almeria

Which, if I can attempt to boil it down to one sentence, would seem to be: "Tests don't seem to be a good predictor of college success, even when taking GPA into account. But they do seem to promote diversity."

And to which I would like to add, solely from anecdotal observation[1]:

"They also provide a second chance for a significant number of people. Even with a bad year, or even two, in high school -- this doesn't necessarily mean you are doomed to a lifetime of minimum wage servitude. If you have the intrinsic cognitive skills, you can easily do moderately well on the SAT, even without prepping."

I would like to consider diversity and the possibility of a second chance to be not merely incidental, but essential benefits to be striven for in the admissions process. Instead of simply stack-ranking based on the most easily demonstrable predictors of success.

[1] Including observations of some of the smartest and most creative and inspiring people I have ever met -- but again, that's anecdotal.

Seriously, the one time I was in a situation where much of the team seemed hellbent on this "just put all in Kafka" idea (without really understanding why, exactly) the arguments they came up with were not too dissimilar from what you've shared with us above. It all seemed to come down to "OMG databases are hard, schemas are hard, our customers don't understand the data they're shoving at us. But Kafka will take care of all of that for us. Because, you know, shiny."

That said I'd still like to have a more ... balanced understanding of why Kafka may not necessarily be The Answer, and/or have more hidden complexity or other negative tradeoffs than we may have bargained for.

As has been in use at UC and just about everywhere else, up until now.

In math terms: just because predicts(A) > predicts(B), it does not follow that predicts(A) > predicts(A ∪ B).

If network ops is your bag, then yeah, maybe you "ought to" know about what's in the article.

Otherwise -- it's just pure FOMO-based clickbait.

For the ruthlessly cynical and basically destructive ends toward which this man has devoted his life - his judgement is arguably quite effective.

That is, after all, how you get to be "America's preeminent living statesman".

But "as the company enjoyed booming and historic sales with its stock price doubling, Amazon failed to adequately notify warehouse workers and local health agencies of COVID-19 case numbers", the state's attorney general Rob Bonta said.

"This left many workers understandably terrified and powerless to make informed decisions to protect themselves and to protect their loved ones."

Amazon lurkers out there - especially L6 and above - do you have anything to say about this? Anything at all?

Or are you so used to hearing such patent bullshit from your higher-ups (of the sort pasted below) that it just ... goes through you?

Nothing personal - I'd just really like to know.

"This settlement is solely about a technicality specific to California state law surrounding the structure of bulk employee COVID-related notifications," the spokesperson added.

"There's no change to, or allegations of any problems with, our protocols for notifying employees who might have been in close contact with an affected individual.

"We've worked hard from the beginning of the pandemic to keep our employees safe and deliver for our customers - incurring more than $15bn (£11bn) in costs to date - and we'll keep doing that in months and years ahead," they added.

But in general: learning by building stuff based on a real need -- even if that "need" is just to scratch the itch of some personal project you've always been wanting to do -- has about 10x the staying power (and "interview cred") as what one gets when starting from the mindset of "oh shit, I'm falling behind, I gotta cram on this stuff".

And on top of that: knowing when you really need X or Y, and when you don't -- is often as valuable as, or even more valuable than simply knowing how to do X or Y.

So even slaves at Pompeii had a window to get light from, we see.

The point there's no need to feel smug about people who are dealing with seriously nasty stuff.

Or are dealing with a genuinely painful day-to-day work situation and are struggling to keep a lid on it.

I get the point that venting about the problems of one's current or previous environments is bad form, and not anything anyone really wants to hear about it. But the touch of schadenfreude in your characterization of the (often very real and painful) situations these people are helping doesn't exactly help, either.