I wondered about that, too, but in the body of the article they claim the license is a Creative Commons flavor so I interpreted it as a marketingdroid faux pas that the source is not available but that the content is open
I guess the distinction would be if someone wanted to upstream a change, not fork it, through what mechanism would that take place, but I'm going with "highly unlikely" on that one
Yes, seems like the GitHhub repo was a bit of an after thought:
Top right:
> About
> SOURCE CODE for "Database Performance at Scale: A Practical Guide (Apress, 2023)," by Felipe Cardeneti Mendes, Piotr Sarna, Pavel Emelyanov & Cynthia Dunlop
But readme.md:
> This repository ACCOMPANIES Database Performance at Scale:A Practical Guide by Felipe Cardeneti Mendes, Piotr Sarna, Pavel Emelyanov & Cynthia Dunlop (Apress, 2023).
In the context of technical books "source code for" often means "source code for [readers of the book to reference while reading]" rather than "source code for [building the book]"
I disagree. Words have meaning. 'Open source' means 'open source' in all contexts.
For comparison, https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ is an open source book. A PDF with a CC license without a repo of the publishing artifacts is not an open source book. It's just a free book.
I dont think I have ever encountered this in my adult life honestly. A more common occasion is encountering a business that is cash only (usually small market stalls) and is infinitely more annoying as I have to go and take out a amount of money greater than the product I want to buy, leaving me with a rather annoying amount of loose change.
Agreed. Especially when there's no ATM for 5 miles.
Plurality of payment methods is always more desirable and more
robust. If one is serious about business, why would you not take,
cash, cheque, credit and debit cards, contactless, NFT phone, and
bitcoin? Even if some of those are suboptimal, a sale is a sale.
The ability to negotiate and adapt is what makes the world go round.
One example; I was caught in an emergency needing to get a taxi to an
airport. On the way I explained the situation to the driver, and ended
up negotiating the fare as a mix of US dollars, Danish Kroners, and a
good bottle of wine, where the official expected currency was Euros.
The problem comes with cashiers and managers who are not business
owners and are terrified to do anything unusual. They are tied to
procedural rote and unable to think dynamically. It's all about what
they can't do even when evidently agreeable and favourable options
are on the table.
> If one is serious about business, why would you not take, cash, cheque, credit and debit cards, contactless, NFT phone, and bitcoin? Even if some of those are suboptimal, a sale is a sale.
For some businesses, the overall cost of accepting some of those methods may be higher than the expected revenue from customers who won't use another method. Buying new payment readers. Having to convert the bitcoin immediately to currency to avoid losing money due to its constant price fluctuations. Higher per-transaction fees for some types of payment. Increased susceptibility to fraud (for cheques in particular).
> The problem comes with cashiers and managers who are not business owners and are terrified to do anything unusual. They are tied to procedural rote and unable to think dynamically.
You would be too if you were barely making ends meet, the expected outcome for "a customer asked me to accept an unusual form of payment" was almost always "it was a con, the 'customer' got the merchandise/service for free", and you'd most likely be fired as a result.
> You would be too if you were barely making ends meet, the expected outcome for "a customer asked me to accept an unusual form of payment" was almost always "it was a con, the 'customer' got the merchandise/service for free", and you'd most likely be fired as a result.
Just the millionth example of why trust is a critical component in society. Its presence allows things to be flexible and efficient. Lack of it makes things suck for everyone.
As a former manager of a liquor store, I didn't want my staff to do anything unusual. That was for me and the owner, per the owner's instructions.
It wasn't that they couldn't think about creative solutions, it's that we generally didn't want them to. There were serious implications for wrong decisions. For example, we couldn't sell a product for less than wholesale. The staff had no idea what the markup was and so couldn't know if a discount was above or below wholesale. If a product was sole for less than wholesale, the owner could have lost his license.
The wildest we got was when the computers crapped out. I told the staff to write down every transaction. Each transaction included the cost of the item, bottle deposit, and tax. On a Friday/Saturday night, we knew the top 10 item totals by heart and we were also good at counting back change.
When I was a regular run of the mill staffer at the store, I was happy to stay in my lane. The expectations were clear and that was good for everyone even if we, or customers, were sometimes inconvenienced.
> why would you not take, cash, cheque, credit and debit cards, contactless, NFT […]
Well, all other significant concerns aside, NFTs are not fungible, it is literally in the name. Transactions are made through fungible methods.
Example: a $10 bill is exactly the same as any other $10 other bill or the same as having a $10 in your bank account. Same applies to BTC, any bitcoin is an equivalent of any other BTC.
This fungibility is what gives them the baseline feasibility as a common transaction method. Fungibility is just one of the many requirements for something to be useful as a common transaction vehicle, but it is one of the most fundamental ones, and if it isn’t satisfied, the rest of it doesn’t really matter. Sure, BTC is too volatile to be useful for transaction purposes in a lot of cases, but volatility is further up the chain of concerns, and BTC indeed satisfies the fungibility requirement. Sure, common AAPL shares are fungible as well, there is exactly zero difference between shares of AAPL that you can buy and the ones i can buy, but they aren’t fit as a common transaction method for many other reasons too.
Meanwhile, any given NFT is not an equivalent to any other NFT. They are explicitly intended to be unique and non-fungible/non-replaceable. There is no price for 1 NFT, just like there is no price for 1 painting, each NFT and painting is their own non-fungible entity. So everything else aside, NFTs are explicitly and by their definition are hard-disqualified to be a common transaction medium on the very fundamental level. In contrast, BTC doesn’t have such fundamental problems, but more in terms of practical problems (transaction speeds, transaction costs, high volatility, etc.)
Sorry I'm a complete idiot, that was confusing. Meant "Near Field
Xfer/Coms = an archaic way of saying "contactless" from about 10 years
ago. I forgot there is also "Non Fungible Tokens" for bored apes and
whatnot. :)
True. The only time I have walked out of store (maybe once or two times) is when I have already used card few times previously with unplanned $50+ purchases. Now this time I only need $5 thing, & they say there's charge of $0.50 for card.
I also was in your similar example. In US I have a car, so very rarely I use public transport which is not Bart. I landed in Toronto at 2am, got into Bus Google Maps told me, Bus driver said $2.50 fare, cash only. I gave him American 3 dollars, and he gave me Canadian $0.50 change back.
>I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.
Or maybe people everywhere else need to really reflect on how underpaid they are. It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US, so why isn’t more of it ending up in developers’ pockets, where it should go?
> It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US
It actually is much lower.
That doesn't mean that developers aren't underpaid, but there definitely is a huge difference between a company serving the US market from inside the United States and one in Europe. In general the fraction of revenue that goes towards salaries is a fairly substantial chunk of the books of a typical company, but for a scalable proposition that is entirely virtual there is an advantage if your home market is unified in language and currency. And it also is an advantage if you have easy access to large amounts of capital.
Success breeds success and creaming off some of the $ of that success is what causes developer salaries to be what they are where they are: it's based on competition for talent mostly. And that's precisely why some of these large companies were trying to collude to depress the salaries as much as they could.
> It’s not like the revenue of tech companies is lower outside of the US, so why isn’t more of it ending up in developers’ pockets, where it should go?
What you're forgetting is that taxes differ quite a lot from country to country. That, and cost of living is a factor too. If food and housing costs half as much, then even though you're paid less, you're not really poorer for it.
I think many American developers are kind of blind to how absurdly expensive California housing is.
From what I read on the internets, housing is also absurdly expensive in London, Lisbon, NYC, Toronto, Vancouver, Shanghai etc. Adjusting for the local level of salaries of course. So not sure what your point is?
A lot of this completely self-imposed (and very much by design) to prop-up real estate because there's no other industry to support the economy.
Vancouver is a prime example: it's extremely easy (compared to the US) for foreigners to purchase assets (even with questionable sources of incomes that wouldn't pass the higher scrutiny of USCIS) and for owners to collude into restricting the supply. They are happy since their investment appears to grow in value (they can get out of the game and cash-in if another foreigner decides to park his money into these assets) and the government is happy since a lot of people's retirements are tied to their home value and it gives the impression the economy is growing.
I think most Americans are kind of blind to how absurdly expensive American housing, and the entire American lifestyle, is. It's not just housing, it's everything: healthcare, restaurant food, car culture, heating/cooling/lawn care for the enormous houses, I could go on and on.
I would also add the strength of the dollar. If the dollar appreciates to the value of the local country's currency, then the revenue earned from there using the local currency for pricing and transacting begins to be worth less.
> There is a huge salary gap between usa and Canada as well.
Not in my experience. At least not for SV-Caliber talent.
Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job in the US (takes maybe a week for a talented engineer to get one). Therefore, comp has to be priced appropriately. The later can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure a US visa, mostly due to skills. A lot of them are immigrants to Canada themselves (there's a reason they immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some companies leverage this and have floors of international devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US counterpart through a subsidiary.
> Most of what comes as "SV caliber" is mediocre devs.
That's an interesting statement. I assume the whole tech ecosystem and market is completely irrational since it seems to price these developer so much higher than their real worth? Where would one need to go to find non-mediocre devs who know more than just "the buzzwords"?
> I assume the whole tech ecosystem and market is completely irrational since it seems to price these developer so much higher than their real worth?
You somehow consider this less likely than the alternative where all less-than-leet-tier devs have decided to stay out of SV and therefore, the inflated salaries for everyone there are actually rational?
I think many Europeans can't imagine moving to the US (higher work load, less social safety, higher violence) and employers well know it and can keep salaries depressed.
In my experience the social safety net doesn’t really matter for highly skilled workers making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. In terms of violence you’re statistically unlikely to be the victim of violent crime in the US as an upper class white collar worker.
It's unfair, but I'm of the opinion US healthcare is much better if you have the means to pay for it.
Look at all the top surgeons and hospitals in the world for everything from neurosurgery to cancer treatment. They're all in the United States. The median level of care might be much better in Europe but they are behind when it comes to cutting edge treatments, rare diseases, and so on.
Yes. American health "care" is the best. Problem is with the "administration" that for basic stuff, there is crazy price gouging and no free market competition. It is ridiculous that you have to involve insurance in every visit to a doctor AND it's tied to your employer being able to provide something.
I got a bill from a lab last year that was for about $1200, and when insurance denied it as out-of-network (it wasn't, the lab and the insurance company had some billing procedure issues) it was less than $100 somehow.
Out of stubbornness, I fought with the lab for months to bill it correctly, and eventually got them to write it off by emailing the CEO.
It doesn't matter until it ends up mattering. Contracting an illness that prevents you from working and needs medical supervision can be life-ruining if your social security, etc. is tied to your employment.
Yes, it's definitely more than 1:10 overall. But those reasons to leave the US (unhealthy work load, less social safety, higher violence) are at the top of many people's minds when they move to Europe.
I can’t just move to the US. I’ve applied around 100 times and only brilliant.org replied and gave me an interview. All the other companies stated that Europeans don’t have permission to work in the US (and it wasn’t stated anywhere)
> Or maybe people everywhere else need to really reflect on how underpaid they are.
You must consider currency exchange rates too. In my country, at the current rates, 80k US$/year puts one above many top executives, doctors and other prestigious jobs. Not bad at all for a remote position in software development.
> 80k US$/year puts one above many top executives, doctors and other prestigious jobs. Not bad at all for a remote position in software development.
The real question is: Who is creating the most value here? The top executive at a local company? The local doctor or the software engineer shipping products in markets around the world?
It's unclear whether or not the local doctor's qualifications would even be recognized in the US, yet the remote software engineer's work is making money there and countless other high-value markets as we speak.
If you really want to make it big in nearly whatever profession, you have to go america. All other countries are severely underpaid. (I don't care about Switzerland/similarities because it's just 3M people).
Western Europe has something called income equality, you should try it some time. Or well, more or it.
A cashier in Sweden earns a very liveable wage, quite close to the average wage, while a programmer earns maybe 75% more than that, if not twice as much. That's already a significant difference. I'm a student and get 1200€ a month (not only is university free, we also get paid to study). With this, I have my own apartment with my own kitchen and all and am still able to save 500 a month. When I start working and get an average salary (the starting salary for programmers is about the same as the average salary for the entire population), I will spend a bit more, but still probably have 1-1.5k€ left every month. That is a lot. Then after some years, that would increase by a thousand or so. Why should I expect more money than that? I don't deserve more than that.
Housing is expensive here too, but not nearly as bad as in the US, so we simply don't need as high salaries. In Sweden, things like preschools are also heavily subsidized and university completely free, which is beneficial if you have children.
The OP was talking about startup roles. At that stage there is little revenue to speak of, and the salaries on offer are going to correspond to how much financing they were able to obtain.
VC funding of software startups in the US easily dwarves whatever is being offered in other parts of the world.
The vast majority of countries are neoliberal/capitalist so that’s simply not how it works. Your pay is a function of the market price for your talents, not of how much your boss is making.
Workers getting a large share of a company’s revenue, much of which is in the form of fractional ownership of the company sure sounds quasi-socialist to me! It doesn’t matter that market conditions led to this compensation scheme (as opposed to direct political intervention); what matters is the end result.
So are you saying that socialism can only exist if it's imposed and maintained by the state? (i.e. no democratic society can be socialist by definition?)
>So are you saying that socialism can only exist if it's imposed and maintained by the state?
I 'm not sure I understand the question? Socialism is a political philosophy on how the state should operate and what it should permit. It IS a description of the states behavior.
Democracy has nothing to do with it. You can have a socialist country with a king, or with direct democracy and no leader.
You can't have a socialist state without socialist laws and rules.
I think some of the confusion is from how the word is used now.
People refer to systems which apply socialist thinking as socialism, even if the governance is not a state government.
For example, let's say a theoretical union takes guidance from the political philosophy of socialism, and requires union members to contribute the highest percentage of their salary as union dues, that they can legally get away with. Let's say workers are paying 90% of their salaries in union dues.
The union can then use those dues to support the union members in various ways.
This isn't a state government, but it behaves like a socialist system and people would probably call it an example of socialism.
> Let's say workers are paying 90% of their salaries in union dues. The union can then use those dues to support the union members in various ways.
Realistically that seems to be more or less completely unsustainable without some use of force. e.g. if individuals who contribute more than they pay in are allowed to opt-out the system quickly collapses. That's how universal healthcare, state pension/social systems work etc. so it's not necessarily a bad thing. However in general socialist "corporations" are generally incapable of competing in a "free" market so they can only exist when they are supported by the state or private/capitalist enterprises are banned or strongly restricted in one way or another.
> if individuals who contribute more than they pay in are allowed to opt-out the system quickly collapses
Sure, that's why I said this was theoretical. I wasn't using it as a demonstration of how socialism can be sustainable without a state, I was using it to demonstrate a system that might be described as socialist even though it's stateless.
Well by Democracy I implicitly meant freedom of speech, independent judiciary, protection of private property and individual civil rights etc. most of those things are not really compatible with state imposed socialism.
> median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.
That's right and wrong and the same time. If we are talking about non-junior positions: Developers in Spain who earn <= $30K/year are not going to apply for positions in American (and non Spanish) companies because they probably don't know they can do so. They are not in the "global" market, they do not read HN, they work either for consultancy companies or agencies (hence the low salaries). They usually don't work for product companies. They may not even speak enough English.
On the other hand, non-junior Spanish Developers who earn more than $30K/year do so because they know their value. They speak good enough English. They work for product companies (either unknown or globally well-known ones) and hence their salaries are higher than the median salary advertised in the link you provided. These developers can earn $80K/year in Spain (either for an Spanish company or remotely for an EU company), so if they decide to work for an American company (and this means usually a) weird working hours because of timezone differences, b) perhaps working as a contractor instead of as an employee), they definitely know that $50K-$80K/year is very low.
So, yeah, for the Spanish developers that American companies can hire, that salary is low.
Those figures are wrong to be honest. Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more. Plenty of senior folks in Spain making $100k+. In Barcelona, you can make north of $70K easy; even for non-senior devs.
I agree with OP. The salary is way too low for a senior European developer to consider because taking a US job means that there are no employment protections that you'd usually get; employment is at will for contractors.
Yeah Spain salaries aren't great for devs even by the UK's standards, but GP's numbers seem way too low.
About 4 years back I didn't bother proceeding with a couple of (well, two) mid-level engineering positions based out of Barcelona because they paid too low (about €55,000) compared to what I could get in the UK for an equivalent role. One of them was for King, who was still raking it in then, and I can't remember the other organisation.
Still less than what my expectations had been calibrated for, but way more than what GP is implying!
Today a dev in Barcelona makes as much as a dev in London or slightly less. Considering the cost of living and the quality of life, the dev in Barcelona gets much much more.
Among my friends and acquaintances, I’m currently witnessing an exodus from the UK, with people moving to Spain, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
Agreed on all points you make btw. If I had to contend with the rental market, and didn't already have much of a senior-ish network here in London which is currently keeping my pay well above what I can get anyplace else in the world (except the US), I'd be upping sticks as well.
> Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more.
I doubt that statement. As a German living in Spain since the pandemic, I dealt with this and my social bubble is full of tech expats dealing with this, too. Living in one EU country and working remotely as an employee for another one, is almost legally impossible, and full of unnecessary hurdles for both employer and employee. Everyone of top-talent grade I know who does this, is basically either self-employed (as I am) or operates a "legal construct" such as having empty "mailbox flats" in the country they work for (breaking all sorts of laws by doing so).
The EU itself has never harmonized income tax laws; actually all of the EUs political system always tries not to touch the tax subject at all. As a result, each EU state has an individual double-tax treaty with all other members states. Yes, do the math - there are hundreds tax treaties between EU member states. Non of them are based on some EU guidance or blueprint, and oftentimes older than the EU itself (german-spain treaty dates back mostly to the 1960s with some minor additions in the early 2000s). Finding legal advice alone is almost impossible (i.e. a lawyer that speaks either of your languages and both legal systems recently well). And if you do, good luck, your fellow civil cervant at your tax offices will screw up your fringe case anyways.
Worker-protection laws apply by country of residence, but the employer is bound by their national ones too. If you live in Spain and work remotely for a german company, legally you are bound by spanish worker laws. That is, you get spanish bank holidays off, minimum wage laws of Spain (and Germany!) and so forth. Even when figuring out all legal subtleties, it is simply not manageable for any companies HR department to deal with all country specific regulations and changes, let alone in different languages. I run a company myself and could not employ a person from another EU country within reasonable effort; the only way to go is hire them as contractors or through payrolling agencies. Both will not make them your employees, which has a lot of other legal consequences (holidays, employee patent/inventions laws, but also stuff like you can't really enforce any policy on them without going through the intermediaries).
> European developer to consider because taking a US job
Nitpicking, but this is technically not possible. The US company has to have a EU presence or the developer needs to be self employed and invoice the US company
There are numerous talent management companies like Deel that handle this for you. Of course technically EU person would be working for EU company in this case.
Also no one stoping person living in EU from registering LLC in US and working through that. Corp2corp with own LLC is actually how majority of people from outside the US work with US companies.
North of $70K is still a ways away from $100K+ and I'd love to see which companies we're talking about here because that's not the news that reaches me from Spain. Rather the opposite.
Once you accept the fact that single income families don't afford real estate ownership, 70k is easily sufficient for a comfortable life. Again, assuming it is a double income household. It is so for the high price region in Southern Germany around Munich.
It isn't. It has pretty much decimated their industry to the point where there are no decent tech companies in Spain, and the few that exist do not pay those local rates (typeform for example).
> Those figures are wrong to be honest. Most senior folks in Spain don't work for Spanish companies in general; they work for EU companies that pay more.
Does that contradict those figures though? Are you talking about the upper 10% discussed?
I don't know this website but for France it says 38k€/year on average. Which means they're not using the total salary but the post employer's taxes.
I'm using France for reference, and approximate number for the sake of explanation: for 100€ cost to the company, 40€ is employer's taxes, 20€ is employee's taxes. We call 20+40 = 60 the "gross" salary, and 40 the net salary, we never talk about the 100 when negotiating a salary. I don't have the time to check if that 38k is gross or net.
It is my understanding that if you have a 50k€ gross salary offer in Europe, you need to add ~40% to it to compare to compare to total cost for the employer as understood in the US.
I'm 90% sure their number are "wrong" for Spain in the same way.
In the US, the salaries that are typically listed show the "gross" salary, the way you defined it. It contains the 40 net salary and the taxes on top of it.
There is also a portion of taxes and other insurance that the employer must pay. These are generally not summed up in job offers. They include the employer's part of social security, insurance, 401k contribution, and other benefit plans which are often part of an offer for a salaries position.
On top of that come Europe's minimum vacation requirement of 4 weeks (although in practice, most are at anything from 24-30 days / 5-6 weeks), the unlimited sick days and numerous national holidays. Also, we have mandatory contributions for pension, social security, healthcare and (in Germany) workplace accident and elderly care insurance.
All of that needs some form of accounting on the employer's side that drives up the gross employment cost.
Or, to put it bluntly, us Europeans tend to see lower take-home amounts on our paystubs for the same gross cost the employer sees on their bank account, but a lot of stuff that you'd have to take care of on your own in the US is covered by that.
> I think americans need to really reflect on how inflated american dev salaries are.
Considering the high costs of living in some of their regions, those salaries may be justified. But I believe they are definitely not in a good position when it comes to remote work + competing with English-speaking developers in poorer countries. Situation in Europe may be similar.
In Europe they can find African developers in the same timezone, while in North-America they have Latin-America. Given the lower costs of living + favorable exchange rates, the difference in terms of purchasing power ending in developers' pockets is huge in favor of the ones in the southern hemisphere.
Maybe those in the richer countries shouldn't be too vocal against return-to-office?
I have friends in India who work as senior engineers for Indian companies that make more than that today. Nice to see that a European holiday is well within the purchasing power of Indian tech workers.
These sort of reports can be very misleading because they are often based surveying local companies competing for employees with other local companies. The salaries are very different when working for example for a local bank, vs. for an international tech company or well-funded international startup.
I'm a spanish dev working for a YC company and earning above that, any Spanish dev I know who has the level to be working for a YC company earns well above 50-80k.
> Americans need to really reflect on how inflated American dev salaries are.
More specifcally: SV needs to reflect on how inflated SV salaries are. Possibly with a few outliers elsehwere, such as New York and maybe a few pockets in London. But overall the area where software developers as a rule make > $120K per year is probably less than a few hundred square kilometers and the world is much, much larger than that.
> median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year[1], so 50-80k would easily place them in the upper 10% of the scale.
that's global market already. If apple, google, msft be confident they can hire thousands of high quality engineers in Spain for $30k/y, they would sure open dev offices there and cut jobs in California.
>median salary for a developer in Spain is $30,000 a year
Whhhhaaaat? That doesn't sound right. I know a guy in Barcelona making $200k, although he works for a US company. Heck, even in Eastern Europe, with the right knowledge you can make $150k+.
That's the median. It's like saying the median salary for software engineers in US is $120K/year (which is "true" if you Google it)... but then all the Silicon Valley engineers would say "whaaaat? Here the juniors can easily earn $200K/year their first year!"... So, yeah in Europe you can earn as little or as much as everywhere else (of course, Silicon Valley is still the place to earn top money)
SV vs. Berlin? Sure. Kentucky's hinterland vs. Paris? No, you don't.
Fun fact, FAANG salaries in Europe depend on the lovation you are hired at, with differences between, e.g., Munich and Berlin for the same job levels. It is funny, because companiesbreally understood how salaries and cost of living are connected, and still every discussion on HN regarding dev salaries ignores this simple favt and only compares absolute numbers. Heck, mostly there isn't even an agreemt on the measurement baseline (including US benefits, EU common health care, vacation days...).
Many individuals either don’t understand (or pretend to not understand) that most companies make an offer based on what it takes to get you to accept their offer, not based on the value they expect you to create. (It’s perhaps capped by that, but is otherwise not related.)
“What’s your best alternative?” is what underlies the companies’ positions on negotiating salaries.
It's called "cost of market" at my company. Cost of market doesn't necessarily equal cost of living.. for example I make about 20% less in the Midwest than I would in New York or SF, but still way more than if I worked in London. But my cost of living is waaay less than London and also way less than 80% of SF
I don't know how to prove it, because I don't want to post screenshots or other identifying info, but I've been in communication with a couple members of the sh1mmer crew. After posting some technical info about it on Reddit, they reached out.
They claim to be in high school, and the way they converse seems to match.
We use estimation in days, for longer running project wherever have a collection of user stories we are tackling we tend to use the average cycle time for the team (how long it takes from starting the issue until it is done) multiplied by the amount of issues we are tackling.
Oh man, I relate to this feeling tremendously. I am a junior dev on an apprentice program (just shy of 1 years experience to date) and the times I have struggled with something because I let my pride, or fear of bothering people with inane questions, have been the lowest points in the last year. I always get to the otherside wishing I just talked to a senior dev - because more likely they could have saved me a stressful week.
Few random thoughts as someone who mentored many junior engineers:
- don’t care about your pride. You’re here to learn, so do everything you can to learn. Imagine even the worst possible scenario - people get fed up with you - you’ll go and find different job (benefits of being in a booming industry). Your old coworkers won’t follow you but knowledge will
- don’t think about all the time you spent looking for answers yourself as wasted. Some if it was, but you learnt also tons of other things that may not be relevant now, but will be in a future
- ask your mentors not only for direct answers to your questions but also for reason and/or how they came to that conclusion. Most important skill for you to learn is how to think about problems and how to find solutions, not the actual solutions to few problems you came across
For whatever it might be worth, here is my advice to juniors about being mentored:
It mostly is true that the only stupid question is the one you didn’t ask.
Please don’t ask the exact same question twice. Take notes if you need to. Asking for clarification or following up for more detail is fine.
If you have many questions and your mentor has other responsibilities, try not to keep interrupting them all the time. Discuss the best way to balance your needs and theirs, perhaps finding a time/place/medium where you can have a larger discussion and deal with several questions at once.
Assuming your mentor has accepted that responsibility voluntarily, they’ll probably be happy to help even with the basic stuff — we all had to start somewhere — but will appreciate it not taking over their whole day.
The they/them pronouns are used in place of he/him/she/her because they are ungendered. I fail to see how the use of ungendered pronouns are exclusionary.
Claim 1: Google will shut down video aggregation and hosting sites
Counterclaim 1: But what about x, y and z that exist parallel to Youtube?
Claim 2: Those are allowed to exist by Google.
I dont disagree with your overarching point, it just seem like your arguing it in a flawed manner without any real evidence of your claim occurring or explaining why there are other sites that provide similar functionality without being affected by Google?
>We (developers) should be leading by example and creating services that don't rely on permission from large corporations to operate.
Great so that is what the original poster is doing? And your already claiming that Google is going to shut this down. Seems kinda alarmist.
It is alarmist for sure, we absolutely should be alarmed at how little control over content end users have.
YouTube specific examples are hard to come by, but here's something related to how they control their API from wikipedia: "YouTube also does not allow videos to run whilst the Android device is sleeping. This can be seen as an annoyance for some users. Particularly if the user is trying to use YouTube as a replacement music player.[13]"
When you look at the reference for that quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGoVol6ujHk You get "This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated."
Presumably that original use case was outside of their terms, but why? It's not to help users, it's because it infringes on Google Music and their Ad Partners will not be happy if people are listening to ads instead of watching them. If google could get away with monitoring your phone to check you're watching the ads they put up, I'm sure they would because they could charge 3x the price for them.
If we look at other similar companies that have offered APIs for developers to use in the past we actually do find lots of examples of services that already existing being shut down:
So yes, these apps are only allowed to exist while Google allows it, if there's a squeeze at google they will get shut down. There is no reason not to use different tech given the options we have available today if we want to protect content and respect our users.
[0] https://github.com/Apress/db-performance-at-scale