The impact of this is going to become so obvious when interest rates start going up.
Let me explain. Ultimately, how much money the workforce is making matters to consumer spending. People may be ok not having a job, because they have some way to stay at their standard of living. But unless a bunch of them are sitting on family trusts, it also means they don't have a growing amount of money to spend.
Yet consumer spending has been growing steadily for the last 5 years. How can that be? The likely scenario is really cheap debt. The kind that disappears when interet rates aren't basically zero anymore.
We've shoved a lot of stuff under the "free money" carpet. When the Fed bumps up the interest rates, all those spiders are going to come out to play.
Former professional writer for the Wall Street Journal here. The dirty little secret of writing is that it never gets easy. It might look like other writers can bust out beautiful seamless prose without breaking a sweat, but what you don't see are the hundreds of little revisions and rewrites that happen, sometimes just inside their brain. Writing is hard, and stays that way.
Because writing, at its most fundamental level, is the art of making your own ideas more clear to yourself. So how do you become a better writer? Become a more clear thinker. And yes, that is hard. Ironically, continuing to write is one of the best ways to do it.
> "Even though the remnants of old projects can sometimes feel like tombstones or failure markers, for some reason we don't feel the same way about, say, an old save game file."
Very true. We beat ourselves up over leaving projects unfinished in a way that we don't about other things. It's probably because side projects mean something more to us, and the way we look at ourselves.
Also true that side projects are explorations. It's also more fun to explore with other people than it is alone.
Do teams have to pay taxes on the grant money? I'm asking because I know prize money from things like hackathons are taxed.
$12k can last 2 months full-time for a team of 2 ($3k/mo/founder). But if there are taxes, taking home only 65% of $12k ($8k, or $2k/mo/founder) would probably not be enough, at least not in or around major cities.
A lot of people here are saying maybe poor people should just move away to where it's cheaper. Supposedly, the economic arguments are in their favor. If you can't afford to live here, why don't you just move to where you can?
Counter arguments say the expected "that's not fair to them." But I think that's missing the point. The real, honest truth is we (speaking as someone better off) need these people to stay here. If they move away, who will drive our buses? Who will teach our children? Who will build our homes? Who will do all the jobs that don't pay well enough for the richer ones among us to do? (Please don't say machines. We're not there yet.)
Two solutions:
(1) Pay them more, so they can afford to live here. But that begs the question. Where is the money going to come from? Frankly, it's unlikely we'll just suddenly start paying construction workers and plumbers and teachers more.
(2) Subsidize their cost of living. There's probably a case to be made that if we need people to work these jobs, they should be entitled to some cost of living subsidies. Maybe create a group of "endangered" jobs that we need but whose average wages are lower than the cost of living. Anyone who works those jobs has access to affordable housing, gas credits, etc. It's a run around the wage market, but maybe it could work.
Great point. It's happened before. For example, at many companies, HackerRank-esque code tests were meant to replace the technical screen, but just ended up being an additional step you have to do.
More red tape happens because companies feel like they have the power to ask people to jump through whatever hoops they want. But you can reverse this. If you have the people companies want desperately, you can dictate what the companies can and cannot do (no 3-day interviews, for example). I think that's what Starfighter is trying to do.
tptacek: ever heard of Cicada 3301? It's this mysterious group that has anonymously posted very involved cryptopuzzles. Not clear why, but one theory has been for recruiting people into intelligence agencies.
I love what you're doing but I agree with other commenters that presenting it as a game to programmers but a recruiting channel to companies might not align well. What do you do if a lot of your top players aren't interested in getting a job? There are probably exceptions, but do you think people who are good enough to beat your CTF have that much trouble getting a job?
Our goal is to fix a broken hiring system. Too often, talented programmers don’t get the chance they deserve, just because they don't have the typical resume companies look for. We think that’s wrong.
So, we are working with a number of startups, including some from Y Combinator, on a new way to hire programmers. Without resumes. Open to anyone. Letting your work speak for itself.
Here's how it goes:
1. No resumes. Apply with code.
To get started, we send you a few real coding problems. You write out your answers and we manually review it.
2. Pair program with one startup.
After we review your work, you get assigned to one of our partner startups. You’ll pair program and answer a couple technical questions via screen share for an hour. The project you'll work on is the same one that everyone uses, so it doesn’t matter which startup you get paired with.
3. One interview. Shared with many companies.
We share your pair programming session and interview with all our partner startups, including the ones you didn’t interview with. Your work speaks for itself, and any company interested will reach out to you for an on-site interview.
Right now, the application is only for front-end engineers at our partner startups.
How did you get your foot in the door? (I'm trying to get my first job as a programmer after teaching myself and building things over the last year to year and a half.)
And a follow-up. How did you get your foot in the door? (I'm trying to get my first job as a programmer after teaching myself and building things over the last year to year and a half.)
Let me explain. Ultimately, how much money the workforce is making matters to consumer spending. People may be ok not having a job, because they have some way to stay at their standard of living. But unless a bunch of them are sitting on family trusts, it also means they don't have a growing amount of money to spend.
Yet consumer spending has been growing steadily for the last 5 years. How can that be? The likely scenario is really cheap debt. The kind that disappears when interet rates aren't basically zero anymore.
We've shoved a lot of stuff under the "free money" carpet. When the Fed bumps up the interest rates, all those spiders are going to come out to play.