New server means a new #introduction
Hi, I am a design executive in Europe who started as a backend developer in Missouri.
My life has taken many turns, but I’ve always benefited from the advantage of being a white cishet male who is stereotyped as credible. Hopefully, I leave this planet more equitable than I found it.
I strive to apply critical analysis to everything yet also find solidarity with everyone.
While I value “strong opinions, weakly held”, I do indulge in strongly-held opinions on a few issues. I’ll thread them here so you can make an informed decision on whether to follow or block me:
@angiebaby is there was a no-regrets way to experience being that cocksure or unaware, I'd love to know what it's like.
@nf3xn I hope you do but am not confident.
Government, almost by definition, engages in "social engineering”. I am at least heartened to see public discussions about both the means and the goals. And for the goals to be more nuanced than increased consumer spending.
@calisti thanks for reading all that. As you can probably tell, I'm still working through my own perspective and it's helpful to write-think.
@nf3xn I am likely guilty of benchmarking against the US, having come from there.
My maybe-too-generous read was the NPLV wants to see the most needful distributed more evenly, and has to frame this as “stop them from clustering" to be palatable to the neoliberal national government.
@skry I promise we're not doing that for giggles. It'd be hard to grow a good company that way.
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress So, finally, now that I'm inside I see it working in the aggregate.
I still don't *like* it, because the false negatives (which I think includes Sara) are not only lost opportunities to hire great people, but also damage our reputation and can scare off other good people. But I dislike the “hiring people like myself” culture I know from other tech companies even more.
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress Sorry, I promise to stop spamming soon, but want to share: I was initially very concerned that it would introduce the very sort of bias we're trying to prevent. But the data looks good, so far.
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress now that I'm on the other side of this, I feel the pain of false negatives acutely. Individuals that I believe would make stellar colleagues are sometimes screened out. But the “early evidence" criteria prevents false positives, which is the sort of classic tradeoff that's necessary to scale.
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress the hypothesis, then, is that early-in-life evidence of being extraordinary is more valid than later “I did well in the ivy league school my parents got me into” stories.
So the high school questions are *one way* to demonstrate being a smart and ambitious person. The GIA (which seeks to measure how adaptable you are, not IQ) is another. Many of us have other stories in our early lives to demonstrate this.
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress the goal here is to prevent hiring people who have shiny CVs with a lot of success because they've lived lives that have never really tested them. Failing to screen out these surfers-of-privilege is what leads companies like ours to bloat up with "fine" people.
We like to think that avoiding this has contributed to our growth even while the industry is in layoff season.
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress (more disclosure: I never finished high school. So I can be a bit sensitive about this.)
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress but anyway, what everyone usually wants to talk about is The High School Questions, so I ant to share how I've gone from skeptic to advocate on that one.
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress I was going through the process about the same time as Sara, so know she ought to have met humans exactly at the step she joked about not seeing any. That's clearly a major fail.
(Also, the "personality" assessment she "passed” is not that kind of test. There's no score with thresholds, it only informs the interviews that follow to ask more meaningful questions.)
@calisti @supersingular @AgathaSorceress disclosure: I'm a hiring lead in Canonical, but not near the roles I shared or Sara's story.
I've not been here a year, yet, but see the process changing often. My initial doubts. have been largely put to rest by seeing both the good-faith intentions and the actual results.
@nf3xn basically: areas that are full of rich people have to offer them space. This alternative to social housing in a cluster of other jobless is social housing elsewhere.
(There is some homelessness, but coming from the US it seems practically nonexistent.)
If the feedback you give is always critical or always affirmative, you’re probably not being constructive.
I’m not certain whether the approach is right, but I love living in a country where “social engineering” to address disparity is on the table.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/03/nls-most-deprived-neighbourhoods-call-for-social-engineering/
Every single post on @autism101 is highly relatable and makes me think “but that’s just the human condition”. 🤔
@angiebaby the suspense is killing me
(I have a data-entry-job nostalgia but don’t imagine it’s for the same reasons)
@Alice that is not possible. They will make more, whether we want it or not.
OK nerds: who wants to create a computer game in which you are the engineer trying to debug Voyager with a half-day lightspeed delay on each move? Turn-based (one move every 12 hours); you have a spec for a very (very) simple microprocessor and some fault data to start with, and your job is to figure out what's gone wrong and patch it. Sits squarely in the genre of sit-and-think puzzle games and https://tomorrowcorporation.com/humanresourcemachine, and would be a fun alternative to Advent of Code if it's ready for December.
Nothing more motivating than a royalty statement with a £0 balance 😓
If you're a curious human, please consider buying a copy of my book, Sticky. It's the best thing I've ever written! 🦎
• You can find on all the usual spots - and in store - in hardback and/or paperback.
• It's available as an eBook (Kindle & Kobo)
• And if you like to listen to your science - delivered in an Irish accent - it's also on audiobook (Amazon only) with me narrating it.
Well, I finally have data to back my model of the software world out there. And the data is relatively solid and shows what I keep saying.
You are all on our turf now. Please accept that you have no idea what you are talking about. Sit down. Listen. Ask questions.
But respect our work. We are trying to keep the world running, 1h per month.
https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/open-source-hobbyists-turf
@caolan I am toying with a Gemini client but in total disregard of the non-extensible principles am interested in explicitly-inline images. So when I can across your <= it caught my attention.