic idea that the European automobile companies will get decimated in about 10 years unless they react to this. Also Tesla plans massive new investments in batteries - [2]. (that includes the new China factory but also giga factory #2 and 3).

0 - https://electrek.co/2018/08/02/tesla-gigafactory-1-battery-p....

1 - https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/25/tesla-an-uncomfortable-...

2 - https://electrek.co/2018/11/02/tesla-multi-billion-investmen...
These Windows is really that makes Microsoft look bad. Imagine being the developer who wrote this and now the top comment is about how Windows ads and default games suck.
Or, you know, actually use HTML with the <abbr> tag ...
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1058676834940776450.html
Clearly some people can do that, since Google hires thousands of people every year. Why shouldn't they be hired over you?
Most of your points are good but SDE1 may be all the sycophant recruiters would let him in the door at for a variety of reasons that are a dystopian caricature of "values" and misaligned incentives. If his intentions were to quickly try his luck at a tech giant like Amazon, he probably did so the only way possible.
> Is it so shocking that I don't want to subject myself to grueling demoralizing interviews to likely be rejected?

Yes, it is. And this is a problem bigger than Google, this is simply one of the things that are going wrong on this planet. It is however one of the problems that are _relatively_ easier to fix.
Postgres can definitely do fuzzy matches!

[0] https://www.rdegges.com/2013/easy-fuzzy-text-searching-with-...
I don't understand why Amazon would call out games specifically - is there some rationale behind it?
I'm shocked at how many defenders pop up here for a proprietary chip that cannot be audited. Sure, this hardware/firmware combo might be safe. It also might be terrible, but no one on this thread actually knows either way. It is also vulnerable in ways that a magnetic lid switch would never be. The T2 is the single most important attack target (for desktops) now for large budget attackers. I wonder how long until the HN headline reads T2 vulnerability found.
I struggled with the same concept myself. A decade ago my manager provided an additional perspective : initiative, eagerness to succeed,ambition... Desire to grow and willingness o work for it, are qualities the company appreciates in addition to "Doing your job". The onerous process is not maybe the best way to measure it, but it's the best way many big companies have. Explained that way, the 'gating' is a little bit easier to understand.

I still struggle with it every time I need to invest the work, but c'est La vie.
Phew, that's a solid model! No software ever had both remote holes and local privilege escalation!
Ask lots of questions in those interviews. There are medium sized companies try to emulate giants. You can wind up with a company that's not going to pay you as well as a giant, but tries to implement all the rigid, bureaucratic policies of a giant. Speaking from my own mistake.
That doesn't seem relevant -- Rust works on and supports multiple architectures. And there's plenty of UB in unsafe code.
South Koreans are working themselves to death. Can they get their lives back?
> The questions Google asks are disrespectful and unprofessional.

Yep. This is not the only instance were Google shows a culture of lack of respect for the dignity of the individual.
I don't know that I can say I'm particularly good at this, but to the extent that I do have any original / good ideas, I think a big part of it is this:

1. Know at least a little bit, about a lot of stuff.

2. Know a lot about at least a few things.

3. Constantly trawl for new "stuff" (eg, read books, magazines, the web, watch documentaries, etc.)

4. Think about how to combine different bits of the "stuff" you have in your head. Take notes, write down lots of ideas, even if they're dumb at a first glance. Keep chewing on things, and eventually the penny drops and you see some connection between things that makes sense.

5. Related to that, and I don't do this well enough myself, is "spend a lot of time thinking about the kinds of problems people have".

I've read a few books on creativity / innovation / etc., but I'm not sure I can say any of them specifically helped, although a few of the ideas may have been useful without my being consciously aware of it. I read some of the Lateral Thinking book and I vaguely recall thinking it seemed somewhat useful. YMMV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking

I also recommend Alan Kay's video series on "How To Invent The Future".

Part I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1WShzzMCQ

Part II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8VZlPBx_0

Another thing: I think sometimes ideas come out that are "ahead of their time" and seemingly die on the vine, or just get left behind. But sometimes when the environment changes, those ideas become ripe to get re-invented. There's a book title Rethink that sorta deals with this idea. https://www.amazon.com/Rethink-Surprising-History-New-Ideas/...

Anyway, I think there's some value in reviewing "out of date" literature on various topics, and look for things that seemingly died, that may be ready for you to pick up and run with.

Finally, there's this book: https://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools-Thinking/...

I bought it a while back, but honestly haven't had time to get to it yet. But if seems like something that you might find interesting.
I haven’t come across better mail UI than Inbox.

Inbox got demoted, new Gmail got promoted.

If what I was told is true, then at Google, data beats opinions, that is, they have data to back up those decisions.

Now, why am I not convinced this is the case over here?
Because it's not a good measure of your programming skill. To be honest, I legit don't care whomst Google hires, what I hate is that there are all these other people who start adopting these attitudes and it can have a really shitty influence on the whole industry.
If you are in California, the employer is now required by law to disclose salary range.
Except this line of logic can be used to justify literally anything except illegal activity.
even if you wont. millions will apply and try to break down the doors to get in
brilliant,

but for

>Triboluminescence with household chemicals - Keep your eye on what happens when the battery falls over in this video.

I watched it over a couple of times, but never actually catch the battery fall over, the subject matter is constantlly grabbing my attention. at what time does it fall over?
I think a way forward for the future would be if people cremate their dead instead by burying them, and throw the ash into the sea. This should mostly destroy toxic pollutants and would prevent the leaking of human bodily salts and other pollutants into ground water.
Honest question. What is a typical use-case for this tool?
This is what we are forced to do now. Then you can pat yourself on the back.

Walmart doesn't hire people with learning disabilities because they are extremely efficient and productive.
Looking out 5 years, there will be significant battery shortages blocking the legacy automobile manu. from making EVs in volume to compete with Tesla and Chinese companies. It will take 5 years if they start building new factories soon to get them in production - and they don't seem to be hurrying. So in another 5 years, I see the Europeans (BMW, Merc, Audi/Porsche/VW) will stop arguing away the hit to their sales (did you see what Tesla did to them in q3!?) and react, but it will be late. Same thing for other American manufacturers. Some Japanese companies like Leaf are already getting with the program.

So for the first 5 years, it will be like the days when there wasn't enough ram to go around, and it got more expensive and valuable like right after a technology transition. But in 10 years we should be back to more widespread production. Whether much of that is in the US or Europe or its all in Japan on China remains to be seen.
A lot of people are starting to use RxJS [1] instead of Redux for this exact reason.

https://medium.com/@jamestthompson3/beyond-counters-using-re...

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-build-a-github-search...

https://twitter.com/gabrielvergnaud/status/10573757954155233...

[1] https://github.com/reactivex/rxjs
"If you browse my link you'll see that Google continues to ask off-topic questions, even if they aren't riddles or brainteasers.

"

I have read literally thousands of interviews at Google (both on hiring committees for 10+ years and in the group that reviews hiring committee decisions), and i just don't encounter them much.
I can't even remember the last time i read this type of question.

I suspect your definition may be different than mine.

I do see that new grads/folks without a ton of experience get asked more questions to test fundamentals (not riddles), and folks otherwise get asked to just solve problems.

I have also seen occasional a few unscored warmup questions that are more abstract/riddlish for nervous people, but even that's pretty uncommon.
It's usually small talk about resume instead.

Interviewers are also deliberately pushed to ask different questions if the candidate is not doing well (though it's slow to change interviewing behavior on this). Rather have signal on more questions than knowing that they really did badly on a single thing.

That means they may change style/abstractness of question depending on how interviewee is doing.
I like how the article tried to portrait these interviews as super professional and as if they have like a plan or something. My experience is that most interviewers dont prepare, they probably have been asking the same question for years. And no, they are not simultaneously interviewing for multiple skills, the just try to sound professional. If you are a dev, better leetcode. That's all that matters at Google.
Nice, i am surprised to see Professional Mechanic's to hang out on HN.
You never ever had issues and then go on to list two major complaints. I see this a lot about major software packages people get attached to. Sunken cost fallacy?
I read it as "I'm trying to make sure I don't hire someone who isn't willing to work with me, and the system allows me to do that." I can't speak for anyone but myself obviously, but I think I interview at Uber a similar rate to your average Google engineer (2-3 times a week), and our interviewing process is pretty similar to what's laid out here.

In cases where the interviewer is hiring for their own team, I feel like it's reasonable to assume that the interviewer is trying to hire people they want to work with. Acting in their own self interests, as it were.

In some cases that may mean "I want to make sure you are someone I'm able to collaborate with." In some cases that may be "LeetCoding like hell". Regardless, if that's what the interviewer is looking for, the candidate gets a really important insight in to the team they'd be working for and not necessarily indicative of some larger corporate conspiracy.
I've had a similar thought experiment before, where basically you let people of different political leanings go to their own countries with their like minded ilk. Two problems arise:

1. People tend to hold complex combinations of views which may not completely align with everyone else. How many partitions do you need in order to make this work?

2. Mobility remains an issue. People simply don't have the resources to get up and go to something they actually support and build it up.
That's what CEOs are for. All corporations have a structure where one person or a group of persons are accountable for decisions. For example,look at financial crimes(think Enron),executives are sent to jail all the time.
How to ensure error free production planning? – SlickAccount Blog
Thanks for contributing that to Snow Leopard. It is my all time favorite OS X release precisely because it felt solid and fast, and didn’t add a bunch of useless new cruft to the interface or mess up anything I relied on. I haven’t felt that with any release since. It’s a depressingly rare feeling with something as fundamental as an OS.
In a smaller company even a junior person can have impact. It's more of a reflection of being a cog in the wheel of a large "soul less" corporation...
For all the complaining here, Google's system actually works for Google, so i'm unsure why people expect something to change.

The average interview score from a panel of interviews correlates very highly with performance at Google, interviewees report high satisfaction, etc.

If those things changed, i'm sure Google would change it.
But why would they change it otherwise?
I empathize with the CEO who wrote this. Heartbreaking in many ways to let go and shut down when it seems so close to making it to profitable status.

I was an early employee of a venture funded start-up that also had to face up to the fact that it was running out of money and series B wasn't going to happen because investors had gotten spooked.

I know nothing about this start-up other than what I just read, but if the founder and early employees are on HN and reading this comment, know that you have my respect for everything you accomplished, for the seemingly straightforward way you are communicating the shutdown.

May you find your next venture or steps in life equally as rewarding in the process but more profitable in the outcome.
FWIW, I went through the interview process and I actually really enjoyed it.

My attitude going in was that I was evaluating what it would be like to work there, and I treated the interviewer as a coworker solving a technical problem, where I was taking the lead.

The questions I got were pretty much exactly the sort of hing you see on LeetCode, but I hadn't seen any of the questions before. I know from studying for other technical exams that once you reach a certain number of practice problems, pattern recognition takes you a long way.

I had a similar experience at Facebook. Everybody was super nice, they all wanted you to do well, and they all responded well to being enthusiastic and genuinely interested in the problems you're solving.
By that you mean people who stay in one terminal? Why have a window manager at all then?
Experience says that in addition to liability, failed candidates just try to argue and get upset. People claim they want feedback but then claim that the interviewer must have misjudged them.

More work for the company, and leads to even more negativity in the process.
Citation needed.

Any case, fair use is a defense, not a license or permission.
Not sure about Google but in IBM when I was conducting tech interviews I was looking more for team members to help me complete the project rather than trying to project an authority figure.
The relationship was never adversarial and if you know how desperate we were to get good skills there is not much option to take the high ground.

The poster is correct that open ended questions that reveals the work ethic of team members are much more important than solving algorithms and hard problems. Intelligence is over rated.
Interesting take on getting promoted:

> It is not enough to get your job done and help the company grow.

It’s a promotion, not a participation medal. Yes, you should get a salary increase but are you qualified for a new title and responsibilities just by showing up and performing adequately at what you were assigned to do and nothing else?
I joined Google at 2008, and these questions were already banned by then.