Music. Learned to play piano. Very relaxing
Readit NewsDeleted Comment
birdymcbird commented on Ask HN: Looking for new hobbies to relax, grow or make friends, any ideas? · Posted by u/matthewfelgate
birdymcbird commented on Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off · Posted by u/baron816
Especially when it was a C++ application, not C#.
Why did they rewrite?
Candidates can't read minds.
The best technical interviews I've been on as a interviewee have been those where the expectations are clear. In your example:
"We're not expecting you to create Twitter in 15 minutes, but we want to understand how you think about the challenges and key considerations of building a large system like Twitter"
>>>> Many interviewers fail to provide enough context and that leaves the interpretation of the prompt too wide open.
yes but this not a defect as youre viewing it.
in real world at amazon, your job to deal with ambiguity. the hand holding phase where youre given or told exactly what to do is maybe 1-2 year for college level hire. you work with ambiguity or you move out.
if you do not want ambiguity challenge then amazon not best fit for you. its not for everyone and amazon certainly has big problems in its culture. not defending any of it but saying to you what it is.
until recently i was a principal engineer at amazon. so maybe my opinion has some weight.
system design interview is more about interviewee asking questions..taking time to understand the problem..ask about product feature or SLA..understand functional and non functional requirement.
then its about candidate showing some knowledge set showing they can think and reason behind some immediate coding task. Demonstrate ability to make judgment..simplify where possible..discuss costs and trade offs.
this interview not about candidate building some system at scale themself. building and supporting has trials and lessons you only learn by doing and failing, not through interview prep or YouTube videos
Full disclosure: disgruntled amazon employee
It seems like lately a lot of our CEO's decisions lack backbone or conviction. It seems like he go the role of CEO by yes-maning Bezos (See brain double quote here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/andy-jassy-ama...)
A lot of the decisions made by our CEO lately have been justified with "not invented here" logic. Announcements for both RTO and layoffs have been justified with "other leaders are doing it" statements. Unpopular decisions (like RTO) are made days after a public forum where our CEO could have announced it.
this is amazon culture since beginning. decision making federated to director level or VP organization and s-team only step in on bigger goal.
rto not even top 3 company problem though. main issue is fast pace culture that had its own problem with retention now turned into lazy, cancerous zombie.
-performance bar lowered at all levels.
-management layers overrun by hires from failing companies.
i left after 10 years. tech stopped hiring innovators. it simply h1b wagon..people who do exactly as told because they afraid of PIP and having to move back to india. the other class of worker is a politician from some company like ibm. from ibm, they bring EXTREME culture of politics and empire building.
my theory that amazon leadership know this biggest business risk. any rto policy to get these people to quit without severance. amazon leadership know problem so bad they will risk strong talent.
article puts goodreads problems on amazon. partially true but lazy journalism.
much goodreads leadership same as when amazon bought them. i know because i work close to them before i leave amazon.
tech was outdated ruby on rails. the engineering org has very low technical bar and love inventing things that amazon already solve at scale. more energy put into resisting amazon than thinking about innovation. lots and lots of waste.
i do wonder how amazon layoffs affected goodreads. i would clean house.
birdymcbird commented on Ask HN: Resources for CS and software eng for a sharp middle school dropout? · Posted by u/vector_spaces
Not sure how far she makes in CS without some high school level math like pre algebra, algebra 1 and 2. remember that actual computer science curriculum have more advanced math like single and multi variate calculus, differential equation, linear algebra, discrete.
Good news: most software engineer not taking derivative or vector calculation like full calculus or linear algebra taught in CS program.
but you need ability to reason about basic maths if your program has any computation at all.
khan academy is good for the math. dont really need much more.
birdymcbird commented on Ask HN: Another web app has plagiarized my app's name. How do I deal with this? · Posted by u/oblib
Not a lawyer but if EZInvoice not your trademark then not much you can do.
Bodily autonomy is a right.
you see abortion as issue about body autonomy. many see it as issue of murder. it like religious debate.
me not arguing either way. but wonder about “quality” of this journalism. it subtly condition reader to believe one side is correct and other side like some German nazi.