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jimmar commented on Flunking my Anthropic interview again   taylor.town/flunking-anth... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
jp57 · 5 days ago
One great piece of advice an informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection.

That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in the interview or application process.

Having been on the hiring side of the interview table now many more times than on the seeking side, I can say that this is totally true.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.

I can only think of one instance where we had two great candidates for one role and management found a way to open another role so we could hire both. In a few other cases, we had people whom we liked but didn't choose and we forwarded their resumes to other teams who had open roles we thought would fit, but most of the time it's just, "sorry."

jimmar · 4 days ago
> there is no information in a rejection.

The most helpful job interview I had was when the interviewer broke script and just leveled with me about how I wasn't presenting myself well. There was a shared connection (our alma mater) that must have convinced him to be straight with me instead of hiding how poorly I was doing behind a mask. The HR handbooks say that you should never let a candidate know why they were not selected, but that information can be extremely helpful.

If you're not getting offers, I strongly recommend that you find somebody you trust to do a mock interview. Let them critique your resume, cover letter, posture, awkwardness, lame handshake, etc.

jimmar commented on GDPR meant nothing: chat control ends privacy for the EU [video]   youtube.com/watch?v=3NyUg... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys
jimmar · 17 days ago
> Until about 20 years ago, very little civilian communications were encrypted. Ten years before that, virtually no civilian communications were encrypted.

It does not feel like the world is a more dangerous place than 30 years ago. I need to see evidence that crime is increasing because of encryption before taking arguments against encryption seriously.

jimmar commented on The $25k car is going extinct?   media.hubspot.com/why-the... · Posted by u/pseudolus
jimmar · 2 months ago
The article compares 2025 prices to 2019 prices. We've had high inflation building upon high inflation for the past several years, so I'm not shocked that prices are higher. We might as well ask where the $1 menu went at fast food restaurants. Yesterday's prices are long gone.
jimmar commented on Show HN: Let’s Bend – Open-Source Harmonica Bending Trainer   letsbend.de... · Posted by u/egdels
jimmar · 3 months ago
I suppose your target audience knows what “bending” means, but I had to google it after visiting your site. Maybe a sentence or two on your site explaining what bending is, or a demonstration on your intro video, would be helpful.
jimmar commented on NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions   science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/magicalist
Macha · 4 months ago
Voters want to know that the money is being "spent effectively". This basically means that the amount of bureaucracy and overhead can only go up. Accepting less alignment with government goals and streamlining process would probably bring overhead down.

That is not the goal of the new admin, they'll probably end up achieving a worse ratio of overhead as they monitor everything to make sure it doesn't contradict their anti-DEI messaging.

jimmar · 4 months ago
I don't think transparency requires additional bureaucracy. I would also be a fan of removing requirements that the NSF align its mission with whichever political party is in power.
jimmar commented on NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions   science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/magicalist
jimmar · 4 months ago
In 2023, the NSF said it gave 9,400 research awards at an average of $239,700 each [1]. That's $2.25 billion. That year, the NSF has a budget of $10.5 billion [2]. Can somebody with more insight into the NSF explain where the NSF money goes?

My PhD was largely funded through government grants, though not the NSF. To put it mildly, our government contacts were not the most competent people and were frequently roadblocks rather than enablers. There were many opportunities to streamline processes that would help researchers spend more time researching and less time on bureaucratic overhead.

[1] https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/04_fy2025.pdf?Versio...

[2] https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2023/appropriations

jimmar commented on Show HN: Feudle – A daily puzzle game built with AI   feudlegame.com... · Posted by u/papaolivia92
jimmar · 5 months ago
I entered "meat" and it matched "chicken" as a correct answer. "Ham" was also a correct answer that I failed to guess. In my mind, both "chicken" and "ham" fall under the "meat" category. If a guess is not specific enough to differentiate between two possible correct responses, I think you should mark it incorrect.
jimmar commented on Utah bill aims to make officers disclose AI-written police reports   eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02... · Posted by u/hn_acker
jimmar · 6 months ago
> and requires officers to legally certify that the report was checked for accuracy.

I think that part of the bill should be enough. I'm fine with policy officers using AI to pull in details about locations, check for accuracy, etc. But officers must be accountable for the accuracy of what ends up in the report.

jimmar commented on DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes   nytimes.com/2025/02/21/up... · Posted by u/belter
sxyuan · 6 months ago
For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread):

1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least the 1970s, with the main deviation in the past few years coming from the after-effects of the pandemic? [1]

2. Federal spending largely falls into a few categories: taking care of the elderly (36%), defense and veterans (20%), taking care of the poor or disabled (22%), and interest on existing debt (13%). [2] This adds up to 91% of the budget. The US population is aging, which means that 36% slice is going to naturally grow. What do you think should be cut, and how?

3. The US pays far more for health care (28% of the budget if you include Medicare) and with worse outcomes on average. Why shouldn't the health insurance industry be the first item on the chopping block?

4. Corporate tax receipts have been steadily falling as a percentage of GDP. [3] Why shouldn't corporations (that benefit from a healthy and educated workforce, a safe and secure environment, a working transportation system, etc.) be paying their fair share to keep the national debt in check?

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S

[2] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DUdb

jimmar · 6 months ago
1. US GDP estimated GDP in 2024 is $29 trillion. According to your first source, U.S. Federal Spending was 23% of GDP. If that were reduced to the 2014-2019 average of 20%, that would trim $870 billion from federal spending. That seems like good progress toward avoiding a potential debt crisis.

2. Reduce defense overall and make the process of getting money to the needy more efficient.

3. No comment. Healthcare is mess.

4. Taxes on corporations, like tariffs, are just passed onto consumers. I'm in favor of tax reform, but thinking that taxing corporations is a way to stick it to rich people is shortsighted, IMO.

jimmar commented on Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?    · Posted by u/julianpye
D13Fd · 6 months ago
> Soft power sounds like manipulation to me. So if we destroyed our manipulation, great.

Wow. So hard power -- literally killing others -- is OK, but "manipulating" them is not?

The fact is, power is power, "soft" or "hard," and we are discarding ours for nothing.

Also, alliances are not "manipulation." Working together against a common foe is not manipulation. Trade agreements are not manipulation.

jimmar · 6 months ago
> Wow. So hard power -- literally killing others -- is OK

I'm not sure where you read that in my comment. That's not something I wrote, and it's not something I believe.

u/jimmar

KarmaCake day1447May 12, 2011View Original