Another metaphor: if someone decided not to pave their driveway, because they don't want it to get so hot in the summer, would you tell them, hey I'm not going to visit you until you pave your driveway?
In practical life, people who chose to live in less accessible places actually don't get visited much except by very close relatives & friends (I can think of 4-5 of my relatives like this). So probably proves the point :-)
> make sure you don’t leech off of those around you
I think that's a toxic attitude. Picking up the phone for someone else every now and then is really not a big of a hassle. Obviously I don't know the whole situation, but in general I do think that one should be ready to do such minor favors for another human being without calling them a leech.
I know someone who lives off the grid like this, they are also too cheap to ever pay their share of airbnb lodging (I will stay with someone else, oh you got it I come stay with you), too cheap to give a bit of scotch tape for taping up a box when clearing out their dead mothers house because they bought that tape for 2 euro, or finally too cheap to buy their own chewing gum when they have had all their other expenses paid (flight, lodging) to go to a wedding in Kiruna Sweden.
on edit: changed some incorrect uses of to to correct usage of too.
exactly the original comment was make sure not to leach, and someone else thought it was a toxic attitude, and I don't think it is too toxic an attitude - because there are people who are leaches after all.
Yes but there was the original comment which suggested that it was not nice to suggest not to be a leach, because that was a little bit much to assume, so I provided a counterexample where that was a reasonable assumption.
Normally I would not expect, given that thread of conversation, that I should have to explain that my example was not meant to be a universal condemnation of anyone not having a sim card in their phone.
Especially because it wasn't that long ago (by my standards) that not everyone had a personal phone in their pocket.
In fact, only 33 years ago my parents had to call the neighbours 3 doors further to call my aunt to notify her (and my grandparents who happen to be visiting her) of my birth.
Although, I admit as someone with a speech impediment, I absolutely loath using the phone. But it's a necessity even as a software developer. But nothing as annoying as having to pick up the phone, only to hear that it was (effectively) the wrong number and they needed someone across the room...
I feel you. After my last phone broke I decided to get a dual SIM phone. I set up my phone to block all calls on the first SIM from any unknown number. I got a cheap second pre-paid SIM and essentially made it my 'business number'. On my android I then have it set up to 'Do not disturb' mode during sleeping hours. The transition was a bit more cumbersome than I anticipated, but after it was all said and done, I couldn't be happier with the outcome. My friends and family can get a hold of me whenever, and I no longer get calls from business/employer/etc unless it is in the allocated times I want.
That's easy to fix though - I am putting my phone to do-not-disturb (or even airplane) mode when I go to sleep every day and I honestly don't see any disadvantages of doing that. If somebody calls me when I'm sleeping, I will react when I wake up. I don't think giving the people on the whole world the ability to wake me up whenever they want to is justified in any way.
Well I kow I should do that, but perhaps because I'm near my fifties (so lived a lot without a mobile phone), I always fail to remember to active it back when I wake up.
My wife (who is younger than me, as in 16y younger) do that too and have no problem.
For me, if I do it, I sure remember, but 2 or 3 days later :-D
I have been on do not disturb mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the last few years. It’s actually amazing. It has allowed me to use my phone on my own terms, when I choose to, not on someone else’s terms when they want me to.
I haven't gone that far because unwanted phone calls aren't a problem for me, so I've just turned off most notifications and it's been great. Email is a much better tool when you don't have notifications on, I'm much better at paying bills because I check a couple of times a day when it's also convenient to pay them, with notifications on I'll swipe away and forget. Same goes for things I actually want to read, I'll read them properly now instead of a quick skim at an inopportune time.
Google has been awful at respecting my decision though, they'll keep enabling various news notifications and the have a very different opinion on "breaking news" than I do, I think the last one was for some Hollywood awards show. If there really is some breaking news I need to be interrupted for then the government emergency SMS service should suffice.
I first read this on HN: app notifications should really be called app interruptions. It really changes how things should be viewed.
I hate everything about CDs. The flimsy jewel cases that break all the time, the tiny artwork, how easily CDs scratch, how choosing a song requires clicking stupid buttons, the delay after inserting CDs, the high pitched whine of the motor, the sound of the stepper motor as it moves the laser...
When I listen to music, I want to slow down and relax, and taking a record out of the sleeve is just so much nicer than fidgeting with CDs. I like that everything about playing records is analog. I like the crackle between songs when playing an old record, it's so much nicer than the random skipping when playing a scratched CD. When something breaks in my analog audio system, I can usually fix it myself with a soldering iron.
As for the sound, I think it's mostly because of a different style of mixing than the media itself.
I mean it can’t possibly be about CD issues because that’s trivially solved by using a digital music player. I can see the argument about the giant album art making it more of a ritual, but all of the CD complaints sound like lame justifications IMO.
Sorry, for some reason I assumed that the question was about Vinyl vs. CD, maybe because my preference for physical media seems like something obvious that needs no explanation.
Another factor is that I have the same analog hifi system since 16 years. I've grown to like it.
I've also used (and still use) digital players (computers, iPods, smartphones, etc), but they either break, or the software changes every few years, making it kinda hard to get attached to.
Most classic albums released first on vinyl were released before the loudness wars, most CD (re)releases were during or after the loudness wars. That may explain much of the impression that vinyl sounds better.
Not an audiophile, so reading this through the lens of ux, what you describe is a form of pliancy: taking the record out etc. Something that isn’t reproduced properly in digital is feeling and operation (as in actual touch and manipulation) I presume there is something in our brains that responds to that (beyond simple nostalgia)
> ... how choosing a song requires clicking stupid buttons, the delay after inserting CDs, the high pitched whine of the motor, the sound of the stepper motor as it moves the laser...
Some of the earliest CD players are superbly constructed — and have some of the best sound. I have a couple of Sony decks from the mid-1980s that are quiet, quick, and have excellent controls, complete with 20-odd direct buttons for individual songs. Playing a CD on these machines feels just as mechanically satisfying as playing a vinyl record. You have to spend some time & money finding them, but it’s not hard to pick up a top of the line 1980s player for a few hundred dollars. For me, it’s absolutely worth it.
Because unless you're paying for an expensive service, it's uncompressed vs whatever bitrate your streaming service decides to use. It's usually cheaper just to buy the CD (and rip it if you want) if you're after quality.
> In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all
I can't imagine that this makes any sense.
Let's say you give every interviewee feedback:
- 90% of candidates will be grateful
- 10% of candidates will not like the feedback and start to argue (at this point ignoring emails might make sense to avoid wasting time)
- 0.01% of candidates will actually sue you over it
The lawsuit will probably go nowhere, and in the worst case cost €10.000 in legal fees.
But all the good will from the other people must be worth something! Maybe one of all those people who you gave good feedback refers a friend, and they apply to your company. If you hire that person, you just saved 10.000€ that you don't have to pay a recruiter!
So either all these lawyers are giving bad advise, or maybe my numbers are wrong? I've never heard of a lawsuit where a candidate sued a company as a consequence of interview feedback that they got, so I assume that must be a very rare occurrence.
Lawyers at companies have much bigger fish to fry like constantly reviewing sales and customer contracts in the high six figure ballpark not reviewing the risk of the feedback for every rejected candidate. For the latter their answer is always clear cut, "don't give any meaningful feedback to avoid ANY AND ALL risk of litigation, period".
Their job is to keep the company safe from any litigation risk, no matter how small, not to keep rejected candidates happy.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but outside of the SV bubble(see Europe) most companies don't see feedback from rejected employees as a high return ("who cares what some people that were not good enough for us think?") since the're never in the firing range of reddit/twitter mobs like the big FAANGs.
So you think that companies don't care what candidates might tell their peers...
But at the same time they're sponsoring meetups and conferences, hosting coding contests, sending people to career fairs, buying huge ads on job platforms to advertise company culture, just to get people to apply?
I can't talk about all of Europe, but here in Linz a lot of companies struggle to get candidates, and they spend a lot of money and effort to get a good reputation as an employer.
Well, I have no trouble giving feedback these days because life's too short not to, but that isn't even an accurate description of the problem.
A prospective job seeker goes on Glassdoor. 100 companies. 99 with only positive and neutral reviews, maybe some negative saying "rejected without feedback". 1 with a rant about how they're disrespectful dicks who are just assholes. "It wasn't the feedback. They weren't even correct and they just told me I wasn't up to their so-called 'standards'. Completely rude in their email correspondence.".
Go on, you read that, you have 99 other places to apply to. What do you actually do?
Well, if everyone has ranting screeds on their Glassdoor you'll blame the ranters. If only one company has a ranting screed, you'll blame the company. No one writes a ranting screed for not receiving feedback. Therefore no one wants to be that company. Essentially, we're in a stable equilibrium.
I feel you overestimate the amount of fucks managers and HR give about Glasdoor feedback from rejected candidates in Germany. No company I interviewed at gave any meaningful feedback(for legal reasons) or seemed to care about opinions of rejected candidates knowing recruiters are constantly flooding them with resumes from new potential candidates on a daily basis and also most rejected candidates won't bother writing feedback on Glassdoor because once you've been around the block a few times you realize it's the norm and you're basically preaching to the choir.
> No one writes a ranting screed for not receiving feedback.
The hell they don't. The root post of this very thread could easily have been a "ranting screed" on Glassdoor if the poster was of a different mindset.
> But all the good will from the other people must be worth something!
Is it possible that there may be a distinction to be made between all the good will from the other people being worth something and all the good will being worth more than the legal headaches, PR headaches, and other potential consequences of someone reacting badly to feedback?
This is the kind of question that demands a quantitative analysis, but I hardly know where to begin beyond that it's an expected value question. Where do you go about putting a number to the value of something that "must be worth something"?
So you are suggesting that (from their behavior) people are oblivious to the low risk/high reward indicated by those figures?
Or maybe they don't like assuming risks based on other's bogus data when they already have their version of bogus data that is probably closer to reality?
I’m not really sure who “they” refers to (parent, GP, the company, the employee?), but let me take a step back here and illustrate my point more clearly. Maybe it will help. What I’m trying to say is: this isn’t a court of law, it’s a collaborative conversation. Someone posits a hypothesis based on some estimates. Others are invited to build on either of those: the estimates themselves , or the hypothesis built upon it.
This is a healthier way of looking at online discourse than constantly asking people to provide sources and citations. If they didn’t mention them, you can safely assume it’s a guess. It’s implicit. Don’t like the guess, great: help us improve. We’re all in this together. It’s not a battle of “who has the best opinion”.
Maybe that’s what you were trying to do, in which case I’m sorry for misunderstanding. I genuinely didn’t understand your comment, please forgive me :)
The figures discounts the downside too much for them to work.
I was on the receiving end of no-reply and didn't like it. But if I were to switch sides to a company, then after a couple of honest attempts at feedback I will most likely say fuck-off and send a stock letter instead.
> If you make a conclusion on made up data you get bogus conclusion
No. You work with made up numbers to understand the problem. Then you can make conclusions even without knowing the precise numbers.
For example, my analysis doesn't change much wheter the rate of lawsuits is 0.1% or 0.01% or 0.001%. It would change if the rate of lawsuits is 1%.
But I am pretty sure that the rate of lawsuits after interview rejection is much less than 1%. So I can make a conclusion without knowing precise numbers.
Calculations based on estimates come up all the time, and they are very valuable. They make it clear what assumptions your decisions are based on.
What's the alternative? You have to make a decision. If you don't want to use estimates, what are you going to base your decision on? Whatever feels right?
What I'm saying is that even with the lawsuit rate that low, there is no real incentive for the company (really the people sending the emails) to behave otherwise than they already do. Actually their benefit is that low, that even a slight error of that 0.1% guess would make the whole do-good business a really bad proposition.
Your (guess) data is probably right but it discounts too much the downsides. When you present your hypothesis to them (e.g. me) they will tell you (rightly so) to try it yourself first.
The incentive is “be a good person/entity.” This whole bottom-line approach and “what’s in it for me” is unfortunate to say the least. Behind every corporate establishment is a cadre of people. People with (possibly) spouses, children, non-deceased parents, neighbors, and friends. Possibly at some abstract level similar to the abstract “us.” Treat people like people, not some kind of legal liability.
> GNSS accuracy is poor in forests, canyons, and dense urban environments
I feel like this should be solvable on the software side, especially for medium or long distance runs. If I look at the traces, I can see that the recorded zig-zag is obviously wrong, and a bit of smoothing should be able to fix it.
Most fitness trackers do apply some level of automatic track smoothing but it's not a solution. Sometimes athletes really do zig-zag around, especially on trail runs in rough terrain. The Apple Watch is sometimes overly aggressive about track smoothing which leads to funny results showing the athlete running through solid obstacles.
Accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope sensor data can help a little to sanity check GNSS inputs and fill in brief gaps. But those tiny sensors have terrible drift which makes them nearly useless for sustained position tracking.
I run in New York City using a Garmin (Forerunner 935 but the model doesn't really matter). GPS accuracy is terrible in midtown due to the signal bouncing off the buildings. Sometimes it records that I've run a two minute mile. At a minimum you'd think they'd have software that can detect that it's unlikely I'm setting a world record (or scaling the side of a building).
This frustrated me enough that I eventually got a Stryd footpod. The pace/distance tracking is extremely accurate and I use it to override what the watch records. So the GPS track still bounces all over the place but the recorded pace/distance data is correct.
Thank you! I tried using internet archive but somehow it wasn't loading the page properly. I was going a bit insane, but remembered it's just the internet and moved on.
Training a junior dev is going to take a bit more than two weeks.
I'm convinced that remote work is something that works only for some people and some kinds of tasks. Anything that requires a lot of coordination sucks doing remote.
You hit the nail on the head. These types of discussions are sensitive because remote work is sometimes considered to be an opportunity to improve working conditions worldwide and people don't take kindly to push-back on that.
Our startup has gone through distinct phases -- It took us years to find product-market-fit and with that our ability to work remotely has gone through distinct phases that were obvious to the whole team.
At certain points it worked great, but once we moved from the idea testing phase to execution, we wanted to be face to face much more so that we could coordinate our work. Also since new hiring ramped, we have to prioritize face-to-face training.
Remote work is quite reasonable for senior employees that have a demonstrated ability to work independently. In essence, some people are capable to be productive as "independent contractors" even if they're actually a full-time employee, self-managing their time, tasks and coordination with others; and some people can't (yet? is it a stage of career develoment or separate skills?) reliably provide the results that the company needs without a strong management structure doing that coordination, task assignment and information flow for them.
Yeah, but currently everyone seems to focus just on those few customers who like subscriptions. Nobody caters to the guys who don't like subscriptions. (Or maybe just nobody blogs about it)
Is it just a few customers who like subscriptions? I'm not sure this is the case. I know my startup has an iOS app with one-time IAPs, but we see way more usage of our Chrome extension, which is a subscription.
I have resisted the push to make or app subscription-based, since I personally would never buy an app with a subscription. But perhaps I'm out of step with the "kids these days"? I also have zero subscriptions to Chrome extensions, and we have plenty of customers there...
