• 3 Posts
  • 27 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: November 17th, 2024

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  • Thinking back on being a beginner, my problem wasn’t that instructions were imprecise, but more that I didn’t interpret “to taste” as a real instruction. It means I should fucking taste my food as I go, when at the time I would just taste it at the end.

    So many bad meals can be avoided by sampling them over time and adjusting. I should know, having made too many.

    I would classify this as an example of cooking logic (my own phrase) that needs to be learned. A lot of good recipes will assume the cook understands fundamental concepts like this, but it’s not necessarily the recipe’s job to teach you. Same as how IKEA assembly instructions might seem cryptic at first, but really boil down to using 3-4 different techniques to screw wood panels together. I do think there’s a general lack of awareness that cooking has a separate logic, and this means a lot of people never teach it to others.



  • every single time I’ve gotten past the first round I am rejected for someone who was recommended internally/someone with job experience

    Sounds like unfortunate timing. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know how far along in the hiring process other people might be, so sometimes you’re interviewing for a job that’s right about to be filled by someone else. My only advice on that side would be to make sure to be responsive to recruiters and try and get your interviews scheduled quickly.

    Getting to first-round interviews is a good sign, especially with so much of the interview process being sloppified by AI tools. Your resume is catching eyes and someone thinks you’re worth talking to. Give yourself some credit then: you’ve set yourself up for success. The beginner career market is always going to have tough competition, so getting your resume on the desk of a real human is very important.

    My only other advice would be to focus on getting past those first interviews, and that might require you to examine your shortcomings on that stage. Are you failing the coding challenge? Find opportunities to practice and improve. Are you failing technical questions? There are github repos with common interview questions (eg “Tell me the difference between private and protected keywords in C++”). If you’re failing while talking about your technical/school experience, find some time to refine your thoughts and practice selling your strengths.

    The more times you get past introductory interviews, the more chances you have to be the first candidate who “checks all the boxes”. Sometimes that’s all it takes.



  • Whether or not you’re wasting your time in college is only something you can answer. However, there definitely are jobs out there for junior software devs right now. If economic outlooks improve, I’d expect demand for juniors to rise also.

    Anecdote: I saw stats shared on social media by a CS professor at my former college. Enrollment for their classes is way down this year, when “back in my day” they were packed. Make of it what you will, but it’s possible young people might no longer be seeing software development as an easy career to get into. That could make it a more attractive prospect for someone who’s in it for more than just money.


  • I prefer to call for food because it guarantees that the restaurant (which I presumably like) will get all of the money I spend on food.

    Nearly all of those online ordering platforms take a cut from whatever they facilitate. Sometimes that means prices are more expensive online, or sometimes it’s the same price on my receipt but less money for the restaurant.

    And I’m not sure what your point about minimum wage workers is. Normally it’s already someone’s job to talk to customers and enter their order in a system.





  • At my last job, there was no planning of work/projects. Like, there was a general plan of “We need feature X by Q3 and here’s what it should do”, but nothing about breaking work down into smaller units or prioritizing different tasks.

    The manager would drop an email: “Hey, can you do …” and that was it. Now it’s another thing to throw down the waterfall. Big surprise, the same bastard would harp about how the project was underperforming!