This sounds highly improbable, especially the "Oh, wow, Linux, what is this, 2003? I'd hoped I'd never have to see....." comment, I honestly can't believe there are any developers would make such a comment.

The OP should name the company if this interview was this terrible.

I don't want to say. Its been almost four years since then. A friend started working there for a different team, and he intimated the team I'd interviewed for was strongly anti-TDD, and very pro-Python. Even he laughed at me for not using a Mac. Recently they expanded too much and laid off 3/4 their development staff including my friend. In all, it sounds like it wasn't a great place. But I don't want to publicly call out a whole company of hundreds of developers because I got stuck with a few bad apples.

I do wish I know who my interviewers were, I want to meet them now and ask them what was up and what they thought of the whole thing. I do remember a few in the room seeming pretty embarrassed about it all, but I think the main three antagonists were their bosses or something.

If you tell HN how they looked and the company name, we can go on a witch-hunt :p.

But in all seriousness, sorry you had to go through something that terrible. Like someone mentioned already in this thread, you should have left the place when you heard the linux comment. Come to think of it, I'm happy for you for not getting stuck in an obviously poisonous environment.

Since the NSA is by default monitoring calls, I wonder why they cant do anything about this? (:p)

With all the data they have and considering the degree to which they have violated our privacy, it's a shame they do so little with it.

And they are calls from foreigners, to boot. They may not even need to ask the secret courts for permission to record those.

Even the metadata, which they definitely collect, would be very useful.

Because despite all the propaganda, they are not here to protect you, the people but the government or whoever is in power. I'm sure the NSA could have prevented some school shooting but unlike terrorism that threatens the government directly, mass shooters do not.

Fines? It would do more damage than good(if there's any good that is). One of the best things about the information age is the ability for anyone to take part in it. You could be selling glow sticks to a guy a thousand miles away from you.

If there were fines, it would scare away people with less technical skills who would want to start something new.

What we must do is introduce certifications, this would help make companies more security aware, but wont make it mandatory.

If you're an inexperienced startup then perhaps you shouldn't be taking risks with my data.

If I bought glowsticks at the mall and they injured me when I used them I would expect consumer protection laws to issue fines to make selling them too risky a venture, why shouldn't I be protected by a similar mechanism for injury caused by leaky data?

omg, stop being such babies. You can't run a startup without risk, I am sure you have been around the startup world to notice how much risk these startups take in order to be successful, as a society we should encourage people to take more risks, and help them, not become a barrier to their success.

I don't want to encourage anyone to take more risks with my life, thank you very much

I love coffee, I drink atleast 2 cups a day, I love hearing that coffee is good for me, but it still makes me wonder if any of this information about coffee is misinformation. After all, doctors and scientists are human.. for instance, http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/smoking/smoking...

Well established ways of conduction medical studies that dont depend on doctor quirks. They can establish a mathematically significant correlation. Correlation doesnt establish causality.

Doctors tend to be actually heavy smokers, from my experience. I have talked about this with a couple of them and they say that it helps them facing the stress of their everyday duties - even though they are aware of the health risks.

In the U.S. at least, doctors smoke at a much lower rate than the general population. It might be that they stand-out more when smoking if you know that they are physicians.

a lot of them are borderline or full blown alcoholics too. this stems from the job they do - depressing, stressful, often under-appreciated. they know the effects of addictions too well, but at the end, they are still only human beings like rest of us...

Yep its down for me here in India.

"Sorry, something went wrong.

We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can.

Go Back "

This is why, I think we need to make ICT (Information Communication Technology) a mandatory subject in our schools.

Teach kids about the internet. Many people are still under the assumption just deleting something would make it disappear for ever.

Maybe a lot of people from our generation are doomed to sharing too many things online, but we can at least save the next generation from themselves.

You make a mistake 10 years ago, may be a few close friends in your town know about you. Now you make a mistake, the whole world has access to that information.

Government regulations, bans are not going to do anything to stop the spread of information, we need to educate people to protect themselves from their own selves.

Judging by how much of a hash lots of schools are doing with literacy and numeracy (and we've been teaching these things for ages), I don't have high hopes for ICT.

Ahh Im 16 hours late to the party,

What's helped me deal with procrastination is, to keep a backwards list of things I have done.

I used to make a timetable, plan my work ahead, and always end up not following it.

I then did it the other way around, now I think about the work I have to do, just pick it up and start working, once I am done with my work, I write it on a notebook I carry around with me all day.

Its now like a part of my life, I even write down things like, "had a shower", "bought bread". I have noticed I have become really productive compared to the person from around 7 months ago. I am really happy as a person, and when ever I have a doubt if I have done enough work, my note book is there to tell me how much I have done.

I guess this is one of those carrot and stick things in this case, a self-governed carrot and stick I guess.

I think most programmers can relate to this feeling when you consider that amazing feeling you get after a whole night of debugging and seeing it run beautifully. I feel like this backwards list is also something like that. Looking forward to seeing that book fill up is making me do the work, and seeing all the work I have done lets me feel accomplished.

And I don’t get to be disappointed by plans that never worked out.

This would hold true for most complex pieces of software really.

Amen. Writing software the "right" way is time consuming and sometimes difficult. With commercial software, developing more features and content is often a more valuable use of developer time.

This was one of the best things I have read in a while. Thank you OP.

Why?

I'm assuming that the user above is probably proud because females have been notoriously under-represented in sciences, engineering, and technology. The fact that scientists who are females made such an interesting discovery could potentially inspire others to follow in their footsteps if they are interested in paleontology.