Heat, Ronin and the Ocean's series are the trinity of heist movies. "For me the sun rises and sets with her, man."
For any Heat fans reading this comment, Michael Mann co-wrote a novel, Heat 2, that focuses on his character, and the entire time I was reading it I imagined it being Val the entire time. It's very good - a worthy follow-up.
And yet I'm left wondering why the investors had such a bad reaction to its launch? Early signs point to this being a technological marvel, and despite the price tag I think it'll have useful applications in businesses with deeper IT budgets. You won't give one to everyone on the floor, but there's likely a case to having a small set of these.
It reminds me of the "Neural SubNet" from Deus Ex.
Sorta unrelated but I wanted to join in on everyone reflecting on their athletic careers:
I worked at a mid-tier consulting firm as my first job and had an incredible work-life balance. I ran 3-4 times a week and cycled twice a week. I got into triathlons and even completed a 24hr obstacle race challenge where you had to complete a 11km course with ~40 obstacles as many times as possible in 24 hours. I completed it 8 times. I was fit.
A few years later I moved into a top-tier consulting firm and my work-life balance evaporated. (I also picked up a girlfriend along the way.) I'm lucky to get one gym session and one run in a week. I participate in probably only 1 or 2 races a year (instead of the usual 5-7 before I joined). I'm miserable. I only realised in the last few months how important training and being fit is to my identity and that even being successful in a "prestigious" consulting firm is an insufficient salve for the wound. Especially since my "peak" probably lies somewhere in my mid-30s, which are only a few years away for me, I really want to pick up where I left off. I can't wait to find another job now and find that part of myself again.
My French language classes, typically held in person after work, moved to online and over Zoom. Initially, we tried Google Meet and found it laggy and that we would often drop out. Then we moved to Zoom and it has been a much better experience. The interface is more intuitive, has a few more features and somehow the quality has improved and the connection is much smoother. I care deeply about my privacy, but I'm lucky that we don't discuss anything sensitive in our classes such that the security issues and the lack of encryption would become a big deal.
Will.i.am's failures and eccentricity (for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prv5q84-Ebg) are far more well known than his successes. I'm surprised he was able to raise so much money.
The one on my MBP 2014 is definitely superior, but I don't mind it. Gets the job done, and I found it precise enough to work on corporate presentations, a place where neurotic detail reigns.
Interesting. Does anyone here actually use the dial, or know someone that does? Otherwise, it doesn't look like a compelling upgrade to my Surface Book (1) though. Even though I paid an arm a leg for it, I've grown to love it over time. Glad they are providing both 13" and 15" options though.
Though HB says: "We will stay the same", I'm sure practically everyone knows that that won't be the case. IGN, the go-to place to get sponsored reviews of AAA games.
Boy, the IBTimes has always been a terrible place to read articles, especially with its autoplaying videos, but now when you scroll down (after having stopped the video of course) it inexplicably jumps to the lower right corner of the screen and then PULLS the article to the top of the screen where the video used to be. So while you're reading and scrolling, the article just jumps away from you and you lose your place.
Incredible. How anyone thought this is good web design is beyond me. Then again, IBTimes has always been a really shitty place for journalism overall.
This sounds so much like those ads that look for "8 years of Swift development experience" despite the fact that Swift only came out 3 or 4 years ago. The fact that a recruiter can 'recruit' for a company like Facebook without having enough knowledge in the area that they're recruiting for is not only embarassing for FB but for the recruiting profession in general.
I certainly had this in the back of my mind. But I knew someone who got hired doing the exact same thing - my contact. So I had good reason to think that this effort would be worth something, and Uber can certainly afford to pay for those kinds of services. Of course, like you are saying, nothing stops them simply just using what I did and telling me to fuck off, which is what happened.
Long post warning - this is just a perspective about shitty HR in the vein of this post, not sexism, like the original Fowler post.
Late last year at 10am on a Thursday, I got a call asking if I wanted to interview for a HR position with Uber in Australia. He wanted the position filled ASAP, so we organised an interview for that evening.
I had already accepted an offer from another company for a summer internship in software dev, an area I was actually interested in, but I was beguiled by the Uber brand and was practically willing to give up a lot to work for them as a result. I am not interested in HR by any stretch, and believe that HR staff are better put to use removing staples from about-to-be-recycled paper or other more productive ends.
I 'passed' the initial interview and was asked to do the following:
- Draft a cold email to a potential hire, with the goal to fill an existing vacancy in the company;
- Pass an extensive, three-hour 'data analytics' test (see: basic-intermediate data manipulation and analysis in Excel) hosted on HackerRank. This was actually fairly challenging because you're purposefully time-poor throughout the test;
- Create a PowerPoint presentation outlining a plan to target university grads. This was also challenging since if I was given a template with pre-made slide designs, it would be pretty easy. But I designed a slide deck from scratch completely in line with the Uber design guidelines, including typeface, color and other design requirements, on top of my recruitment strategy;
- Trawl through their current Uber Careers website and list as many possible ways that it could be improved.
So I was given this Thursday night. He wanted the tasks done asap, but I told the recruiter that I had an assignment due Tuesday, and that it would be quite a crunch. He 'relented' and gave me until Sunday night. As I write this, I realise that he was unabashedly using my enchantment with the company to his favour.
I did nothing that entire weekend but work on those items, and handed them all in Sunday evening, right on time, to the detriment of my assignment. I found out later (through a contact in the company, not from the recruiter) that I scored over 80% in the online exam, and that all the other items were very well received.
Despite this, I never received anything back from the recruiter at all. Nothing except a boilerplate rejection email, featuring photo of Diversity Hire #1 and #2 laughing over coffee and 'Thank you for your application. However, we cannot proceed with your application at this time...' The recruiter insisted that they tried to call me (again, I heard this through the contact) but lo and behold, despite being glued to my phone for over a week, my phone didn't ring once. The incredible disrespect I felt from this experience will mean that I'll never apply to them for any role, ever.
Tl;dr - my perspective of Uber is that they are entitled to your best work, and have no intention to reciprocate.
Agreed - time and time again I'm surprised by the people that read HN. It seems to comprise of people who did some cool stuff 10,000 years ago, people who are doing cool stuff today, and everyone in between. Alas, all good communities are doomed to become shit as time goes on...
In the distant future, when they discover the endless jars of eggs and sperm in Mark Zuckerberg's basement, somewhere, Chris Holt will be saying "I told you so."
For any Heat fans reading this comment, Michael Mann co-wrote a novel, Heat 2, that focuses on his character, and the entire time I was reading it I imagined it being Val the entire time. It's very good - a worthy follow-up.