Yeah, I just didn't think a person deserved to be insulted for what I saw as a relatively benign comment based on an assumption which was reasonable for a person who only saw the video clip.
I interviewed for a QA position at (Deleted to protect the guilty) where I had to answer a bunch of brain teasers like this. I always prepare thoroughly and even enjoy solving these sorts of puzzles, so I knew most of the standard ones by heart and did fine. I would say that about half of the people who interviewed me did not appear to have the mental acuity to answer such questions themselves. I did learn some new and interesting puzzles though!
Two months later I was hired for what turned out to be an excellent software development position at a completely different organization.
When I interview technical candidates, I ask a pair of related questions that encompass data structures, sorting, and time complexity. It is a very simple-sounding problem. The good candidates get the questions almost before I finish asking, and the mediocre candidates struggle.
it really blows your mind. I think the nay-sayers are missing the point of this article - it doesn't matter if you are sympathetic to the family. You have to remember that the higher paying job isn't creating 2x the economic output - her choice to take the lower paying job means that:
There is one fewer position making $120K
There is one more position making $60K
Now consider this: the $120K position is much more likely to be a management position, which, if done well, could create several $60K positions, lets say 3. This means that for the economy as a whole, there is one less $120K position and TWO fewer $60K positions.
"Now consider this: the $120K position is much more likely to be a management position, which, if done well, could create several $60K positions, lets say 3."
This does not follow. The task of the higher paid position might be to fire people, not hire them (especially in this economy).
This seems backwards to me. Traditionally, aren't managers appointed when there is a need to manage people doing work? You don't (generally) appoint a manager and then wait for them to somehow create the work that people would do.
Well this is just plain wrong. She has two positions available to her; her choosing the $60k one does not wink the $120k position out of existence, and there will certainly be someone else trying for that. Perhaps one of the many people who do not fall in the narrow description of "parent with a mortgage, two kids, one in college" that would make it such a seemingly terrible deal.
DOUG: Oh... umm... there's a seminar at 3:30 PM I thought he would be interested in.
YOU: What seminar?
DOUG: The underlying physics of the violin.
YOU: Why do you think he would be interested in that?
DOUG: We talked about it once.
YOU: So, just because you talked about it once, you think he would be interested in spending time going to your hoity-toity physics seminar?
DOUG: Um, yeah, I do, and it isn't hoity---
YOU: Oh yes, the fluctuations of the harmonic oscillators will exponentially dampen the transverse waves of the vibrating string...
DOUG: Dude, shut the hell up. First off, that's nonsense, second off, we don't talk like that, and THIRD, you STILL haven't answered---
YOU (sarcastically): Oh, oh, I'm so so sorry, I haven't answered you question yet have you.
DOUG (gritting teeth): No, I just want to know when he will be arriving.
YOU: I have no idea, check the fucking monitors.
DOUG: WE AREN'T AT THE AIRPORT!
YOU: Yeah, I know, I'm just fucking with you, he arrives at 3:00. He won't make it to your seminar, and in my oh-so-humble opinion, he wouldn't want to go to your seminar anyway. Joe's a real man.
I don't really understand why this is news-worthy - he took a risk and lost. The safer path would have been to keep working as a chef and then mix-in the career change, perhaps by starting a cooking-related website, blog, Facebook app, whatever.
I find it quite difficult to believe that a chef with 10 years of experience could not find a job in Seattle. This beggars belief.
In short, don't tempt economic fate when you have a wife and kid and live in the USA - you should not count on ANY social support in this country.
<i>In short, don't tempt economic fate when you have a wife and kid and live in the USA - you should not count on ANY social support in this country.</i>
Or a job in a kitchen here in SF. We have more restaurants per capita than any other city in the world bar Paris. Even if it was just prep or even dish washing - it would have been some $.
It also seems like he didn't have any network here in SF, or try to build one. So many free tech events going on every night that you would think he would attend them to get a network going.
I genuinely feel sorry for this dude but he certainly made a lot of mistakes that don't indicate good judgment (the kind of "non-tech" smarts you look for in a good dev, as it happens)
The article is interesting, but the conclusion that all antidepressants on the market are flawed is not correct, mostly because different antidepressants target different systems in different ways. I took Celexa for over a year, it worked OK but not great, and then after reading the wikipedia article on treatment of depression, I tried SAM-e, which works much better (200mg Jarrows in the morning with a B-complex supplement to break down the homocysteine). Prior to Celexa, I tried Zoloft, which was completely useless.
The SSRI-class antidepressants' efficacy also appears to be somewhat linked to genetic factors (despite their all being, in theory, quite similar in action). Zoloft seems to be the only thing besides benzodiapenes that will keep my panic disorder in remission; I chose this drug because a blood relative was already using it successfully to treat much more severe problems.
So I can't speak to its effectiveness as an antidepressant, but they can work quite well on anxiety in many cases. I am also taking fish oil supplements to see if that helps improve things further, but I can say that low-dose fish oil for a couple of months on its own wasn't enough for me. From a nootropic standpoint, it might have some benefits regardless.
One of the odd things about SSRIs that I learnt recently...
I was reading up on peripheral neuropathy, since I'm suffering some nasty nerve damage in my feet due to diabetes, and discovered that SSRIs are one of the most effective treatments for peripheral neuropathic pain. (which probably didn't help with my diabetes diagnosis, since I've been on a SSRI (paroxetine) for anxiety for the last 3 years, and it was the pains in my feet that led to testing for diabetes...)
The current Scientific American has an article you may find interesting on the biology behind certain kinds of chronic pain. In particular there is a certain kind of cells called glia whose job is to heal hurt neurons. They consider active pain neurons to be hurt, try to "heal" them, and increase the sensitivity, leading to a nasty feedback loop as anything will cause pain.
There are treatments being developed for this kind of pain. But one of the more effective existing ones is marijuana. Marijuana dials down the glia, which breaks the feedback loop. If you live in a state that allows medical marijuana, you may wish to look into this.
