Probably will get downvoted for this, but I think the halo around reading books is overrated. You can gather ample amount of knowledge just as well via a series of essays online, podcasts, and sometimes even twitter threads.
Most of the books, for example, introduce a radical new idea and then elaborate on that needlessly for 400 pages. I found Sapiens to be one such book.
Even if the idea/premise is insightful, there is often a lot of redundancy in the pages. We should value brevity more.
Of course, this might not apply to all books. Textbooks/Reference books can happily coexist with online tutorials/blogs. Even certain nonfiction books (Thinking Fast and Slow comes to mind) might be best presented in a book format.
What radical new idea did Sapiens introduce? I ended up not liking it as much as I thought I would because I expected it to be little more concentrated on known factors around human evolution, but it ended up providing a lot of conjecture and best-guesses.
I think some people that see online essays and podcasts as a more efficient way to consume information might ironically be the most "orthodox" sort of readers. Most well-written non-fiction books provide a clear index, a table of contents that makes the process of the book clear, and introductory matter in each chapter that summarizes things for you. If you want a certain piece of information, you can go into the book and get out within 5 minutes. You don't owe every book you pick up a cover-to-cover read.
Highly recommend "How to Read a Book". It calls the author's process of "surgical reading" "syntopical reading", though they might have slightly different meanings in reality.
HBO is betting on their content to be superior right now, but there are some obvious areas where the streaming experience isn't on par with Netflix. No 4K/HDR, one plan costing a premium that limits simultaneous streaming to only 3 screens, etc.
Hope that they catch up eventually else it's gonna be hard to compete solely based on content.
Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV+ have also realized that adding more language tracks to their content is a _must_.
My family's viewership of Amazon Prime Video is severely limited because they refuse to add Spanish audio to their content. They have a few Spanish-language shows and movies but it's slim pickings.
HBO has no excuse on this, imho. I _know_ they have Spanish audio for every single one of their shows and movies - when we had cable TV we could switch language track in seconds, and this is not counting their Spanish-language channel that played in Spanish by default.
HBO's Spanish options are fantastic, I watch in a Spanish-speaking country and it's been a great service with good quality dubs and subtitles. We've run out of content though, I don't think we get all what the US gets.
I enjoy subtitles, my wife doesn't. I don't think I would enjoy subtitles when we're late-night binging until 2 or 3am.
Regardless, do Netflix, Apple and Disney have better engineers than HBO (and Amazon)? Do the latter two not care about offering Spanish (or non-English)? Do they have some contractual obligations to not offer the options online?
Turns out I don't care what the reason is. They don't offer extra language options, so I don't subscribe.
Really just gossip is what you have to go off of initially.
After you've been at the company for a bit, when you're interested in a new team, you can usually get some meet-and-greet meeting with current members on the team.
That's the time to ask really tough questions, even potentially awkward questions: how many times do you get paged? What's the worst project you've worked on? What's the average tenure of team members? When people leave the team, do they leave Amazon? (If they leave Amazon, then the team is less to blame, otherwise, beware).
I would have guessed AWS from your post since it's the more notorious one about bad WLB. As a new grad SDE1, things are bit horrifying especially since I've onboarded remotely.
Perhaps a sign of things to come, podcasts, like RSS and feeds will eventually just be something you'll find exclusive on a dominant web platform. Sucks.
>"First, tech should embrace and accelerate distributed work. It makes tech more accessible to more people. It seeds more parts of the country with potential entrepreneurs. It dramatically decreases the cost of living for employees. It creates the conditions for more stable companies that can take on less risky yet still necessary opportunities that may throw off a nice dividend instead of an IPO. And, critically, it gives tech companies a weapon to wield against overbearing regulation, because companies can always pick-up-and-leave."
The next big "tech" revolution is working from home -- and distributed working. It has been around, like the way smartphones were around before the iPhone -- in concept, but never realized in practicality. It is an imperative that tech should accelerate and develop a cohesive set of products that will enable iPhone like working from home.
This is so true. Half the VCs you talk to want you to re-locate to the Bay Area.
What does that mean to someone mid-career (you know, the type with enough experience to really do something big and build) - it means:
- They often have kids.
- They may have student loans from advanced degrees
- They have to worry about healthcare for their whole family
- They may be willing to live on ramen-noodle salaries, but dont want to subject their kids to it.
Unless seed funds and VCs start allowing more reasonable founders salaries, or allow non-bay-area founding locations with reasonable cost of living, the numbers often just dont work out
At this point in the discussion, I will often have a load of people jumping on me to "get roomates" or "eat pasta" or the "all schools are good" argument. Let me pre-answer those:
1. OK, so you have a family with children. Do you really want roommates?
2. Yes theoretically I can eat pasta everyday and save money. But is that really the life I want to give to my family (FYI, I can easily work on wall street and make a half-million salary, so really...)
3. No, not all schools are good. My high school for example had metal detectors on entrance. A staff member died from a heart attach after a confrontation from a student. No, not all schools are good. Perhaps you want to subject your kids to that, I dont.
So what do you end up with? Rich kids funding other rich kids building juice squeezers, after which they will just join the VC firm and perpetuate the cycle.
And as for the eggheads, present them with a shitty enough "deal" and it makes total sense to either go to a big firm or go work on Wall St. "Thought Leadership" is cheap.
I wonder if we can create ways in which this will remain enabled even post the COVID crisis. Limit the amount of visitors, keep the parks open only during certain months of the year, etc.
Lottery systems are already used in some places, but they're very frustrating for those that miss out. Charging makes things less accessible to poorer people. I think tiers of experience are part of the answer - scenic shuttle/route at the easy end up to paid backcountry permits at the challenging end. Parks already do this but I think they could do more.
One thing that can make overrun scenic routes a challenge is parking for photo stops and I suspect a solution to that lies in changing the way people think about photos and documenting their experience.
It's probably changed since, but many years ago I hiked a couple of days in Tiger Leaping Gorge in China. There was a lower route for tourist buses and an upper trail for hikers. Upper route required greater commitment - better fitness, multiple days, guesthouse stop, etc. As both routes were on the same side of a steep gorge, neither was really aware of the other.
I'm excited about the possibility that the covid experience (and data) will strengthen the arguments and motivations for various ecologically sound cultural shifts, but I'm less sure about the specific issue of bears getting comfortable in close proximity to human campgrounds.
At least you don't need to spend 4+ years on a degree that's not worth anything.
Don't know how accurate this list is, but I'm pretty sure an electrician in my area wouldn't even want to get out of bed in the morning for 40K euro per year.
Slightly off topic, but the fact that the world's richest man who owns a tech giant chose to publish this on a closed platform like Medium should be worrisome for the future of the open web. On the other hand, this might just be the biggest brand endorsement for Medium till date.
I mean, Amazon doesn't really have an associated "official" blogging platform, not in the way that Google has Blogger, Yahoo has Tumblr, and Twitter has Medium. Also worth noting that Amazon's spokesperson used Medium when writing a rebuttal to a high-profile investigation of Amazon's business practices in 2015: https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t...
Blogger and Tumblr aren't like Medium; maybe a good comparison for them would be Wordpress. Twitter's official blog isn't on Medium. So doesn't "have" it -
blog.twitter.com
