I wonder if a "Trusted Traveller"-style program would work. You go through a small vetting process, and you build a solid history with receipt checking through their app, and then you're assumed trusted, maybe with more occasional checking, and higher trust levels?
That looks exactly like what I want. I never really researched it before because the last thing in the world that I need is another thing to dedicate time to.
I swear if I could afford to be retired today, I could keep myself busy for the rest of my life with stuff like this. My Dad retired a couple of years ago and I think he's bored much of the time. It drives me crazy.
Call it a historical irony: those in the generation which can afford to retire have generally built their lives so closely around their work that, without it, they can find nothing to do; meanwhile, those of us who have plenty of ideas for how we'd spend such a vast amount of economically secure free time will mostly never be able to afford it.
When the lotto jackpot reaches around $500 million, I'll spend $5 on tickets (it happens maybe once a year). It's easily worth it for the few days I get to dream about setting up the ultimate workshop or being able to travel to find the greatest teachers.
> ...it is almost entirely unique in its freedom of speech and its allowance for political opposition without fear of retribution as a modus operandi.
This is a common misconception of Americans and is blatantly untrue. America is absolutely not the only free country in the world and, in some areas, it is less free.
Take press freedom, for instance: the US currently ranks 41st:
There are plenty of other fully democratic countries in the world, where freedom of speech is accepted, encouraged, and enshrined in well-respected laws.
I'm completely fine working with people who have kids. I don't have a problem with them working from home some days to look after a sick child, or taking time off during the day to pick them up from school, or coming in late because they were up all night with a crying baby.
What I detest is the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude that, just because you have kids, you a superior or more evolved human being.
I admire that you made the decision to have and raise kids. I understand it takes huge dedication and effort, and it eats most, if not all, of your free time.
What if I choose not to have kids, and I spend the rest of my life "pre-kids"? What has that got to do with my job? Absolutely nothing. And it shouldn't come into it.
Having kids is a choice, and not a path everyone chooses to walk.
Speaking as a kid-raiser (past now; they're 30 and successful) I have this observation: folks who never buckle down to something as demanding as raising kids seem, well, immature to the rest of us. Still kids themselves. Still complaining over their ruined weekend because they had a flat tire on the way to the movie on Friday night. Still upset that a late Amazon package may impact their fishing trip on Saturday. Their responses to life at an entire different setpoint, much lower and amplified.
Its like soldiers - the rest of life isn't as vivid for them, as emotionally gripping as being responsible for a life yada yada. Dis it all you like; the effect is still there.
Complaining about trivial problems is in no way limited to people without children. In fact, in my experience, people with children take this to an entirely new level when those are things that affect their child.
Sure, it takes all kinds. But for really caring about something, there's nothing like worrying the spike in white blood cells in your very ill child might be diagnosed as leukemia on Monday. After that, the rest becomes noise.
But for really caring about something, there's nothing like worrying the spike in white blood cells in your very ill child might be diagnosed as leukemia on Monday.
Some folks are mature enough to develop empathy while completely child-free. Others must have it forced upon them via childbirth. It does, indeed, take all kinds.
Maturing is due to experience. The snarky "forced upon" isn't a good description? It has to be learned regardless of the method. Hipster urbanites may have insulated themselves from emotional attachment to the point they're indeed less mature.
Simply not true in my experience. Most people in my country have children yet react strongly to completely irrelevant events like a team they "support" winning or especially losing a football game. That's way worse than complaining about someone ruining your fishing trip as it has nothing to do with them at all.
Pretty much all people care about stupid shit, you just don't empathize with people who care about things you don't personally care about.
Even childless people will experience those sorts of "real cares" in the lives of people they care about (whether it is parents, grandparents, spouses, nieces/nephews, cousins, or even more less strictly well defined relationships). Painting all childless people as free from attachments is its own sort of naïve, even if their current problem of the day seems trivial to you, it certainly doesn't mean that every problem in their world doesn't meet your arbitrary "real" scope requirement to "grow up".
What matters more, in this context, is if you let this personal prejudice influence how you treat your co-workers. Do you value their input and opinions less? Do you think you somehow do a better job because of your kid-raising credentials?
I'm with you on anyone holier than thou on anything. As a parent of 3, I myself grimace when I hear some woe is me/praise me tale from another parent.
My general theory is: you made your life choices, quit bitching and just get your obligations met. I don't care if it's kids, fur babies, Tamigatchi, or music festivals. I really don't want to hear about the corporatization of Burning Man just as much as I also don't want to hear about the ridiculousness of your kid's pre-K administration not recognizing your special snowflake's brilliance.
I've always had a lot of interests and obligations outside of work, but the thing I never had until kids, was a mental/emotional productivity nuclear bomb when you're feeling like you are shorting your family for work, or work for family, etc. Nothing will screw with your mind like the biological imperitive.
> What I detest is the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude that, just because you have kids, you a superior or more evolved human being.
Is this in response directly to what manyxcxi wrote, or is this a response in general? I didn't pick up any such attitude in their writing, so I'm genuinely curious whether anything triggered it for you.
(I agree with you in general, and I'm a parent. For me, it's one of those things where I realized how much free time I used to have and squandered.)
You find such people in software development circles? I haven't met a single one so far.
Sure, there are plenty of people who are unaccomplished otherwise so they treat raising a child (something the majority of the population succeeds in doing) as the pinnacle of human achievement. But I have never worked with someone like that. In my experience these people usually don't work at all...
Found the same on a 2015 rMBP with max specs (Sierra, 16GB RAM, Core i7). It's much less performant with exactly the same VM as VirtualBox.
In fact, it ate my entire CPU while it was running, even when the VM OS (Windows 10) settled down after startup. and was apparently running no CPU-intensive processes.
It also crashed twice in the space of an hour, bringing down the entire VM, necessitating a restart.
Could very well have been a factor. I gave up on it quickly. Repeatedly crashing renders it an unnecessary annoyance. VirtualBox works well enough, is stable and reliable, and Veertu doesn't distinguish itself enough to merit the pain in switching.
Re-shipping services like myus.com for the US and parcelmotel.com for the UK/Ireland make this an easily surmountable problem.
I'm in Ireland, ordered mine from the UK on a Sunday night, had it by Thursday. Supply seems to be stable by now and I imagine they'll start shipping further afield soon.
I don't know if I want a small or a big one though, and I can't just go to an Apple Store to try both on... As soon as I have a chance of checking how they feel on my wrist, I'll think about ordering them through some unofficial channels.
I imagine this strategy would only work if you already had a connection with the company that's recruiting. 100% of the roles I've secured since I started work at the age of 14 -- tech and non-tech, part-time and full-time -- have been through networking.
Although it's fairly straightforward to distinguish between gender and sexual orientation, I disagree with these traditional US categories of ethnicity.
Take a 'White' person, for instance: is a White American the same as a White Englishman, or a White Australian? What about a White Frenchman? These are all classified as 'White' but could potentially be vastly different in terms of diversity.
The same argument could be made with the other ethnicities. The 'Asian' category -- are they Chinese, Japanese, Filipino..? Or an American Asian immigrant -- Chinese-American, etc.
If you're aiming for diversity that's representative of your customer base, then surely your measure of ethnicity has to be more granular.
Whites are 78% of the US population, so being 70% of Google's population is a pretty fair representation. Asians are over-represented though. What exactly do you think is "fair"? I'm guessing having fewer than 50% whites at Google.
Because "diversity" is code for "there's too many white people here." I highly doubt anyone would complain about diversity if Google were 61% black (just like no one complains about the NFL and NBA's appalling lack of diversity).
Either way, to boost non-Asian minority percentages you've got to take away from the white or Asian percentages. Hmm... who do you think's gonna be on the receiving end of that rebalancing?
The point is that in reality Google is not 61% Black. If it were, you'd have a point.
And people do complain about lack of diversity in the NFL/NBA, on both sides.
These are such small percentages that you wouldn't even need to reduce head count to increase representation, just hire a few more workers. But even if they did have to replace, why are you so focused on saving every last White or Asian soul to the detriment of addressing the problem?
Well, minorities take offense at having a 2-5% rate of employment in a 37% non-White country so you can pick your problem, but don't just assume your personal concerns trump all others.
> Before decrying lack of diversity in field X, demonstrate presence of one in the pool of qualified candidates.
No, after identifying the lack of diversity in field X (or, in the case, Company G), finding the lack of diversity in the pool of qualified candidates tells you where you need to work if you care about diversity. But it doesn't mean "there's no problem to do anything about" -- as Google recognizes, hence whey they point to the steps they are taking to address the problems of lack of diversity in the pool of qualified candidates.
Your comment presumes that diversity is something that is axiomatically desired. I don't - just like I don't order my bookshelf based on gender/race of the authors and decry lack of diversity there.
I personally only care about it as far as principle of fairness. Ie if one can show that company X discriminates against persons Y (by demonstrating that sufficient number of qualified candidates Y are turned away) - then it would register on my radar. Otherwise I consider 'diversity' as a tool to push through quotas that I personally detest.
No, it doesn't presume that diversity is axiomatically desired. It has as an explicit condition ("if you care about...") that it is desired, but whether such desire is axiomatic or a consequence of an a posteriori conclusion about instrumental utility of diversity makes no difference.)
And, while your statement of your personal biases about quotas are, I suppose, revealing of just that - your personal biases - I am not sure what you think they add to the discussion. Certainly, you can't think that a statement of what you consider diversity to be an a secret code word for unaccompanied by either evidence or logic justifying that consideration says anything about anything other than your own bias.
