wkimeria

This right here! It makes for a sane, friendly culture, and junior team members also get to learn during the code review process.

Laughs in recognition

Early in my career, I had a code review with 2 Senior Engineers who absolutely hated each other. The code review session ended with them screaming at each other and them almost getting into a physical fight. Till today, I still have no idea about what they were fighting about but it pretty much boiled down to the naming convention of a local variable (I kid you not!)

Wow!

I have almost 30 years in tech and thankfully have never run across that. But I can see how that could be a thing for other companies/industries.

Every place I have worked I have given 3 week notice, and every potential employer has been ok with me starting in 3 weeks (except one).

The one exception was a company that balked at my request to start in 3 weeks in order to give my current employer time. They countered with "Well, take it now and start immediately, or leave it. You must not be serious about working here." I countered with "You are probably looking to hire people with no sense of responsibility to their current employer". Bullet dodged.

I have quit before I have started. I accepted an offer from a company (after being jobless) but my interaction with their HR the day before I was to start was so rude and combative that after I left, called my future boss there (who I really liked) and told him I was rescinding my acceptance. I then grovelled back to another job whose offer I had turned down (and they re-made the offer). It all worked out.

This is why "rubber duck debugging" works.

I've had good luck explaining any thorny technical problem to any inanimate object on my desk. Often times, the mere act of doing this makes me really pay attention to my assumptions and the information I have gathered.

> 8) He was very funny without being mean. Sort of like Cosby before we found out what Cosby was really like.

I shouldn't laugh but this right here is gold. Also, love all the points you laid out.

That's closing the barn door after the horsepower has escaped.

I will see myself out.

Oh yes. Absolutely. Sit and listen to the feedback. If you do not agree with it, DO NOT ARGUE!! (for context, I agreed with 80% of the feedback. The 20% I did not agree with, I did not argue, just made a mental note to be better at explaining myself in the future).

I also left out one piece of info. I am pretty senior (Staff Engineer), so it is possible that companies are willing to invest that level of effort for more senior engineering roles and less for more junior roles.

Also, being rejected sucks (I've been in the field 25+ years, I have been rejected by a lot of companies), but contextualizing it as "I was not right for the role" rather than "I suck" (which used to be my go to), has been hugely helpful.

Have you tried contacting them to ask? Some companies are open to it. A couple of years ago I interviewed with a number of companies. Two companies I really liked rejected me after a full round of interviews.

It hurt, but I decided to try something. I sent an email with something along the lines of "I am disappointed that you decided to pass on me, but I respect your decision. I know this is a big ask, but I'd really like some feedback on how I can be better at what I do".

Surprisingly, both companies agreed to meet with me again (via Zoom), and the feedback sessions were about 1/2 hour each. I just sat back and listened (and at the end, thanked them again for their time). In one case, it was with the hiring manager, in the other it was with the recruiter. What I learned was very valuable, and these two companies are definitely on my list to work with again. With one company, what sank me was that they felt I did not have the technical depth for the role (and I was impressed with how detailed their feedback was). With the second company, they felt that I did not have leadership experience of the breadth that they needed.

Now, granted, it is pretty rare for companies to invest time in a candidate that they have already rejected (unless they figure this is someone they would love to recruit in the future when they had more experience or for a slightly different role), but it is possible if you send an email thanking them for the opportunity and phrase the request for feedback as a growth opportunity for you that they might be open to it.

Also, I know that some people state that companies do not do this for legal reasons but truth be told, unless the company is rejecting you for an illegal reason, this is a non-issue. It is more an issue of how much bandwidth the company is willing to spare.

I enjoyed that article a hell of a lot more than I thought I would (which would also explain why one of my favorite courses was Philosophy).

And you see the absolutist Utilitarian argument he is making used in economics. For example, Larry Summers (yes, that Larry Summers) memo (when he was at the World Bank) justifying dumping toxic waste in developing countries since the life expectancy of people in developing countries was already lower. The argument being that it was better for someone who would only projected to make it to 50 years to die early than it would be if someone who was projected to make it to 75 years died early.

The memo

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:*

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate[sic] cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate[sic] cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

Note: The memo was written by Lant Pritchett and signed off by Lawrence Summers (who was the Chief economist at the World Bank at the time). They have both argued it was meant to be sarcastic but nothing at the time indicated that.

It is wild to see the passive language being used about her murder by the US mainstream media, but not surprising.