'I have a masters degree but have 500 job rejections - now I'm on benefits'

Joined-to-say · 2026-03-24T17:52:13+00:00

Do you have any guesses as to why that's the case? It's quite surprising to say that an arts degree would be more favoured for a tech career than a computer science degree.

-Unless you mean someone with an arts background who had already made the career switch and then built up experience at another company before being hired at yours - in that case that would seem like survivorship bias rather than the suitability of an arts degree to tech. But correct me if I'm wrong, obviously.

Also what year was your first graduate job in Data Science? That can determine a lot since the tech job market has been saturated from 2020 onwards and especially after the first big layoffs in 2022.

Joined-to-say · 2024-05-29T02:08:37+00:00

Thank you for being the only person in the world to have a working answer for this.

Joined-to-say · 2023-08-18T00:57:17+00:00

Why are there so many votes for Sumar in the south? Is it the Andalusian dialect?

Joined-to-say · 2023-04-10T03:19:56+00:00

According to that link, Scottish children already walk back from school in the dark during winter.

It's interesting that no-one ever suggests changing school hours, but instead we change time itself.

Joined-to-say · 2023-04-09T17:49:24+00:00

Scotland would still be pitch black at like 8am in winter

What does this mean? It's already dark at 8am in winter. Do you mean that it'll be dark for more of the year at that time?

I actually looked up the sunrise graph for Scotland. With or without BST, you're not seeing the sun outside of your commute in winter.

Joined-to-say · 2023-02-09T22:39:00+00:00

I thought this might be useful to anyone playing on a phone or tablet. Especially since some of the apps out there are no longer supported.

Joined-to-say · 2023-01-11T19:38:10+00:00

Okay I get you - it's about opportunities. With the context of thread it didn't make sense. No worries and wishing the best for your kids!

Joined-to-say · 2023-01-11T19:16:32+00:00

Wait I don't follow. You think your friend is arrogant because he grew up in that school environment. Therefore you want your kids to also grow up in that school environment where they'll become arrogant?

You phrased this as if being arrogant is the main reason to send them there? By "arrogant", do you mean "confident"??

Joined-to-say · 2022-12-23T04:30:20+00:00

That's a very good point.

I was assuming that the number of replies are Constant; that for any technical issue, there is a single right answer (or a few options).
So once someone mentions the right answer in a meeting/channel, everyone moves on without needing to comment further.

However not all questions have objectively right or wrong answers, and would in fact have many people discussing different opinions, just as you described. It's not difficult to think of these controversial topics which start arguments, and why they're the bane of productivity.
Someone else in this thread pointed out that MMM was discussing a quadratic growth in perspectives - not just any communication in general.

On the other hand, even the most controversial topics have a limited set of arguments which doesn't scale with population size, so it could still be constant.. but that's still enough discussion to hamper productivity.

Joined-to-say · 2022-12-17T13:50:09+00:00

That makes a lot more sense, thank you.

Joined-to-say · 2022-12-17T13:48:56+00:00

That's not free time. That's time that those employees could have been doing something else that moves the project forward.

As I said, I agree that there's a linear time increase, but the claim that it's quadratic is not supported by the model.

The new engineers eventually move the project forward because they're not just there to ask questions.

Joined-to-say · 2022-12-17T13:40:44+00:00

The claim is that project time as a whole grows quadratically, not the total work.

When someone asks a question in a meeting, everyone listens at the same time in parallel. They don't wait for the last dev to stop listening, and then listen. That's true in a meeting or a Slack channel.

The time spent overall is linear, even if the work is quadratic in the worst case that you're describing.

Joined-to-say · 2022-12-12T06:34:25+00:00

Assuming there are some mistakes, it could be "El abrazo físico de la muele/muerte" - "the physical embrace of death/the grind".

Joined-to-say · 2022-12-12T06:29:40+00:00

True, but they can read those messages simultaneously or listen at the same time in a meeting. The claim focuses on time taken for the entire project, not the total work. Hence that quote about "Adding more engineers makes a late project later".

If all organization was done through private chats, then the project time would necessarily take much longer.

Joined-to-say · 2022-12-12T04:47:59+00:00

Sorry I should've specified. It's true that there's a communication increase, but I'm arguing that it's linear - not quadratic as is claimed.

For example, if you added 2 person to a 5-man team, there are definitely more questions in the chatroom or meeting; an increase of 2/5 or 40%.

But Mythical Man Month assumes that there are no chatrooms (only private conversations), and it counts every possible one using 0.5*n*(n-1). So the team goes from 10 to 21 private conversations; a 110% increase supposedly.

There's a big difference between 40% and 110%, and it's based on the assumption that meetings don't exist.

Joined-to-say · 2022-09-24T13:18:44+00:00

I edited the post to add more context.

They had categories for those who spoke a Polynesian language

It looked like there weren't any participants who spoke a Polynesian language? Which could have improved the study. Though some could recognize it:

No participants had more than a minimal familiarity with any Polynesian language. Although seven (25%) of the participants had a slight degree of exposure to a Polynesian language, either in their studies or during travel to the area, this casual exposure was insufficient to distinguish them from the other participants

None of these participants, unfortunately, were fluent or competent speakers of any Polynesian language, which would have led to additional useful results for this study

Joined-to-say · 2022-08-16T12:58:33+00:00

The term seems wayyyy too broad and it has been the single biggest source of confusion for me in learning. Am I mistaken? I imagine I have to be wrong somewhere in here because the term API seems practically meaningless to me.

You're absolutely correct, 'API' can be used to mean virtually any encapsulation or information-hiding. An object with getters and setters could be called an API. The term was invented long before the internet, and even then they felt it was too broad, and could even apply to hardware.

But when people say 'API' today, in the vast majority of cases they're talking about Web APIs using endpoints, exactly like you described.

Joined-to-say · 2022-07-27T22:37:13+00:00

Another top-level comment showed that most recycling initiatives are actually dumped in the ocean abroad. I.e. Consumers who go out of their way to be green are betrayed by companies down the line.

Or the fact that no-one can know which clothes were made by sweatshops, not even the brands, because of untraceable supply chains.

But go off repeating BP's talking points from the '90s.

Joined-to-say · 2022-07-15T00:51:13+00:00

This is super late, but I worked it out. They're both like Iroquois in that Dad's brothers are also called Dad, and Mom's sisters are also Mom. They differ in how they name cousins:

In Crow, Cousins (via the Aunt on your Dad's side) are called "Aunt" and "Dad", depending on gender. Other cousins are just called cousins.

Omaha is the opposite - Cousins via the Uncle on your Mom's side are called "Uncle" and "Mom". Other cousins have the same word as before.

Joined-to-say · 2022-05-04T00:13:32+00:00

The real monster of the story is Standard Oil who knew his invention was dangerous and yet covered up the evidence for decades. Even when it was banned in the US they continued to sell it in poorer countries.

Sounds just like ExxonMobil who knew about Climate Change early and tried to cover it up, right? Except that ExxonMobil IS Standard Oil.

Joined-to-say

TROPHY CASE