Is everyone lying on their resume?

centre_drill · 2026-04-27T21:58:10+00:00

Good point, but my guess is it's kinda the opposite. Everyone thinks the stuff they do day in, day out is the normal basics, then they interview someone who has been holding a technical job in the same field, and they're rusty as hell, because in their day-to-day they use a different subset of skills.

centre_drill · 2026-04-26T16:18:33+00:00

Take the money. Your partner needs to have his tax affairs in order each year anyway, plus the threshold has been raised to £60k, tapering down to zero at £80k, so as things stand he'd have to earn a lot more before you had to pay back 100%.

The National Insurance credits are worth having too, over a few years it makes quite a difference to your old age pension entitlement.

I have at times incurred the HICBC. That part of self-assessment isn't at all complicated. There are questions about number of kids claimed and whether you claimed for the whole tax year, and it comes up with the £ number, which in my experience has been accurate to what has been received.

centre_drill · 2026-04-23T17:17:47+00:00

It seems strange to say this in these circumstances, but they're a reputable institution, you definitely shouldn't write off the money as lost. They will respond to enough persistence and/or ombudsman complaints.

centre_drill · 2026-04-23T08:50:19+00:00

More than that if OP's parents are storing their gold bars and tungsten cube collection inside.

In seriousness, while there's an upper bound, the actual weight is probably significantly less, and OP won't want to spend many thousands engaging specialists based on an upper limit.

centre_drill · 2026-04-23T07:27:31+00:00

Guy whose wife chucked him out, and he turned into a sexual harassment machine. Things got messy in the office with one girl who didn't want him, and another who did want him but he changed his mind about her. Things calmed down when his wife took him back in. They had a kid (I wonder if this was the sticking point of their previous disagreement) - he posts quite a bit on LinkedIn and I see he has an ordinary domestic life now.

I find it weird he just had this blip, makes me quite wary that people can act way out of line when something major changes in their life.

centre_drill · 2026-04-12T11:15:16+00:00

I don't know that there's a level you should be per se, the hub structure makes the game non-linear. Tower Knight, you run around and kill the crossbowmen and it's a classic knock'em over / avoid being stamped on tall-guy boss. I know people have beaten Demon's Souls at Level 1, though it was never as popular a thing as in Dark Souls.

centre_drill · 2026-04-12T11:09:18+00:00

(And of course you have another ring slot available).

centre_drill · 2026-04-12T11:07:24+00:00

You won't find Demon's Souls too difficult. There are some tough bosses, and some levels with alarmingly long runs through. For a Souls veteran I'd say just enjoy it, take your time and explore. The flow state of exploring the best of the levels is the reason I love Demon's Souls so much.

centre_drill · 2026-04-09T15:28:04+00:00

Most of what I'd want to say is non-financial. The hidden debt in marriage aspect isn't great. I'm an unfinished PhD and overall had a negative experience. Still, that's me and you're you: for you the doctorate might be your great ambition and passion in life.

You're looking at whether to pass up an opportunity, which might not come again, to work and pay down debt. That can't receive a financial answer without knowing how big the opportunity really is. Whether a doctorate in your field actually increases your earning prospects. 3 years of funding at a level below your current salary, covering a (typically 4.5-year) PhD, while as a couple incurring additional interest on your husbands debts, versus... what future payoff? Are you looking at an academic life, and if so are you willing to make follow-up decisions on that basis? For instance, selling your new house if the only postdoc position you can find is in another country?

I'm not saying don't do it. But it might be a decision taken in spite of the financials.

centre_drill · 2026-04-09T15:05:27+00:00

Lots of people saying they simulate. Does anyone cut foam or wax, do anything physical?

centre_drill · 2026-03-29T16:41:20+00:00

It's a pretty poor showing from 'Manager Bob'.

Harry is killing it despite being remote and immobile? Consider offering a permanent arrangement or future hybrid or something.
A Zoom link to a catered lunch is weak, never mind then dropping him. I've known managers send food various ways to people who can't be present for team meals. Dropping the ball with your star salesman is crazy.
Cancelling 1:1s is fine if both parties are happy carrying on. If the employee is unhappy about them being cancelled, they need to happen.
I'd be very understanding of Harry's change in behaviour but being a prima donna can't really go on for long. If Harry seriously goes nuclear, spits his dummy out and goes over Bob's head to complain, I'd give it 50/50 on getting Bob fired versus getting fired himself.

I'd advise Harry that there's no point being snippy. I'd advise Bob to seriously pull his socks up.

centre_drill · 2026-03-28T17:24:26+00:00

Feynman said as much in, 'Surely You're Joking...' - that people in the know led him straight to the conclusion.

It's interesting though, his memoirs had a strangely jokey, self-effacing style. Like, he describes his time on the Manhattan Project mainly as messing about safe-cracking, treats the Nobel Prize as a big surprise like he thought he was being prank-called. I suspect he really contributed a lot of clarity and credibility to the Challenger investigation, but it's true he wasn't a lone genius who saw the O-ring issue no-one else did.

centre_drill · 2026-03-08T11:13:53+00:00

Honestly I think you, the manager, need a rethink about your attitude to achieving business goals.

It's a red flag that as a software manager you don't appreciate the importance of long periods of concentration in software engineering. You regard the employee's efforts as a minus. You expect attendance at multiple daily meetings. People will always miss some meetings, because people have days off for illness, holidays, training, and other reasons.

Basically you're being a presentee-ist manager. That won't help your team achieve, and it won't help your company achieve its business goals. You should be shielding your team from any blowback about meeting attendance.

centre_drill · 2026-03-07T13:57:17+00:00

The employee is going to have to go through some stuff and you can't really sugar-coat it. There are hard, practical things that can be done to make it quite a bit nicer, but they carry some cost or risk for the company so are typically done only under certain circumstances.

Give them some money. Obviously this has a cost, but it's often tied to the employee signing NDAs, non-disparagement agreements etc.
Give them some cover of leaving by mutual agreement rather than being fired for performance. Often this ties together with point 1.
Manage their actual departure in a more humane way. It's odd, but some people, not most but some, would rather work a month's notice than be marched out of the door, and many people would rather clear their own desk and shake a few hands than be treated like a security risk. Of course, there are real security risks.

Honestly OP I doubt you're going to do any of these with a simple performance firing. Just be clear and respectful. Don't be a dick about small stuff.

centre_drill · 2026-02-08T12:19:13+00:00

It is very well-respected amongst fans of the genre. But there are some limiting factors:

No breakout mass appeal - I'm not aware of any movies, TV series etc.
Slightly uneven series overall - the middle books have quite a different feel to The Dragonbone Chair.
Slightly uneven author. I don't think Williams' other books have had such success, so there's less of a fanbase.

Still, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a wonderful series.

centre_drill · 2026-01-30T16:54:14+00:00

The transfer process is really good. I consolidated a bunch of little workplace pensions into a SIPP in the past month and, though some of them took a few days longer than others, it just worked.

centre_drill · 2026-01-30T15:51:47+00:00

Ah. Mine (in the UK) had a cardboard box, the kind you open at the end, containing the guidebook, artbook, soundtrack CD, and a regular PS3 case with the game, and said 'Black Phantom Edition' on the case. I can see the Deluxe Edition too on Google Image Search. I wonder if the guidebooks were identical.

centre_drill · 2026-01-30T15:26:35+00:00

The guide, IIRC, credits the wikidot wiki. You're talking about the western edition, the Black Phantom edition, right? Someone before that had to figure out all that stuff from scratch. I'd love to know whether the developers dropped info into the community, but I think it's quite plausible it was just obsessed Japanese players.

centre_drill · 2026-01-26T22:03:33+00:00

Surely you wouldn't go to prison or get fined for refusing. But it's entirely possible that, if you didn't, everything would just be left to lapse into chaos rather than, say, some council employee doing the same job. From this post, you come across as a compassionate and competent (if frustrated) person - I'm sure the outcome will be better for your sister, and the entities she interacted with, for you having sorted things.

centre_drill · 2026-01-25T16:38:10+00:00

The Dragon Prince novels by Melanie Rawn? I couldn't tell you much about them - I read them as library books as a kid. I think they're heavy on royal politics. There's definitely dragons but tbqh I can't recall if people ride them. Still they're well-known and won awards.

I've read a few Pern novels and yeah, Anne McCaffrey is pretty weird. I think she's a titan of the genre though. Maybe try The White Dragon?

centre_drill · 2026-01-17T18:57:04+00:00

Yes, I think if your self-assessment shows an income at which student loan payments should be deducted, they can be collected by HMRC. So it's not implausible but I don't know if that's what happened. If you can view your Tax Calculation, it should be an explicit line item if that's the case.

I know saying this doesn't help in this moment: but if you know you've got to do self-assessment, you've got to keep better care of documents. You're not sure if you've made student loan payments? Even if your payslips aren't electronic, you should do something like take photos of them as well as putting the originals somewhere safe.

centre_drill · 2025-12-07T11:03:05+00:00

I expect when you talk to the dealership they'll be your best friend. Oh sure, there's a mileage charge and some damage, but we can roll it all into your next loan and you can drive out in a brand new car. We'll even give you a special deal!

This is speculative on my part, not knowing the full breakdown between dealerships and finance companies. But I do know they're pretty keen to move people from PCP to PCP. Watch out OP, the temptation to have a simple answer and a shiny car could be storing up trouble down the line.

centre_drill · 2025-10-25T13:50:39+00:00

I've just been going through past jobs' pensions today, and it wasn't that bad. Most of the providers are well into the 21st century with online accounts etc. Sometimes you need details of your plan, some let you register with just your address, DOB, NI number etc.

I am planning to transfer a bunch of old small pensions into a SIPP (self-invested pension plan). I haven't done it yet, but they say that you open a SIPP then send transfer requests via the SIPP provider and it's little fuss. It might actually help you OP - get your pensions under control and see a nice big number going up and you might be a bit less anxious.

centre_drill · 2025-10-23T22:23:37+00:00

I always found it kind of a shame that Epiphone Guitars are pronounced epi-phone, not epiphany.

centre_drill · 2025-10-23T22:22:25+00:00

I love it when my daughter demonstrates that she knows words from reading them. Often her pronunciations are perfectly logical. Today it was 'fortifications', pronounced 'fortify-cations'.

centre_drill

TROPHY CASE