morgtheborg (u/morgtheborg)

morgtheborg commented on Ask HN: How do I figure out what skills are in demand? · Posted by u/rose52152

What exactly are you doing? It sounds like you're hitting the HR screening which means you need to apply more or apply more effectively.

Cold applications are well and good at scale, particularly when combined with custom cover letters. But using your network often yields a faster response. Also, being open to relocation helps.

morgtheborg commented on Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues theverge.com/2024/2/21/24... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew

danlugo92 · 2 years ago

One thing's for sure though, nobody in tech really cares about your race or sexual orientation, they care about your results.

Sure there might be some bias against/for some groups, but everyone knows there's genuses in India and white caucasian flops so they give everyone equal opportunity.

Only exception is for like legal reasons it might be easier to hire some French random low-tier programming over a Russian/Irani genius but that's due to sanctions, but if those same Russian/Irani guys held a western european passport they would gladly just hire them outright.

Source: Venezuelan (sanctions) who is also a holder of a European passport (all sorts of doors just open just because I hold this 2nd nationality out of sheer luck, and you know Venezuelans aren't extremist either).

morgtheborg · 2 years ago

Eh, that isn't quite true because determining the quality of the "result" is biased by our opinion of its author and, equally important, how they present their results. Race and sexual orientation impact your speech patterns and habits which you very much are judged on.

Additionally, when a woman works with a man on something often the woman's contribution is assumed to be less than the man's contribution if they're listed as co-authors - I would be very surprised if this weren't the case beyond academia but also in artifacts like design docs.

morgtheborg commented on Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues theverge.com/2024/2/21/24... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew

multicast · 2 years ago

We live in times were non-problems are turned into problems. Simple responses should be generated truthfully. Truth which is present in today's data. Most software engineers and CEOs are white and male, almost all US rappers are black and male, most childminder and nurses are female from all kinds of races. If you want the person to be of another race or sex, add it to the prompt. If you want a software engineer from Africa in rainbow jeans, add it to the prompt. If you want to add any characteristics that apply to a certain country, add it to the prompt. Nobody would neither expect nor want a white person when prompting about people like Martin Luther King or a black person when prompting about a police officer from China.

morgtheborg · 2 years ago

I can see why someone would be like wtf if their "viking" input produced less than 90% white people results, but there should be an equal wtf if "CEO" produced 90% men.

One is a historical fact that is never going to change, the other is a job in society where the demographics can and will change --- at least partially as our expectations of what "normal" looks like for that role are updated. By perpetuating the current (or historical) norm for a given role the biases of what person we naturally consider appropriate for that role remain unchallenged.

morgtheborg commented on 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 1000hoursoutside.com/blog... · Posted by u/gmays

sneak · 3 years ago

This assumes that your old person life will be shit without kids, an assumption I do not think holds true.

morgtheborg · 3 years ago

I don't think it will be pure shit, no, but at the point I can't physically do fun things anymore (whenever you think that will be) there really isn't much let to DO which means your relationships are going to be clutch. And the longer the relationship the more meaningful (generally), so having kids seems like a strong enhancement.

I don't think it's binary "sucks/not sucks", but I do think, for me, it'd clearly be sig LESS fun to be old without kids based on what I've seen of the older people in my life with different family situations. Seems shitty to me.

I'm sure there are people who have the opposite experience, but I was trying to explain why the "sacrifice" of prime years can be seen as an investment rather than a straight loss.

morgtheborg commented on 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 1000hoursoutside.com/blog... · Posted by u/gmays

elil17 · 3 years ago

Reading this article a couple years back got me to really question why I was planning to move far away from my parents and spend so little time with them. Changed some life plans based on that.

morgtheborg · 3 years ago

Yep. I was raised moving a lot and assumed I'd do the same as an adult. But then I thought of how rarely my parents saw their parents. And how much I love my parents and siblings. I ended up marrying a man who also traveled a lot as a child; both of us are happy to prioritize being near family.

morgtheborg commented on 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 1000hoursoutside.com/blog... · Posted by u/gmays

kotlin2 · 3 years ago

How much did you hang out with them once you were home though? With a < 12 year old, you spend a few hours in the morning + from like 5:30 pm until bedtime on weekdays, and then the entire weekend, with your kid. I lived at home for some time. I spent an hour maximum per day with my dad, including on weekends.

morgtheborg · 3 years ago

Whoa. My siblings and I were in and out of my family house throughout our 20s. Hell, during COVID a bunch of us moved back in in our 30s, kids in tow.

And we spend HOURS per day with our parents when living at home, even when teens. Evenings were hanging out as a family usually, whether that meant reading in the same room, watching movies, playing board games, whatever. All during the evening when they got home from work.

Heck, family dinner alone is an hour a day.

morgtheborg commented on 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 1000hoursoutside.com/blog... · Posted by u/gmays

sneak · 3 years ago

> The sleepless nights and diaper changes are a mere blip on the scale of a lifetime with kids.

You're looking at what, 2-5 years of that? Per kid? Plus the huge time commitments for all of the other burdensome stuff that having kids entails, like school and transport and non-school education? 2-5 years out of a lifetime isn't much, but 2-5 years out of your 30s or early 40s is a gigantic percentage of your remaining not-old life. Unless you're a major biological outlier, you're not traveling on sporting vacations or backpacking trips or hallucinogen-fueled music festivals when you're 55. You don't get a lot of useful years remaining as a not-old person by the time you're old enough to responsibly have kids. It's a gigantic tradeoff and to minimize it like this is woefully shortsighted.

It's fine if you like kids and didn't have actual plans to have fun in your 30s or 40s, but people with exciting lives will lose a lot if they suddenly have to dedicate almost all of their free time for 5 years to their offspring.

This is also assuming that you have more than enough money to spend on kids and all of the other things you like to do in life. Even if kids took 0 time (which as we know they do not), this is not true for most people.

> You actually like hanging out with your own kids.

Some people do. Sometimes children grow up to be terrible, for reasons outside of direct parental control. Not every potential bad final outcome can be avoided with good parenting. Not everyone who thinks kids might be a good idea is capable of being a good parent.

I personally find the idea of having huge, tremendously expensive, hugely time-consuming, unavoidable responsibilities like this in the middle of the prime of my life to be a living nightmare, for well-considered reasons which you seem to simply handwave away as trivial. Having kids and raising them well must necessarily become one of your primary goals in life, displacing others as there are only 24 hours in each day.

We don't have a lot of time left.

morgtheborg · 3 years ago

Huh. I guess I see the sacrifice as making my old-person life not shit not because I have kids. So I'm investing prime years so the potentially long amount of time I'm all aged has more meaning/purpose/love in them. I'll say my aunt didn't have kids. And while we were little I guess she told my Mom she had no regrets. But at some point in our 20s, she backed off that a bit as she (finally) saw the benefit of kid.

I assumed I'd hate having kids until they were like 11/12 but to have the adults would make it worthwhile --- even just the chance of a close relationship with them as adults. But I'm actually shocked to find I even enjoy the baby/potato stage.

morgtheborg commented on 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 1000hoursoutside.com/blog... · Posted by u/gmays

deamanto · 3 years ago

Hey just wanted to say that I really appreciate this comment and it's an opinion I haven't seen shared before even though in hindsight it's obvious.

I personally have chosen not to have kids - one reason is doomer level but the other is time and independence. I have a dog that is a relatively (to kids) minor responsibility but in my day to day life feels like the biggest responsibility, I compare that to having a kid which I would say is a lot more and I wouldn't want to take on as I've already experienced a dog and that is as far as I'd go. But while you haven't changed my mind, you have negated a lot of my feelings towards a previously thought "lifelong responsibility"

morgtheborg · 3 years ago

I have a dog. I totally thought having a kid would be like having a dog. In the sense that I do a bunch of shit with my dog that I don't necessarily want to do and she is often a burden to things I want to do (mainly travel) but, in aggregate, is worth it. And if having a kid was that negative shit multiplied by some large x with similar or even higher positives, it would be a huge no go. Happily I got the dog a month before I got pregnant.

And it is not the same at all. So many things I do for my dog I do out of obligation. I do not often want to walk her. Once I'm walking her or going to the dog park or whatever, I have a nice time but I don't naturally WANT to do it.

In contrast, I want, like actively WANT, to do all sorts of absurdly unpleasant things for my eight month old. And society is set up to bring kids to all sorts of activities my dog can't go to --- despite my pup being sig more pleasant to have out and about than my baby.

I will say I think a sig portion is hormonal. I would say having a kid was a genuine metamorphosis for me. In contrast, I think my husband had more of a dog-like sense of obligation and is only recently enjoying the kid.

As sexist as it may sound, I'd suggest most women who are financially stable with good partners to have at least one kid because I am shocked, utterly shocked, by the fundamental shift in self I've experienced and, frankly, it's cool. Life is short. It's a cool, unique experience worth having.

But men? Unless they actively want kids, I'd suggest staying away from it --- the sacrifice to their relationships, lives, etc. seems sig harder to bear since they don't seem to have quite the same hit to their hormones. As my husband says, I take care of baby and he takes care of me. Who takes care of him? I try but baby comes first. That's a hard hit for a man not excited for kids (thankfully my husband is and remains so).

morgtheborg commented on 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 1000hoursoutside.com/blog... · Posted by u/gmays

kotlin2 · 3 years ago

Hmm that’s interesting. I wonder if the two systems produce equal outcomes into adulthood.

morgtheborg · 3 years ago

I know that I come from a family of five and was starved for attention. My husband comes from a family of 2 and felt he always got attention when he wanted it.

Like some of my strongest memories are of leaving notes for my Mom about how I felt neglected and was in <x> room waiting for her just to BE there with me. She'd last about ten minutes before she'd begin multi-tasking. Not because she was a bad mom but because she just had so. much. to do with five kids and a full-time job.

If you're going to have a large family older kids have to take on some of the emotional labor or the younger kids are totally shafted.

morgtheborg commented on The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents axios.com/working-from-pa... · Posted by u/jbegley

nradov · 5 years ago

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend boarding school starting from age 13, and getting out of my parents' home early was a huge benefit in every possible way. I wish more young people had the same opportunity.

My parents are good people, there was nothing wrong with my home environment. But it's more important that youth learn to act like independent adults and take responsibility for their own lives. Staying at home too long causes learned helplessness. When there's no one around to help it's sink or swim.

morgtheborg · 5 years ago

I also went to boarding school at 13. I wonder if just giving your kids more freedom would have a comparable impact.