utopkara

Late to the party, but here's an eclectic mix:

- Logbook of your work, plans, thoughts; use whatever tool that you know will be around the longest. Be it git, apple notes, or any other. Make sure it has a search, and keeps track of dates. - Somewhat related; an infinite terminal history. You may have the best one liners, but you don't want to keep rewriting them. Also, know your unix tools. - Computer Science; as covered in GRE computer science; those are just fundamental, if you try to find your way around learning them, you'll just waste time and effort; just go through the learning. This is assuming you are a software engineer. - Competent peers and good ways to review work, and collaborate in general. Code reviews are great, but they are just a small fraction of what you can achieve with a team. Retros, design reviews, pair coding, planning for common objectives are all productivity multipliers. - A focus on objectives; this is a basic one, but not an easy one. You'll be making many decisions when you code, design, review, discuss, communicate, argue, negotiate, etc. if you don't keep track of the various objectives, you'll waste time and effort either immediately or in the long run. In a time crunch, stop and think about your objectives, and whether you can work towards them more effectively. - Basic drawing and handwriting; you need to get comfortable with using a pen or a marker, and the ways of putting your ideas on a piece of paper or whiteboard. I've witnessed many impenetrable computer science theory or just basic design problems turn to dust when beaten down on a whiteboard by clear minds. - Regular breaks, walks and occasional coffee. Being tied up on a (hard) problem for many hours without breaks is usually a waste of time, also unhealthy for your body. - Knowing your data; if you are trying to solve a problem with ML and you don't know what your data looks like, you are wasting your time. Understand your data first. This requires experience, looking is not seeing or understanding. Also, know your objectives, see above. - Know your sources of wisdom; these could be people, books, or search tools. You are unlikely to be the first to run into the same problem. If you are looking for a novel problem or solution, it is mandatory to check what has been done before. If you are dealing with a tough problem, you might get insights from others. If you are looking for better documentation, maybe it's out there somewhere. Don't forget to check before you get lost.

The author has one opinion, here's mine:

The OLPC designers, developers, engineers, educators (and whoever contributed to the project) have done a fantastic job.

I got an OLPC for my kids through their Give 1 Get 1 program. The beautifully designed little laptop was a fantastic learning tool for children. The software and hardware kept my daughters engaged and exploring. OLPC was a way better educational tool than any available ipad software at the time. Considering the unique experience, and even now it is better than an iPad (although I am assuming the software might have caught up by now). My daughter loved programming scratch on OLPC growing up, and she preferred it to other computers and ipad too. Later on, I even installed the OLPC distro on my old Thinkpad because she wanted the simpler interface. During covid, they became more familiar with chrome and iPad, although, had it been pushed further, I believe OLPC would be a much better platform than Chrome, and iPad for learning during covid.

Depends on the people involved.

Some are likely to be sharing screen in a presentation at any given time, then it is the expected way of starting a chat.

Others would be unlikely to be in meetings often, then it is plain unnecessary (and even pretentious).

Logged in to say kudos. This is a fantastic idea. Driving around in Antalya now, and I am transported mentally.

A lot of the children's stories I heard growing up included violence of sorts. Not saying it was necessarily good, but it is very common, hence perhaps is either harmless or maybe beneficial in a convoluted way. fwiw, the stories kept me from wandering into abandoned old houses, tall thick bushes, or too far away from home; we were pretty much on our own when I was a kid.

It is hard for one to appreciate the value of a process that helps teams operate well in the long run, in the face of disruptions, pivots, failures, growth, etc. If you can do without standups, good for you.

You usually do not even want a global optimum with a high capacity model such as a DNN anyway (SVMs memorize only a small number of data points), because that possibly means that you are overfitting to your training dataset.

Meeting room switch does take time, and it is a cost, cannot argue with facts. However, real estate cost is not high only if the company is located in the woods. If one is looking to grow workforce in a central location, the real estate cost is through the roof. Keep in mind that companies do not start at their final size; so the efficiency of the space will be far lower during the earlier stages.

Given your requirements, I would suggest a consultant/contract developer position for large/established companies building enterprise solutions. Large, because they will have challenging business problems that they cannot deliver through their normal project development process. Enterprise solutions, because the problems will be better defined and your experience will be better appreciated.

I had an office (in the company which pioneered individual offices for their dedicated building for creatives many decades ago), and I have worked in open office settings. There are times when you want to think on your own, but I don't think it is impossible to achieve if you have a good pair of noise cancelling headphones. In return, you get to interact with peers more openly. Not to mention the cost savings for the company. This is absolutely a win-win. Although, the devil is in the details, and they are neither easy nor cheap: Open office settings have to be implemented with the flexibility to occasionally work from home; ample amount of meeting rooms for impromptu huddles; well designed ergonomics; absolutely relaxing decor and setup.

Fantastic story! Looking forward to following the new breed of aviation pioneers and adventures in space!