cntainer
Joined 8 years ago
Karma
525
Submissions
106
Member since
Sep 6
Recent submissions
Comment · 1 year ago
it depends, I noticed that many engineers will input information on a slide following their thought process closely, they rarely think about the audience's perspective, especially if the audience is less technical or not familiar with the domain.
Comment · 1 year ago
Sure mate, because taking a messy list of confusing statements and turning it into something like: "High risk of failure on re-entry - foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data - test data unfit to support decision as flight condition is significantly outside of test database" requires a PhD in Materials Science.
If you can't effectively communicate how the results (or lack of results) of your research will impact the outcome of a high-stakes space mission you have no business being in that room from the start.
Comment · 1 year ago
I can't remember the last time I saw a slide as mangled as the one in the article. It hurts my brain just reading it.
But you are right, most engineers would consider that reasonable, while complaining about the "muggles" that just don't get it.
As a Software Architect, one of my main responsibilities has been to take information presented like above and turn it into something that non-technical people can digest.
Being able to express a complex concept in simple terms is an invaluable skill.
Comment · 2 years ago
Pretty sure it means that Ruby isn't the bottleneck for your case.
In most WebApps the first performance bottleneck people tend to hit is the DB: missing indexes, n+1 queries, etc.
Comment · 3 years ago
The magic of cloud is how quickly you can scale things up. If you're a new fast growing business it will give you a competitive edge.
If you drank to cloud kool-aid from the beginning you kind of get used to huge costs for simple services so it's easier for your brain to justify paying 10k a month for a simple web app deployed in kubernetes, using cosmos db and any other number of services.
I've seen many companies that started on the cloud and their core architecture is so interleaved with the cloud that it would a huge investment to reduce that dependency and switch.
Comment · 3 years ago
Cloud providers will always make their in-house offerings more attractive and easier to use compared to other (open standards) solutions. That's how you get locked in.
Comment · 3 years ago
Just another example that a free market does not always ensure healthy competition and some times intervention is needed to level the playing field.
Comment · 3 years ago
I don't think Google is afraid LLMs will "fix" all its issues. I think they're more afraid that their seemingly unassailable moat is suddenly exposed to disruption.
People use search engines to find answers to questions. If ChatGPT can give an answer faster and in a more natural format then people will flock to it. Most won't care that the quality of the response is as low or lower than what a search engine returns.
Comment · 3 years ago
"Making fiction become fact" - the dream of many present day entrepreneurs.
Comment · 3 years ago
Sure, this helps by removing some of the bias, if done right. But many times devs end up perverting the original intent of the framework.
Eg: I've seen many scrum teams transforming story ponts into days or vice versa missing the actual purpose.
Comment · 3 years ago
The people getting paid salaries to have a bird's eye view and veto power over those kinds of changes that could screw with my deliverable should be the ones knowledgeable and accountable for that estimate
But they are accountable to their stakeholders (clients, upper management, etc). They take your estimate and many others from other people in the team and work those into a delivery plan.
A good manager will know how to manage risks and remove blockers in a way that gives a developer the best chance to work within the estimate. A bad manager will usually have no plan and put all the blame on the developers if things go awry.
Comment · 3 years ago
I expect a plumber to give me an estimate of time and cost for his "tasks" before starting work. Even if he doesn't tell me the exact cost upfront he'll still be able to tell me roughly if he'll be done in 2-3 hours or less/more.
If I have a big project and I'm dealing with a plumbing company I might not be talking directly to the plumbers but to their manager. The manager will usually ask for time/complexity estimates from his plumbers before sending me a quote. The manager will usually factor into the quote any risks plus the company's profit margin.
There's a lot of talk about agile, scrum, no-estimates and so on, but a big part of the software industry still works with time estimates and budgets communicated up front.
Comment · 3 years ago
Management is punishing waitstaff by underpaying them and then blaming the customers for not tipping enough.
Comment · 3 years ago
I hate tipping in general, but especially when it's expected or even demanded.
The fact that restaurants or any business relying on the practice use it as a reason to underpay their employees just pisses me off.
Comment · 3 years ago
500 - the number of employees before your CEO becomes a political figure
1000 - the size of company when you’re at risk of losing accountability
From my own experience and other sources (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35206141) those numbers seem too high. I've seen this happen 2 times in front of my eyes while both companies were in the 100-200 range.
One of them managed to go to the next level and adapt to the new reality the other is still struggling.