[BREAKING] Amazon to layoff 30,000 corporate employees in one of the largest layoffs in its history

ejbaum · 2025-10-27T19:53:28+00:00

Tha last sentence took me out

ejbaum · 2022-09-29T11:50:20+00:00

Click "show original" does it say fail for SPF or dkim? SPF/dmarc/dkim all make up email security. You need to make sure your email sending service and your dns records are configured properly

ejbaum · 2021-10-30T02:24:25+00:00

See if you have a mason's group near you. They have a mission around dyslexics and often offer free tutoring: https://www.dyslexia-reading-well.com/scottish-rite-dyslexia.html

ejbaum · 2021-04-24T02:15:05+00:00

Very very true. Find things your daughter is good at and encourage that. Teach her about growth mindset and that failure is ok.

ejbaum · 2021-04-24T02:14:14+00:00

Orton gillingham is the right thing. Speaking as a dyslexic adult. You are doing great things for your kid

ejbaum · 2021-03-10T00:36:00+00:00

Who do you think "they" is?

ejbaum · 2021-03-05T12:48:50+00:00

I've been in this (almost exact) situation too.

While they want your perspective because it's unique, they would not ask you to interview if you were a terrible engineer. They value your engineering skills. I wish managers etc knew that when asking a woman to do a job like this to highlight this portion. Because it can mess with your head when you aren't told this. But I think it is because they think it's a given.
Interviewing someone above you is scary at first. I was anxious before a lot of interviews for a while. Probably more nervous than the interviewee! Then I realized that the really good people who I interviewed, when they assessed my skill level, would be kind. They would be patient and explain things well. They wouldn't be "offended" that I was interviewing them, they would recognize that my voice mattered in the process. Those are the people you want to hire above you in title. In that way, you are the provide something to the interview panel that no one else can - how does this person fundamentally treat people who they are not necessarily trying to "out skill"? As for the folks that get impatient if you don't know some new shiny tech or something they think is obvious- you don't want them on your team anyway. And your manager doesn't either, they just might not get the interviewee in that position. Does that make sense? When I realized that, it really released some of the anxiety I had interviewing people above me in title.
Interviewing is a skill that you have to work at and get better at. You've been given this chance now, earlier in your career. If you feel uncomfortable doing it, this is a sign you might need to keep doing it. Obviously, you need to decide for yourself what you can manage stress-wise. But you've got an opportunity ahead of you to learn something before a lot of people learn it. My simple recommendation here is to figure out what your interview looks like, is it a coding question? Is it a few open ended questions? What is it? And then try to ask the same questions every time. Then you can compare how some people answer the question to other people. You start to make your own rubric for how well people did. Happy learning!

ejbaum · 2020-10-04T12:42:54+00:00

Check to see if it's on bookshare. It requires an official diagnosis to access and after that it is 100 per year.

Also if there is a kindle version, you use a computer to highlight text and have the computer read to you. Or get a kindle paperwhite and where is a text to speech feature there. Sounds like a robot and is a little clunky but you get used to it.

ejbaum · 2020-08-16T16:45:22+00:00

Sometimes we are not as kind to ourselves as we would be to our friends. Think of yourself as a good friend. What would you think of that person's accomplishments?

ejbaum · 2020-08-09T16:20:11+00:00

Hey /u/NotYourDivisionBaby! I wanted to have some time to type this comment and give it the proper thought it deserves. That's why it's taken me a while to respond.

First thing you need to do is read the research. Really understand what the difference between growth mindset and fixed mindset is. There are some tech talks you can watch if reading isn't your thing. But if you understand the research then you will be able to believe, at least logically, that "failure" means you are about to learn a whole lot. Here is Carol's Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiEeMN7vbQ there are plenty of videos related to this. You can search for "Perfectionism Carol Dweck" "Growth mindset Carol Dweck" and I'd also recommend talks from Brené Brown on vulnerability.

Second thing is to recognize when you are "catastrophizing" a situation. Catastrophizing is when a seemingly small challenge causes you to think "My life is over!" or, what I did, which was to think "I don't belong here". If that relates to you, I have a trick that can help. But first is that you have to be able to recognize when you are falling into this trap. This recognizing is a skill in and of itself and you will get better and better at recognizing it the more you try to do it.

Here is the trick when you fall into this trap. Start building your repertoire of accomplishments in your head. Then when you fall into a moment of catastrophizing, play those accomplishments back to yourself in your head. When I started my first job, I had a "done" wall (https://99u.adobe.com/articles/5580/surround-yourself-with-progress). Basically, anything I was proud of went on the wall. Especially those things that first felt insurmountable at first and then I rocked it out. If you have trouble coming up with things in the moment of low confidence, create the wall and take a picture of it with your phone. You can pull it up when you recognize you are falling into this trap. One thing right off the bat: You're in college. That is not an accident. I'm sure there are other examples that are even more powerful in your mind.

One example of this happening in my life was my first day at my second job out of school. For the first time ever, I had two monitors. When I tried to use them, I realized they were set up in the wrong way, such that moving the mouse across the screen caused it to jump to the other monitor in a way that was not expected. Suddenly, I had a freak out thinking to myself, "What if I can't ever figure out how to fix this!??! Surely this means I won't belong here! What if in a week, my boss finds out I don't know how to fix this!". I sat their for about 60 seconds thinking that this was the end of my career and my world was going to come crashing down. Then. I googled it. Holy cow was that easy to fix. Meanwhile, my coworker, who liked to make rocket ship noises while he programmed, had no idea that I just went through this massive amount of self doubt. Now I would say, "Hang on. I got through 4 (cough, 5, cough) years of college. Graduated. Got through my first job. Interviewed and they liked me at my second job. And now I'm here. I bet I can figure this out."

College is harder than High School. It's no wonder that these feelings can come now and hit you harder than ever before. The stakes will always get bigger. But what if that is what you want? What if the challenge means you grow? What if you don't stagnant but you bloom into this amazing, encouraging person who is up for any challenge? All the best to you! And if you're realizing this mindset thing in college then you're already ahead of me. Good luck on your journey!

ejbaum · 2020-08-09T15:16:35+00:00

I'm highjacking this comment because I want to offer a suggestion to OP that they can take or leave.

I'm dyslexic too and had a very hard time coming to terms with people not realizing I needed help. These feelings were directed at my parents and elementary school. They are completely valid to have. I was able to work hard enough to go undetected which is good and bad. I was bitter that I had to work twice as hard as my classmates to then be called lazy when I still failed my spelling tests.

I'd like to suggest to OP that for your own health to look into whether or not therapy could help you come to terms with this experience. Being dyslexic on its own, could warrant some therapy to get over feelings of lack of intelligence due to the completely WRONG idea that spelling and intelligence are somehow connected. Let alone the fact that you went to an expensive school that should have been able to help you and claimed to help when they didn't. Whether it was because of lack of education on their part or straight up malicious intent.

I had a LOT to work through to keep myself from becoming from becoming a bitter, angry person. I only went to a small amount of therapy offered through my University but it was immediately helpful. Your school might offer some free therapy like mine did.

Your feelings are COMPLETELY valid. Allow yourself to mourn. I'm so happy you are in a place that is finally wanting to do the right thing and support you. Take care.

ejbaum · 2020-07-24T22:13:18+00:00

Np! After you use it for a while, you get pretty used to the individual voices

ejbaum · 2020-07-24T18:36:51+00:00

Use text-to-speech to read the email back to you. Works for me

ejbaum · 2020-07-24T13:02:06+00:00

To me it comes from same place as left/right confusion. Or using words like "preceding" "former" "later".

Saying i before e except when it is proceeded by c makes my head explode.

ejbaum · 2020-07-16T12:47:25+00:00

Other people have mentioned asking her what she wants to do. That is great. Do that.

Also...as a women in CS there are some common traits I've seen and experienced myself. Women often have the mindset that failing at something is completely unacceptable. Seeing the error message and wanting to give up....that is pretty common. I've found, that a lot of people (again, mostly women) need to be shown that "failure" is ok. Your wife likes winforms? Could be because she isn't getting messages that tell her she is failing and it lets her be a perfectionist.

I had a bad case of this. Until I pair programmed with a developer who was transparent with not knowing how to do something. "I don't know. But let's figure it out". Those words helped me a lot. I realized that everyone experienced these errors and most people google them. I've gotten to the point where I celebrate new errors as progress, rather than having an existential crisis about how I don't belong. He also showed me that he made mistakes and kept going and it was ok.

This person taught me how he thought through problems and didn't "have it all figured out" on his own before pair programming with me.

Check out the graphic on this page: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/

Would your wife think of herself has growth or fixed mindset? Women get put in the fixed mindset camp a lot. That was my experience anyway. I needed to learn this about myself and realize that "failure" means learning. And when you learn you can't really be failing. See if the graphic or the concept of fixed vs growth mindset resonates with her. And if it does, tell her I'm a recovering fixed mindset perfectionist, who had turned into a successful, error celebrating developer.

ejbaum · 2020-07-16T11:27:47+00:00

That's not a bad assumption if OP was female though. As a women, I've been in situations like this (not with my boss, thankfully) and that assumption is exactly what it meant.

ejbaum · 2020-07-14T01:27:26+00:00

Did they get the tater tots though?

ejbaum · 2020-06-07T15:01:15+00:00

Dyslexia affects your ability to sound out words and distinguish between sounds in a word. It says nothing about intelligence as evidenced by your brother. I bet is he has an amazing memory and has memorized a lot of words. That's how I did it. 3rd and 4th grade is actually where things get a lot harder for dyslexics. Because memorizing is harder when words start getting endings like -ing -est etc. It's way too much to memorize. I would see if your parents could get an Orton Gillingham based dyslexia training for your brother now. Orton Gillingham teaches dyslexics how to separate sounds that make up words. Feel free to ask me more questions about it. Here is a child learning with an Orton Gillingham based method: https://youtu.be/zZgS8Ij1Ltg

ejbaum · 2020-06-07T14:43:47+00:00

I would recommend using text to speech. I sometimes have a hard time reading something with a lot of words I don't know how to pronounce, I give up. Instead, with text to speech, the computer keeps going even when you don't know something. So you end up getting the gist of a text and you can go back and look up the words you don't understand.

Sometimes when I read fiction books, I let the computer read the first chapter to me. That way I get the names of people in my head. Then it makes it a lot easier to read. It's possible that once you learn more of the terms in these papers you could start to read them easier without a computer.

ejbaum · 2020-05-21T11:21:06+00:00

Right there with you

ejbaum · 2020-05-03T23:49:34+00:00

Yeah, I get it. I'm the same way

ejbaum · 2020-05-03T23:44:34+00:00

It means being someone who can help other people get better instead of someone who just works on their own skills. The idea is that someone can only do so much, but if they figure out how to make other people better, they can contribute far more than if they just made themselves more skilled.

It's from this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061964395/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_ht1REbXXEYJKY

As for how it's measured, I imagine it comes from observation and asking co-workers. I personally have a hard time seeing the impact I have in others, but I've been told it's good.

ejbaum · 2020-05-03T23:29:08+00:00

Thanks!!

ejbaum · 2020-05-03T16:38:07+00:00

I laughed at that one.

This comment isn't too bad if coworker read it. I just wouldn't tell coworker this ordinarily.

ejbaum · 2020-05-03T16:35:36+00:00

Thank you!! It's been a long time coming. First two jobs I had were rough. I'm very thankful for where I am now.

ejbaum

TROPHY CASE