Novashi

>But hey talk is cheap and you seem to know a lot - so how about you link an open source project you've published ;)

I wrote tech docs explaining the jungle of IT systems that we were relying on at a hospital I worked at, and sometimes that included diving into old code. These were usually much longer than READMEs.

Having a README wouldn't have saved this code from needing to be refactored. Nor would it have really changed my opinion of the code. It hasn't been a reliable signal.

The hard part about documentation is keeping it up-to-date and accurate and not filling it with extraneous details and going off on tangents. A lot of the READMEs are written for quick bootstrapping and that isn't going to reflect much on your code quality. I care more about good documentation and that's harder to write than a README and a much better signal.

I don't have time to work on open source but it's clear my experience has been vastly different than yours and I doubt either one of us are going to come up with a peer reviewed reason for either side.

Turn this around and say "this repo has a README! surely it's really good and so is the code" and it makes no sense to give that much credit for something that really isn't impactful beyond the first few days of using something.

False dichotomy, and if you actually witness this first hand and only have two options in your candidate pool, you might need to spread your net a bit further. Also the original post was about READMEs only, so if they have unmaintainable code, the README really doesn't matter that much, does it?

Developers are at various stages in their expertise when they go looking for jobs. READMEs are nice but try not to let yourself get tied up with emphasis on a few signals that document the whole human. README quality is a pretty weak signal.

If you bring up the README in an interview, and the dev cannot find any motivation or acknowledge that it could be better, then maybe you might have to pass on them. My problem with your methods is that you get to this point without even opening a discussion.

READMEs are a relatively teach-able skill and in pretty quick fashion. Maintainable code, much less so obviously.

>that's a huge groan and turn off and you lose tons of strength (credibility) as a candidate.

Toxic and off putting. You put too much weight on relatively minor things. It’s preventing you from fairly considering the rest of the candidate. You could be the one to teach them to do READMEs well.

>Any virus writer is going to know how to use public-private crypto to encrypt the files in a non-reversible way.

Flatly untrue. They are people capable of mistakes. Viruses are often more complex than every day business software and that isn't perfect yet either.

Assuming this means you won't actually check their usage of it, meaning you won't catch any errors they make.

It needs to be billed and itemized then because that's racketeering language.

Plus they're likely doing something they enjoy.

>the shift towards spacial minimalism suits me nicely.

It hasn't for me. Rent has gone in the opposite direction as I've downsized.

We haven't optimized low-cost, small, quality homes despite all of technological progress and I'm pretty sure it's intentional.

>There were so many times where an engineer would start blabbling big terms to avoid doing something or an PM spouts MBA Bullshit...

Well that just tells you everything you'd want to know about FB culture, regardless of his actions in those situations

It isn't just the older generation (and actions done 20-30 years ago) doing dumb things and getting shamed for it. The newer generation grows up without learning the implications of mass surveillance, mass long-term storage, mass searching and indexing, and encountering driven people looking to shame others just for fun.

(example: one of the kids of the parents accused in the college admission scandal tweeted about "studying is hard" or something to that effect and it came into my twitter feed and everyone was having a laugh)

If you decide that people NOW shouldn't be shamed for behavior 20-30 years ago, why even bother shaming? I know I'll be different in 20-30 years in the future, so maybe don't shame me (as much) in the present, as long as the actions aren't too heinous. Maybe I don't end up changing, in which case, more shaming would seem 'normal', but the advantage there is that someone has to remember to come check on me. I could gamble that there's a bigger outrage and the internet mob moves onto something else.

The upside of this is that the internet is learning how many people are really bad people. Part of the outrage culture comes from that. Most of these details were hidden in an information-deprived world, and importantly, lack of searching and indexing to actually find all of it.

Maybe it will get so bad that new identities become a much bigger industry and that becomes a social norm. A new identity and probably a new home country is probably the best short-term solution today for this if anyone feels unjustly shamed by society.

Honestly what should your salary be if you have domain expertise and are good with data science tools (and tools surrounding them like git, CI/CD, etc.)?

>Feels like it's a very high false positive rate and one that pushes all the time costs onto the applicant (multiply ~2hr by say 5 companies that want you to do a coding challenge).

It is, I wouldn't entertain companies that do this unless you really need a position.

This is the trifecta of bad interviewing tests:

- No compensation

- Stupidly restrictive time limit

- High chance of not getting feedback

Personally I would turn them down and then explain these three things. There are plenty of companies with less annoying hoops.

I think the biggest motivation is impact -- I want to do something more useful than company or marketing websites. Tools or websites that someone relies on and that I can take some pride in. I find myself not caring about my current job to the point where I feel like I'm taking advantage of them. So I want out but I'm still investigating other options. I don't think I'm built for academic research though.

Travel would be nice but I'd prefer to stick to civilization and not do stuff like long-term scientific expeditions to an Antarctic glacier or something remote like that.

Company size really doesn't matter but I've found it's easier to break into industries by joining a larger company.

Salary isn't a huge deal as long as it's over $80k (with median cost-of-living).

Thanks for taking the time!

This is a good technical approach but if you get this far, your salary won't match the value delivered by your actual skillset.

Companies know this. There's not appropriate compensation for people who can get comfortable with this breadth of stuff. Fullstack is currently "exploited" because of this IMO.