sbisker

I’ve noticed that a lot of bootcamp grads are, in fact, legitimately hired by their bootcamps - just not to write code. They are often brought on term by term as TAs until they find work.

I suspect this practice is a bit disingenuous of the bootcamps, a way to pad their “successfully employed” rates while keeping labor costs low. But it is hard for me to fault the candidates for putting those experiences in their resume. They need that money to keep their job searches going, and recruiters are always biasing against gaps on the resume.

If you’re being paid by them for any reason, put it on your resume. (And if you’re not…move it to the education section, where it belongs.)

Yep, surveying the landscape now! Lens is incredible and I know particularly for shopping them, Facebook and Amazon are working on merchandise recognition. Honestly that’s part of what makes me interested in the space - the fact that it’s possible, but right now limited to the biggest players.

It’s early days, but I’m looking into more precise and domain specific object recognition in photos. Apple or Google will generally tell me if a photo contains a chair; I would like to know what kind of chair (is it a Herman Miller Aeron or a Herman Miller Embody). There are a few domains I am interested to apply this to, but at this stage I’m still learning the limitations of the tech (and any leads / insights would be appreciated!)

The headline struck me as unusually crass for HN even before I saw the parent comment. I was a bit surprised it wasn’t rewritten. So, I guess I’m a second person.

Maybe it’s generational, but I was taught to avoid using names in puns. I definitely grew up with people who would make last name puns like this to put undue emphasis on race.

If folks doesn’t even see why that would be a problem these days, I’ll take it as a win for society - but I think the question was in good faith.

Actually credentialism could make sense in this case. Let someone study all of the Leetcode once, on their own terms, and use the same results for every company for the next 5-10 years. A credential has issues of access and privilege, but I think it’s clear at this point the lack of a credential is also posing serious problems.

Doctors don’t have to relearn everything on the boards every time they talk to a new job, and that definitely helps combat ageism in that field.

They do their best to prevent it, but a lot of students don’t even apply because they or their parents think they can’t afford it. Access to education about financial aid itself is a privilege. That has got to be the biggest limiter by absolute volume of people.

It “felt” more uncommon that someone actually turns down an MIT offer after they see the package, as they do their best to provide student work aid and students tend to be optimists about debt - but I only saw the people who said yes, so my data is totally biased. I’ll note that one common situation is folks who can technically “afford” MIT, but are offered a full ride elsewhere - a lot of folks I knew who joined felt some pressure to save money by taking the scholarship elsewhere, and struggled to turn it down.

On another part of his homepage it says he went to MIT around the same time he did YC. As someone who interviewed for YC myself while attending MIT, I am not even going to pretend I got the interview entirely independent of my background and the opportunities it gave me - and indirectly, my ability and decision to finance a very expensive education, even after financial aid.

Now, he obviously had talent to even get into a top engineering school at that age, so there is some correlation as well as causation here. Still, unless he wasn’t admitted yet or actively hid the fact from YC, it seems highly unlikely it didn’t carry some weight - especially at that age, with so much less track record to look at.

I’ll grant that when I read the article, I missed the part where he admitted to intentionally ignoring the invite. If they tossed him for what they considered a values mismatch, that’s obviously a little different. Still, I feel like a “Listen bub!” voice conversation could have helped here, versus relying on email - if only in delivering the bad news better, if not actually hearing out the apology and talking over potential next steps. And I give him points for admitting to that mistake - that strikes me as far more in line with their values than lying and saying his mother was sick (which he could have trivially done).

As for asynchronicity, I totally get that something will be lost. The question is whether enough will be lost as to render the participant totally unable to learn those values over, say, the next few days and catch up. But something might be gained as well - it’s possible that these synchronous moments are an actual bottleneck. Experimenting with async could result in them handling more students with less staff.

I’ve also seen organizations realize in that situation that they can change or automate things as to reduce the consequences of the exceptions, or to make rules simpler to follow, in justifying drawing that firm line. Trust is won when people see you as being fair, and part of being fair is knowing your perspective has been heard and considered.

I started reading this article excited that Recurse had gone online and, after following RC and Hackruiter for almost a decade, I might now be able to do it. I ended it in a similar state as the author - bewildered as what to think. I know the folks running that program don’t do anything lightly, and they thought long and hard about whether that decision best served their mission and goals. Still, I’m torn.

I understand people have to draw the line somewhere, but any time “exceptions can be made in an emergency”, that is a sign that an experience can, albeit maybe with considerable pain, be made asynchronous. In a remote first world, I think more and more things will be forced to become asynchronous, whether we like it or not.

I’m reminded of make-up tests. Professors dread making them, they take real time, and they indirectly “reward” those who can’t make the first sitting (with more study time, etc). Some do refuse to do it. Still, universities compel teachers to do it because the value of having each student tested is considered a crucial part of the mission.

I get that this is a different situation; there’s a social unity component, some experiences can’t be exactly recreated. But is completely booting someone for missing one initial meeting in spirit with the mission? Is so much lost from a recorded version that it is truly better for that seat to stay empty for 6 weeks and one less person to be able to join the next batch as a result of a time zone gaffe? And is it really fair to say that because no one else had this problem, the six months of evolution post-COVID should match the same intentionality and strictness of running an in-person program for a decade?

I hope that at the very least, folks over there are looking at what happened with an empathetic lens - especially if they are truly willing to take this person for the next batch, and want to see them succeed.