Given that it's Veteran day, and the term "foobar" is thought to be borrowed from military term "FUBAR," I am guessing that it is Google's attempt to recruit Tech-savvy Veterans.
There is this no nonsense, star faculty in the department where I did my undergrad.
Urban Legend in the department says that in one of the offerings of his classes, there was this smug student, who would chime in, and comment on the material being presented at every chance he got.
One day, while the faculty was presenting a particularly tough topic material to the class, the smug student raised his hand and asked, "Would it be OK if I ask a stupid question?"
The faculty looked at the student's face, grinned and said, "It is perfectly fine. After all, there is nothing such as stupid question." He paused for a bit, and then completed his sentence. "But there is only such a thing as stupid student."
What was funny to me was that the author claimed, "Ah, those are just silly, throw-away apps I developed for my kids and friends." at the start of the article, and then jumped to, "I dedicated $500,000 worth of my efforts on these apps!" later on in the article. Well, that escalated way too quickly ....
Also, what is that statement that amounts to "Nobody uses Android in San Francisco"? I found it pretty ridiculous ....
If I do not know any better, the first thought that would come to my mind would be: "Wow, this company has really messed-up code base, and people here cannot even get linked-list done right. Do I really want to work here?"
On the next episode, I guess the character Mike will get an offer, and will be asked to move-in to the company house where all 5 employees of the whole company live in the same big apartment?
To me, some important information seems to be missing for it to become a legit brain-teaser: the numbers of rabbits? the number of holes? how does each round work?, etc.
- When getting into the PhD. track, one should be aware of what he/she is getting into, and be prepared for the resulting lifestyle.
- One should have an extraordinary drive (even to the point of personal obsession) to search for answers towards the unsolved problems in his/her field of study despite knowing the consequences that will be imposed onto his/her life by this intellectual journey.
- One should find a PI whose personality clicks with his/hers, and whose research he/she is motivated to work on. It is pretty rare to match these two parameters perfectly, but one can weigh trade-offs, and work with the best available while still maintaining his/her aspirations.
- One should realize that, regardless of popular belief, academia is business with its own business model: understanding the intricate business logic behind the model will facilitate one greatly in his/her quest.
- One should realize that like every human society, academia has its own fair share of personalities and egos, and intrapersonal skills matter, a lot.
I will take a 24/7 roaring colleague who roars about all of good and bad to you without reservations than a colleague who will put on smiling face, and back-stabs you when the time is right.
Sadly for most people, it is more about Corporate Culture and Interpersonal Skill and Street Smart and blah blah blah than being really competent and getting real things done.
10 years later, those two programmas in that Brazilian small town would still be recounting to their fellow programmas and friends that:
- There are male programmas in America (in fact, the rumor says that most of the programmas are male) and,
- The strange ritual of male programmas from America is that they start to recite these about 100 strange sounding words, and ask you if you know any of them.