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Search - "air companies"
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Tech startups, an analogy:
After 18 years going from help desk teams to NOC teams, telecom engineering and all manner of startups in between I have concluded the following:
Imagine wanting to start an aerospace company because you know how to fold a paper airplane, but not how to actually design and engineer an actual craft that will pass basic air worthiness checks.
That’s 99% of “tech” companies.
Discuss. I’ll make drinks.9 -
Fuck startups.
Back when I was an wee lad I interviewed for an startup, not knowing that startups are not real companies. The scumbag interviewer, who was also the owner of the outfit, asked me what I was looking in a company. I said "fair wages, a non-antagonic environment and projects with real roadmaps".
He asked me to elaborate. I said, "You know, if today your product is a sales platform, I do not want to come into work next week and discover it is now an air travel tickets marketplace, or come back the very next day and discover it is now an automated pizza factory, or in the next day and it is now a crypto exchange..."
The scumbag looked PISSED. "Sorry, but we are looking for someone who likes the challenges of a dynamic environment (read: we do not have a business model and we hate the very idea of trying to make money out of our company), and you do not fit the profile"
Startups are not real companies, i.e. they do not systematically charge money in exchange for goods or services in amounts that exceed the cost of providing said goods or services. Most startups are just tax fronts for money laundering schemes. The rest are just playthings for rich assholes who can't get a real output-producing job. Those two categories are not mutually exclusive.
Take Facebook, for example. The poster child of startups. The Zucker that owns it just announced they are setting impossible performance targets on purpose, not even attempting to hide the fact that it is just a way to lay off large quantities of employees without using the words "massive lay offs". Companies, real thin-margin, lots-of-regulation profit-driven companies do not do that. They are not some sort of "capitalist woke", real CEOs just know that if their companies largely miss performance targets on their tenure, purposely or not, next it will be their neck on the chopping block. Because they can be fired if the KPI charts say they suck. But the Zucker cannot be fired, not even after commanding their beanbag and tap beer offices to be heated exclusively by burning hundred dollar bills.
So the Zucker is not interested in performance. Not even in lay offs as expense cutting measures - investors are an infinite source of free money for startups. The Zucker just wants to project power, especially now that engineers are not so confident in the stability of they high-paying jobs.
So are irrelevant 500-souls-or-less self-aggrandizing startups. Their owners are there because it is in vogue to have a startup or ten. And will have that startup pivot to whatever sounds fancy that season. After all, only poor people care about things like EBITDA and profit margins repeatability - A.K.A. "getting more money".
Fuck startups.13 -
Fuck air line companies.
They always lose your shit.
Like Ensiferum here. Airlines lost their shit so they they have to play acoustic.
Acoustic most pit motherfuckers. That's right. Acoustic. Most pit.
Fucking metal! 🤘11 -
First rant!
The first time I got in touch with programming was when I was about 14 years old. I started a private server for a game called Maplestory (yeah you know it, I know you do) and had one of the most popular servers.
Topping all the rankings of best servers, getting lots and lots of traffic...
Anyway, I started modding the game and implement new features and quests. Right until my father saw our bandwidth. Because the server was running on my computer in my own bedroom 24/7 and blowing nice hot air in my room.
Our bandwidth limit was reached in just a couple days in to the next billing cycle and had to shut everything down from that point. And this happened a few times.
I was devastated shutting it down but learned so much from it. And it introduced me to programming.
Up till now, I'm almost graduating in computer science, already have 2 companies that are willing to hire me, and probably even going to work with my dad on a huge app soon2 -
I had the most depressing realization last night after I spent a good chunk of the day answering questions on Stack Overflow.
I can usually understand their code, I often understand their questions, and I know how to help and when to recommend that they completely change direction. I'm effectively trying to mentor total strangers using a few code samples and paragraphs. I'm happy to do that, and I'm good at it.
Then I realized - these people all have programming challenges of their own to solve. I work for a so-called "consulting" agency where I sit around for weeks because they have nowhere to put me. When they do find me a client it's some company that has no idea how to develop software and no interest in how I can help. They just want to add another developer into the giant mess they've created to keep doing what they're already doing. I'm still using any of the skills I put to work all day long helping people on Stack Overflow.
In other words, the people who need my help figuring out how to write code actually have the jobs writing code, and I don't. Clearly I'm doing something wrong.
Ironically, when I go to one of these companies with a lead developer who doesn't know how to write a unit test or put together three lines of coherent code, that person tells me to just follow what everyone else is doing without making any improvements. Then he goes on Stack Overflow to figure out how to do his job, and chances are I'm the one answering his questions.
As my wife always reminds me, I work in air conditioning so I shouldn't complain. It's a stable company with nice people and it pays the bills. But I sure would like to develop some software in my software development job instead of treating it like a personal hobby.7 -
Happy birthday, Dr. Nabil Ali!
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Egyptian pioneer of Arabic language computing, Dr. Nabil Ali, on his 82nd birthday. Dr. Nabil Ali’s innovations in the field of computational linguistics propelled the Arab world into the Information Age by creating programs that enabled computers to understand Arabic in digital form.
Dr. Nabil Ali was born in Cairo on this day in 1938. Expressing an interest in art at a young age, Mohamed was inspired to apply his creative passion for visual aesthetics to the world of engineering. After obtaining his PhD in Aeronautical Engineering at Cairo University, he spent over 20 years working as an engineer with the Egyptian Air Force, as well as with various computer and electronics companies throughout the world.
For Dr. Nabil Ali, digitization of Arabic, with its complex linguistic rules and morphology, was a way to connect Arabic speakers with the world.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Nabil Ali published a number of papers, books, and technical reports in support of the developments he was making in the field of computational linguistics. His work won him several awards, including the prestigious Saudi Arabian award, the King Faisal Prize, in 2012—recognizing his pioneering contributions to the Arabic Language and Literature.5 -
Go to meetups and talk to people. Give presentations at meetups if you can. Get involved in community projects. Love coding. Use your downtime to study new stuff.
When talking to potential employers be positive and enthusiastic about your technology.
EDIT: Oh, a few more. Don't seem desperate for a job. Without saying anything, potential employers should feel like you have other offers and they're being evaluated by you. Ask questions about their company if you get an interview.
Try to give off an air of being in control and having a number of choices in your carreer (even if you're living off ramen every day).
The pressure should be on companies to hurry up and snap you up before another company does.
Be honest but a little spin won't hurt. -
I use to work in companies that have none or one female dev. The guys hired a girl and placed her seat in the farthest corner from the Air Conditioner.
Idiots. All others pleasing her with any stupid request, like "it's hot in here, can I turn on the AC?" and all others say "YES OF COURSE" as they can pronounce those words while drooling.
You know what? She puts the AC in 18 CELCIUS (64 Farenheit, - you're welcome)
I AM RIGHT UNDER THE AC, I'M COMMUTING TO THE OFFICE WITH EXTRA CLOTHING IN SUMMER BECAUSE OF THOSE IDIOTS. I HAVE TO PROTECT MYSELF OF GETTING A COLD IN SUMMER BECAUSE OF OTHER'S INABILITY TO MANAGE THEIR TESTORONE.4 -
Imagine buying a 16 tflops GPU from some manufacturer, yet the computing power is somehow shared, and when they need to produce some more GPUs, they just take some part of your 16 tflops, as well as from all the other people who bought these GPUs, so suddenly you have 15.6 tflops, yet money is never sent back to you, and you have no control over such decisions.
Oh, you tell me it's "robbery"? Yet federal reserve does the exact same thing by creating money out of thin air, basically taking their cuts off of every person's monetary value.
For your very real work, companies pay you with something that can be created out of thin air, and then that something loses its value when new tokens are created.
This is slavery. From now on, I'm going to call dollars "slave tickets".11