skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Recently went through a process that had 5 hours of interviews, then a take-home (said 8 hours, took 16), then a full day on-site, then a reference check. Then not advanced with one sentence from a stranger ("We've decided not to move forward...") Asked for feedback nicely twice, no response, ghosted.

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Been my experience with multiple SV startups now. In some cases went through back-channels to find out what happened (In one case - whole team loved you, CTO had your offer, CEO overrode at least minute and wanted a non-US contractor to avoid benefits pay)

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Utterly absurd amounts of time and you still can't be sure!

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My proposals -

#1) Companies that want take-home work or multiple day interview processes after initial screening /pay/ for them. You are already paying for your engineers to be inteviewing/etc. Pay the applicants. Keeps incentives aligned (you only advance ppl you really want to see how they work, you don't expect 40 hours + of work from me because I should feel blessed to get the opportunity to work for you...)

#2) More conversation. You can get way more ideas about someone's technical acumen by asking them how they know when to refactor, what they think about tradeoffs around technical debt, how they would think about data modelling something, etc than writing code. A brand new programmer maybe do some pairing, a person that has been writing production code for 3,5,10 years? Ask them the interesting questions and just talk!

#3) Hire quicker/Fire quicker - I think Riot for example will pay you money if you decide it isn't a good fit and you leave. Everyone is already employed at-will. I'd rather have a 3 month probationary period than try to find time for 40 hours of interviews while working my day job.
Sorry. I made mistake with units. The ramp-up seems to have stopped though.
“With subjects selected for their predisposition to belief, mesmerist and subject constituted what Daniel O’Keefe, in Stolen Lightning: The Social Theory of Magic (1982), calls an “act-as-if group”: a social interaction that temporarily redraws the accepted borders of reality by mutual agreement”

The idea of an “act as if” group is incredibly powerful and applies to a number social situations outside of magic.

One example: dysfunctional or abusive family systems are able to maintain homeostasis and propagate across generations because (and only as long as) every member acts as if all the crazy stuff is okay. Also happens in a dysfunctional 1-on-1 relationship. The redrawing of borders on accepted reality happens implicitly - you learn by experience what is “real” within this group based on feedback. See also cults, which are closely related to abusive family systems.

Other examples: the reality distortion field of charismatic leaders, Silicon Valley hype cycles, many dynamics in the field of mental health.

The effect isn’t always negative. On the one hand, group psychology is so powerful that it often causes individuals to throw critical thinking out the window. On the other hand, you need some level of reshaping shared reality for things like the civil rights movement to succeed.
How useful would a voice enabled speaker be in stores?
Click the battery indicator in your menu bar and see which apps are listed as "using significant energy"?

Go one level deeper and open "Activity Monitor" and look at the energy impact for the apps you are using. Unless you use Safari, which is wonderfully energy-effecient, then the most likely culprit is your web browser, especially if you're using Google Chrome. Personally, I'd use Safari over Chrome for the energy efficiency alone, but I understand people have different priorities.

You can also check the health of your battery by doing "Apple Menu" -> "About This Mac" -> "System Report…" and then selecting "Power" in the side bar. (Google for the expected charge capacity for your laptop model.)
> There are _tons_ of very good engineers who have spent the majority of their careers in extremely restrictive IP environments

Don't take those jobs if you want to be hireable I guess? You'd have to be joking to think a HackerRank quiz is going to help you glean any information about their expertise. Such expertise, by the way, is something I'd like to know about. Figure out a way to talk about it. Tell me the situation (you can't disclose real details) and then tell me about a hypothetical project with similar parameters in a way that doesn't break your contract. Or make up an imaginary project -- if you're actually a good programmer you can come up with something that sheds light on your technical ability and understanding.

> Further, there are _tons_ of very good engineers that cannot do 'a bit of show and tell' easily.

I'm sorry, soft skills are essential at my imaginary company. You need to be able to explain your thinking at an abstract level. I don't care if you can't do whiteboard problems, I get that - I can't either - but you do have to be able to walk through problems with other people. Especially problems that you know and understand well. If it's the interview environment that's the problem, well I'd like to informalize that process as well too so people don't feel so nervous about the whole thing. But if you can't explain a problem to somebody 1 on 1 then you'll probably be a very annoying person to work with.

> Doing the process you outline will optimize for talkers

It would optimize for "explainers", not "talkers". Talkers are usually people who can't explain something, and they're fairly easy to weed out from the people who actually know their stuff.
There are different philosophies, but it comes down to how you want to balance type I and type II error, where:

Type I error == false positive == hiring someone who isn't qualified

Type II error == false negative == failing to hire someone who is qualified

I think a lot of companies are obsessed with minimizing Type I error. They really don't want to hire bad developers. As a hiring manager, your ass is on the line if you make too many of these mistakes (when your own manager asks, why are we paying 100k/year for someone who you are telling me isn't very good?). And perhaps you'll have to fire someone, which is painful for most people to do [0].

On the other hand, the costs of Type II error fly under the radar. Your manager comes to you and asks why haven't you hired anyone yet? "Well, I haven't found someone qualified yet" is the only answer you need to give. So it's easy to avoid culpability and it's harder to measure the costs associated with the work not getting done (generally, it's easy to measure a developer's cost, which is their salary + benefits + time they spend using others' time multiplied by those employees compensation. It's much harder to measure the value of their output in most cases, unless they are working alone on a revenue generating project.

I think there's a problem (at many companies) of people being held accountable for Type I but not Type II error. And so naturally, people worry more about Type I.

[0] On a tangential note, I had a boss once who made a good point to me. He encouraged me to take risks in hiring, but he said tgat the worst person to hire is someone who is mediocre. If someone is really bad, it's easier to fire them. If someone is really good, then everyone is happy. But if someone is bad, but not bad enough to fire, then they stick around and cause the most damage.
I think we all do this to a degree.

If you look most major projects have equivalents e.g. Laravel has Str.

Same with collection types, SPL is an abortion so everyone maps over array which isn't really an array to pretend we have proper collections/lists etc.

It's mostly fine but there are times when it's annoying.
Just say you’ve chosen not to move forward and decline feedback for legal reasons if pressed. That’s what everyone else seems to do. Better than lying.
It's not Lowtax, but some of the most prevalent "weird twitter" accounts, like @fart and @dril established their brand of humor at SA: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-a...
> That argument is either wrong or tautological.

There are two distinct claims here.

(1) National health expenditures are overwhelmingly determined by the resources available to households, as measured by consumption or disposable income (not individual income), and these same measures effectively explain why the US spends much more than other countries.

(2) The increase in health spending in the US, as in other countries, has overwhelmingly been driven by an increase in the volume or quantity of healthcare consumed. While healthcare prices have risen they have generally not risen much faster than incomes have in the long run (especially not overall, but even when disaggregated somewhat), and thus cannot substantially explain why the share of income or consumption allocated to healthcare has risen overtime (indeed, the indices published by CMS and BEA indicate that had the quantity of health per capita remained constant the share would have actually fallen over time). This is also mirrored by related indicators, such as the vast rise in the health workforce, slow growing wages in healthcare (average healthcare wage approximates national average and hasn't increased for decades), and so on.

> The US spends more on health care for worse outcomes

So-called health "outcomes" are substantially endogenous (lifestyle, social influences, etc) and these factors vary systematically between countries. Moreover, health expenditure is almost certainly subject to rapidly diminishing returns and there is little to nothing to suggest the broad outcomes people typically cite (e.g., life expectancy) improve systematically with expenditures amongst countries in the developed world.

https://i2.wp.com/pbs.twimg.com/media/DUwPBxoXUAEMCxy.jpg

The pattern of rising expenditure with little or nothing to show for it on the margins in these broad measures may be regrettable, but my point is largely being driven by increasing disposable income, as opposed to idiosyncratic features of the US healthcare system. It sure seems like people really don't like to cut spending in practice and ultimately reject aggressive rationing conditional on income levels.
You're always left with an imperfect amount of information after an interview. I don't think that means you should discount how well someone fits into a conversation given how important solid communication is.
This is, while sad and even maddening, obvious.
Off by default for scammy caller ID seems like a reasonable default. Bored seniors can always enable it back.
Laravel has Collection class that wraps arrays - as such you can do `(new Collection([your array]))->filter(function(){})` or `(new Collection([your array]))->map(function(){})`. It also adds other helper methods. I guess Symfony has something similar

Reference: https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/collections
It could be dysfunctional if the application of that heavy scrutiny is overwhelmingly biased towards a particular interest rather than being applied uniformly. Complaints of dysfunction aren't based on disputes of principle, but anger at their implementation.
"Trumpian"

Blame the US electorate.
http://archive.is/E5y1N
I wanted to comment specifically about companies that require Codility to determine if someone is worthy of working there.

On the one hand, I get it. There's a lot of fakers out there. On the other hand, as someone who has been coding for over 15 years, I simply don't give a shit about your dumb tests. I'm also not concerned with being measured or showing up with my hat in my hand asking you to hire me. So far I have avoided places that use this as a gate to getting hired. I flat out refuse just to see what they do. The cookie-cutter HR people who can't think for themselves and who possibly have never had an independent thought do not know how to handle anyone who disagrees with their shitty policies.

Honest truth: I hate corporations. I hate them with a passion. They are possibly less humane than Hitler's Germany. That's saying a lot.
Yes, I really want to give up my evenings for weeks to practice to impress people who clearly do not give a shit about what my job actually entails, by doing stupid crap tests that have nothing to do with the actual job.

I'd be damned tempted to walk out of an interview if they expected me to do trivial programming exercises.
All, here is the investment fund that owns NSO. While they're based in Europe, their LPs are in the US - might be worth shooting them a letter.

https://www.pionline.com/article/20190328/ONLINE/190329893/n...
I'd say "great replacement for blockchain technology"
(in some applications)
> The vast majority of applicants cannot code at all.

I've been interviewing devs for years, and this is not my experience at all. The vast majority of applicants that I've interviewed can code, although they tend to be minimally competent at it.
For me seat width matters more. The A320 inner fuselage is more than 6 inches wider than a 737, which means an A320 will be able to offer up to an additional inch of seat width. An airline may chose to split the allowance between seat width and aisle width, but an A320 will almost always have the seat width advantage.

I've always found A320s more comfortable. It's a big reason why Jet Blue and Virgin are generally much more comfortable than Southwest or other 737-based carriers. For seat pitch the thickness of the seats can matter, so the fact that Jet Blue and Virgin had more modern, thinner seats mattered for legroom. And of course you can add and remove rows. But thinness doesn't matter for seat width and everybody uses 6 abreast rows, so there's little a 737 carrier can do to make up the difference.

The 737MAX carries forward this handicap (737 has a circular fuselage while A320 is more elliptical), so Airbus will continue to have the leg up in this regard for the foreseeable future. Newer planes like the C-series provide even greater width[1], and considering the C-series is basically Airbus now that's just more reason to prefer Airbus when booking. Indeed, given that most 777s have been converted to 10-abreast seating in coach[2], I'd prefer an A320 (or preferably a C-series, though I haven't flown one, yet) over any Boeing plane if flying coach.

[1] The configurations so-far have been 18.5" for window and aisle, and 19" for the middle seat. 19" is like business class on Boeing planes! Compare that to a 737 where the typical seat width is 17". That's a huge difference, especially if you're traveling alone and are the conscientious type (i.e. avoid rubbing shoulders).

[2] From the originally envisioned 9-abreast configuration. Apparently the 777X is being designed for 10-abreast and will more seat width as compared to the 777, but I'll be surprised if it provides better width than a comparable Airbus plane. Boeing seems singularly focused on the demands of the big American carriers, and they couldn't care less about coach comfort.
WebAssembly can't touch the DOM without JavaScript. Does that change your question?
A simple question can weed out the bozos, but a hard/tricky question won't select for the exceptional. The reason being that most folks can't solve a hard problem they've never seen with a gun to their head and no time for research.

A hard problem with no practice is effectively impossible unless lucky enough to have faced the exact same on in the last month. Selecting for the lucky at that point.

Lets dispense with the fantasy we can select the "best" in an hour, and move toward short contracts instead.
That policy wouldn't be about blocking people from making calls. It'd be about allowing TOOLS that let USERS block unwanted calls.
In German, Zunge "tongue" is fem. As is "Sprache", and most any other noun on "-e". "Zung'" just doesn't flow well, and it's not an "-er" (e.g. tonguer, which would be one with ... I need to look up the etymology of it). Equally, speaker, speach, speak, but there is no noun ablauting -ach with long A in all of German. That would be preterit verbs, which have no gender. That's where the noun is likely from, ie. the past participle slash gerund, cp. Gespräch "a talk [that was had]", or at least it had to dissimilate.
TypeScript Server Boilerplate
Personally I started looking at Rust precisely because borrow checking is a massive improvement over the C/ASM wild west.

If you like GC, I feel like there are plenty of other good options, like D, Ocaml, CLR languages (C#/F#).
The industry has stopped blaming things on "pilot error". It's not constructive, and in 90% of the cases it is the wrong conclusion. That in itself is dangerous because it means you stop looking for the real cause and ways to prevent it in the future.

The current view is that a mistake by the pilots can not be allowed to bring a plane down. If it does, the plane, software or procedures are designed wrong. And from my experience the industry (at least in Western Europe where I fly) really lives by this.
That's what I love about Rust, you get all of those things without having to sacrifice performance. i.e. I get a modern language, get to write code at a relatively high level, and still don't even have to use a GC. You learn to love the borrow checker, it's an amazing tool to work with.
https://twitter.com/FT/status/1128148984143470592
readable via here
How would this account for (legitimate) blocked numbers or those that originate behind a switch? I get calls from recruiters from time to time that do this as a matter of course.

Although I have no expectation the GOP would actually do this, I would add an asterisk to the policy...

* If you use these lists for marketing to existing customers, we reserve the right to sue you out of existence. Kindly GFY.
I still agree that's an issue and I'm wondering if the Titan M chip is going to be a Google exclusive or if it's going to be licensed to other OEM's at some point.
Depends on where you go. In the Big Tech cos, you usually have this hierarchy:

1) Junior Engineer - can write basic code, but usually needs help for bigger projects or navigating a code base.

2) Engineer - Is pretty independent and can whip together what they need based on a design.

3) Senior Engineer - Can take a problem and build a design for it, can lead a team of lower-level engineers to properly implement the design.

There are higher levels like staff and principal engineer, these ones typically are the same as senior engineers but are at larger scopes.

At levels 3 and higher, you tend to write more English than code. You're there to decide what code gets written, rather than the specifics on how it gets written. That's what levels 1 and 2 do, they'll take your designs and implement them.
No, much of the codebase is shared, and where the codebase is not shared the teams usually are. There are undoutably exceptions to this, and this may fall into one of those, but your blanket statement is just not how Apple operates internally.
HN'ers all agree ;) that modern day journalism is filled with hyperbole and unsubstantiated information.
FYI you can run the queries in this post through the Google Colab link. I work at BlazingDB btw. https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1EbPE9FwFur7fE2054BH...
... for now. We've built the Rust/Wasm story such that once wasm gains that ability, your code gets upgraded internally, with no API changes. You're already ready for the future!
> You are purposely forgetting that design relies heavily on taste.

Not only that, it ignores how culturally-dependent design is. Sometimes in really big, fundamental ways -- take, for example, the fact that in China, the color red is heavily associated with luck, joy, and happiness. A big part of design is understanding and incorporating these kinds of local knowledge; at the end of the day, design is a process, not a destination.

Much like art, it's impossible to truly separate design from the greater context of the world at large.
> Whatever that value is, it is more than that of life that hasn't been conceived yet.

Please provide some form of evidence or proof for this.

I can just as well argue that because my day-to-day work is related to fixing climate issues, your life should be ended so your resources go to me so I can do my job better and grow my team. That way, you'll also stop stealing my oxygen and emitting carbon dioxide (which is putting my children in peril, and they will also be working to fight climate change so their life is worth more than yours).
> I wonder how many Rust users really want linear types and borrow checking, instead of the other stuff Rust brings to the table: modern language design, large and friendly community, nice type system, native compilation, good package ecosystem.

I think there are probably more users that would love this but they are not users of the language to begin with. The community that actually forms around Rust is the type of community that does not want GCs, wants the borrow checker and the constraints that form the language.
On practicality: I have written a ~30KLOC system for provisioning, configuration and management of a medium-size (500 switches) event network, with an ASP.net-like web frontend GUI, all entirely in Rust with PostgreSQL backend. The system was used for the past two years at an event for 20K people.

So it is very practical stuff for me :)

The biggest difficulty was absence of something analogous to ASP.net, so I had to invent my own... but even there it proved an excellent and practical choice, the macro system is very expressive and the strong typing gives a lot of confidence when refactoring.
> They establish the demand and build anticipation in the product.

Who's left to do that? The article says that they gutted the solar sales team.

> Or is it more likely that they lost focus on Solar Roof during the Model 3 ramp, and that they are still doing the R&D to increase manufacturing yield and longevity of the tiles, and hope to ramp up production later this year?

Do you have an actual source for that, or is that just a scenario you personally are speculating on?

Tesla declined to comment on the article (but for a tiny quote). Not only is that highly unlike Tesla, but if your first assertion is true, ("first establish the demand and build anticipation"), then this silence does not bode well.
The sad part about this is that the filtering doesn't prevent getting sub standard candidates through the door. For example, I've been rejected by the Google interview process...but then shortly afterwords went to I/O expecting to find loads of insanely smart people working at their sand boxes and office hours that could run circles around my abilities and teach me things. There are some that know their stuff, but a lot who's apparent knowledge etc. was very under-whelming to the point of me knowing more than they did about the subject. Over time I've come to realize that part of the hiring process at these companies is political and that the filtering is still not preventing bad candidates from making it inside the company.
> is there any political push in the U.S. to, if not hold the NSO Group's executives and key engineers responsible, at least make their lives difficult? (For example, through the Global Magnitsky Act)

NSO is Israeli. The U.S. has proven that it does not care about illegal acts of its friends, not in Israel, nor Egypt, KSA etc.

Granted, NSO Group is a private entity, but it definitely has the Israeli government looking the other way and so will do the U.S. one as a result.

The Magnitsky act was targeted at Russia, there's political will for that. Using it to target Israeli actors? I don't think so.

P.S. Before downvoting because I criticized something Israeli, note that it is such mentality that helps players like NSO to operate with impunity in the first place. Nonetheless, I want to make clear that there are U.S. & European companies, (for example Italian-based, "Hacking Team", that do this and it's just as bankrupt).

It is the business model that is bankrupt.