> The US has Confederacy parades, and also has criminal sentences for being an unregisteres agent of a foreign power.
No wonder the US did everything to save the nazi collaborator responsible for the massacre of ~100k Poles in Eastern Galicia from a post-war tribunal justice.
> I’ve just been fortunate enough to work in situations where people were there for the mission and there for the people.
How is "being there for the mission and for the people" better than "being there for money and for tech stack"? The latter also has to do with people and missions, only the missions and the people are important and related to the candidate directly, and not through company owners' or hiring managers' goals (most likely motivated by prospects of monetary rewards too).
> How is "being there for the mission and for the people" better than "being there for money and for tech stack"
Tech stacks change; human stacks stay the same. Intellectual honesty isn't going to obsoleted by some shinier virtue in 5 years—and if a company needs to pivot, it's still going to be a right tool for the job.
Typically tech stacks don't change for good reasons, just subjective reasons.
Why should I value the subjective decision of some new engineering manager that decided the tech stack should change so they can pad their resume?
Even if I'm there for the mission, this would give me pause.
If I was there for the tech stack alone, I'd quickly be looking for a new job.
The central point you seem to be making is "hiring for people there for the mission means employees friendlier to company changes/pivots". This feels valid, however the tech stack could affect execution of the mission. Or a given person could just hold the opinion that tech stack affects execution of the mission.
I guess my counter-argument to that then is it's not such a straight-forward win.
However my views are that tech stacks and programming languages matter a lot more than most give them credit for. See:
So it's easy for me to recoil to hearing "right tool for the job" cargo-culted without real arguments justifying the comment.
Circling back to the central point, I do think I would bias towards hiring people that seem "there for the mission". I believe many people would probably be just pretending though, so it's not that great of a postive signal imo.
However we may differ in that I don't think I'd heavily avoid hiring people "there for the tech stack" any more than I'd try (and fail) to avoid hiring people "there for the money".
I think where we're ending up here is that—while all these points ("tool for the job", "here for the mission") may be true—they are often cited by people who are full of shit, so seeing them in job postings, interviews, etc doesn't really send any useful signal.
> In a strict language, you can say (roughly at least) that replacing [] with [1..n] will add at minimum a certain number of extra CPU cycles and a certain amount of additional allocation.
It's not at minimum, it's always the worst case cost of N in strict languages, whereas the lazy setting provides you with amortized complexity.
I think you might be misunderstanding what I meant by "at minimum". I'm talking about the case of replacing a [] constant in some arbitrary piece of code with something like [1..10000]. Given strict semantics you'll of course incur at least the time and space costs associated with constructing the list (that's the "at minimum" bit), but you might also incur additional costs depending on what the rest of the code does with the list. For example, it might execute some arbitrarily expensive computation if the list has more than 20 elements, or whatever.
I think you might have thought I was saying that given a strict semantics it was somehow still possible that you wouldn't necessarily incur the full time and space penalty for constructing n elements (which of course is not the case).
> Infix operators are bad. Custom infix operators are worse.
Disagree, as a regular user of `shouldBe` and other HSpec expectations, as well as DSL libraries that rhyme like English. And even when they don't rhyme, they provide flow for defining your complex types that would be tiresome to define with verbose prefixes (Servant).
> Haskell is very indentation-sensitive, more so than Python. Slight, harmless-looking cosmetic changes can break the parser.
That's not true, Python is more sensitive to indentations.
> Lazy evaluation is bad.
> Lazy data structures are bad.
> Is purity worth it? Not really.
These are just lazy crowd-opinions.
> Every file starts with declaring thirty language extensions.
This has never been true, all extensions can be declared default global to a compilation group (library/executable/project) and never mentioned in .hs files. When you see extensions being specified in every file of online tutorials, you know it's being done so for 1) didactic purposes 2) self-contained units for copy-pasting into your editor.
All in all, the author isn't very well versed in Haskell, as it becomes clear with the provided examples of Ord instances for newtype IntAsc declarations. A seasoned Haskell programmer would almost certainly write it with `deriving via`, especially in a situation where they want to demonstrate how easy it is to get around the limitation of a single typeclass instance per type.
Your link says that as many as 354,000 Russian _and_ Ukrainian soldiers have been killed _or_ injured in the Ukraine war, but you present it as a number of people killed in a single country. Why doing that?
You’re conflating a group of pro-western enterprise software developers - with little to no adulthood responsibilities aside their work, due to their age - with a group of the brightest folks.
Software developers make up maybe a third of that wave, if that. There's also artists, scientists, teachers, journalists, political activists and all kinds of other folks that simply don't see the future in the country. A lot of them are families with kids, so it's often not the lack of responsibilities but a higher willingness to take the risk.
Political activists and journalists are hardly the brightest group of people either, so you’re just assigning the opposition group that you prefer to align with, with a token of “the brightest” because it makes you feel good about it. How about you look at the rest of the society who couldn’t or weren’t willing to leave the country and who still run projects in Russia despite the sanctions. Are they not the brightest because they work and associate their career within - let’s say for the sake of the argument - Rosatom? That’s just one hard science sector of the vast energy industry of the country, for starters.
There's lot of smart people left, that's no doubt, but there is an obvious filter that the ones left behind are on average less risk taking, more conservative, often older, often the ones with the national motto of "от нас ничего не зависит/there's nothing I can do", and the next google or the next scientific breakthrough is much more likely to come out of the young risk taking ones now living in a functional country and not from the aging engineers living in a dictatorship and working at a bureaucratic rosatom making "up to $720 a month" (actual number, I looked up their open engineering vacancies).
> but there is an obvious filter that the ones left behind are on average less risk taking
Where’s that clarity come from? The opposite could be argued as well: those who’ve left are seeking safety and safety isn’t associated with risk taking. There are fewer risks in leaving Russia than in staying in.
> breakthrough is much more likely to come out of the young risk taking ones now living in a functional country and not from the aging engineers living in a dictatorship and working at a bureaucratic rosatom making "up to $720 a month" (actual number, I looked up their open engineering vacancies).
Here, you did it again: “those who work at <this company> are less likely to make a breakthrough, because I don’t align with them, and therefore I assume that only aging engineers uncapable of breakthroughs would consider staying and working there. Look, even salaries prove that they are less likely to have it.”
>Where’s that clarity come from? The opposite could be argued as well: those who’ve left are seeking safety and safety isn’t associated with risk taking. There are fewer risks in leaving Russia than in stayin in.
It's not about safety, it's about agency. Because action > inaction. Staying put does not require anything, just making excuses why nothing can be done to either change things or move.
The ones that stayed and are trying to change things might be the brightest and bravest of all, but they are few and might not even survive that decision. Most other ones simply lack any agency and float down towards some not very bright future they have no control over, making excuses why nothing can be done and hoping to lay low and "авось пронесет". Those are less likely to accomplish much.
It’s the second time you’re deliberately avoiding answering where else is your clarity about the second group come from, except from your imagining things.
> It's not about safety, it's about agency. Because action > inaction. Staying put does not require anything, just making excuses why nothing can be done to either change things or move.
When a person has an option to leave but decides otherwise, they exercise their agency and the action is described as a conscious decision based on an act of volition. You are free to attribute it to - as you said - “making excuses” or “actually lacking agency”, but that would be the same biased simplification of reality that you’ve already done a few times in other comments.
I did not IQ test the million people on the border and I have no objective way to evaluate and compare the brightness of the people that have left vs the rosatom engineers, if that's what you're asking for.
"Biased simplification of reality" sounds like a description of essentially any opinion, we are all biased and reality is too complex to argue about without simplifications, so that's not a great argument. Anything outside of a few math formulas is a "biased simplification of reality".
I'm curious, what exactly are you arguing for? Do you really think that a loss of that million is insignificant and that the roskosmos/rosatom/rostech/etc will accomplish more than all the people that have left? If so, could you explain why you think that?
> we are all biased and reality is too complex to argue about without simplifications, so that's not a great argument.
However it's a good argument for distinguishing between simplifications introduced by feelings and the ones introduced by omission while trying impartial judgement, as these simplification premises would have different value to your listeners.
> Do you really think that a loss of that million is insignificant and that the roskosmos/rosatom/rostech/etc will accomplish more than all the people that have left? If so, could you explain why you think that?
We must first establish and agree on the dimension by which you're willing to evaluate that significance. What would be a unit of measurement of the significance that you're mentioning in your comments?
>However it's a good argument for distinguishing between simplifications introduced by feelings
It's not based on my feelings but on the personal experience and some research I did. All the smartest people I personally know and worked with have left the country. I also looked up the top 10 AI researchers at Yandex, and out of the ten I looked at only one was is still in Russia, that's a 90% loss for the top talent in the hottest industry at the (arguably) most innovative company in the country.
>We must first establish and agree on the dimension by which you're willing to evaluate that significance
Sure thing, let's take two, scientists and entrepreneurs as their accomplishments are the easiest to quantify. The unit of measurement would be the influential papers written for scientists (measured by the number of citations) and for the entrepreneurs the market cap of the companies they started, obviously both of those are not perfect metrics but they generally track with the value created.
Do you think the million people like the "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates" that have left the country that the other guys are mentioning will do better on those dimensions versus the ones staying at rosatom/roskosmos/etc?
> It's not based on my feelings
> All the smartest people I personally know
> I also looked up the top 10 AI researchers at Yandex
> in the hottest industry at the (arguably) most innovative company in the country.
All of that is actually based on your feelings that (1) the people you know are smart enough to be qualified and counted among the brightest, (2) the AI software research and the researchers you personally know are more relevant to the points you make, than other research and the researchers you haven't met in other industries that Russia is excelling in.
> Sure thing, let's take two, scientists and entrepreneurs as their accomplishments are the easiest to quantify. The unit of measurement would be the influential papers written for scientists (measured by the number of citations) and for the entrepreneurs the market cap of the companies they started.
I disagree with the market cap metric because it's useless to compare without other constraints on the kind of businesses we're allowed to compare directly. For starters, a hypothetical company involved in the derivatives market may easily be evaluated higher than a profitable energy-producing company purely because of a higher speculative capacity of the former, since the markets allow for derivatives to exist as assets in the books. I disagree with that premise purely on a basis of the 2008 crisis that showed that those had never been assets manifested in reality.
I disagree with the influential papers' citation count too, because that measure would be subject to interpretation of influence. Are AI papers influential? Are all AI papers influential? You could get thousands of meaningless citations for a parroting AI architecture for every single meaningful citation of Perelman's proof of the Poincare conjecture. Which one of those would you value as more influential? I assume no one could seriously suggest that citations for AI software papers would have the same nominal value as citations of the fundamental proofs in mathematics or physics.
> Do you think the million people like the "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates" that have left the country that the other guys are mentioning will do better on those dimensions versus the ones staying at rosatom/roskosmos/etc?
You are conflating two groups again: the million people left aren't all the kind of "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates". Not all of them are the Techies in the first place. The right question to ask would be if I think that those who left have better chances to excel at science and business (regardless of their qualifications) than those who stayed. My answer to that question is no, I don't think so, because there's no hard evidence for that. There only is a hint that they might be better off financially if they dedicate their lives to making money in the industries that are known for generating loads of cash, like finance and tech. That's about it. Switch the roles and try comparing artists and less technical folks in their respective places at home and abroad, and the odds are suddenly opposite.
Alright, if we're talking fundamental research, what about the number of the Fields medal recipients? I feel safe taking that bet, in the last 30 years for one Perelman there's 6 russian-born mathematicians that received it who are in the US or Europe.
I can disagree and question everything all day too, but you gotta nut up or shut up, pick an objective metric and I'll take a bet on it. Gdp, citations, number of patents, number of users of the product, number of Nobel prizes, anything measurable that would work for you? Literally anything measurable not based on your feelings.
How many emigrations have you done? Because if the answer is "zero" I'm not sure your opinion counts.
Taking your entire life, your family, kids, urgently moving to another country at a time when your bank card don't work internationally, you can't reliably wire money out, and there are visa restriction placed on you even when you have a visa. Then learning how to live in a different country, where you understand nothing: from how to pay taxes to using their version of self-checkout kiosks.
Emigration is the ultimate risk-taking.
I now have friends who have a position ready for them in the US, in business and academia, yet they were put on administrative check and have spent almost a year just waiting for their visa. They put most people with technical education on this check.
People who left the country are not just software developers. We have seen the exodus of musicians, scientists etc, which after some very painful decision process just packed their things and took next flight anywhere. Many took their families.
> As a MSU CS alumni I can tell you, it is pretty clear the brighter, the more likely to leave.
How does your alumni status’ anecdotal evidence bring clarity on the matter of the predominant intellectual capacity of those who’re leaving Russia? Aren’t there any other MSU graduates who consider themselves as bright as your CS peers and yourself, and who are staying in? What’s the respective left/stayed ratio among them?
I can add one more data point to it as MIPT graduate. Number of people among MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates I know personally who emigrated in the past 12 months is remarkable. It’s somewhat similar to early 1990s when whole labs were relocating to the West.
Basically everyone (that would be 10+ people) I know who was still staying back left after Russia unleashed full scale war with the exception of the ones that have to care for very old relatives. There are two people who stayed for other reasons, and they aren't brighter than average peers.
Prior to the war maybe slightly under 50% stayed. Now it is under 10%.
> Prior to the war maybe slightly under 50% stayed. Now it is under 10%.
Just to clarify your point, are you suggesting that only 10% of MSU gradutes are staying in Russia after receiving their respective degrees, or are these the numbers among specific people with specific degrees you know personally?
What does being pro- or anti-West has to do with the topic? There are many Russian expats in Germany who openly manifest their support for Putin's war on the streets of Berlin. You can be anti-Western and at the same time pragmatically leave Russia to avoid draft and being killed for basically no reason.
That’s a fair point. I was trying to exemplify the conflation point between two groups with the assigned traits (“the brightest” vs “rest of them”) with bringing my own selection of people everyone would clearly disagree with to be a valid representation.
> The occupation of Ukraine signals Russia's intention to do the same with other countries they occupied in the past (Poland, Romania, the Baltic countries, &c) which are now part of NATO.
None of those countries have ever been officially mentioned as the "red line" by Russia, except Ukraine. Article 5 doesn't apply to Ukraine, and it doesn't allow for preventive military measures on non-alliance territories just because "there's a signal" somewhere outside.
> Because it's evil Russia attacked poor innocent Ukraine in 2014
The poor innocent Ukrainian government did pass a bill to prohibit official use of minority languages on the eastern part of the country (dominated by Russian-speaking population) on a Sunday morning of February 23, 2014. It happened a day after their president had to flee the country. It was clearly a period of political crisis and no one was supposed to work and enact any legislation on that weekend day in the first place. No one was supposed to pass a bill of that significance without extended debates and a referendum specifically. But the coup leaders decided to move forward with it nonetheless. Russian troops legally stationed in Crimea took over the peninsula 4 days after that punitive act of the Ukraine government against its own russian-speaking population of the eastern part of the country. The reinforcement from Russia were only sent 6 days after the event, as the Kiyv regime decided to escalate.
> So what? Passing some bills justify full scale military invasion?
It wasn't full scale at first, and there was leeway for a diplomatic resolution of the political crisis, which Kiyv regime decided to ignore and to escalate instead.
> Maybe we need to invade Russia, since they pass freedom stripping bills every week.
> prohibit official use of minority languages on the eastern part of the country
No, they did the same for all languages. Romanians have lived in Northern Bucovina for centuries, yet you don't see us invading Ukraine. But what you're saying is fair because they should only have prohibited Russian since they are the people who genocided Ukrainians so they have no right to occupy Ukraine.
are you negating "prohibited official use of minority languages" with "they did the same for all languages" as a means to show that the bill was even-headed?
> But what you're saying is fair because they should only have prohibited Russian since they are the people who genocided Ukrainians so they have no right to occupy Ukraine.
Right, the Russian language had to be prohibited because Russia would react to Ukraine's prohibiting the use of the Russian language for russian-speaking Ukrainians, presumably as a punitive measure for their alignment with Russia due to their geographical & cultural proximity and generational ties. And that's because Romanians living in Northern Bucovina couldn't care less about it..... My take is that you deserve a Nobel prize for being the most consistent person on Earth. Thanks for showing your stance clearly in the open.
