People should try negotiating first. If that fails, then start looking for a new job.
Unfortunately, what I gather from the behaviour of my peers is that they lack the spine to do so. They can't muster the courage to draw a line in the sand.
So they keep picking up assignments, fail to do them adequately, and need to perform heroics to cover their ass till some other guy comes along to save them.
Ironically, some of them wonder why they keep getting passed up for promotion. I don't have the heart to tell them why.
At my last job, I was in this exact situation. I attempted to be reasonable and negotiate. My ex-boss's response: "The guys at Google can do it, why can't you? You just aren't good enough".
This was after I spent 3 months (and many long and unpaid hours) saving the company $50K/year. When I was finished, I got reamed in a 2+ hour meeting for not working on the boss's pet projects (even after I explained to him many many times exactly what I was doing and why I couldn't work on his other projects). The problem is that I've seen too many people in upper-management that do things like this. It's why I decided to finally start my own company.
Some people are just not logical and make decisions based on pure emotions. I would have quit on the spot, but I wanted unemployment, so I intentionally made things difficult until I was laid off a month later.
that is exactly what I am experiencing. MY boss on numerous occassions told me he knows he is emotional but "so its life, so deal with it".
one thing I truly learnt from a situations like this is always expect the worse. for example: my boss yelled at me that a project is not finished. so I told him OK i will work this weekend to finish it. then next day he replied: spend weekend with family you work so hard. so I did. oh naive me. Monday comes and I am being yelled at that project is not completed. But you told me to spend time with family. - well, you should weight whats more important my advice to spend time with family or complete project that would make me and managment happy.
I will quit eventually, but the job is extremly well paid (makes me feel like a bitch I know), and there is no way I can get something similar for this salary (average for my work is 60% less). Thats probably a trick when someone offers you way more money than your job is reasonably worth.
Perspective shift: You're being paid to be yelled at.
Document everything, so that he can't take it beyond yelling. And consider yourself an actor, or an actor-in-training. You sit there and take it until "they yell cut", and let it roll off you without soaking in.
And... if he's going to find something to yell about, regardless, then indeed, spend the weekend (and evenings, etc.) with your family. Fuck him.
P.S. Have some networking in place and prospects cooking, for if and when one of you has had enough.
P.P.S. The more you stand up to a bully, the more -- often -- they actually end up respecting you (and acting in a more reasonable manner). It's not guaranteed, but it's worth exploring.
Beside, showing that drinkers earn more does not show that drinking is an overall economic boon as the first sentence implies. It could as easily mean that drinkers simply get a bigger slice of the pie.
They are not claiming causation. They are hypothesizing correlation between drinking and sociability/social network size, and causation from that to higher earnings.
"We hypothesize that drinking leads to higher earnings by increasing social capital."
The hypothesis seems to be that drinking makes people like you and that gets you better jobs.
As opposed to being social getting you better jobs and making you drink more, or having a better job allowing you to drink and be social, two alternate explanations which seem a lot more likely to me.
right, except for the bit where they suggest that we should encourage drinking to boost earnings. It is the absolute definition of the correlation/causation mistake. They also got a positive coefficient on the Divorced variable - I guess we should encourage divorces to boost the economy?
At least in my community, when you talk about "sql server" it's obvious that you're talking about MS SQL Server. In the same way, postgreSQL is "postgres" and Oracle Database is just "oracle".
That community being people who already know about the brand. I say it every day at work, too, but the OP still has a valid point for public discussion.
I don't know about your culture, but I've never heard anyone use 'sql server' when they meant 'the database server'. You just don't call it that. I also think it's a pretty dumb product name. You might as well call a web server 'html server'.
People not familiar is Microsoft are probably not taking part in a discussion on HackerNews, let alone a discussion of why their SQL Server product was not ported to *nix.
> and made it to the Redmond campus based on her own ambition and drive to do something for herself.
Sorry but no. Again, I don't want to belittle her accomplishments - it's certainly a feat for any girl or boy her age to be even able to put a very simple application together, but she came from a very wealthy Pakistani family. Saying that she made it to Redmond out of her own ambition and drive is spitting in the face of all her not so privileged compatriots who are struggling to do the same.
I know privileged and smart 30 year olds for whom getting a real job or moving out of the house would be a major major accomplishment. This girl was 10.
Writing off her accomplishments due to privilege is unfair.
Agreed. Even here in the good old Bay Area there are quite a few trust fund kids with zero work ethic, little motivation and no desire to ever work because their parents will let them ride the money indefinitely. Very sad.
One day you will come back to the comments you made here and find yourself embarrassed for sounding like such a little person. I hope you're better than this and we are just misunderstanding you.
I believe he's pointing out, accurately, that wealthy families in Pakistan can be just as privileged as middle-class Americans. He's saying it's unfair to use this girl as an example of those actually living in under-privileged poverty conditions in Pakistan.
It's a fair objection, though rather emotionally contentious given the context.
Pakistani women are still not as privileged as men. Even if you were to compare a wealthy Pakistani family to some sort of American class (which would be very hard, since you would be ignoring both cultures), she would still be notable for being a 9 year old girl who became a MCP.
I think the point that it's more about the notions of the wealthy family than of the girl. Wealth allows families to transcend or disregard social norms. In this case it is clear that her family chose to raise her a particular way, and give her particular opportunities that, as you point out, would not be available to most Pakistani women.
This is precisely the point raised above, that this story is primarily about the opportunity provided by the family. But you are right, it's important to note that her family was evidently both wealthy and progressive.
Probably because he/she recognizes that any such discussion will not lead to any possibly productive output and instead be a pointless match of tilting at windmills.
For what it's worth, I'm getting the same vibe from you. Your first contribution to this thread was basically taking a big steaming dump over this young lady's accomplishments. Why would you do that? It didn't add anything to the discussion, and instead makes you look like a colossal jerk. If this were not HN, I'd think you were just plain trolling.
__Probably because he/she recognizes that any such discussion will not lead to any possibly productive output and instead be a pointless match of tilting at windmills.__
Yet he/she takes the effort to right that down? I love it when people take part in a discussion, then, when a reply is on it's way they say "let's not discuss this more". If it's not worth discussing why bother dropping such useless statements? Ever considering not enter the discussion in the first place? It's not rocket science.
__For what it's worth, I'm getting the same vibe from you. Your first contribution to this thread was basically taking a big steaming dump over this young lady's accomplishments. Why would you do that? It didn't add anything to the discussion, and instead makes you look like a colossal jerk. If this were not HN, I'd think you were just plain trolling.__
I strongly disagree. andreadallera didn't took 'a big steaming dump' over this young lady's achievements. He/she simply question them. I have no idea if this young lady accomplished much or not, but how is questioning the same as denying?
>Yet he/she takes the effort to right that down? I love it when people take part in a discussion, then, when a reply is on it's way they say "let's not discuss this more". If it's not worth discussing why bother dropping such useless statements? Ever considering not enter the discussion in the first place? It's not rocket science.
Because you realized you made a mistake by entering the discussion in the first place. It's like trying to argue evolution with a creationist who you don't know is a creationist when you start talking. You find out, and then you go "Oh man, this is gonna go nowhere fast. I'm off."
>He/she simply question them.
Common fucking decency would imply that a thread discussing the death of someone is not the proper place to question their accomplishments in life.
An MCP at 9 years old is a big deal. I know it might have been easy for some of you geniuses in here, but this girl was 9.
Exactly what i thought. Plus, from a marketing point of view, porting sqlserver to unix would have been suicide for Microsoft given their primary objective (for what concernes the server market) since XP is to enlarge their market to the server world. sqlserver is the main reason to have a windows machine at all if your team develops with .NET.
I disagree. The main reasons I develop in .NET (as opposed to Mono) are tooling and performance. SQL Server is helpful in the cases where I need a RDBMS, but connecting to one's database of choice is generally painless.
I hate to write this, since the tragic happening but really, the hype is widely unjustified.
I started programming when I was 8, I know a lot of people that started meddling around with computer around the same age, and I was born a decade before her which, in computer years, is like a century. Everything programming related was a hundred times more difficult to accomplish than it is now - I wrote assembly on a C64, because that's all my poor family could afford, with nothing more than a printsheet of the opcodes. And no internet, keep that in mind. And I won't say I'm a prodigy because of that.
I am also an MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) and I can tell you that the exam was nothing but difficult - basically, it had nothing to do with actual programming and more with knowing what checkbox to flag. I studied for it the evening before the test.
I've seen so many stories like this, most of them not as tragic and not as heartwarming. For example, a heir of a very wealth family that I know has been featured in at least 10 Italian newspapers as "the new Mark Zuckerberg" or "the 20 years-old startupper" or "the genius behind <his startup>", all because his family has deep ties with the editors.
That has taught me never to believe a thing of what I read on something even vaguely institutionalized.
Jesus, every damn time someone of note passes away we get a bunch of morons on here telling us how the accomplishments aren't as good as they seem. You people need to learn when to bite your tongues. I'm willing to bet if it were some VC going on and on about his/her life's works, the last thing you'd do is point out how unremarkable and unimpressive any of it is.
Let's see if a similar article is written up about your achievements when you pass away.
> we get a bunch of morons on here telling us how the accomplishments aren't as good as they seem.
Whoa, easy. I have expressed my opinion and I have backed it up well I think. No hate for the poor girl, that's just terrible that somebody 16 years old have to die, no matter his or her accomplishments.
On the other hand, what accomplishments are we talking about here? Seriously, I'm really sorry for the poor girl, I really am, but still I can't see the accomplishment she's made.
And, honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about what people will write about me when I'm dead.
I don't get this angry when commenting here but the disgusting lack of empathy continually expressed on HN really, really gets to me. If you truly felt sorry for the girl, for her family, considered her family's pride for what she accomplished not only for herself but possibly for other kids in Pakistan, then you wouldn't feel the need to point out any of what you've stated.
I read the article and found it quite inspirational that a girl her age had so much motivation. Most kids at the age of 9 are playing their Wii's and watching early-morning reruns of Power Rangers. Her achievements go beyond technical certification.
But it's alright. Let's be champions of truth and justice at the sacrifice of appreciation and empathy. It'd be the hacker thing to do, anyway. It's happened with Dropbox, AirBnB, Steve Jobs, etc, already; so one more added to the list is a drop in the bucket.
The nice thing about textual discussion is that you can have multiple opinions being analyzed at once. Just because not every single person is mourning in every message they write, doesn't mean nobody cares about the obvious tragedy. But there's no fun in analyzing the obvious. This girl is an absolute inspriation, and andreadallera helped remind me that it's not too late to hope for similar status for myself one day.
Empathy should have nothing to do with your ability to evaluate facts. Empathy has an evil cousin, politically correctness. When politically correctness comes into play, you lose the game. You can't talk about anything with a straight perspective because, you know, somebody might get offended.
A 16 years old kid has died. That is a sad fact by itself. If she was the dumbest kid in Pakistan that wouldn't have made the fact less sad - only, you wouldn't have known it. If she was the poorest kid in Pakistan, same thing. Now, you know that a lot of 16 years old kids die in Pakistan? Most of them with family situations much worse than the one she was in? Do you feel empathy for them? I bet so. That's a good thing, a human thing to feel.
Now, as a thought experiment, let's say she wasn't a Pakistani little girl. Let's say she was a 16 years old boy coming from a rich US family. Even fat and greasy, to add to the image. Let's also add that this one didn't die - he's well off in his NY mansion eating Snickers all day. What would you have thought of the article? "16 years old kid from NY loves messing around with .NET". Wouldn't you have said: who cares? And rightly so?
Empathy drains perspective. Feeling empathy is the noblest thing in the world. At the same time, it doesn't mean that it should suspend your ability to evaluate situations. A big problem with our society and our communication channels is that they routinely employ this effect to steer public opinion where they want it to be. Don't be a sucker - be human, but use your brain.
The reason why it's remarkable (and I use the word literally) is because 16-year-old girls from Pakistan do not start with the same advantages as 16-year-old boys in the US. It's not surprising, given that, if one outcome is ignored and the other is celebrated.
Again, perspective. On average, that's certainly true. In this specific instance, not so. Take a 16 year old boy from the ghetto in the US and compare it to a rich upper caste Pakistani girl. Who has the most advantages?
I think, in changing your thought experiment, you're making my point for me.
If a 16-year-old boy from the ghetto in the US became the world's youngest MCP at the age of 9, I would absolutely expect that to be news.
I would also think it was particularly unworldly to comment on the reporting of his untimely death, "well, I, as a white man with excellent access to education, got an MCP at the age of 20, and it wasn't all that hard".
The challenges that Arfa, or your hypothetical ghetto programmer, faced, were entirely different, and quite probably greater to the ones you faced, and they achieved a specific milestone a long time before you did. I genuinely can't imagine the mindset that attempts to minimize rather than celebrating their achievements.
You could have at least stated that you felt sorry for the girl's death in your first post. Instead, it sounded more like you were focused on discrediting her skills without heed to the sensitivity of her passing. She might not've been a true prodigy, and you may be fed up with articles like this, but please show some dignity.
> Empathy should have nothing to do with your ability to evaluate facts.
Frankly, your original post was extremely light on facts. The only relevant fact that you presented is that you think the MCP exam is easy. You wrote:
> the hype is widely unjustified
You really don't have enough information. You're looking at a single fact without context, and saying that it's nothing special. For some context, check out khalidmbajwa's comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3467046
Spot-on. This entire thread is a good example of people stopping thinking rationally and trying to censor people who disagree with them just because once they got into irrational empathic state they think they have higher moral ground.
Feeling empathy and being sad for whatever reason is ok, but trying to project to other and decline them the right to ask the question or to make a statement in a respectful manner is not.
I strongly disagree with you but was planning on staying out of this conversation. But now I feel compelled to interject.
Your example fails in supporting your point. Your example person could not be more different from Arfa.
Your character: Fat Boy who enjoys messing with .NET is alive and enjoying his snickers bar.
Arfa: Young Intelligent, Motivated Girl Concretely acting in fulfilling her goals and bettering her environment dies at 16.
It does not matter her gender, age or privilege. Her outlook, her willingness to act in perusing her goals and enrichment - in spite of her "silver spoon" - puts her ahead of a lot of people. Do not underestimate the power of taking things for granted.
We agree that her early death is tragic. But is it fair that so many other people also die and no one notices? No it is not fair. I agree. But the reality of the matter is that attention is a scarce resource and will always be. Now, If I had somehow heard about the death of your rich fat kid from NYC then I would certainly feel empathy for the parents and the early loss. But the reality is, a random person hearing of that event is not a likely scenario. Most news outlets would not be interested.
Many people, some more technically accomplished than Arfa will not get similar coverage. But technical accomplishment is not the sole determinant of value as a person or worth in attention units. If you look at how we price people's worth in attention you will notice that it is only loosely correlated with the value of the labor they put into improving themselves and more correlated with how much demand for their attention they can create.
As for Arfa's case she actually does stands up to scrutiny of the worth of her accomplishments. The real loss is not her current skill but the time derivative of it, the rate of increase, her potential. The fact that she had already made news, met Bill Gates, lack of greed, willingness to give back and the inspirational aspect of it all. Those add to make hers a very uncommon situation and hence worth covering by the media.
Her dying is a very sad event as is the case for nearly all deaths. But make no mistake, this coverage is not due to the empathy of the news outlets but a calculated cost value decision. Fair or not that is the reality of it and there is no gain in focusing on how many others are not covered instead giving more weight to the tragic fact of her loss. She has gotten to your ellipsoid of attention. That alone justifies the attention she is receiving, not an accounting of how easy it is to replicate her accomplishments. Such a stance is not much difference from holding a belief that I could make stackoverflow in a week.
Finally I completely disagree that empathy drains perspective. Empathy gives perspective. You underestimate the value of social and emotional intelligence, which are vital in getting people to work together and overcome difficulties. Empathy is exactly trying to get someone's perspective and then using that to your mutual advantages (or manipulate to get ahead). Intelligence in species is correlated with complexity of social groups. Some argue Neanderthals were more IQ intelligent than us - closer to our savants but we overcame them by being more able to work together and having a superior Collective Intelligence.
Empathy is not an enemy of rationality. See Higher order intentionality. I have a pet theory that the empathetic mind is a simulation based intelligence, dual to the calculation based intelligence commonly linked to I.Q. You can run simulations, or run outright calculations to get at the same answer. Some things are easier to calculate others easier to simulate. Both add perspective and neither has ordinality.
You are a true engineer right to the end. Sticking your foot in your mouth and then continually trying to use logic to climb out of the hole you dug for yourself. The next time someone of note passes away, resist the urge to take them down a notch and just keep your mouth shut.
And you're a true manager right to the end, my friend. Making decision with your heart alone and refusing to see logic and data when they're in front of you.
There's nothing logical about your post, because a logical post wouldn't ignore that she was a 9 year old girl from Pakistan when she became a MCP and you weren't a 9 year old girl from Pakistan when you became a MCP. You refuse to see the vast amount of differences between you and her and then continue to make a comparison as though it has any meaning.
> You people need to learn when to bite your tongues.
While I appreciate your proselytizing suggestion that we change our entire moral and ethical framework based on what some random person on the internet wrote in anger and eschew logic and reason, I will bite my tongue whenever I please, thank you very much.
Really? A young girl dies, hacker or not. A writer who was touched by her writes about it. And the only thing worth writing is that you beat her to programming by 2 years. Bravo!
Not that this applies to you, but at what age do people learn empathy and sensitivity?
I think andreadallera just wants an msnbc digital life writeup as well.
andreadallera, here's the author's email address todd@geekwire.com, enjoy petitioning him for your own digital ink noting and praising your deep feelings of self worth -- those being more important than the death of a child.
No no no not at all - Sorry if it came out that way.
On a personal level, I am deeply sorry for her death. Given time, she might have become a great programmer.
On a more general level, when I see something like this on the news, I can't help but ask myself why exactly somebody has written an article about this particular person. In this case, it doesn't seem to me that she was the prodigy they're talking about. A smart kid with a will to improve herself? Certainly. But think about the context - she came from a very rich Pakistani family. What would you think, as a 16 year old boy from Pakistan, coming from a poor family and working your bones off to make a living, coding at night, of this story? Because, you know, it's very likely that there's somebody like the boy in question in Pakistan.
Scope mixing is the bane of modern communication. You can't use empathy as an excuse to talk about anything. This personal tragedy should have remained personal, not brought up on the news. Just my humble opinion.
My family is of Pakistani origin, and I have lived in Pakistan for several years. I think discounting her talent, simply because she's from a "very rich Pakistani family" is unfair.
Yes, elitist families have more opportunities than the rest, but counter-intuitively given the feudal elite culture of Pakistan, the rich are often devoid of ambition and simply join family businesses. Girls, especially, are raised with no other ambition than to get married.
I think for this girl to have such greater ambitions, despite the rampant chauvinistic expectations of her society, despite a country where everyone (including the rich) have 5-10 hrs of electricity/gas/water a day, despite living in a country in political upheaval, is pretty exemplary. And her talent, as such, is impressive in context.
I believe I read "SAMS 24 Hours to HTML" at 8-9 years of age and produced my own "replica watches" website (because i figured they were profitable to sell, and I sure wanted one :P).
I remembered getting about 80 emails from potential customers, asking my parents for their credit cards/money in order to acquire some merchandise and a domain name, and them completely freaking out (because of all the "credit cards + internet = FRAUD!" adverts at the time).
So thankful the internet has progressed into what it is now.
I'm sorry that she had to die (really, I was shocked when I read she had died), but dying at a young age does not make one prodigy. She was (I'm certain of that) an extremely bright and self-confident kid. But better leave it at that. Saying that she was the greatest programmer of all time or the greatest person that had ever walked this earth is just insulting her memory, and belittles her achievements (which is much greater than mine's when I was her age).
It's supposed to be a positive inspirational story and it is supposed to attract readers. Perhaps there is some liberty being taken with the adjectives but as you are aware, there are many things to consider when it comes to putting a piece of news together. The hype is not necessarily created for the benefit of the subject.
What is wrong with you? What does her death have to do with you? That was one of the most disgusting, least human, comments I've ever seen written on HN.
What does her death has to do with you? What does her death has to do with all of us?
What disgusts me is the lack of tact and consideration of editors and maybe her parents - the first are ready to exploit the death of a 16 years old girl to make some uniques, the seconds (I really hope that's not the case) are ready to put their child on the cover for some advertising.
Have you considered that their motive may have been to inspire? Life is very frail, and this young girl's accomplishments in life may have a profound positive impact on other children for generations to come. How can you not honor that?
> Taking a step back you have to ask: Why are these publishing companies given such power
Publishing companies have not that much power. What they publish is decided based on how many references the paper gets and how prominent in the academic society the authors (or the professors backing them) are. They just enjoy their role as "gatekeepers" - basically, they get paid big money to put a barrier at the entrance of the whole system.
They are not a huge single organized crime organization as the article says. There is no such thing. I bet legal lobbies in US deal with much more power and money than the single most powerful crime org in Italy.
Credit crunch is going to make an already terrible situation worse. The biggest problem is that every kind of "external" help (like, for example, EU lending money to italian banks at a low interest rate) is only going to help Mafia because they're deelpy entangled inside the italian government and banking system. The only viable strategy would be for EU to lend money directly to small businesses... but that's not going to happen.
On one hand, I feel your pain. On the other hand, cost and value are not the same thing, and so aren't value and market price.
If you do something and what you do costs much more than the market value of its output, make sure it's not your job. Hobbies usually fall in this category.
Right. The market price of a good is governed only by supply and demand. Sure, the cost it takes to produce the good influences its supply and demand, but in a capitalist society, only the market determines its price at the end of the day.
Let's forget the sunk cost for a minute. What happens if the price per item is less than the variable cost per item? Is that "unfair"? No, that's precisely how firms go out of business, when no one wants to pay (i.e. there is no demand) for the products they sell.
This is not an argument for plagiarism / piracy. Capitalist markets do need strong property ownership laws and enforcement.
In the same way that a liquid betting market, the price is a reasonable estimate for probability, in a any liquid market, the price is a reasonable estimate of value.
