Readit NewsAs someone self taught, let me cut to the chase and say your number one problem is proving yourself in the professional world the first time. My advise assumes you have a different degree and you have some CS skills. Assuming this, you have to knock on ~100+ doors until one opens. I’m not joking about ~100+ doors. You will be ignored, rejected and laughed at - repeatedly. You need to search exclusively in your local market with a local address on your resume. Don’t use the major bot controlled job sites - check prospective employer sites directly. Check for entry level positions - or even internships - that’s your best path. Manual QA tester. Project analyst. End user phone support. Third shift operations. I’m not joking: you have to prove it. Once a door opens, it may not be the title you want, it may not be the technology you want, it may not be the boss you want, it may not be the benefits you want, and it definitely won’t be the pay you want. It may be unpaid. Don’t negotiate. Your one and only criteria should be: will this role allow me to prove myself. Will this opportunity grant access to greater challenges, future roles, broader networks. If so, take it! Then work twice as hard as the next person and prove it!
My advice surely sounds cynical but remember the hiring pipeline is populated 98% by non-technical folks whose assessment of your skills relies exclusively on a degree. That’s the system.
tl;dr if you are self-taught, learning CS is actually the easy part. Getting your foot in the door is the hardest.
This is actually our 10th au pair, so we've had a wide variety of experiences. Some good. Some bad.
The cost and contractual obligations are easy. Agency fees are usually around $9000 for a year for a brand new au pair (it's cheaper if you extend). That covers them overseeing all aspects of the program, like background checks, facilitating contact, and organizing events for the au pairs. You pay the au pair $200 / week. I'd say our total costs are in the area of $21k / year. You also need to provide a private room for them. A real room. They can work up to 45 hours per week, 10 hours per day, no overnights and they need 36 consecutive hours where they are off per week (where "off" means they can walk out the door and be gone for those 36 hours). The contract is usually for a full year, but can be extended for an additional 6 to 12 months.
Usually our au pairs are responsible for getting the kids to school, picking them up, taking them to activities, and making sure homework gets done. This year will be...... different.
You can set up family rules. You should provide these before you match so there are no surprises (surprises are usually bad for both parties). Our rules are pretty simple; no drugs, no drunk driving, ask before you use the car, be well rested and ready to work, when you leave give us a vague idea of where you'll be and when you'll be back so we know when and which ditches to start looking in if you don't return. I'm happy to supply a redacted copy of our rules if you're that interested.
You don't need to supply things like a car or phone, but getting the best au pairs is competitive (I understand right now it's extremely competitive because nobody wants to, or can, come to the US). So we put together a kind of offer packet to make ourselves more appealing. We have a car dedicated for the au pair, but if they want to go more than 100 miles they need to pay for a service appointment. We provide a phone and a service plan. There's a community pool. And we pay for various memberships to amusement parks and museums so they have stuff to do (both with the kids and during their off time).
If things are going really bad you can go into rematch. Either the family or the au pair can trigger it, but once that's triggered the au pair has 2-3 weeks to find a new family or they are sent back. You as the family can take as long as you need, but you'll be without an au pair until you get someone. It usually takes at least 6 weeks to get a new person from out of country. It's hard for au pairs to find a rematch if they cause the rematch, especially given the short timeframe, so often they have to take a less desirable position.
We've gone into rematch twice. The first was with our very first au pair. She was really uninterested in the job because she was preoccupied with boy issues back home. The final straw with her was lying about causing a couple thousand dollars in damage to our car. The second one was at the beginning of this year. We got our first au pair from China and when she got here her English was significantly worse than when we interviewed her. The kids had a lot of trouble connecting with her, but we finally triggered rematch because she took a car she wasn't insured on out for coffee when nobody else was around. It was the third time she had done it, and after each of the first two we had someone who was a native Mandarin speaker explain to her that she couldn't take it. So in both cases the real issue was about trusting them.
We thought about going into rematch a third time. We had an au pair that was really good with the kids, but she was shockingly racist, bigoted, and fascist (she outright said people of certain races and certain religions should be executed, and when we compared it to the Spanish Inquisition she had never heard of it and then claimed that that was fake history and had never happened). It warranted a lot of discussion between us (the parents) and we decided to occasionally ask the kids if they heard her say anything like that to them. As long as she kept those opinions to herself around them it wasn't a problem, and it led to a lot of interesting discussions. Ultimately I think we softened her views.
We also had one au pair who ended our contract early. Our son has ADHD and he was just being diagnosed, so she had a really hard time with him. She decided she just didn't want to work with kids. She gave us a couple months notice which made it easy to get a replacement for her.
All in all it's been a very positive experience for us. The kids have had a wide variety of experiences with other cultures. Most of our au pairs have been European, so they've had Spanish, German, Austrian, French, and Polish influences. Our current one is our first male au pair (most agencies won't accept men), and he's been fantastic. He's from Brazil, so it's been an interesting new experience for the kids. My best friend married one of our au pairs (they were about 2 years apart in age) and moved to Austria with her. We stay in contact with most of them (even the rematches; our last rematch texted me last week asking for a couple of my recipes). We've also set up little vacation "franchises" around the world, and have traveled to Europe with the kids to visit ex-au pairs a couple times.
Happy to answer any more specific questions.
Which agencies have you used?
mke commented on Ask HN: What are some available force multipliers that most people don't know? · Posted by u/newsbinator
This thread is predicated on the value of time, but ICYMI:
1) how? I consider The Shawshank redemption romantic movie for women, if you want more realistic portrayal of prison and impact it does on people I recommend German Das Experiment. I served in military which was sort of like prison where you were totally under someone's control and I experienced changes shown in Das Experiment first hand, when your are noob and older dudes bully you and later you turn into them
I meant that it can change your world view on the nature of forgiveness, not of prison psychology. Surely I was influenced seeing it at 14 years old. Das Experiment is for a much finer palate!
Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Forman’s Amadeus, again Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, Antonioni’s Blowup, De Sica’s Miracle in Milan are some of the first films that come to mind and wish more people came to enjoy them
Amadeus, definitely changed my world view of what movies could be!
1) It’s a classic and perhaps a cliche, but The Shawshank Redemption will profoundly change your view of the world.
2) Then, on the nature of competition, obsession and greatness The Prestige and There Will Be Blood
4) And then there are days where I still wonder to myself, what the heck happened in Primer ?
> We demonstrate a range of pre-existing memory CD4+ T cells that are cross-reactive with comparable affinity to SARS-CoV-2 and the common cold coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, or HCoV-HKU1. Thus, variegated T cell memory to coronaviruses that cause the common cold may underlie at least some of the extensive heterogeneity observed in COVID-19 disease.
Could we just start deliberately spreading these weaker cold viruses then?
Why not just test everyone for t-cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2? The general population already has broad coronavirus exposure. If your test reveals no immune reaction, you are clearly a candidate for extended quarantine. If you have an immune reaction, now what? More study needed. Can you be safely exposed? Something must explain the rampant asymptomatic carrier rate.
In the same spirit, Ulysses By Tennyson
Related, I’ve long enjoyed longform.org