I find titles to be a social construct we use, the meaning of "senior" I feel has been diluted over the years much like the word "engineer" has been as well
I think the more important question is whether or not the person you are hiring can do the given job and task, regardless of years of experience
This is a great suggestion, it can help get rid of that sense of "I need to write this code now" but still produce a meaningful diff in the relevant places you'll need to change without all the mental overhead of determining the logic right there & then
This blog post covered SSR better than most blog posts I've seen
Anytime SSR or any of its derivatives comes into the conversation I always ask myself if things are becoming unnecessarily more complex. React server rendered components sounds like it's taking things too far - it goes against the natural developer experience DX order
If your complexity on the app is doubled and it slows and confuses all the developers with increased coding footguns for only a measly gain in performance, is it worth it?
Good old php sites and rails app with no SPAs have worked fine over the years
Benign dictatorships are almost always easier to pull off than board management models.
Board management models generally only work if it the restaurant was individually owned at one point and then that owner left
Starting a worker owned restaurant from the ground up is a terrible idea because the end customer doesn't really care and your artificially creating additional managerial barriers to entry when you have to move fast early on
If someone has the capability of leading a worker owned restaurant (there is always a leader even in these models - e.g. a board chair), they are also equally capable of running a simpler ran benign dictatorship with less red tape.
The other issue with board management runned operations is if you want to expand operations (e.g. opening up a second restaurant). It will get political very fast and not work because there will be disagreements on how money should be spent and allocated
A worker owned business is just a more complicated business. It can work but it needs very specific conditions and it's prone to political issues
I have seen though however a benign dictatorship take on funds from investors to expand operations, but that only works if there is a well established culture (e.g. usually the restaurant has built a few successful stores on their own). It's not very that far off from startups taking investor funding
There's a reason we call restaurant entrepreneur as restauranteurs
I run my own nonprofit currently (board management) and have done startup consulting for the restaurant space for over a decade. Restaurants and startups operates on similar principles
I don't see how any of your points don't apply to 'having shareholders' equally.
A board management can elect a leader/ceo/dictator if they wanted (and from the sounds of it probably should).
Just like having a company run directly by shareholders is probably a bad idea.
Having a company that is 100% Owned by the same people that it employs does not make a decision on how it's run, it just aligns workers and shareholder interests completely.
you could have a worker-owned business where one person is appointed "benevolent dictator for now" when things need moving fast. "worker-owned" doesn't mean "every decision has to be collective"
I can't tell if this some subtle satire on the 20th century of other similar "benevolent dictators for now" that, any day now, will relinquish control to the masses of workers. If not, that would be some true irony.
no, just a play on "benevolent dictator for life" - my contention is if the situation calls for a "dictator" who can make decisions fast and unilaterally, that could as well be a job as a position of power.
I worked at a company that sounds similarly to this company culture about 3 years ago. I got laid off, moved onto a better company.
But just yesterday I ran into someone who works at my old company. We chatted for a little bit until I realized how drained I was getting just from talking to him
And I learned something about this type of culture, especially having read these comments in this thread:
Canonical sounds like a tech fraternity. Just imagine a traditional fraternity or sorority - the hazing (the boss eating food during your interview), the induction processes (hiring asking for high school background, the unnecsesary long essay prompts, unnecessary long interview process, the ghosting, etc)
They are filtering for a very specific person. Someone who is a "Yes" person to the point that they will demolish their morale values and respect on themselves. They sound like there looking for more younger & naiive, but brilliant engineers, that can be basically exploited to build great things. Asking for so much personal information about why they want to work there, there high school background, is basically from the HR perspective "Can I exploit this person if they work there, by leveraging their past against them?" It's a power play dynamic - it's easier to manipulate and gaslight someone you know more about
I have people on both sides of these spectrums.
On the applicant side, we sometimes call them 10x genius engineers that make everyone's life miserable because their code is way too complex for no particular reason. There also underpaid usually and promised promotions and payraises, but those are just empty promises to keep them on the leash. They say their coworkers code is dogshit but don't realize how many unnecessary abstractions that made in their own code. They also don't take advice from friends telling them they are being exploited either, and they usually have an addiction problem to compensate the exploitation (weed,drugs, alchohol generally speaking). They also do amazing work and build amazing things though on the other end, and usually invent very novel solutions that aren't easy for others to inherit or work on
On the business/HR/CEO side - these are the same people that never mature out of the applicant side, and continue the hazing process ritual. Usually the boss on the outside sounds very down to earth, respectable, but deep down inside he likes to have raging parties and feels like he/she missed out on the frat lifestyle growing up. It's externalized validation for them
Having a particularly confusing hiring process is actually a form of gatekeeping from keeping people that respect their boundaries from applying. It's the same level of logic as scammers who will intentionally misspell their emails to filter for people who aren't as grammatical or tech savvy - for instance, since it's easier to target more gullible or less-informed audiences
Not saying that Canonical is that case. But it definitely does sound like a tech fraternity. And the hiring process sounds like a hazing process at a fraternity.
But, at the time I actually really wanted that tech fraternity life style and appreciated it for what it was. Most small / tech consulting agencies are more likely to have this cultural mindset, because working with new clientelle usually is an emotional rollercoaster. You do learn a lot in these environments - and it is stressful - and you do get treated like dogshit without you realizing it (someone outside the company has to tell you) - but you also learn to appreciate a more mature better work/life balance afterwards.
It's not terrible for a first job if your young single and have no kids, sometimes you have to learn things the hard way
I think the author here is prioritizing simplicity of deployments above all else, because he realizes time is money. The amount of time to build something VS paying to use an off the shelf item is an important decision to make, and I think the author made good decisions across the board
The author does come across more as a business/operations person first, developer second. Most developers would not consider tools like ahrefs or intercom or even realize that marketing is generally more difficult/important than the develpment work itself
Relatively speaking even at all these costs I would consider this to be frugal. If your a skilled developer you would easily be worth at least $100/hr
Taking off the shelf solutions with easy scalability of services for adding additional people operationally is important
time saved is time earned, time is money, and money saved is money earned
I wish people like this would architectural decision records so people inheriting it later wouldn't be left in the dark by the decisions made in the system
Because sometimes on the outside systems look confusingly written, but it could be a reflection of the scope of confusing business rules to begin with that they had to scope out
What I propose wherever I go is writing a deprecation plan before production release. It may not be kept up to date over the lifetime but at least a plan for what it would look like to exit to another platform exists documenting assumptions and one way doors, why things were done, and what a replacement would look like and why. I’ve never had great success though, people are too eager to make the next 1.0.
> Choosing to enjoy life today instead of waiting for tomorrow for that enjoyment isn't a failure, it's a choice. It comes with risk and tradeoffs.
100% this. It's not as black or white as people make it.
That being said, there is some level of diminishing returns for how much enjoyment you can get from something (e.g. eating), and how much of a tradeoff (e.g. gaining weight). You can maximize it (be selective in which foods you really like - and the people you want to be around) and minimize the tradeoffs (eating in a day 2 meals instead of 3). That's if you want to take a sabbatical and maximize the enjoyment out of life. If you want to grind, focus on yourself, etc and push yourself to the limits - you need to be outside that comfort zone. You spend more time putting yourself in uncomfortable situations at the cost of spending less time with friends and family.
Life is all about balance.
Sometimes you take high risks and push yourself further
Sometimes you take low risks and enjoy the benefits from the work you put in
With every high comes lows
All good things come to an end
But you won't get anywhere in life without taking risks
When I started using Airbnb it definitely was more affordable than hotels
Now a days I almost always book hotels instead - especially for 1-2 day visits - as it always tends to be cheaper, less complications, and offer more value imo
