localtalent

From what I've experienced, this is rapidly becoming untrue - CoL in Toronto has become very high, friends are paying comparable to what I paid in NYC but salaries are definitely lower. They're paying in CAD what I paid in USD, but are earning 20-30% less. Food is also more expensive (particularly eating out), on the whole, than NYC.

Most new construction apartments are quite small, and the older, larger ones command a significant premium. You can move out of the downtown core (to North York, Scarborough, etc) but then you're committed to a long commute on the slow TTC or sitting in traffic on the 401.

MTL is much cheaper, but salaries also lag even further.

It depends where you want to work. Here in NYC my experience, the plural of which is not data:

Enterprise-style jobs at non-tech-focused places (banks, pharma) don't care.

Big Consulting companies really don't care, they just want warm bodies.

Startups and small companies care a lot. I've been on both sides of the table and it's been a big differentiator. When I was screening potential candidates at another company, if you didn't have anything at all we were less likely to bring them in for an interview.

And it wasn't always tech stuff. One person did multiple research projects on bird species and submitted them to science journals. One person made a book of notes passed to tellers during bank heists. At a small company people spend more time with their colleagues than their SOs, and you need to like each other. Side projects are like cover letters, they let me know what you're interested in and that you're an actual human being.

Currently on lunch at a job acquired through a side project. I built it because I saw a problem, got upset enough about it to do something, and made it happen. I think that's the key - it's a combination of being interested in something and design/build/execute ability. Do it because you care, not because you want a job.

Love the project, thanks for putting it up.

The auto-refresh was making me crazy as well - even a big 'Auto-Refresh: ON' toggle by the menu would be enough.

I'm not a fan of settings in general but it does appear you're getting two distinct groups of users.

It hurts the field as a whole - when impossible-to-build CG renders and endless piles of pie-in-the-sky Post-Its becomes synonymous with 'design' it makes it that much harder to convince organizations to put resources behind including design in their planning and production.

I've met them in person a few times while working for a magazine that documented solutions in resource-constrained (not necessarily poor) environments.

IIRC, many of these projects came from actual farmers, not design students.

There's a related project, the Greenhorns [0] working to recruit new, young farmers and support them as they get going - part of that is cutting equipment and labor costs. I chatted a couple of farmers who were using the produce washers built from old washing machines.

Is it a solution for large-scale industrial farming? No. But from hobby farmers up to ones doing a 50-100 share CSA model, it makes a lot of sense and reduces barriers to entry.

Thanks for the link! I've seen similar initiatives here in NY and I love them. I think it's an excellent complement to some carrots and/or sticks that can get the spaces filled with more permanent tenants.

I'm in a similar situation - comfortable with the product, uncomfortable selling. These tips were excellent, do you have further information or some more examples?

I think in theory, it's fantastic - the basic tenets of computer science are really fascinating, even abstracted away. I may look like an adult, but it's just a disguise.

It may be that the sample chapter wasn't representative of the rest of the book, but I found it a bit confusing. From an admittedly quick read, I got:

- commentary on jargon - a mention of red-black trees - reference to the Traveling Salesman Problem

What I found confusing is that if you have no grounding in CS, you wouldn't even catch the references - they don't seem to play a real part in the story.

If the traveling salesman were trying to find the shortest route to visit everyone, and had been trying for years and years and years on his own, and some days found one that was just a little bit shorter, and it was just enough hope to keep him going...the idea that figuring this out is difficult or impossible is at least well-explained.

I'm sure my algorithms teacher is upset by this, but I've completely forgotten how red-black trees work, and I didn't get a better understanding from that chapter.

I'm not trying to be an armchair critic, and I certainly like the story, but from this particular chapter I'm not completely clear on how it explains CS concepts.

It will be bootstrapped here - the bike-sharing program will be injecting 10,000 bikes into the system as of next spring/summer.

And I defy anyone to spend time on a major non-recreational cycling route (Sands Street, 8th Avenue, the Williamsburg Bridge, Prospect Park West) when the weather is pleasant and state that the infrastructure is underutilized. Were it the ghost town that Cassidy and Weinshall claim, the DOT would not be putting in pedestrian safeguards (bollards, the wall at the bottom of the Williamsburg Bridge).

This debate has raged for the better part of this year, and the notion of Prospect Park West residents sitting with golf clickers counting cyclists in the dead of winter and claiming the paths are underutilized is ridiculous.

This is not the place for anecdotal arguments, they aren't productive. Anyone can cite stories of bad behavior on all sides: sidewalk cycling, oblivious jaywalking, and aggressive driving. It's what every cycling article on Gothamist, Streetsblog, and the NY Post stirs up, and I could write out the comments myself and be pretty close to accurate. Nobody wins, and everyone leaves feeling angry - not useful.

The article here is refuting a heavily biased New Yorker piece article by specifically refuting assertions based on fallacious assumptions.

We are where we are - everyone is behaving badly, and all sides are so deeply entrenched in their beliefs the arguments just cause people to dig in further and the ad homs and strawmen appear. HN is better than this.

The situation obviously can't continue, but it's time for a rational discussion of what's most effective, in terms of cost, and transportation efficiency, and safety for the largest number of people.

I'm prepared to have this discussion, and while I'll admit bias in a certain direction on this issue I'm open-minded enough to hear all sides. I'd like others to do the same, and we can all get onto having a fruitful and interesting discussion around solutions.

Some suggestions for potential discussion topics:

- Education/awareness

- Infrastructure costs and benefits (street parking, bike lanes, bus lanes, raised crosswalks, etc)

- Discussion of network effects

- Legislation to punish offenders (relative to cost/potential danger of the offense?)

- Maximum efficiency of moving the largest number of people (measure in average trip time)

- Externalities (pollution, business impact, etc)

- Psychology + behavior understanding and modification