adnrw

I think the bigger lesson is probably something along the lines of:

First, make sure they can do the job technically, within some sort of parameters of what they can currently do and what can be learned on the job. That's your baseline.

Then, try and suss out if they'd be good to work with. That will come naturally through the way they interact with you in the interview and how they answer questions (whether they are the questions in the article or completely different ones).

If you reckon they tick the boxes for those two major attributes, it's then just a matter of weighing up how much of each attribute they bring to the table and if the balance is right.

> The specialisation means that work for "web designers" has declined IMO.

Yep, exactly. There isn't really such thing as a "web designer" anymore (or rather, there isn't going to be). The job has been split into several different specialised roles.

It's no longer enough to just be able to design and build a good website, because that level of service has become commoditised.

I think that like in most industries, the low-end has become commoditised.

Want to sell stuff online? It used to cost thousands of dollars to get an online store up and running.

Now you can sign up to Shopify and start selling your stuff the same day using a theme that, to be honest, is more than good enough for what it costs.

The same goes for brochure sites, a space now filled by Squarespace and Wix and so on. Cheap or free options have always been around, but now you can get a theme that is more than good enough.

But that's great for web designers, right? Anyone wanting to only pay $25/month for that kind of product is going to be a terrible client for anyone trying to make a proper living in the space.

Work for web designers isn't drying up overall, it's just that the low-end – the work we didn't want to really do anyway – has become commoditised.

The higher-end work – the more challenging problems to solve, the ones that need proper design thinking to solve – is still around, and it's become much more specialised.

I agree that at some point (probably reasonably early on actually) it would start taking longer to say the number out loud than one second, so you'd fall behind.

However we're talking about counting which is not necessarily saying it out loud. You could just be pushing a button every second, or watching a drop of water fall from a pipe at a constant rate.

Anyway, I remember learning this little fact as a kid and it making the numbers (and the difference in magnitude between them) much more tangible.

For context, at a rate of 1/sec/sec:

  1             = 1 sec
  10            = 10 sec
  100           = ~1.5 min
  1000          = ~17 min
  10,000        = ~3 hours
  100,000       = ~1 day
  1,000,000     = ~12 days
  10,000,000    = ~4 months
  100,000,000   = ~3 years
  1,000,000,000 = ~32 years

Interesting - what trouble did you have with the banks here?

I am a NAB customer and when we got married it was one form to fill in (with associated documentation) to update my wife's details across all of the accounts, including having new debit/credit cards sent out by post within the week.

My parents were incredibly insistent that my sister and I understand how they did their personal and business finances and it's among the best things they taught us (neck-and-neck with how to cook).

They ran their own business until I was in my mid-20s, so during school holidays we would often go with them to work. In addition to us helping out in their warehouse, they also used to get us to do things like writing up the deposit slips for incoming cheques to take to the bank.

They seemed like menial chores at the time to keep us busy, but it really did help us understand how the whole thing worked. They essentially showed us "this is how we do it and why" rather than saying "this is how you must do it" and considering nothing like that was taught to us at school, in hindsight I am very grateful for it.

So yes, definitely bring your kids in as much as possible on finances - even the most basic things like budgeting to live within your means is essential.

> The fact that the Apple Watch doesn't "fit beneath the shirtsleeve" as OP points out is a major ding: form is as important as function for such a jewelry/tech hybrid. A 2x slimmer second generation of the Apple Watch will get /everyone/ on board.

I agree. I think they will sell a boatload of the first generation, but two or three years down the track it will get its equivalent of the iPod-on-Windows or App-store-for-iPhone moment and take off. Everything will suddenly click and everyone will want one.

I'm not sure your follow up clarifies your point, but it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding it.

Are you saying that the only way Apple can sell their products for such a profit (over the raw cost of materials) is because of the Reality Distortion Field? We know that they've been working on this for years with all of the associated costs of designing and developing a product in that time.

I use this every day basically for pushing and pulling to and from Github. For pretty much every other git function I use SourceTree.

I find the Github app too limiting for most git functions other than pushing and pulling (and the resulting rebase or merge) to the remote repositories, but the interface is much much better – simpler, quicker and easier – for those specific tasks than SourceTree.

I think you've slightly misrepresented the second driver's intentions. The article says:

"...the guy behind, he sees the two or three seconds and thinks, oh, the guy in front of me is going to floor it too, I'll floor it and we'll both get through the intersection. Whereas the guy in front thinks, OK, I only have two or three seconds left, I'm going to slowdown."

So it's not that the driver in front sees the timer and stops during a green light, whilst the driver behind doesn't see the timer and isn't expecting to stop during a green.

More likely that both drivers see the timer and make conflicting decisions: the driver in front decides there isn't enough time and slows down; the driver behind decides there is enough time and speeds up, having assumed the driver in front would be doing the same.

However, your scenario is plausible too and just as problematic.

Thanks for posting this, I couldn't figure out what they were referring to by "Greek fucks".