I’m engineering adjacent (analytics / data sci) but my experience has been the best engineers pitch and pick their own projects rather than being assigned out weeks in advance.
Just recently an engineering manager told me “I trust [IC7 engineer] to go where he is most impactful”
So this isn’t the only model, and successfully identifying and pitching working on high impact projects is a seniority marker that will lead to rapid promotion. In any organization. The pitch may look different in different places but I promise you - if an engineer is successfully pitching and delivering high impact projects promotion WILL follow.
Identifying and pitching high impact projects is a combo of technical and soft skills though, and the way this happens depends on the org.
It’s kind of odd to think it’s NEVER correct for a company to do layoffs. The CEOs job is to run the company - if the company is more efficient why shouldn’t the CEO be rewarded? Their job is to run the company not never fire anyone.
Although the MBTI is widely criticized/weak, I’ve found it to be quite a lot of fun for having discussions about personality with friends/family.
The MBTI makes strong statements about personalities which inevitably leads to inaccuracies, but it does make for an interesting starting point to talk about the way that people interact.
There are different types of consulting services - you could assess many parts of someone's cyber security preparedness without knowing technical details about security, as weird as that sounds.
Does management make it a priority?
Is there appropriate funding?
Are the correct policies in place?
And so on.
Of course, if you ignore th and technical details you will have very serious issues.
That said, you shouldn't send a super technical security expert to interview executives about their culture around cyber - the expert will find it boring/beneath them, the execs won't like the expert... etc
Very interesting. However,
I've yet to see a graph library that effectively handles large graphs/communities.
It's very difficult to automate displaying more than about 10-15 connections in a meaningful way. I think a solution to this probably might be extremely far away though, as I think it requires making assumptions about meaning and where summarization would be appropriate.
It's a little bit hard to capture in a survey, but the reality is you can't value everything. Values aren't a list of all the things you think are good, it's a list of the things you value "above replacement".
Even just talking about what values your company has is very instructive and revealing. Sure, few people say "we don't value maintainable code", but if you're putting together a list of your four or five core values and you're coming up with things like "speed of execution", "rapid iteration" and you don't put anything about mainainability, the reality is you don't value that.
You might not object to it, but it just isn't important to you - you don't value it.
I realize there are scenarios in theory where it's easier to verify output than create it, but in practical terms (e.g. A web application) what would the difference be between a testthat validates all possible inputs/outputs and the actual program you're writing?
As a frequent flier I've found flying is much more stressful to my body than one might expect. Long flights make me completely miserable, sometimes for multiple days afterward. Plus there is social isolation and a strange sense of detachment from being away from home and friends for so much time. I was in denial flying was that uncomfortable for years (why would sitting in an uncomfortable chair breathing dry air for a few hours leave me THAT uncomfortable?
I'm skeptical of what amount to anecdotal claims about health problems from flying. It's an unexpectedly physically stressful job which I think will tend to make people over attribute health problems to it.
It seems you've been hurt recently by a consultant :).
The institutional response to managing the risk of complex systems is often to introduce layers of approval and process that appear to be dealing with a problem ("this system can't fail, therefore please check with everyone involved in the system before making a change") but really have little real world value except driving everyone crazy and incurring enormous cost. They also shield individuals from real responsibility (how carefully do you review something you are the only approver on? What if there are 5 approves? What about 15?).
A better answer is to find ways to conduct real world tests with subsets of your system where you can roll back bad consequences. As far as I can tell This is the approach of google/Facebook and other newer tech companies with pushing small changes to subsets of customers for testing.
Legacy enterprise companies are woefully inequipped to do this for the most part, both technically and culturally.
Some industries have regulations that make this approach difficult (financial services) or human consequences to failure that make the cost of experimentation too high (medicine, airlines, etc)
I would encourage everyone here to actually go ahead and read the manifesto/letter. I did and was surprised by its tone, given the type of headline this situation is attracting.
I think the author makes some very calm and reasoned points and is attempting to start a discussion where he is open to being wrong.
I do NOT agree with all of the points he makes, but I think he is expressing his views in what is largely a respectful manner that is not, for the most part, racist or sexist in the way you might expect.
If he's wrong, and he IS wrong on some points, the proper reaction is to engage on these points because other people are thinking them too.
Encouraging diversity and inclusion means convincing and educating people at the margin like this guy, not virtue signaling and slamming them for not toeing the line.
First and foremost you should contact a lawyer - HN isn't a good forum for getting legal advice.
If you contact your local bar association they can set you up with a minimally costed consultation ($35 in sf) that will likely answer all of your major questions. This has worked well for me for several issues.
You can try a nominative fair use argument, but it is likely easier to just change the name - are you really getting so much value out of the name it's worth spending thousands on a lawyer fighting it for an uncertain result?
Just recently an engineering manager told me “I trust [IC7 engineer] to go where he is most impactful”
So this isn’t the only model, and successfully identifying and pitching working on high impact projects is a seniority marker that will lead to rapid promotion. In any organization. The pitch may look different in different places but I promise you - if an engineer is successfully pitching and delivering high impact projects promotion WILL follow.
Identifying and pitching high impact projects is a combo of technical and soft skills though, and the way this happens depends on the org.