npsimons

18 ms·

181.
by npsimons 5y ago
I don't know if I'd say it's Graham's best essay ("Beating the Averages" still ranks as one of my favorites), but reading this most recent essay, I was thinking of Elon Musk. Say what you will about the guy,
182.
by npsimons 5y ago
> When the average person proposes an implausible-sounding idea, its implausibility is evidence of their incompetence. I mean, this is basically QAnon, antivaxxers, creationists and trickle-down economists in a nutshell. That said . . .
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by npsimons 5y ago
> The older I get, the more I value time over money. This! When I have enough money to take a year (or more!) leave without pay, but you say "sorry, you've used up your annual leave", the only option I'm left with is
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by npsimons 5y ago
> Why do I want to work with a bunch of people who are mainly there for the freebies? I mean, some of us value work life balance. Even on projects I'm insanely passionate about, I need to pace myself, otherwise I'll get burnt o
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by npsimons 5y ago
> Interesting tech stack -- in the Rust world that I participate in, there is a lot of discussion about the lack of jobs (especially outside the blockchain industry), so if you can offer something that is more novel, that might help. I&#
186.
by npsimons 5y ago
> Stop drowning us in processes. The more we have to play around with your gold-plated project management system, the less we're interested in writing code for you. Remember that a lot of us get by with GitHub issues and nothing els
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by npsimons 5y ago
> Language doesn't matter, but platform can/does to some Very much this. I can put up even with FORTRAN - hell one of the most interesting challenges I had recently was figuring out how to call C++ from FORTRAN. But I've b
188.
by npsimons 5y ago
Interesting question, as I just handed in my two weeks notice for my day job of nearly 20 years (so I guess I'm a senior engineer, but I suffer from imposter syndrome and think I still don't know what I'm doing after all this
189.
by npsimons 5y ago
I've run the numbers, and unless the PVs are putting out above approximately 4KW, it's cheapest to take my shower before 8AM. Thankfully I live where it's sunny almost all the time and I often get 6KW between 1100 and 1300, b
190.
by npsimons 5y ago
> but the most direct way to solve the problem of credit scams is to put the onus on the bank who opened up the account incorrectly to assume responsibility for the debt, not on the person whose details were spoofed to create the account
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by npsimons 5y ago
> The reason I picked and stay with Roku is that they aren't married to a single Big Tech co. Same. I'm so sick of being locked into one system or another, having my eyeballs monetized, or getting the shitty version of an app b
192.
by npsimons 5y ago
Neat looking, but I've already been playing this "game" IRL for the past couple of decades; I really don't feel like grinding all over again from scratch.
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by npsimons 6y ago
I felt like the original was definitely taking the piss from websites that were 90% static textual content, but won't even load without Javascript. The sort of sites in search of a solution to a problem that does not exist.
194.
by npsimons 6y ago
> But the time and quality of thought required to put words into print was a higher bar, and ostensibly higher quality on average, than the time and quality of thought I put into writing a quick blog post or vapid tweet. Very much so. It
195.
by npsimons 6y ago
I'm in a similar situation. Unless it's something I can work through (with examples or problems) or something I care about (very ephemeral), it's hard to carve out the focus or time for it. I tried starting "Emperor&#x27
196.
by npsimons 6y ago
> Basically -- how do you think open source has been doing it since practically the 90s? This! I don't get how HN, a community of hackers who can't but be aware of FLOSS, could claim with a straight face that "remote doesn
197.
by npsimons 6y ago
> This sounds absolutely horrible. And now you know how it feels to work in an open floor plan or cubicle where someone can come along and break your flow causing you to have to waste over 20 minutes getting back into it. The key with th
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by npsimons 6y ago
I grew up on BBSes, USENET, email, LKML FFS! I really don't get people who make provably false claims that online culture doesn't work.
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by npsimons 6y ago
Yeah, GP has apparently never heard of Dr. Spock's books.
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by npsimons 6y ago
> We are social mammals. We are sentient beings that have had writing for thousands of years . Perhaps we should start acting like it.
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by npsimons 6y ago
> Engineering culture should be disseminated via documents rather than oral lore. A million times this! If there's anything that WFH has done, it's exposed the big gaping hole known as "institutional knowledge." >
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by npsimons 6y ago
> an assistant right outside the door to bark orders to. And that same assistant will screen time with the boss, something us plebs don't get.
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by npsimons 6y ago
This. You know what happened the first week I was back at the office? Non-work chit chat taking up hours of time. If it's really valuable information, write it down so even more people can be exposed to it! It's like that saying
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by npsimons 6y ago
> This is a better angle, but it’s also not something that happens for everyone, everyday, or can be used to justify 5 days in the office. It's not, really. To think of it another way: what would happen if your mentors left for bett
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by npsimons 6y ago
Chin up bar, dumb bells, etc, etc. Just too much to have at an office. And the mention of the kitchen in the post is spot on too - it's just way too convenient to have my full kitchen at home for a quick smoothie. Some projects at my j
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by npsimons 6y ago
> where nothing gets written down This is a big problem. More often than not "institutional knowledge" is short hand for "I'm too lazy to write this down, hope I don't get hit by a bus!" People pretend li
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by npsimons 6y ago
> Until you can retrain your staff or transition to different staff, a manager might be better off asking people to come back to the office. Meanwhile, those who already have remote work skills won't stick around to have their time
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by npsimons 6y ago
> Was anybody's choice of editor really a major point in their developer progress and productivity? I believe you are picking a point that wasn't my main one. I may not have made it clear, but in my view, I'm going to be u
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by npsimons 6y ago
> They're missing out on so much institutional knowledge transfer. What this sounds like to me is your organization isn't documenting things properly. I know, because I've run into this exact same problem on projects at my
210.
by npsimons 6y ago
> While I'm sure there's some kernel of truth to the benefits of chit chatting about random stuff and coming up with better ideas through that, until I see some evidence that in-office work provides this to a substantial degree

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