A Microsoft executive accidentally exposed one of the ugly truths of tech:
One of the great dangers in tech lies in believing you're a special kind of clever. A Microsoft executive's innocent comment led to some stark revelations about how some people in tech really think.
[...] Sometimes nerds can get on your nerves.
They don't necessarily mean to, but they can have a particularly unfiltered mind that's connected to particularly unfiltered vocal cords.
[...] Here, for example, was a conversation I blundered upon. It involved someone at Microsoft, someone at Starbucks and someone who might want to consider his filters. (And may now have.)
Naturally, the conversation was on Twitter. I don't get to eavesdrop anywhere else these days.
Microsoft senior cloud advocate Chloe Condon saw a tweet that she wanted to applaud. It read: "We once hired a former barista in our #DevOps team. Our dept always had epic coffee."
Condon, amidst a bevy of handclapping emojis, tweeted her reaction: "Hire folks with non-traditional paths to tech."
This seems like an expression of wisdom. Don't you want thinking that's not fomulaic? Don't you need an outside perspective to tell you that, just perhaps, you're not all that? Don't you want someone who doesn't think they know it all?
Oh, but Condon's sentiment found a detractor. Or, at least, a[n] apparent sneerer.
I'm reminded of an old saying, "Those people who think they know everything are so annoying to those of us who do."
The exchanges in the linked story serve up large doses of humble pie, crow, and a side of Schadenfreude. Are there any Soylentils here who would like to confess to having a similar smack-down? Replying as an AC (Anonymous Coward) might be prudent. We could all use a good, self-deprecating laugh as the year 2020 winds to a close.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:05AM (2 children)
A good many people are arrogant, but hide it by STFU. I don't think the average nerd is more arrogant, they just often don't hide it as well.
By the way, if you can't STFU, please don't run for President.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @07:41AM (1 child)
That's like saying "I don't think the average crocodile is more green, they just often just don't show their belly".
More gree... err... more arrogant than what, fP(ete's)s?
(large grin)
let's see if this gets on someone nerves
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 22 2020, @02:56PM
...than the average (non-nerd) person would be the glaringly obvious reference point from context.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:11AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday December 22 2020, @07:50PM
I would unironically pay to see this movie.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:19AM (12 children)
No Goddamn Fucking Shit.
I'm a nerd. It's like this. I "KNOW" I'm right - god damn fucking insufferable, absolutely zero social intelligence.
But get this.a nerd with social intelligence - will turn out to do something great
Or a sociopath.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DECbot on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:12AM (4 children)
Why must it be either-or? Perhaps they're destined to become a great sociopath. One can dream.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:29PM (3 children)
After all, he-who-must-not-be-named did many great things. Terrible things, yes, but great!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:45PM (2 children)
Do you mean Lord Voldemort, Hitler, or Trump? I have troubles keeping strait who he-who-must-not-be-named of the week is. Not to invoke Godwin's Law, but Hitler makes the most sense here. He was instrumental to the creation of the Autobahn, the VW Beetle, and getting Germany out of the Great Depression and he was also instrumental to horrible acts like WWII and the Holocaust. Comparatively, Lord Voldemort looks like an occult obsessed, serial-killer gang leader and Trump looks like an ineffective raging buffoonish sock-puppet.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:37AM (1 child)
Trump went up against China while everyone else is lining up to suck their balls. He may be a raging buffoonish lying lecher and guilty of killing a lot of people with his covid denial, but he did definitely do something great.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday December 24 2020, @12:21AM
MAGA hats are still made in China...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @07:17AM (2 children)
I'm guessing you are one of the insufferable no-free-will nerds.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:26AM (1 child)
I'm guessing you are one of those insufferable "free will" turds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:14PM
Nailed it. Care to show us your scientific rationale for your belief?
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @07:47AM (2 children)
Your entire post, especially the excerpt above, sounds to my ear more like a dork than a nerd [alanirwin.com].
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:40PM (1 child)
There are nerds, geeks, and jocks.
Then there are normal people.
Uhm ... did some Googling
https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/47460/Are-You-a-Building-Science-Geek-Nerd-Dork-or-Dweeb#:~:text=A%20Nerd%20is%20someone%20who,with%20common%20social%20expectations%2Finteractions. [energyvanguard.com]
I guess a dork is someone who is socially inept but otherwise normal? Surprised that diagram leaves out jocks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:45PM
A dork is a someone who is obsessed, socially inept, but otherwise normal (ie: lacks intelligence).
(Score: 1) by CrypticNerd on Tuesday December 22 2020, @02:48PM
I'm not arguing with you. I'm just explaining why I'm right (or, the corollary, why you're wrong).
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:25AM (7 children)
So what was the comeback?
I had to go to the Twitter feed to see, and all I could scan were a few back and forth insults.
There is no story here to submit.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:59AM (2 children)
So they hired a person with barista experience and had "good coffee." Maybe they should have hired someone with coding skills, one of us nasty nerds, and maybe, just maybe, Windows 10 would be a tiny bit less broken.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:30PM
If Windows could be a tiny bit less broken, that would not make it substantially better compared to using Linux or Mac.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday December 22 2020, @11:40PM
And this is a classic example of what the post talks about. You literally think this huge company did not have any of these nasty nerds who could code, and you think that's why windows is a bit of the mess it is - because of lack of coders.
Here in the real world, you are the issue. You think you can code and that's the solution to the problems. Newsflash - coding is easy, lots of people code, it doesn't make your opinions any more valid, or you any smarter.
Microsoft is not the best example of this - google is. I type an address into chrome, it suggests a different site. No chrome, I don't have a typo. I type something into search, even quote words, it rewrites my query. Oh, but it can do a verbatium search, under 3 menus. But that disables things like different conjugations and word endings.
chromecast? what a joke. is it lack of coding that makes them take away the existing option to pick screen mirroring vs direct cast, or to pick video quality so I can minimize my mobile hotspot data on this 15" tv that doesn't need 1080p?
the issue is literally people who code, thinking everything is fixed with code. because they only know how to code. they of course have zero idea what to code, and they're not interested in any one else's. who know who's good at listening to people and getting them what they want? a starbucks barista. now if only they could code too.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:07AM
Same reaction here, this isn't a story. At least not yet.
Maybe it will turn into a story, somehow?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:29AM (1 child)
Someone replied:
So, I still think this story is entirely a non-issue, tempest in a teacup, etc..
On one hand the exec has a point: He hired someone who was a decent devops employee that happened to have been a barista. Bonus points for great coffee on top of their good work.
On the other hand someone brings up the point that some tech jobs require specialists. Could that specialist have been a barista at some point in the past? Sure, but you wouldn't want someone whose only training and job experience was making coffee to be designing algorithms for cancer diagnostics.
My personal thought is this: entry level positions exist for a reason. Perhaps your job applicants don't meet the wish list of "requirements" HR decided on. Who cares what job you did for extra cash during college? It doesn't matter much anyway. You get someone hired then see how they do. If they do well then you can see about upgrading their job duties and responsibilities. Starbucks doesn't give new hires control of the whole bean roasting facility in their first job, so why would techs think new hires in a company's devops would be any different?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:05AM
On the third hand (or maybe at one hand and a half), on equal qualification for the job, I will always prefer someone with a diverse experience (and/or hobbies).
Sometime, I will prefer such one even if slightly less qualified than the top candidate - there a many things that can be caught on the fly on the job, but it's hard to make a morose person work with the team.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:33AM
The story isn't over until the social media offender hangs himself for the crime of insulting baristas. It shouldn't take long.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:38AM (4 children)
Is why the PR industry seemed to embrace Twatter where anyone gets to attack the message with an equivalent audience.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:06AM (2 children)
Tweets are limited in character length. Magazine ads, for example, can be many paragraphs long. Hence, Twitter is less work.
(Score: 3, Touché) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @09:29PM (1 child)
Twitter users are limited in character.
FTFY.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:40AM
If you use Twitter, you're a twit!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:20AM
Same reason the software industry embraces Windows, the x86, WebApps and a dozen other half-baked designs with broken executions: It creates jobs.
(not sarcastic)
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:02AM (1 child)
Given the sharp uptick in videoconferencing, and some of the mishaps that have resulted from that, I was expecting a much different story when I began to read "A Microsoft executive accidentally exposed...".
(Score: 3, Funny) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @09:31PM
There probably wouldn't be much to see, so not much of a story. After all, it's micro and soft.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:19AM (7 children)
The detractors are typical twittiots and are ignoring the statement's point.
Your odds are indistinguishable from zero of having success in the short term putting someone whose sole qualification is being a barrista on developing AI software to perform image recognition of cancer.
He just didn't qualify the statement enough so a bunch of idiots piled on as a form of virtue signalling.
HOWEVER, someone who worked (or continues to work) as a barrista, but also spent years learning about AI, Imaging and image recognition? VERY DIFFERENT. This difference is what all the cases had in common, they were examples of someone doing some barrista type job then learning a particular tech field over time (years and decades later.) None were some sort of magical case of jumping instantly from adding sugar and whipped creme to weak coffee, to the pinnacle of some technical field without experience and learning the technical field on the way. They were actually making the guy's point!
Being a barrista (or doing any other non-tech job) doesn't mean you can not learn and do high-tech jobs. It's just not a qualification to do them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:35AM (2 children)
The soft skills and work ethic you have to have to deal with sleep deprived caffeine addicts in need of a fix are also valuable in a software engineer. It means nothing if you can't program your way out of a paper bag, but it's a clear differentiating factor if you have some modicum of technical ability.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @02:22PM (1 child)
And another surfaces.
1) Differentiation is not necessarily positive
2) A differentiator over what?
- Over someone that hasn't worked at all? Sure. But again, that's only your competition at an entry level. You're comparing -some- (mostly irrelevant) work experience with NO work experience.
- Over someone that's worked in that tech field, dealt with management, the interplay of technical coworkers, and integrated with other teams to accomplish management goals (vs. the numbing repetition, customer service and hungover shift leaders of a barrista) for that same period of time? Not so much.
Conversely, working a physically demanding (like ditch digging) or highly unrewarding (coffee ladling) job can provide motivation to succeed in a more pleasant work environment, and that's not to be discounted. But if you expect HR to be mind readers you are in for disappointment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @09:44PM
I'd argue that the highly bureaucratic institutions are a breeding ground for the psuedo-autistic tendencies that are pervasive in any business insistent on being labeled as professional, and having experience outside of them is a massively quantifiable boon. In my experience as a cook and dishwasher, those weren't concrete descriptions of a job, they were the pay grades. Sometimes cooks dishwashed and sometimes dishwashers cooked, there was a dynamic interplay of labor resources. In professional environments, thanks to the rigid bureaucratic structuring, there are bold lines drawn where people exist in their domain and take no responsibility outside of it. When it comes to changing a lightbulb it takes a dozen office drones and one janitor. What's worse is academically trained fuckwits tossing about in a workplace never having worked a real entry level job with actual humans, and that's where you get the psuedo-autism, and a total failure to realize the human makeup of both the workplace and the product, whatsoever it may be. Janitors, burgerflippers, and baristas are now automatons but any human failure they're capable of manifesting is cast in the glaring light of disgust, at least by some patrons. Those patrons are probably in reality among the most incompetent but heavily protected, insulated by impenetrable bureaucratic concrete and thus infallible.
This denigrates the fibers that connect us. If the computer breaks it can't be the fault of the person operating it, and because of the rules they must abide by they can't find a workaround for you without compromising their own security. It's a question of technology controlling us, and I'm talking about soft technologies like management and SOPs as well as computers and the like. Having someone capable of seeing these things and integrating them to break the walls and allow people to realize their true strengths is at least a noble goal, but I'd go so far as to argue that it extracts more value on both sides of the equation benefiting not only the employer, but the employee as well.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:40AM
If we were all branded forever by our first jobs, we'd all be doing something simple. Everyone would be like Fry the pizza delivery guy in Futurama.
(Score: 1) by akai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:43AM (2 children)
Eh, it's just the misogynerd narrative. It's a nice reminder that Trump is on his way out and incel tech dweebs have yet to figure out how to turn their hobby into an actual (licensed) profession.
You won't impress any airhead journalists without a professional association. Why do you think the state of software security [soylentnews.org] is what it is? You're not professionals. You're hobbyists. The bourgeoisie says that you're bluffing about your skills. What are you going to do about it?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @09:51PM (1 child)
That "security " story would have been branded as a slashvertisement on the green site, and rightfully so. Citing it as any sort of "proof " of anything doesn't compute.
I'm sure the devs making a combined $50 billions a year on the Apple and Google app stores don't give a thought to what the general public thinks of their professional qualifications as long as they keep buying. And that $50 billion a year says the public doesn't give a shit either.
But the whole premise of the story has a significant fault - that performance is dependent on caffeine. Maybe initially you'll perform better after a jolt, but eventually you're going to need that hit just to achieve average performance. Like the familiar saying "I can't function before I've had my first cup of coffee."
Your code is probably going to be worse if you're jonesing for caffeine, since you're distracted. And the same reasoning would apply to any other job. And you're going to be constantly fatigued because you won't sleep as well. So you're going to need that first cup of coffee just to be functional.
I'd fire the barista just on health grounds. Great coffee means higher consumption, and crappier performance.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by akai.tsubasa on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:19AM
Yes well baristas are also capable of making tea, no? Perhaps he takes care to heat the water to the proper tea snob temperature and steeps for exactly 210 seconds.
But granted if he's any good at programming he'll quickly automate that away with an RFC 2324/7168 implementation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:28AM (1 child)
I don't understand why some rando on twitter replying to a tweet is news.
On the underlying topic, there are many paths into IT. Don't get wrapped around the axle if someone else managed to get in without dropping $100k on classes they never used. The second best sysadmin I've ever met worked a Waffle House grill for 12 years. I'd hire him anytime, and I'd pay him more than myself if I could.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:10AM
Ok, it's not news. Does it make a less interesting point to start a discussion on a site marked "...is people"?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:28AM (5 children)
Yeah, reality really gets on some people's nerves. No, boss, we can't have perpetual motion, infinite data compression, a new killer app produced every week, 100% accurate facial recognition from tiny, blurry mug shots, time travel, or the moon by the end of the day.
(Score: 2) by jb on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:44AM (4 children)
Why ever not? As far as I can tell the moon rises at the end of every day.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jelizondo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:51AM (2 children)
The Moon doesn't rise, the Earth rotates.
See? Going to College makes a difference! :-)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @07:22AM
You are hereby prohibited from ever using the words sunrise or sunset unless you are explaining how everyone around you is wrong ;-)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:40AM
eeerk!
the moon does rise, just 28 times slower than the earth rotates!!!
go back to college.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @09:56PM
Not even close. You've never seen the moon during the day? Try looking up. It's not in sync to be opposite of the sun.
Otherwise solar eclipses would be impossible. You've seen at least one, haven't you?
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday December 22 2020, @04:41AM (1 child)
Not only is it the year of COVID-19, it's also the year when summarizing a tweeter thread is now considered a newsworthy article on ZDNet.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:20AM
Oh, eff off, thou holier than the pope.
Did you just happen to open then RTFA? If yes, you may have missed the
- with the "Technically Incorrect" being a blog.
It's like the S/N editors promoting a journal entry as a main page story, only because that entry raises interesting points.
Can you explain what's wrong in doing so?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by progo on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:02AM (1 child)
Think hard before you virtue signal.
Also, you're a useless fool if you assume a highly educated person would never be a barista.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:17AM
Highly educated != highly skilled.
There are plenty of baristas with postgraduate degrees in underwater basketweaving, or the relevance equivalent thereof, but that's not especially surprising.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:06AM (10 children)
I asked all new hires if they could make coffee. No, I never asked, never wanted a "barrista". Just make coffee. 1/4 cup of coffee grounds, slightly heaped, into the basket, and one carafe of water into the reservoir, make sure there's electricity, and stand back. Anyone who can't master the coffee pot in a couple days has no business working on much anything else.
Now, the rules are, junior man comes in ten minutes early and brews the coffee, so the rest of us can pour a cup when we come in. No barrista bullshit, don't bring any soy milk into the shop, and we can all live together.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Funny) by DECbot on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:39AM (2 children)
The coffee maker has hot water on demand. Here's the instant coffee tin. When my pay increases to cover coming in early regularly to make the coffee for everyone we can discuss drip coffee or even perculated. Otherwise, if I happen to be the first in the break room I'll make the coffee. And if it comes up in the yearly review and I'm penalized for not being 10 minutes early to make the coffee, either the machine will transform into a keurig, or the coffee pot will suddenly require quarters to keep the hot plate warm for another 15 minutes, or I'm switching everyone else to decaf.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 22 2020, @11:33PM (1 child)
Funny. But, I'd like to inject at least a semi-serious note.
Any place that I ran a crew, it was within my discretion to give that junior guy 1/4 hour at the beginning of the day. So, he was paid for coming in early enough to make the coffee.
Paid or not, I view making the coffee for the crew as part of "paying your dues". I mean, hey, NO ONE stays the junior man forever, right? Everyone starts off doing scut work that no one else wants to do, after some months, maybe a year or two max, someone else hires in, and now THEY get the scut work.
Besides, it's good practice to show up 1/4, or even 1/2 hour before work starts. Chat with the off-going shift if applicable, scope out what's got to be done, give yourself a couple minutes to think before all the assholes show up to confuse you with superfluous bullshit. If you can convince new helpers of that, they'll have a leg up on the competition. ;^)
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday January 05 2021, @07:12AM
Under those terms--hourly wage and paid to come in early--I would consider it. Now my current employer, we finally got a new systems guy after about 7 years and since we're all salary, if you were my boss, after the first year we'd need to have a discussion about the coffee arrangement.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:46AM
Spot on. The rules in my offices were typically first one in makes the coffee if they want it, or empty the pot make some more.
I would add this. I usually assume I am the worst dev on the floor. I have no idea what I am doing and will cock it up at any moment. (usually not any of those things as those are irrational fears). I also assume everyone else has it together and will do just fine if they can get past 'fizz buzz' and have some humility. Because do not worry those who have no idea what they are doing and are proud arrogant asses will show themselves soon enough for exactly what they are. I've worked with former taxi drivers, fighter pilots, and one dude was a manager at a mcdonalds for a while, and another a former army grunt. They were all decent at what they did because they were also professionals. But to assume that any of those things would make for a good programmer would be to woefully underestimate what is needed. Also because they are a pro at something else in no way means they will be a decent programmer. Sometimes we take jobs to make ends meet. But other times we rise to the level of competence we have. Telling the difference can be tough. For some if you are not fresh at doing 16 hour days neck deep in whatever the current fad language is in your shop you are not even worth talking to. That is arrogance and hubris. But to also assume that because someone is working a barista job will be da most awesome person ever is also hubris in not looking into if they can actually do the job. You want to be in the middle somewhere where you can catch the best of both.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:26AM (1 child)
What's with the "barista" thing, anyway? Good coffee does not depend on a person, but on beans and roasting process. And nothing beats an Italian espresso, ofcourse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @09:06AM
Spoken like someone who hasn't discovered how nasty the coffee is because the previous shift brewed the last pot by just pouring in more grounds on top of the old. Admittedly this is user error, but they would do it every damn time. Lazy bastards.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:07PM (3 children)
A quarter cup of grounds? Cheap bastard. You probably also used that crap Folgers.
A couple of places I ended up bringing my own coffee maker and coffee. If I'm going to drink coffee, I'll at least do it properly. Plus it made my office smell like a donut shop. People all around were in a better mood. Aromatherapy that actually works , not that essential oils scam.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:33PM (2 children)
Been making my coffee that way since about 1975 or 76, and hundreds of Navy personnel drank it, and loved it, including old master chiefs with decades of service. Never had a cop, EMT, or fire fighter, or truck driver turn it down because it was weak or some such nonsense. You go ahead and use 1/2 cup, or 1 cup, or whatever.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @11:05PM (1 child)
Working for a private company has got its benefits, and free, decent coffee is one of them.
When I had to work as a contractor onsite at a government office, it floored me that coffee wasn't free. Why invest, it doesn't matter if the workers are awake or not, I suppose. And someone mentioned Folgers: that's what they had for the honor system, pay-by-cup coffee maker the poor employees had to set up for themselves. At the private office, we got a dozen different varieties of coffee brewed as single servings. Government offices were always extra institutional and dreary. Even just putting out a pot with Duncan Donuts at the govt offices would have been a very affordable perk for the employees.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 22 2020, @11:21PM
If you ever find yourself contracting for Uncle again, look into a coffee mess. Uncle doesn't give you ANYTHING, but they permit you to set up a coffee pot somewhere. Rules go with the privilege - and not only cleanliness. You have to be prepared to account for the finances. So, you, as the messkeeper, start off with a coffee pot and two cans of coffee, and some disposable cups. You charge as you see fit - honor system, or a quarter a cup, or whatever. And KEEP TRACK of your transactions. If ever a question is asked, you're ready with your little ledger.
No, you don't have to account for every dime put in by every individual. Friday night, empty the money can, count it, mark it in the ledger, "$27.00 taken from the kitty". Go out and buy two more cans of coffee, some creamer, some sugar, and some more disposable cups, staple the receipts to that page in the ledger. Money in, money out, no one has been coerced, cheated, or whatever. KISS - keep it simple, but show where the money goes.
That is exactly how private messes are run in the Navy, and follows closely with officer's messes, chief's messes, etc. No, it does NOT reflect how private clubs like the petty officer's club is run. When alcohol is involved, things get really complicated, really fast.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:34AM (3 children)
Some people even accomplish things that they can't throw into the twitterverse.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:44AM
If you throw a chair on Twitter but you have no followers to retweet it, does it make a sound?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:48AM (1 child)
and won't
just sharing information on the internet has become a dangerous game if suddenly you have the 'wrong' opinion and others will decide you no longer need a job and harass you.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:17PM
What's the fun of having an opinion if you can't have a "wrong " opinion. What's the fun of being someone on the shitternet if you can't be the target of misdirected hate?
Conformity is seriously overrated.
Just look at Eliot Page and Eddie izzard. If they had come out as trans a decade ago, the Internet Rage Machine would've eaten them up. Now? No big news.
When we'have articles on whether a barista can be a good dev, with a dose of virtue signalling thrown in, we've joined the Olympics in making breakdancing an Olympic sport.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday December 22 2020, @06:47AM (3 children)
What was the point of the article? I just didn't get it. Is it that HR sucks at their job? We all knew that already. Not everyone was an instant coder-god at birth? People currently in IT once or twice before had non-IT jobs? Some people are to stupid, or arrogant, to even manage to boil water and add coffee?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @02:39PM (2 children)
The point was to stir up a flame war, but it didn't work because nobody understood what they were supposed to be fighting about.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:00PM
I thought the point was to display how concise and articulate Microsoft executives are; or rather how vague and ambiguous. That would explain a bunch of the Windows misfeatures throughout the years.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:08PM
So kind of like a MAGA rally then?
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Tuesday December 22 2020, @03:00PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ilsa on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:28PM (4 children)
While there is nothing stopping anyone from making a major career change into some other field, tech included, Zeman has a point. There's a big difference between learning to code and being a developer, or an architect, or a sysadmin. Software development is the only engineering discipline where actually being qualified to do the work is not a requirement. A barista without an engineering degree can't waltz into an architectural firm and design a bridge. But it's apparently perfectly acceptable for them to write code. All they need to do is learn to copy/paste off stack overflow.
The amount of shockingly crap code I've come across during my career is breathtaking, and there is a very strong correlation between your background and the quality of your code and the decisions you make. Sure, having a degree doesn't guarantee that you aren't an idiot, but it's a lot less likely. Not having a degree doesn't mean you aren't good, but it's unlikely. The problem with tech is that, unlike other engineering disciplines, there are no minimum standards of knowledge, so the amount of Dunning-Kruger in the industry is breathtaking.
One time we had to deal with a "Tech Lead" who talked a good story to the people that didn't know any better, but then we had to spend 3 hours explaining why using floats to store currency values is a really bad idea. Or the other "senior developer" who wrote a while loop to iterate through a freaking hashmap to pull a value (among a litany of other terrible coding choices). And don't get me started on the supposed "AWS Cloud architect" that exposed an open proxy to the internet, and when it was compromised, proceeded to say that "AWS didn't know what they were talking about" and that the security was fine, while the box was being actively used to perform DDOS attacks.
The overwhelming majority of these issues are produced by self-taught people. They don't know what they don't know, and they don't have the benefit of a formal curriculum to teach them how to work around problems. Hell, some of the arguments I've had with people here on SN are just mindboggling. I'm especially in awe of the people that contradict established wisdom, utterly convinced of the nonsense they spew, even when multiple people pointedly tell them that they are wrong. It's like the tech version of homeopathy.
And we're seeing the results first hand, with an exponentially increasing number of major security and quality failures across the board.
Can a barista learn to code? Sure. But don't you dare say that they are of the same calibre as someone with a degree in computer engineering. Trying to chalk it up to "arrogance" is nothing more than feeding into the same narrative that companies are using in order to flood the market with cheap labour.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @08:31PM (2 children)
Said the parent:
"One time we had to deal with a "Tech Lead" who talked a good story to the people that didn't know any better, but then we had to spend 3 hours explaining why using floats to store currency values is a really bad idea."
I have to explain this almost every job I go to that has junior devs. I have a written math tutorial.
The slightly clever ones conclude at the end that they can just use integers to store money values in pennies. Then you blow their minds with multiplication by percents. Just do that in float and round the answer at the end! Using which rounding algorithm, and can you be sure you'll never be off by a penny? Doesn't sound like much to you, but when we talk about money, people want exact base-10 based arithmetic.
The answer of course is to use a base-10 arithmetic library with all quantities stored in whatever type the library uses for BigDecimal numbers, as they are called in Java. (People say Java is the new COBOL, and COBOL has always supported base-10 arithmetic.) Even Python supports BigDecimal numbers. Relational DBMSes support BigDecimal. The turd in the punchbowl is Javascript, as usual. There is no standard library for BigDecimal that is part of the Javascript standard. They desperately need to pick one and include it in the next Javascript standard.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:23PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:26AM
Well, until a finalized version of WebAssembly is implemented in ALL browsers and MOST tooling supports it... I am afraid we ARE stuck with Javascript. WebAssembly would let you write in a different language and compile to WebAssembly and deploy. TypeScript is the best practical alternative we have now, but it's just a thin layer over Javascript. Javascript is a lot like Java: so widely deployed that it isn't going anywhere for a long time.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:20PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2020, @05:45PM (4 children)
If a mechanic comes in to the software team, one might say that software is purring great. If a salesman comes in, one might say that we've really got a customer focus. If a make-up artist comes in, we may say that they're really helping our aesthetic.
So what? This is a casual comment that _anyone_ would make. This isn't anything more than that. People who seek outrage in such comments are the problem. People who find offense in any utterance.
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Now 'adays we're expected to be absolutely perfect and flawless. Our attempts at compliment are unaccepted and unappreciated. As a result, we should never pay homage to anyone's past or attempt _any_ niceties at all, because it _will_ be taken as offense. So treat everyone like shit, they know exactly what to expect, and they will all love you. (I swear, everyone's becoming a woman.)
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:32PM (3 children)
My reply would be;
After all, if the man is perfectly honest, you're going to have to cheat to find something to hang them on. And if you take something that they did in the past that wasn't honest, by definition they're not PERFECTLY honest.
So find the perfectly honest man and we'll talk. Until then …
Happy holidays!
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 22 2020, @10:36PM (1 child)
No doubt their response would be "I will go through all your past and find 6 lines that you can be hanged for. Which I would point out is not the original deal - "give me 6 lines" - cheating bastard.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:48AM
Lawyers and philosophers both go to the same hell, where they argue with each other for eternity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:30AM
An interesting challenge.
Source lines:
Would the following twist of the words be considered a confession of sorts?
Twisted lines: