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mailshanx commented on Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?    · Posted by u/jamestimmins
faitswulff · 5 years ago
Counterpoint: I consistently leave jobs too early when I could have instead stuck around and made larger impacts during restructurings or just sat around and done nothing and gotten paid. Would I be better programmer? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But would I have gotten paid and had a more intact career? Certainly.
mailshanx · 5 years ago
What do you mean by having an "intact career"? Did leaving too early harm your career, and if yes, how so?
mailshanx commented on Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?    · Posted by u/smarri
gotaran · 5 years ago
If you're single, dating. Especially online dating. Depending on you upbringing, this is similar to personal finance, where nobody really teaches you what to do, and there's a lot of "seduction" or "red pill" toxic nonsense out there. Dating is also a relatively recent modern construct, and it's a skill that doesn't come naturally. There's a certain etiquette to it that might vary from place to place and in time you're in. But generally, it's about keeping it simple to start out with, getting more adventurous as dates progress, and being assertive, organized, and clear in your communication, while trying to forge a genuine connection with someone. It can also equip you to handle other emotional rollercoasters you might encounter.
mailshanx · 5 years ago
Can you recommend any resources to learn this better?
mailshanx commented on A guide to learning algorithms through LeetCode   github.com/labuladong/fuc... · Posted by u/VitalyAnkh
kudokatz · 6 years ago
> the skills you need for advancement are not necessarily the same ones

Exactly this. I suggest learning how to fabricate (or at least exaggerate) "impact" to get promoted. It's the fastest way to make money once you're in the door. Show how much of a team player you are to deliver cross-team, impactful results specifically by stepping on bodies to get there--it'll make you rich!

mailshanx · 6 years ago
Could you elaborate more on that or perhaps give specific illustrative examples of how one may do so? This will benefit a lot of us at FAANG. Thanks!
mailshanx commented on Enabling developers and organizations to use differential privacy   developers.googleblog.com... · Posted by u/ramraj07
mailshanx · 7 years ago
Something that always bothered me when I read posts on Google's blogs: why is it that it's always authored by a PM? Why can't perhaps a senior engineer also write an announcement post occasionally?

Yes, the names of the engineers on the team are present in the acknowledgement section: but, this is a single line at the bottom of the post, whereas the name of the PM and the fact that he is the author is featured prominently below the title. This pattern is common across many product/OSS library announcements.

Sure, one could argue that the PM has a holistic view of the product or library being announced, and that developing this perspective is in fact their job. But surely a sufficiently senior engineer can (and often does) have an equally holistic, or perhaps even more insightful overview. At least sometimes. Even if this were not the case, why not acknowledge everyone's contributions at the same place in the article?

I think this is symptomatic of the ubiquitous class divide between the "suits" and "nerds" in the corporate world.

mailshanx commented on Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote   stripe.com/blog/remote-hu... · Posted by u/geordilaforge
patio11 · 7 years ago
Our jobs page is at https://stripe.com/jobs or you can attend a coffee chat with us and then let the conversation continue that way. https://stripe.events/remote-coffee
mailshanx · 7 years ago
Does Stripe pay at FAANG level? Even outside the USA?
mailshanx commented on Show HN: MLJAR – build machine learning models without coding   mljar.com... · Posted by u/pplonski86
pplonski86 · 7 years ago
Thank you! I believe AutoML has huge value and can be a new standard in ML. I would like to see the adoption of AutoML - that's why I'm open sourcing it. Otherwise, I would need a lot of money for marketing and sales to make it popular.

Before open sourcing I was looking at Metabase and Redash solutions, and I was very impressed with their business model - I would like to achieve something similar. The goal is to be ramen profitable.

mailshanx · 7 years ago
Look at DataRobot - they are massively successful at this point, and I think the key is that they didn't release the source.

Open sourcing the core solution hugely dilutes your value proposition - I hope that you will reconsider your decision.

mailshanx commented on Show HN: MLJAR – build machine learning models without coding   mljar.com... · Posted by u/pplonski86
pplonski86 · 7 years ago
Hi HN,

MLJAR is an automated machine learning platform. With mljar, you can train great machine learning models without coding. It works with binary classification and regression tasks. It can do hyperparameters tuning and model selection. The preprocessing to deal with missing values and categorical columns is available. All models trained in the service are by default deployed in the cloud and can be accessed be REST API or python or R APIs. User can also download a model and use it locally.

Right now it is offered as a SaaS. I'm working on the open source version. The AutoML engine is already open source https://github.com/mljar/mljar-supervised

I've compared mljar performance on binary classification tasks with auto-sklearn and H2O and it works very well https://github.com/mljar/automl_comparison

In the long term, I would like to connect machine learning with databases. User will be able to train machine learning models by writing a SQL query to database. After the best model is trained (with AutoML of course!), all new rows that will appear in the database will be used for computing predictions. But first I would like to create AutoML platform :)

mailshanx · 7 years ago
Congratulations, I read your comments on the Google Auto ML thread a few days ago with great interest.

If Auto ML has commercial value, why are you open-sourcing it?

I think it would be a bad idea to open-source your solution, unless you plan on competing on services, rather than an Auto ML product.

mailshanx commented on Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?    · Posted by u/sardaaraz
mikekchar · 7 years ago
I was single, but the programme does accommodate families. I've even met more than one single parent on the programme (and universally it seemed to be a wonderful experience for the child, which surprised me greatly). The spouse even gets a working visa (or did 10 years ago when I was on the programme). It's a great job.

I haven't looked at the situation recently, but there used to be an age limit of 40. I applied when I was 38, which is essentially the very last time you can do it.

In case you (or anyone else) is interested, I'll write a few things about my impression of what the JET programme is (which differs slightly from the official version). The official version is that JET is the "Japan Exchange Teaching" programme -- so the idea is that people come to Japan to teach English. In reality, it is a rather brilliant plot by the Japanese government to both get rural people used to having foreigners in their communities, and to expand awareness of Japanese values abroad in order to soften the position of foreign powers in business and trade negotiations.

Basically, what was explained to me by a few Japanese government officials (after many, many beers) is that in the 1980's Japan was flying high in the world economy, but they were having a lot of trouble with the rest of the world understanding how they did business. There are some great English language documentaries on the subject (I wish I could remember some, but I suspect you can search on Youtube to find some good ones).

You would have American sales people coming to Japan and saying, "We make car parts. Our parts are 30% cheaper than your supplier. You should buy from us". And the response would be, "We've worked with our supplier for 250 years and have developed a level of trust with them. Why should we betray them for a mere 30% discount" Even small things like people showing up for discussions with important business people and not bringing a souvenir as a gift, or refusing to suspend conversations until everybody had properly gone out and had a drinking party would derail a lot of trade deals.

At the same time, the Japanese government was thinking, "Our population is getting older and if we keep growing financially we're going to have a massive labour shortage". But the vast majority of Japanese people had never seen a foreigner in their life. They realised that they needed some kind of cultural shift to accommodate the bringing in of foreign workers.

They concocted this really bizarre plan where they would seek out and hire young, educated foreigners who are from rich connected families and bring them to Japan for a few years. The idea was to indoctrinate these young people with Japanese ideals and then send them back to their home country. Then 20 years later, those young people would inherit their thrones (remember they are from rich, connected families) and they would be in a position to change foreign policy towards Japan. They would also be able to educate foreign businesses how to communicate to Japanese people. They would also send these young people only to rural locations (where there are no foreigners) to pave the cultural way for the inevitable influx of foreign workers.

I think we're getting up over 30 years of the JET programme and it has been a crazy success - from that perspective. There has been a problem, though. When they initially set up the programme, they didn't know what the young people would do. Someone had the bright idea of having them teach English at the schools. So that's what they did. However, young, rich, snotty-nosed kids right out of school... ummm... They aren't necessarily the best workers (of course there are many exceptions to prove the rule!). In fact, historically quite a large percentage of them had never had a job in their life. They didn't know how to work, had never had any real direction in their life and were also suffering badly from other kinds of culture shock. To top it all off, virtually none of the teachers in the school system wanted these people and took it to be a particularly onerous babysitting job.

Over time, the programme has started to hire a percentage of older people into the programme. They still look for people with good connections. Even though I do not come from a particularly wealthy family, I worked for some of the largest and most influential tech companies in the world. That's the kind of thing that has the JET programme licking their lips. You get a person with that kind of influence and a proven track record of working hard, it's great for them. They can send that person to one of the schools that are pissed off about the people who have worked there before. For example just before I came they had to fire a guy who never once showed up for work -- he went surfing every day. They needed somebody that would keep a low profile and just do what they were told.

The JET programme in Japan, despite being wildly successful in their unadvertised nefarious plan, is under a lot of criticism for their public role. The JET programme pays a lot more than private companies charge for "assistant language teachers". Quite a few schools have moved from JET assistants to assistants from private schools. The advantages are many: usually the workers are older, experienced in teaching EFL and they are a good %30 cheaper. Why should a school hire JET assistants?

This has caused JET to hire actual teachers! These are people who have no money and no connections and are probably not a good fit for the original goals of the programme, but they can actually do their job when they are in Japan. I think there is some hope that the teaching skills will rub off on some of the others (it doesn't, but it's a nice thought...).

So that's where it stood about 5-10 years ago when I was involved. I'm not sure how it's moved on from there. But basically they have 3 categories of people that they are looking for - 1. young, rich, connected people from famous universities; 2. older, connected people who have life experience; 3. people with qualifications in teaching. I think you're still more likely to get hired if you are in category 1, but there are a fair number of positions in the other categories.

Disclaimer: many tongue in cheek comments -- I apologise if anyone found it offensive rather than humorous.

mailshanx · 7 years ago
Thanks for taking the time to write it down - very fascinating indeed!
mailshanx commented on Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?    · Posted by u/saaswarrior
patio11 · 7 years ago
Hiya Dyeje. My name is Patrick. I was previously the CEO of a recruiting startup, have many friends who work at AppAmaGooBookSoft, and am broadly considered credible on HN. I do not work at AppAmaGooBookSoft and my financial exposure to them is denominated in probably tens of dollars; to the extent I am biased here, my incentives are to convince people to not take their offers.

AppAmaGooBookSoft do, indeed, pay deep into the six figures. Each of them has an engineering ladder, where promotions start off like promotions in grade school. If you're not fired, you make it to level X. (They don't fire many people.) The offer at X is, depending on negotiation skill, phases of the moon, perceived competition (particularly on the initial offer stage), and slight variations in performance, about $450k.

There are promotions available after X. People get them, approximately daily.

There are many people for whom it is not in their interest to tell you this, because it will make their offers or proposed life plans less attractive by comparison. There are many HNers who prefer ignoring reality on this issue, sometimes out of jealousy, sometimes out of pride, or sometimes out of believing that they can reason from first principles what Google should pay a Senior Software Engineer and therefore ignore what Google does pay a Senior Software Engineer.

These people are wrong. The market prints the deals where the market prints the deals.

mailshanx · 7 years ago
Do you know if there are any other markets other than the USA where a competent (but not necessarily celebrity-famous) dev can make 300-400k a year?

For many good devs, immigrating to the USA is close to impossible in these times. Would be nice to know if these kinds of salaries are attainable outside the states.

u/mailshanx

KarmaCake day214March 25, 2012
About
ML engineer living in Singapore. orthogonal dot eigenvector at google's mail service.

https://sg.linkedin.com/in/mailshanx

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