I have discovered and enjoyed so many books by reading the book jackets, which I would not have, if I only followed recommendations. I feel like doing this actually lets me make my own judgements about a book instead of restricting myself to lists or recommendations of "good" books.
If you are interested in teaching and are based in the US, the TEALs program by Microsoft Philanthropies (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/teals) is an option to consider. I volunteered with them for a few years teaching AP Computer Science and I enjoyed it.
This looks really excellent and right up my alley. I'm going to apply now. If there are any folks you think would be worth connecting to directly, please let me know!
I'm teaching a TEALs class at the moment, my first time, and can confirm it's a great experience. I have 1 or 2 classes a week, each about an hour and a half, and I do maybe another hour of prep before each class. The curriculum is all provided, so you just need to get familiar with it, not write it yourself. I'd be happy to answer more questions about it if you'd like! In my experience they were super responsive, so if you've already applied you'll probably be hearing back from a rep soon.
It's definitely tough to juggle these roles. A few things that helped me and my partner -
* find local help for parents to do chores like groceries,meal prep, help with personal care if they need it, etc.
* make sure there's a way to pay their bills, manage their finances. You may have to do some of this for them by making sure they have access to their money, pay their bills, etc.
* if you are able to connect with their doctor, this would be great to keep a pulse on their medical needs. If you aren't able to drive them to doctor appointments, etc, funding help to do so would also be good.
* be prepared to drop everything and help them for emergencies. This meant letting managers know a bit about our situation.
If you have siblings, see if you can share responsibility for these things.
There is no single correct way to handle these situations so do what works for you and your family. Remember to take care of yourself and your family in the midst of this! Talk to a therapist if it helps.
I also suggest reading the book _Being Mortal_ by Atul Gawande that goes into some ageing related issues, which I found helpful.
I think one thing posts like this miss out is teams are made up of humans It may be a fun thought exercise to compare teams to parallel computing but one key thing is team members are not necessarily interchangeable or have the same expertise. They also don't produce at the same rate everyday. I would be very skeptical of applying these principles to teams in real life.
Does this post claim that they're interchangeable or actually machines? It's talking about the impact of coordination overhead, through a computing lens. This is a well-studied area already if you want to drop the computing lens and go to operations research.
The market pays the least it can among the alternatives. If the younger were smarter, they wouldn't undercut the elder on price, and therefore maximize their value.
Exactly. Age has no place being passed to the proposed compensation function. Experience and other correlated parameters are valid, but age itself is not.
If a candidate and the employer can’t reach an agreement, so be it. If that is because the candidate inflates their expectations because of their age [or wisdom], well, see previous sentence.
I think the point is that people who are older usually fall in the "more expensive" side of the compensation curve: We expect a higher salary, we want more paid vacation and we are looking for more expensive benefits (paid family health plan instead of only personal).
I turn 40 this December; 20 years ago I got bought with just being able to get into a programming job (in the small town in La Paz, BCS Mexico), the fact that I was paid OK was good Vacations and all that extra stuff was just icing on the cake. I didn't care about the "retirement" things (in Mexico by law everyone gets "poor mans" version of 401k). 20 years later, darn I am sure I am WAY more picky than then.
But when you are in a position to hire and there is no apparent benefit to hiring someone who wants more money vs someone with the same skills and relevant experience, why would you hire the person who wants more money?
We don't deserve a higher salary because we are older. "Respect your elders" is a very cultural thing. We should "respect" all people the same. We should "respect" (acknowledge) people that do things worthy of respect.
Ugh, cmon. You are really straining to be outraged here.
That is not at all what I said. In my experience, older people almost always ask for above market compensation regardless of experience. We don’t hire people that ask for too much money regardless of age.
This, exactly. It takes a lot of hard work to raise children and have a good relationship with your partner. I consider taking vacations to lay on the beach with my partner or children a part of that hard work. The definitions in the essay seem a bit short-sighted to me.
I am curious if Amazon follows this process for engineering design documents. I worked there a very long time ago and don't recall this. At another company I worked for, folks from Amazon introduced this for eng reviews. I found it very difficult to get or do a thorough review after reading a document for the first time at the meeting. Some things are nuanced and need time to process - I thought this style just didn't work for these cases.
The recommendations to solve the challenge you mention are to (a) writing better, (b) splitting into a sequence of meetings, (c) reading the document ahead of the time.
There's no real reason why writing process should not apply to design documents as well.
I wasn't questioning the writing process - written design documents are very necessary. My experience with the Amazon-style design review meeting is that there wasn't sufficient time to read the document, process it and come to a decision. If you're reading the document ahead of time, then that isn't really following Amazon style :)
We try to go slower with such documents. E.g., the meeting may start by asking to read the first five sections and discussing them first. The meeting then may naturally be longer than an hour, usually two hours, and still may need a follow up slot.
Nothing in the Amazon style precludes reading ahead of the time, and it is recommended to send the document to the audience ahead of the time. That people often don't is another thing.
I start reading ahead of the time as I read slower (but also read more carefully and thoughtfully).
