mejarc

The worst, most bad-faith case I've seen of "advertising" an H1B job was of the job posting printed out, taped to the back of an interior office door, and covered by the recruiter's hanging overcoat.

Yes. Here in the western U.S., some public lands near populated areas close during the summer, because of extreme fire danger. Having larger crowds camping in the woods raises the danger for everyone, even with the supervision of the forest service. It'd be insanity to ignore trespassers on private lands in summer.

My courthouse wedding over 20 years ago cost $75, had no showers, no attendants, no reception, and was memorialized only by a snapshot taken by one of the affable court clerks. I've never regretted it. The only way my spouse and I pulled it off was to keep our plans secret from our families. My mother-in-law resents me for that to this day.

Loved his metaphors of the extravagant promises of beginner dance workshops. I had similar realizations when involved in Argentine tango in the late Nineties. There's similarity to the coding bootcamp phenomenon--the workshops generate graduates with overblown ideas of their competence, and the locals retreat from engaging with them, but the workshops can't profit by teaching slow, gradual improvement of a subtle art form over many years of practice.

I was invited to answer one of these, at a company with truly the most hateful manager I've ever had. Oh, was I ever ready to offer my jaundiced, embittered opinion...until the survey required I log in with my company email address.

Yes, there was the usual verbiage about anonymizing, blah, blah, but I lost all confidence that my response wouldn't be tracked to me. I never returned the survey.

I still haven't determined whether this was by incompetent or malicious design.

Gawd, that Volkswagen aroma. I'm sure there's a German word for it.

"[Jackie Opel] joined forces with the Troubadours, the house band of the Clyde B Jones funeral parlour." There's potential for at least one more newspaper feature, or streaming series, with this backstory.

I doubt any company, especially in SV, takes a PR hit from age discrimination, which seems to be widely accepted and barely punished. Google just wants to swat away the plaintiffs like annoying gnats.

Location: US Pacific time zone

Remote: Yes. Required.

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: HTML/CSS, JS, Grunt/Gulp, React, Rails, Sec. 508/WCAG, design systems

Résumé/CV: linkedin.com/in/mejarc

Email: mejarc [at] gmail

Front end developer with deep experience working alongside application engineers and interactive designers to bring their visions to Web applications. Most productive in product development teams with dedicated back- and front end engineers. Tends to leave behind improved documentation and more efficient process. Project/contract work welcome.

The setting: a mandatory, in-person all-hands meeting at a medium-sized enterprise software company in SV.

The time: a few weeks before the winter holidays, mid-2000s.

What we expected: to hear about our company's IPO or beneficial acquisition.

What we got: orders to design and construct crazy! wacky!! zany!!! miniature golf obstacles in the office for the CxOs to play through.

I doubt the (unquantified) morale at this company improved.

So much of this account resonates with my experience as a UX ("X!" Must be technical!) developer in the Bay Area. I love this line particularly: "A film of pseudoscience sticks to everything we touch."

Until 1940 or so, the United States was relatively friendly to non-car transport--just look at the older sections of most towns and cities.