Of the seven team members, two were regular WFH folks, and one more did remote working two days a week. After Monday, March 9, we were told to work from home and stay there till it was safe to come back. I originally thought that might be 2-3 weeks. What a n00b. It looks like we won't be back in the office until June or July. This is The Big One.
Stay safe, everyone.
PS: Location: Toronto.
It's 2020, not 1960. Many of us have the technology to work from home; the CDC and WHO recommend it -- so why not do it? I think this will turn out badly for the employer mentioned here.
My employer was fine with us working from home once in a while -- two of my team members worked from home all the time. As of a week ago, everyone in the company is working from home. Is it less productive? Probably a little. Is it saving our lives? Yup.
I keep myself busy with professional, family and social events, and everything goes into Google Calendar. Usually I add things from my Linux workstation, and those entries are all synced to my Google Pixel 2 phone. As something gets close, my phone will remind me, and Waze can also tell me it's time to start driving.
I had the Twitter and Facebook apps on my previous phone (a Nexus 5) and consciously didn't install them on the Pixel 2 -- I spend enough time on social media as it is, I don't need to be crouched over a phone when I'm out -- that's when I should be chatting with friends, family, and people in my network. I even use my smartphone as a
The smartphone's also my alarm clock and my camera. Giving up all (most) of the functionality of a smart phone isn't going to happen.
> Employees at Google's parent company Alphabet earned "a median pay package of more than $197,000" in 2017, around 18% lower than Facebook's median salary of $240,000, the Wall Street Journal reports. Per the Journal, this illustrates the competitive "talent war in Silicon Valley, where talented engineers are in limited supply." These two salaries were more than $100,000 above Amazon's median pay, which sat at $28,446.
Typo alert. Amazon's median salary is probably $128,446, based on context
I made $28K CAD in 1983, living in Toronto. I don't imagine American engineers made that little anywhere in the last thirty years.
I imagine that we're already under observation, and may get visited by little green men (or women) before we manage to leave our own Solar System for other planets. The idea that we're the most advanced civilization out there is laughable.
I just finished writing a group of ETL scripts in Perl. The longest-running script took eight hours to run, and had been optimized a great deal, with caching and other tricks. At the other end of the scale was a more recent script that ran in six seconds -- so I didn't waste any time trying to speed that one up.
In any case, these are throw-away scripts, since our product was the documentation about how the transformations were achieved, and once our output files matched the standard files, no further work was necessary -- the production transformations are being written in Informatica, based on our documentation.
I've never worked at a scale where I had to stop and look at the efficiency of the algorithm was necessary -- but when that happens, I'll certainly pay attention to it.
Oh
You've reminded me of the hilarious fleet of Ford Taurus wagons that my employer had when I was there years ago (mid-90's). Out of ten vehicles, I believe eight had to go in for transmission replacement. They were leased vehicles, so the company didn't care, but it sure was inconvenient.
I started with C in 1981, and used that (with a side-trip to Pascal) till about 1998, at which point I started tinkering with Perl. I have used Perl solidly since then, but just downloaded Go this week and started to tinker with that. So Go could be by next language. Who knows.
Exactly this -- the vehicle wasn't safe below a temperature of X, and it had been 15 or 20 degrees F below that overnight. They were arguing over ridiculous points.
This was a few years after I'd graduated with my engineering degree. I was working on a robotics project, and I would often bring my lunch and eat it in the lab/office that we had. So I was at my desk when the tragedy occurred.
My co-worker came in from the mall where he'd gone to get lunch, and said something like, "The shuttle blew up, eh?", and I was stunned. (Yes, I'm Canadian.) When I got home, I watched the explosion on the news, but after the first few times couldn't watch it any more. And for probably twenty years afterwards, that piece of tape was a trigger -- I would see the image of the flame leaking out from underneath the craft, and have to look away, with tears in my eyes.
I was most saddened by the excellent Time magazine article that detailed the arguments between the engineers "It was too cold overnight -- we're not sure the vehicle is safe to fly." and the managers "NASA going to lose a lot of face if we don't launch and postpone again." So NASA launched, over the objections of the engineers. And we know the rest.
And now I have a mortgage that's having it's 25th anniversary, and is almost twice the size it was when I started. Why? Raising a family.
I'm not bitter -- just continuing to pay it down. It might be paid off by the time I'm in my mid-70's, but the odds are I'll sell the house (a small bungalow in Toronto) before then. For now (touch wood) the real estate market is healthy, so right now I have some equity
The last time I was debt-free was Fall, 1990. That was a long time ago.
I was very fortunate -- I went to university in Canada, where university tuition is lower. The tuition for my last semester (four months, Winter '82) broke $1,000 for the first time. My parents had also taken out a Registered Education Savings Plan for me, which kicked in, I think, $800 for the last three years of my four year degree. And I had my Co-op work terms. With all that, I still needed a loan (it was around $2,500) to get me through the last year (OK, some of that may have paid for the month's vacation I took after finishing school).
I paid $500 of the loan off in my first six months after school, then a few months after that, received a notice that they'd start charging interest if the loan wasn't paid off in full by the first anniversary. I was earning $22,000 annually, but my expenses were low, so I managed to make four monthly payments of $550 per month to get it all paid off.
It didn't occur to my to skip out on the loan, although it was a relatively small amount. The only other loan I'd taken out was for a motorcycle -- four $400 payments -- and dodging those payments didn't occur to me either. I'd borrowed money, I had to pay it back.
I think the writer of TFA is in denial. They need to mend fences and start paying off the loan. You borrowed some money and promised to pay it back. Yes, it's inconvenient, but it's the responsible thing to do. Grow up.
Great advice! +1
Great idea. My power supplier currently has rates based on TOU (Time Of Use - http://www.torontohydro.com/si...), and I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.
I just hope it's not going to be one of those "Only available in the United States" deals.
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.
