November 2021
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November 30, 2021
Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?
512 by itchyjunk | 306 comments on Hacker News.
I used to have better time googling in the past. I struggle to find things I remember finding in the past using google. I think I might be stuck in some old habits of googling and I've lost touch with modern google. For example, google seems to want full sentences instead of just keywords now. "How do I do X?" seems to get me better(?) results then "X + some relevant keyword". But I can't seem to get past this "most popular responses" google things I need. I do appreciate youtube videos marked at certain times but watching video isn't always what I want to do. Tangentially, has youtube search been integrated to youtube search or something now? I used to be able to search obscure music in youtube. "Sal dulu a" would both recommend "Sal dulu antasma" and list it but now unless i search for that particularly, it doesn't show up. Any pro tips on how to google (or use search engines) like a modern human would be appreciated. Or modern version of google dorking (which also seems to not work like it used to for me). Thank you.

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November 29, 2021
Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe
534 by danrocks | 261 comments on Hacker News.
Recently I interviewed with Stripe for an engineering MoM (Manager of Managers) for one of their teams. I interview regularly, so I am used to many types of processes, feedback mechanisms, and so on. I won't go into details about the questions because there's nothing special about them, but I wanted to share some details of my experience for people thinking of interviewing there. 1) About 35-40% of the interviewers started their questioning by saying "I will only need 20 minutes for this", while emphasizing it is an important leadership position that they are hiring for. So 20 minutes is all needed to identify "important, critical leaders"? What a strange thing to say - also a GREAT way to make candidates feel important and wanted! 2) There is significant shuffling of interviewers and schedules. One almost has to be on-call to be able to react quickly. 3) For an engineering manager position, I only interviewed with only technical person. To me it hints that Engineering MoM is not a very technical position. 4) Of all the people I spoke to, the hiring manager was the one I spoke the least with. The phone screen was one of the "I only need 20 minutes for this" calls. The other one was quite amusing, and is described below. 5) After the loop was done, the recruiter called me to congratulate me on passing, and started discussing details of the offer, including sending me a document described the equity program. Recruiter mentioned that the hiring manager would be calling me to discuss the position next. 6) SURPRISE INTERVIEW! I get a call from the hiring manager, he congratulates me on passing the loop, then as I prepare to ask questions about the role, he again says "I need to ask you two questions and need 20 minutes for this". Then proceeds to ask two random questions about platforms and process enforcement, then hangs up the call after I answer. Tells me he'd be calling in a week to discuss the position. 7) I get asked for references. 8) After passing the loop, have the recruiter discuss some details of the offer, have the hiring manager tell me they'd be calling me after a week, I get ghosted for about 3.5 weeks. References are contacted and feedback is confirmed positive. 9) I ping the recruiter to see when the offer is coming - it's not coming. They chose another candidate. I am fine with it, even after being offered verbally, but the ghosting part after wasting so much of my time seems almost intentional. 10) I call up a senior leader in the office I applied to, an acquaintance of mine. His answer: "don't come. It's a mess and a revolving door of people". I was shocked with the response. 11) I get called by the recruiter saying that another director saw my feedback and is very interested in talking to me and do an interview loop. Guess I'm not joining, then. I am ok with passing loops, being rejected, I've seen it all. But being ghosted after acceptance is a first. What a bizarre place this is.

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November 20, 2021
Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
465 by cdahmedeh | 317 comments on Hacker News.
I was watching a video game documentary about the history of the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise, a theme park management game that had both an easy learning curve but with incredibly sophisticated dynamics. What really impressed me however was the origins of the first two titles: written by one man in assembly language. At that point, I realized how mediocre and untalented I was. Nothing I’m doing in my life are anything that people will remember me for. Throughout my life, I’ve seen many awe inspiring projects done by extremely talented people, way more intelligent than I am, come to fruition. Over the years, I realized how shallow and dumb I really am. I’m uninteresting. Most of my career revolved around software development, something that I’ve done since I was 17 (now I'm 30) until a few years ago. I found myself writing entreprise software usually in the backend and that’s all I really knew except for some server administration and scripting sprinkled on top. Sat beside me were full-stack developers with expertise in DevOps as well. They knew how to do everything I could on top of so much else. As for me, I can barely write basic HTML pages. I meet with incredibly smart people with master’s degrees and PhDs knowing so much about their field of expertise while I’m a University drop-out. People who know world history so well while being able to talk about the hard problem of consciousness at the same time. YouTubers and Twitch streamers who are so talented at playing games and entertaining us along the way. There’s people who have paved the way for innovation and foresight that I don’t have at all. Those who make so much money due to their talents and bringing them to life in this world of ours. I’ve watched so many documentaries about all sorts of people from racing drivers, to game developers, comedians, data science experts, cybersecurity nuts, music producers, video editors, documentaries makers and so much more. These are all things that come to mind thinking that I’ll never be able to do any of that. I’m mostly a self-taught person teaching myself skills as I go along with my life. I generally don’t pick up much except for a few facts that I can repeat to others. I can barely do derivatives anymore in math or draw like I used to. My talents are shallow and honestly quite useless. Today, I don’t do much with my life other than binging on YouTube documentaries and reading Wikipedia articles not helping my case. My motivation for learning is shrinking slowly and would much rather stare out of the window while I’m not doing my obligatory 8 hours of daily work. Now, I’m an unimportant technical writer composing documents for developers and users. There’s no path for career growth if I stay in this specialty. My work doesn’t feel like it takes much talent and I was hired a few times without having any credentials in business writing. I’ve been told by previous managers that I’m always in “learning mode” and quite “creative” but I can’t convince myself that these traits are actually true. I feel untalented, empty and dumb. My dreams do exist but they starting to seem more and more superficial. There’s a lot of subjects and activities that I’m really interested of getting into but I can’t just dive into it. I blame it on the lack of time and laziness but I have strong time management skills and can conjure up much empty slots in my schedule. I sometimes wonder if my mental condition or my medication has had an effect on this: I'm bipolar schizoaffective and borderline.

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November 08, 2021
Aaron Swartz Rememberance Day This Monday
602 by mofosyne | 103 comments on Hacker News.
For the general public he was seen as just another hacktivist along with various hacktivist groups that were active around the time like lulzsec and anonymous. But for the wider internet community, he represents something much much more, especially post 2020 where we are all questioning many aspect of governance that we take for granted as the normal state of the world. In November the eight of 1986 Aaron Swartz was born. While his early childhood was like any other kid, he showed early spark of someone who would be very consequential to internet culture. One of his first website to be recognized by the public is "The Info Network" a user generated encyclopedia, created at the age of 12 years old which won the ArsDigita Prize. But later on he was accepted into Y Combinator's founder program on a startup called infogami. While infogami failed to get further funding, his contribution to the wider Y Combinator, got him in touch with another fellow co-founder to work together on this small but potentially important firm known as Reddit. If you are from Reddit or Hackernews, you will be very familiar with how the next few years will go for Arron as well and so no further introduction will be needed. (But you can follow further in his wiki page https://ift.tt/3jmyo6Y) However what will be consequential to the wider public is his work as an tech activist fighting for the same rights and values that digital natives in the wider internet culture would fight for. Especially in the realms of copyright laws and the wider debate on digital access and freedom. This includes writing Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, as well as filing a FOIA request to find out how Chelsea Mannings was treated after she was detained for her alleged role in the WikiLeaks leaks. In addition to to leaking PACER digital court records to improve public access, which had him investigated by the FBI for potential copyright infringements. And most importantly to rally the internet against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). However it was tragically his efforts to push for open access to academic journals (much of which was publicly funded research) that may have costed him his life at 2008-12-13. Eight years later, as we emerge from the global pandemic, it is about time we celebrate his life and reflect on his his short time with us. As well as reflecting on how his actions had inspired countless digital natives current and in the future to continuously push and fight for the right for information to be free and transparent.

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November 05, 2021
Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
455 by edhowzerblack | 421 comments on Hacker News.
I've moved around quite a bit these past several years and I feel like every company has been the same. Management don't know what they want the product to be. Project managers don't know anything about technology. There's an offshore team in Traansylvania busy making it a legacy codebase. They don't want to give developers raises... I see "Who's Hiring?" threads and "Who Wants To Be Hired?" threads. How about a "Who Doesn't Suck To Work For?" thread? Not sure if this will take off or get deleted ...but if it does take off, it would be great if developers --not recruiters-- replied to this. Tell us why your company is a good place to work so we can apply there :-)

MKRdezign

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