Heh... have a bad experience with lunch-n-learns at a previous gig? :)
Pretty much everything in this comment thread describes approaches that only work with the buy-in and support of upper management. If OP (or anyone else) is truly in a position where code reviews are impossible, and lunch is everyone's "one break in the day", then there is very little you can do improve code quality in that environment.
In THAT kind of environment... you slog through, get what you can onto your resume in preparation for the next job search, and don't let yourself get too emotionally attached. Support for quality has to start from the top, you really can't "grassroots" it if upper management pays only lip service or doesn't really care at all.
This all depends on the environment you're working in. When we used to do lunch and learns they were on Fridays which were blocked off for side projects.
Plus half the time we did lunches it was as a team and we always ended up talking shop.
We also welcomed free food and had other people in the community come and speak. Now if you're in a culture where it's 100% coding 9 to 5 then I'd completely agree with you.
Exactly the position I am in now. After a couple of years I am looking to move on but I am finding that no one needs the experience I have. Everything I have done for my current company is desktop development and the vast majority of the nearby jobs are web development. Companies these days don't want to hire anyone who can't hit the ground running so it's a rough situation. Better to get out now than many years from now though.
Also, ever look into trying out micro ISV? You may not get rich but doing doing something like it will help you work on techs that are popular/relevant, not what your managers wants done. Or try working on side projects with free time?
That's still pretty damn expensive. Ever leave a pot on the stove boiling and let it run out, the amount of precipitate is surprising. Do that on millions of gallons of water and you end up with a lot of material that needs cleaned often and isn't easy to get off.
yes! I have been playing a lot of king arthurs gold as well but the community is very small. There are usually only at most 2 servers with a decent number of players.
I work for the company that is building this 3D printer (Cincinnati Incorporated). I am only a software guy but if anyone has any questions let me know and I'll try to answer them!
>so we often work up to 1.5 to 2 times (60-80 hours is very common) over our official salaried hours for free.
Take this with a grain of salt, it really depends on where you live. I live in the Ohio area and of everyone I went to college with and everyone I have ever worked with I have never met someone that has worked more than 45 hours a week.
I work with a guy that used to be a submariner and he talks about how the best thing about being in a submarine was the food, including lobster. Maybe being in submarine they couldn't spend too long cooking it? As someone who just tried lobster for the first time this weekend I don't think anything can make it taste good.
I think the difference might be that the guy on the submarine cares whether or not its cooked properly, because he's going to be eating it too. The Army uses contractors for the most part these days.
Thanks for this link. Am I reading wrong or does the article say the drone costs $15? That sounds unbelievably cheap, does anyone know how much a drone like this in America would cost?
It's probably the fact that a huge leap in battery technology would make huge changes in both electric cars as well as being able to store solar power (and therefore allowing people to live off the grid). Faster computer hardware wouldn't have nearly the effect and I'm sure these companies want the biggest hype possible.
I googled something like "Paul Software Engineer" to see if I myself would come up and found Paul Graham's articles which lead to hacker news. I had no idea what a startup even was but found the content to be of such a higher quality than anywhere else that I visited often.
