I have an OP-1 and love it. Its a mainstay in my recording and live performances and honestly my "main" synth despite it looking like a toy. I keep finding new uses for it. Example: I needed backup vocals for a part and none of my bandmates could do it. I sampled the backup vocals and just play them while I sing lead in that spot. Really cool.
As for this mixer, I would love this bit of gear but I just can't justify spending that kind of scratch for what essentially amounts to a mini mixer (which I already have). It seems really great though and it being battery powered and tactile like that is great.
Gentle reminder to anyone reading this that your problems are probably not FAANG problems. If you architect your system trying to solve problems you don't have, you are gonna have a bad time.
"And note that you don’t even have to be at FAANG scale to run into this problem - even if you have a small inventory (say few thousand items) and a few dozen features, you’d still run into this problem. "
Wow, this is something that has been a floater-in-mind for decades ;
I'll top it off with an interview at Twitter with the Eng MGR ~2009-ish?
--
Him: So tell me how you would do things differnetly here at twitter based n your experience?
ME: "Well, I have no idea what your internal processes are, or architecture, or problems, so my previous experience wouldn't be relevant."
I'd go for the best option that suits goals.
[This was my literal response to the question, which I thought was a trap but responded honestly -- as a previous mgr of teams, the "well, we did it at my last company as such"]
Dont reply this way. <--
Here was his statement:
This is a literal quote from a hiring manager for DevOps/Engineering at Twitter:
"Thank god!, We have hired so many people from FB, where that was there only job out of school, and no other experience, and the biggest thing they told me was "well - the way we did this at FB was... X"
--
His biggest concern was engineering-culture-creep...
> Wow, this is something that has been a floater-in-mind for decades
Have you literally never come across the "you're not Google!!!" trope before now, during the whole ~decade leading up to this very day? Gosh I envy you.
(Also, I am reaaally struggling to understand that story. Who is speaking? It sounds like a story within a story within a story. I can just about piece together the gist, but I'm very confused by all the formatting and nested quotes.)
Wow. That amazes me that anyone would answer that question without knowing anything about the problem space and implemented solutions.
Wait, I got it, I would rewrite everything as AWS Lambdas. That's the right answer! Screw your (almost certainly SQL) DB, let's move it all to DynamoDB too.
I was stating that the eng mgr was relieved to NOT hear an answer of "the way we did it at company X, and it was successful for them, so I assume that the same approach maps to your company"
I'm not sure a lot people know that Albini ended up washing his hands of his work with Nirvana. After the recordings were wrapped and the mixes were done, Kurt was really unhappy with some of the sounds. If memory serves it was the vocals and the bass. They ended up doing some overdubs and sharpening things up in the low end in mastering. The very thing Albini specifically said he didn't want them to do. I personally think the results speak for themselves. In Utero is a FANTASTIC rock record. I can't help but wonder what the original would have sounded like though...
In addition to bootlegs of the rough mixes you can also check out the official 20th anniversary vinyl reissue, remixed by Albini from the original masters. https://www.nirvana.com/album/in-utero-2013-mix-2lp/
Oh that's cool! I remember hearing about this mix at the time and wondering how it would sound. I much prefer it, way more in keeping with the indie 'live' vibe of the rest of the album and it feels darker/more menacing because of the greater contrast between the verses and chorus.
I actually always felt the original track stood out (in a bad way) on the album and it's interesting to hear how much of that was introduced by the remix.
The recording style Albini uses here was also in evidence with another classic rock album he references here, PJ Harvey's 'Rid of Me'.
Some people (eg. Elvis Costello) hate this 'naturalistic' style, but I think the overproduced style that dominates radio often strips tracks of their personality.
My take is that as a singer songwriter he can't stand the fact that Albini makes the drums and guitars as prominent as the vocals, and gives the vocals so much room ambience. I think it works fantastically on a rock album that's supposed to be dark and brooding anyway.
If you want to get into it, start by putting the released version on repeat and listen to it a few times in a row. To start, focus on Kurt Cobain’s voice, specifically where it ‘sits’ in the mix. Then, switch to Steve Albini’s version.
When I hear Steve Albini’s version, Kurt Cobain’s voice is less pronounced. What do you think??
If that helps, I can point out more differences. Or, maybe you can point out some you hear?
To me the differences matter much less than the fact that after about a minute and a half you've basically heard the whole song, and then I just get bored.
if you like a less polished sound, you should tuck into the Nirvana demos [1]. Back in the day it was really difficult to acquire these things (mainly trading or buying CDRs later on).
Nirvana is an excellent rabbit hole band, though. There are plenty of b-sides, bootlegs, demos, technically unreleased tracks, compilations, etc etc. They've released box sets that have pretty much everything besides the live bootlegs.
I'm not sure I prefer Albini's mix, I'm still missing the released (commercial) mix. Somehow I find albini's version too toyed with (some instruments pops out at times). And the demo you linked is closer to the final version in that regard, sounds more like Nirvana to me. Thanks for the link, I had no idea these were online.
In a totally other genre, Michael Jackson Thriller vocal studo outtakes are breathtaking.
>Somehow I find albini's version too toyed with (some instruments pops out at times)
I'm a professional record producer and songwriter. Here are my thoughts:
Very likely it's the other way around. Albini is notoriously hard-headed about refusing to use compression on tracks and mixes. He's gone on record about how compressors ruin the tone, expressivity, and micro-dynamics of recorded sounds.
Regardless of whether you agree with that, and he does have a point, compression performs one job admirably: it prevents dynamic sounds from unexpectedly popping out of a determined dynamic range.
This is a disagreement lots of people have had with Albini's method, and he's also a little prickly about these things. He has an artistic vision of "properly" recording bands and mixing them in a way that doesn't adulterate or modify their live sound. In other words, he tries to get the final sound just through exacting microphone placement while recording, and applies the absolute minimum of post-processing.
However, the consensus in commercial record production at this point is that signal processing such as compression, distortion, and equalization, even in dramatic quantity, can create a more compelling audio result. Albini certainly views this as leading to a decline in fidelity (in the etymological sense of truth), and possibly as leading to a decline in artistic integrity (heavily debated).
A couple final ideas:
- In a recorded-music world, what constitutes an "authentic" or "true" sound?
- Should a studio operator (recording/mixing) aim to respect the real-world sound of the artist, or the intentions of the artist? How do you identify the intentions of an artist?
Kurt's vocals on the verses are panned left as if he's standing there. They're double-tracked on the album mix, which was a technique John Lennon used that Kurt admired. The reverb really sounds like a room. Guitars are definitely overdubbed on the final mix with the distortion cranked up, rather than sounding like one gentler guitar. I would say the bass seems not quiet but like it's "hiding" behind the guitars - it's not cutting through the mix the way it does on the album version. Seems to be a different guitar take for the solo - there's a pretty noticeable wah-wah effect on the guitar solo in Albini's mix.
Overall Albini's mix sounds much more live, which is exactly what he had in mind before he recorded with the band. The final mix is compressed, balanced, radio-friendly: it sounds more like it could fit on Nevermind than some of the other songs on In Utero.
Other than Tool where Maynard removes himself from center of attention, I've never seen a live rock band where the singer was off to the left. Typically, lead guitarist on the left, singer in the middle, bass is on the right, and drummer in the middle back stage of the singer. If the idea was to make it as close to live as possible, why the decision to put Kurt over there?
I'm not sure about the decision to put Kurt over there but I assume it's no coincidence that Albini's own band Shellac (who are amazing) literally puts the drummer front and center: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i79f87C0M1c
Left Kurt is the most noticeably odd thing with headphones, it just feels too much like he’s right off to my side. It’s just not the sound of the band in my head. The bass is noticeably different too, but doesn’t feel as wrong against my head cannon of their sound.
In my head Kurt has a sound and presence that doesn’t necessarily match the whole body of their work, but makes sense to me when I think about their songs.
Its tough to listen to a different mix when we've been enjoying the original for over 25 years. This video [1] compares them, but I'm with you with it sounding off. In Heart Shaped Box, the effect around 2m53s[2] is too jarring compared to the final mix we got.
I might be wrong, but I've always felt like Albini's aim to sound like you're in the room with the band, where the drums boom and the vocals are quieter.
I think that stands out from his letter as well. Albini sounds really into the live experience of music, and wants to replicate that as faithfully as possible.
As a total aside: Albini's attitude and writing is a breath of fresh air in today's world polluted by corporate backstabbery and doublespeak. Albini is a professional. He says what he thinks, wants do his work and make his money, and doesn't try and lay claim to the entire future legacy of the band because he's good at slinging electrons around a board.
Been a while since I've done anything related to audio engineering so my terminology might not be correct, but I've always heard this described as presence. Stems from old guitar amps that had presence knobs that would dump highs to ground to give a darker, slightly muffled sound.
Like you said, it's the difference between it sounding like you're in a small room with a band or in a large venue where some of the clarity is lost.
I agree with this, but I like the Albini version. My first listen to this track (in a long time since hearing the other version) the vocal is centered with good imaging, and is much less boomy than the original CD version.
Very much like it's a person in a room, instead of processed.
It is far less "in your face", and arguably, teenagers then might not have thought it cool. Like a band from the 70's or 80's.
Will have to listen through good headphones tomorrow. My initial impression is also that I like Albini's version more, but I understand why the song became famous from the final mix.
Albini's does lack that separation that differentiated the remixed songs from contemporary and then recent punk and "always-on" grudge imho.
I listened to Smells Like Teen Spirit at a listening station at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 20 years ago and the in-your-faceness blew me away. It was like hearing it for the first time again. I get why that record changed the game.
Not surprising considering Nevermind is one of the best sounding albums of all time. I personally give Butch Vig a large part of the. refit for getting the best out of the band and really making an incredible album. Hard to believe it's the same band as Bleach.
As the mixer of "Nevermind", Andy Wallace deserves a lot of credit for the finished sound. Both Vig and the band weren't crazy about Vig's initial mixes. Between Nevermind and producing/engineering/mixing Jeff Buckley's "Grace", Andy Wallace did as much to define of '90s rock as anyone else, and has done phenomenal work before and since.
I never pass up an opportunity to point out that his version of Hallelujah from that album is THE canonical version.
I'm sure it was covered by others before that, but his was the first version I ever heard and of the million versions I've heard since there's not a single one that comes anywhere close. And the way it and the next song go together are the definition of a centerpiece.
It's one of the great albums and I can't believe how much we lost because he decided to go swimming at night in a river. I also can't believe the same dude mixed Nevermind. Cheers.
Butch Vig had such a large influence in my life as a teenager. For those that never paid attention to the liner notes/credits on their music, Butch was a producer on so so many bands.
Plus, he's in Garbage, a great band in its own right, with an amazing sound. Vig defines the post-grunge sound that took over rock in the 90s: powerful choruses, vocals up front, tight production. Very different from the garage sound of proper grunge.
I think Bleach was amazing. I remember exactly where I was when I heard it first, Newbury Comics in Harvard Square in 1989, and I had to ask the staff what was playing in the store PA because it was so visceral. What was the recording budget, $600 or something?
Funny that... "I do not like remixing other engineer's recordings, and I do not like recording things for somebody else to remix. I have never been satisfied with either version of that methodology. Remixing is for talentless pussies who don't know how to tune a drum or point a microphone."
Albini, like many greats of rock & roll, should always be taken with a massive grain of salt when he speaks. In the end they'll always go where the money is.
They remixed the singles, really making them more “radio friendly”. Compressed, polished, and out of whack with the un-remixed “lesser” tracks.
The punk folks around Nirvana were surprised with how pliable they were with Geffen. Albini was pissed and wanted his name off of it.
He wasn’t easy to work with. Abrasive, rude, rigidly principled. He’s mellowed out with age, but really hasn’t touched much major label stuff since the 90s, if any.
If you listen to the original mixes on the reissue you hear how much more consistent it feels as an album. And I won’t lie. I have a bias. I love the quality of Albini’s work. Crisp and raw and uses the whole spectrum. And those drums…
Jesus Lizard, early Pixies, this album, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me are more well known work he’s done that is great. Bush was awful. His band Shellac w/ the mentioned Bob Weston is f’n incredible.
These days, he works a super reasonable flat rate and will record anyone. Had friends who recorded at his Chicago studio. Brilliant guy.
Mh. As a teenager at the time, I always thought Nevermind was the real deal. Then the whole media phenomenon took over, so In Utero could have been shite and still sell bazillions - it was promoted massively. That's not to say it was shite, but IMHO it wasn't as perfect as Nevermind.
I think I read somewhere that P.J. Harvey wasn't happy with the way "Rid of Me" came out - but I thought it was incredible and nothing afterwards really compares.
I think the confusion stems from the existence of “4-Track Demos”, but in practice Albini really liked the original demos and encouraged Harvey to turn them into an album.
My only real complaint about the production on “Rid of Me” is the obnoxious volume shifts on the title track and “Highway 61 Revisited” which seem to neither reflect what the live performances sounded like nor accommodate home listening.
Oh man, I just find the title track absolutely thrilling, my whole body is tense building up to the chorus, partly because it's so extreme. And it doesn't seem unrepresentative of what she was _trying_ to achieve - I don't know many other performers who use breaths and whispers as artfully as she does. I think it's just hard to achieve such extremes as part of a wider live set.
Yeah, on stage you're fighting with adrenaline, shitty monitoring, screaming audiences and it's usually a pale imitation of what happens during jamming/rehearsing where you actually develop the songs.
I think that's subjective. It probably doesn't sound like a live performance would, but it does probably reflect fairly well what you'd hear if you were in the room with them rehearsing.
Listening to the album again now it's such a relief to hear a recording with such dynamic range, not the appallingly over-compressed loudness wars derived style we're subjected to now.
Oh, in general the production is fabulous, and you’re absolute right that over-compression has ruined more than decade’s worth of albums, but I’d rather listen to a random live cut of Rid of Me. Such a great song.
Yuri-G is perfect on 4-track demos, otherwise I like the Rid of Me versions.
I agree that the volume on Highway 61 Revisited is an imperfection, but it's still one of my favorite tracks. I have no reverence for Bob Dylan and no interest in listening to him sing his lyrics.
I don't like In Untero compared to Nevermind, it feels a smidge too overproduced and less raw. I really wonder what it would have sounded like were it to have been the same producer.
Huh. It's funny as I always had the opposite thought. To me Nevermind sounds too polished and clean. When In Utero came out I remember being excited that it brought out a more raw sound that I felt they had lost. Different strokes and all that.
Hiring manager here. IMO the current tech hiring norms are gross and not sustainable. It feels like a weird hazing ritual and with the current market, is the single biggest reason you can't hire. Why on earth would someone burn a weekend on a take-home test for your startup when they have 15 other irons in the fire? At my current employer we got rid of all that ridiculousness. No take home test. No live coding. We've gotten the whole process down to a few hours over a few days. I'd like to think it's a mutually respectful process.
I think it's time we accept that the person we are talking to is who they say they are on their resume. You don't see accountants balancing books before they get hired. Why should this be any different? If you aren't who you say you are, its either blatantly obvious in the interview or we'll find out when you join and we'll try to correct or part ways. This is like pretty much any other job out there.
> You don't see accountants balancing books before they get hired.
You sure do, and not just by a hiring manager's whim, but by law. Accountants have occupational licensing.
> I think it's time we accept that the person we are talking to is who they say they are on their resume.
This is a straw man, I have never "caught a liar" on an a coding exam. What they are helpful for doing is judging the quality of what it means to be "proficient in [x]".
If there's anything I have learned from giving coding exams to candidates, it's that the ability of a candidate to verbally sell themselves in an interview has a weak correlation to their ability to produce quality work.
Forgive my ignorance, but is this during every interview? If I am reading this right this is a certification they'd need to get which would be on their resume. Do they need to re-prove those skills every time?
But no, they don't happen "during interviews". My point is that there's less need to test people during their interviews for occupations with licensing, because they've already been tested before they even showed up for the interview. Depending on where you're at, you can't even legally call yourself an "accountant" without an occupational license. By contrast, anyone can legally call themselves a "software developer" and show up to an interview, which is why the need to evaluate their skills at that moment may be different.
While I see where you are coming from but respectfully disagree with your conclusions.
> My point is that there's less need to test people during their interviews for occupations with licensing, because they've already been tested before they even showed up for the interview.
I mean past job experience and education are pretty good indicators? Is there some facet to the accounting certification process I am unaware of that filters out under performers? If my past few accountants are any indication, then no. :)
All of that aside, I've not seen any data that suggests the hiring practices common in our field produce better outcomes than that which I am evangelizing for. Furthermore, those practices are common FAANG type companies which can offer much higher compensation packages than a typical startup. I assert that it's not only the right thing to do, it is also a _competitive advantage_ to have a streamlined, humane, hiring process.
The problem that I have with judging someone based off job experience (or academic experience) is that I usually have no idea what value that experience is. I am not familiar with most workplaces. When I have an applicant that has "3 years of experience as a senior developer at XYZ Corp", I have no idea how valuable that is. I've never heard of XYZ Corp; I don't know how good their organization's IT department is, nor do I have any idea what would be expected of a senior developer there. For some companies, this might mean 3 years of solving challenging and highly technical engineering problems, leading a team, and functioning as a sales engineer in the field. For others, it might mean they copy and pasted existing legacy code and changed field names for three years while sitting alone in a cube. And depending on how humble the candidate is, and how good their self-marketing skills are, it might be hard to distinguish between the two in an interview. Or, their skills may not be matched to their previous job position.
This is not to say that I think occupational licenses are always an ideal way of handling this: I definitely don't think that. I'm merely using it as an example that testing people's ability in an occupational setting is not uncommon.
> All of that aside, I've not seen any data that suggests the hiring practices common in our field produce better outcomes than that which I am evangelizing for. Furthermore, those practices are common FAANG type companies which can offer much higher compensation packages than a typical startup. I assert that it's not only the right thing to do, it is also a _competitive advantage_ to have a streamlined, humane, hiring process.
I 1000% agree with you here. I think that this can include some coding exercises, but they need to be very limited in time and scope. You are absolutely right that most companies are not FAANG, and should not interview like FAANG. Every coding exercise I give is very limited in scope and is directly relevant to the job position -- never leetcode or other BS.
This sounds very forward thinking and I like it. Would you be willing to share a bit more on the process? What does it entail? In the past I was hired on just 2 interviews, and all we did was talk as peers. It felt comfortable and honest. It's the reason I said yes to switching positions.
Thanks! So, I'll say that we are still tweaking and trying to get things just right but, as of the time of me writing this, here is the process:
- HR call 30 min.
- Talk to hiring manager (me) 30 min. Get to know each other and feel out if there is a mutual fit.
- Technical panel 1hr. Speak with several engineers on the team who share your discipline (front end or back end for example). Again no live coding. We just talk through stuff.
- Talk to the team PM. 30 min. Get a sense of how you collaborate with our product team partners to build new features in our application.
After that it's the usual comp negotiations, background, and reference checks. Assuming all that works out then hired!
We're hiring so, if anyone is interested in finding out more, contact info is in my bio.
Sorry, but this just sounds very easy to bullshit. Unless you're doing real in depth quizzing of stuff people wouldn't know if they didn't work with it (e.g. in HFT, explaining what a potential implementation of std::string could be and what the tradeoffs of each design choice would be), generic backend principles are very easy to spew correct answers for without actually knowing how to code. How are you going to filter out people that just memorize the concepts for their chosen language and are good at talking but can't code for their life?
> generic backend principles are very easy to spew correct answers for without actually knowing how to code
I'm not sure I agree with this. IMO trying to get someone to explain the ins and outs of a particular facet of the technology your team works in is less effective than getting a sense of how a candidate architects their code and manages complexity. That type of "art more than a science" craftsmanship is not something you can easily fake in my experience. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. We shall see. So far I've had pretty good luck with the approach and gotten some really great teammates.
It's almost always obvious whether the candidate really knows their stuff. They go into details, when you ask probing questions they don't revert back to generalities or repeat what they already said.
Where this does not work, however, is interviewing junior developers. They don't really know anything at all yet (well, some do, but again, that's almost always quickly obvious), so you're hiring for potential rather than actual skills.
Yeah you have to use the appropriate strategy for the interviewee. In the case of a junior, you are looking for potential and teachability as you said. You tailor your questions towards that angle. I've yet to see any take home or live coding challenge that answered those type of questions for me. All it told me is what I already knew: they were more junior and needed mentoring.
This is really great and it sounds like an ideal situation for someone interviewing. I wish you guys the best of luck with this process. I will work in my company to push more towards something like this.
We don't do take home, leetcode, live coding either. We walk through past projects and ask very pointed questions. We ask about difficult problems we've faced in the past and how you might solve it. I role play a junior programmer describing a situation I have and then ask junior programmer level questions of how to solve the problem. You get to talk to two very senior software developers, and two very senior engineers in other roles, and the CEO (who is also highly technical).
Once you get past the first screening call, I find you on social media, blogs, forums and read your posts, and see what questions you're asking on stackoverflow. Then we might move you to the next stage. All in all, you get a pre-screening from our recruiter (about 15 to 30 minutes), a screening call from a technical hiring manager (30 minutes), and then you talk three or four principal engineers (45 minutes each). This happens in days.
The only person that doesn't talk to you that is highly technical will be the recruiter. If you're hired and start work, we watch what you're doing, mentor as necessary. If you have the right attitude and are coachable, so long as you can string together coherent lines of code then everything else can be taught.
> Once you get past the first screening call, I find you on social media, blogs, forums and read your posts, and see what questions you're asking on stackoverflow.
And what if my social media presence is minimal or not public?
It is possible that a candidate's social media presence is minimal or non-public, and that will lead to a dead end. But are you claiming that _your_ social media presence is minimal or non-public? Candidates are applying with their real names and a work history; not to sound creepy but they become very "findable" with that information. And I use that to judge "does this person know what he's talking about when it comes to his job?"
I know you are a web developer, full stack but with a slant towards backend, like the Jetbrains applications, run a Thinkpad with Windows OS, have a beard (by your own admission), possibly live in a Nordic country but I don't think you are from there (UK I think, London area, or at least lived in London, or you live in the far North of Scotland or London has been a bit dark this year), are in your late 50's or early 60's, have a small family, like noisy keyboards, dislike Vim, absolutely loathe "Fn" keys, own a Mac that you ocassionally use, enjoyed Star Trek: TOS, run Android on a Samsung Galaxy (S3, Nexus 5, S10). You didn't wait for your resin in your table to reach flashover point. Found your reddit account, your stackoverflow, your github, and your abandoned twitter account, looks like you purged your Facebook account but didn't delete it. I am pretty sure you used to skateboard, enjoy riding a fixie bike and photography, possibly did some rock climbing in your youth. I may be off on some of the details, I only spent 20 minutes on it. Of course, I might be connecting two different sets of data points about two different people.
Over-sized coloured mice are very clever if they can build the CMS for a real estate agent.
It was a hypothetical question about whether you have plan B for when you do not find applicants presence in the social media to be enough to draw conclusions but you answered that now. I would consider most of these thing that you listed to have nothing to do with professional aptitude but the fact you took time to go through the process with random dude on the internet for some reason and then deemed these things important enough to list here speaks volumes about you.
Thank you, it does speak volumes about me, but I am not taking it as the insult you think it is. You were trying to be clever by asking a question about "oh, but what if the person doesn't have much of a social media presence or makes it private?" And I proved that if you have a social media presence of any kind, it is easily discernable and those private little comments we all make when we think nobody is listening tells me whether I would want to work with them. Those things have nothing to do with professional aptitude, but you'd be surprised just how toxic some people can be in their private moments.
I deemed the points listed important enough to list here to indicate that you are findable, even when you think you're not. I was also careful about not just saying you're "X that works at company Y" with a bunch of links. Based on what I have read I think you are a competent, level-headed, well-rounded and reasonable person with strong opinions about what you want from your technology with a willingness to compromise. You're also an exceptionally competent developer and team lead and I wouldn't hesitate to hire you.
A social media presence, even when we don't want people to see it, can either accelerate the point to hire or the cut the interview short. I don't look to see if someone does drugs, binge drinks alcohol, enjoys going to fringe fandom conventions or spends their income on collectible dolls. I care that the person we're interviewing isn't expressing undesirable opinions about people of colour, sexual orientation or many other aspects that would bring undesirable prejudices in to the team.
Based on what I've read, your interview would consist of "when can you start?"
Regarding a "plan B" for no social media presence at all, then the interview process becomes much lengthier and more difficult for all involved.
This is the right way to go. If I were looking for a job right now I'd be hitting you up. I've said as much in a few other threads but it's not only the right thing to do, its a competitive advantage.
No, an online presence can either accelerate the interview process or cut it short. No online presence extends the process and makes me leary of making a bad hire, so I'm looking for tells in a weak signal source of an in-person interview where someone adopts a persona to get the job.
I've had to interview a candidate where I am literally handed the resume and said "can you take over? blahblahblah had to ditch." which is unprofessional but you do what you have to do. I walk in, sit with the candidate for about, maybe ten minutes total, whilst I am poking into his online presence and explaining what I am doing, whilst my colleague grills him on various aspects. After ten minutes I write on the resume "Hire this guy before someone else does", thanked the candidate for his time, explained that my colleague would take over, and politely left the interview. Poor guy thought he'd failed the interview. I will admit I handled that aspect of it badly. We made him an offer within the hour. He was an absolutely fantastic hire.
I've also looked at many social media posts by candidates and then put a strong "NO HIRE!" on their application. It isn't about skillset or education or capability, but there are things that people say on social media, in unguarded moments that make them unhirable in a modern work environment due to prejudices and their willingness to express those prejudices.
You should absolutely care about your online privacy. I have made myself "very findable" and if you go through any of my social media posts, you might take umbrage at some things I say (especially about recruiters), but I try to be a cross between Mr Rogers and Ted Lasso. If Mr Rogers said "F*K" an awful lot. I might think some things in the private thoughts of my own head, and thank goodness those aren't automatically transcribed by Google or Siri at this time, but when it comes to posting some very disparaging things in public, some people cannot help themselves and that can tell us whether those thoughts might spill over in the workplace as hidden prejudice or overtly expressed that would land the company in legal hot water.
> I think it's time we accept that the person we are talking to is who they say they are on their resume.
Yea because we live in a place where everyone is super honest and no one is going to try and take advantage of that to make 500k a year.
IMO, it doesn't work. Talk is cheap.
I wouldn't have a job if I had to talk my way into any company, I'm an introvert, I suck at communicating orally. But I can solve problems and write really good code. You throw problems at me during an interview and I'll solve them. Ultimately your company's code is not going to write itself.
>Yea because we live in a place where everyone is super honest and no one is going to try and take advantage of that to make 500k a year.
I would be THRILLED if I was put into some kind of a short probationary period, with limited access (and potentially restricted salary, with retroactive reimbursement) while I showed what I was worth. I personally have a hard time demonstrating that in short interviews, and it's only once I come in contact with the shape of the company's problems do I show my value. Imo it would lower the stress and paranoia on both sides over a candidate's fit.
If a company temporarily paid higher salary and covered your health insurance during this probationary period to account for the risk, I'd go for it. Otherwise,
never.
> Yea because we live in a place where everyone is super honest and no one is going to try and take advantage of that to make 500k a year.
You are right that there is more risk with this approach. I honestly think that its a better, more humane way to do things though. Anecdotally, I've hired a couple _really_ solid developers via this methodology. At least in my case, it's been working out well. As always, you try stuff and iterate.
> I'm an introvert, I suck at communicating orally.
I get it. So am I. Its actually very hard for me to reply to these comments b/c of my general aversion to putting myself out there! I don't think there's a one size fits all solution. At my company at least, being able to communicate effectively both orally and written, is important. We do a lot of pairing and documentation etc. Thats not for everyone. YMMV.
Do all that without writing decent code and you still have nothing to show.
> Lack of communication skills is a bug not a feature.
A bug I'm willing to take in exchange of producing high quality code. Besides, we live in 2022 now, we can type. I just said I suck at talking not at communicating. There are multiples forms of communication which don't involve opening your mouth.
Going through a few days of grueling interviews every few years is vastly preferable to spending a few years working alongside people who can't pull their own weight. Hiring managers are timid about letting people go and it can take an extraordinary amount of time to part ways with unproductive people.
> Hiring managers are timid about letting people go and it can take an extraordinary amount of time to part ways with unproductive people.
With respect, it sounds like you had a bad manager. Underperforming teammates are your managers responsibility. They should be working to address that issue with said teammate or part ways. Sucks. Not fun. It's the job though.
Sorry but your response is a No True Scotsman argument. It is understandable why irrational behavior applies here - sunk cost, nobody wants to have the bad news of letting a new hire go, explicit objective setting may require there to be new hires. These will generally apply to any manager. Unless the new hire is clearly stepping out of bounds or extremely negligent, it is going to be a slow process.
I've never heard of this author. Anyone have any good recommendations on where to start? Specific book titles would be appreciated (its hard to find the starting point in a given series sometimes for example)
Mistborn is a great trilogy, if you read book 1 and decide it's not for you then it's a fine stopping point. Book 3 is another great stopping point, either way you're not getting into a massive commitment like the Wheel of Time series or something. It's easy to read fantasy, characters don't break the fantasy rules laid out in the universe, the story is cohesive and comes to a satisfying conclusion. I was only mildly interested when I picked up the first book but I burned through the trilogy at light speed during quarantine. Highly recommended fun and easy reads.
"The Cosmere" is his overarching fantasy universe, with The Stormlight Archive as its big fantasy epic (beginning with The Way of Kings). That series has references to his other fantasy work, including his other big series (Mistborn), but you don't necessarily need to have read anything else first. I think there are 4 books now with 10 planned, I haven't read the latest one yet but I enjoyed the first three.
It's been a couple of years but I remember really liking The Emperor's Soul, and it's a $5 ebook novella so you're not investing too much time or money to check it out. DRM free from Kobo, not sure if that's the case via Amazon/Kindle.
Oh man, have fun. I wish I could wipe my mind and read Stormlight fresh. Be sure to read Warbreaker before book 2 if you haven’t already, and don’t sleep on the novellas.
Read the first Mistborn, that's a good introduction to his series. The Cosmere is kind of relevant but if you don't know anything about it it doesn't take away from it.
Modern Java is actually pretty good. It's taken great features from other JVM languages like Kotlin and Scala and is much better for it. The JVM is a wicked fast run time and its nice to have a mature ecosystem of libraries to work from and large pool of developers available who know it inside and out. You could do far worse when picking a language for your team to use.
I dunno man... I think that giving an entity the ability to perform operations upon itself and thereby changing it, looks neat in these examples but scales poorly in a sufficiently commplex codebase. You could express exactly the same thing but get a lot more bullet proof code if you separate out the thing doing the action from the thing you are acting upon. You could have the thing doing the action return the updated version of the thing you wanted to do said operation upon and its unambiguous what has happened. So something like (psuedocode):
He also ends up with the commands/actions/events/rules (basically emphasize relation over object) as main types in an interesting[0] example of a rule-based game.
One of my issues with “mainstream OOP” (at this point I’m not even sure what “real” OOP is) is that it apparently tempts people to base their models around objects and subjects not verbs.
I’m not sure if it’s due to prevalent nominal type systems or due to how we traditionally teach class hierarchies (dogs/cats <- animals) but I think centering the model around predicates and relations works much better. [1]
[0] Interesting because while it is a toy example it is one that could be real; not like examples with cars and animals.
[1] Just reminded me a bit of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus; didn’t want to get too philosophical but I think the ontological views we have influence this kind of modelling a lot
My entire household uses Apple products. A few years ago I got fed up and went all in on Linux and Android. I liked a lot of things about it but ultimately came back to Apple. When I switched back to an iPhone my wife told me "I'm so glad you're back on iMessage..." like she'd been holding this dark secret inside her the entire time I was out of the fold.
It's baffling honestly as messaging was the least of my problems. Sucky apps, weird driver issues, and just general friction with simple things like printing were what finally got me.
Windows and Android play very nicely together. I'm a Windows and iOS user, but interfacing iOS and Windows definitely requires research. It's hard to not go whole hog on Apple once you have the iPhone trojan horse. A very high built quality device that receives years of security and feature updates.
That said, if they don't go USB-C by the next time I upgrade, I'm going Pixel or Samsung. Or if they go portless, I'm out. The build quality does suffer, but I'm done with USB 2.0 transfer speeds and goofy Lightning ports. Apple is the only company that could get away with such things in 2022.
There’s nothing wrong with lightning, I think it’s an excellently designed connector. I like that they seem to be sticking with it.
However, the fact that it doesn’t support USB three speeds is… baffling. I hope they fix that.
I was listening to a podcast last week (The Talk Show?) And they were talking about the fact that you can take this glorious 4K footage on the newest iPhones and everything looks amazing and it takes FOREVER to transfer it off the phone because you have to do it at USB 2.0 speeds or Wi-Fi speeds.
They can fix that without a new connector.
Sidenote: I find this kind of hilarious. So many people were up in arms when they introduced lightning because they were changing things and making things obsolescent and people had to buy all new stuff.
Here we are a few years later and all sorts of people are mad that Apple is not introducing a new connector and forcing everyone to buy all new stuff.
I understand the desire. It’s just sort of an ironic situation.
Most don't need to buy new stuff for a USB C charger. I can take the same cable and charge my MacBook, Windows laptop, iPad, Xbox controllers, Switch controllers, Switch, Android phone, drone, and portable battery. I can plug that cable into many of the different chargers around the house or plug a combination of devices together with it. When I do I can share charge or exchange data. When I leave I can unplug my 4k portable fold up monitor from my desktop's GPU and put it in the laptop bag to use on my MacBook with the same cable as anything else. Generally I carry 2 USB C cables and 1 dual port charging brick in that bag and I'm covered for charging, data, power, or display of any device I bring along.
When lightning was introduced no non-Apple things used or would use lightning, you were forced to buy all new stuff. Now it's rarely the case someone buying a brand new iPhone doesn't also already have any USB C chargers or cables. As such this is not ironic for the majority, just sad and frustrating... as what doesn't fit into this mold? My god damned Air Pods Pro which insists I have a dedicated c-to-lightning cable just for it wherever they go with me. Not the cable on the couch for the console controllers, not the cables around the PC, not the 2 cables that do everything else in my travel bag, not the phone charging cable next to my bed, the lightning cable the charge the charging pod to charge my headphones. Fantastic headphones as they are while on the go in noisy environments... why they needed to be lightning I'll never come to terms with.
.
Regardless it's unlikely they'll be sticking with it. The EU is now requiring mobile phones with a wired charging port to support USB C (and additional interfaces if they desire but at least USB C directly). So like the GP alluded to either the next iPhone will be portless or have USB C. Well, or Apple doesn't sell the iPhone in Europe but given the iPad and current MacBooks are USB C that seems exceedingly unlikely. Portless however... wouldn't surprise me.
> Most don't need to buy new stuff for a USB C charger. […]
You’re right. That’s different this time and I’m sympathetic to it. As I’ve started to gain more and more USB-C stuff the possible convenience it would provide has certainly increased. When people were beating this drum 2-3 years ago I basically didn’t have any USB-C stuff so it wouldn’t have given me any convenience. But overtime that’s changing.
Regarding the EU: I like Apple but they are stubborn as hell. For that reason alone I have a hard time seeing them doing it. They could start making two options, one USB-C and one lightning, but that doesn’t sound like Apple either.
Portless would certainly be a solution, but I have a hard time seeing that either. Wireless charging is just too slow.
I really don’t know what’s gonna happen on that one.
USB-C and then portless when the technology is good enough. It'll be hard to stick with iPhones knowing this. I never want zero ports, they'll never match charging efficiency of a cable having no port.
As for this mixer, I would love this bit of gear but I just can't justify spending that kind of scratch for what essentially amounts to a mini mixer (which I already have). It seems really great though and it being battery powered and tactile like that is great.