regularmother's recent activity
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Comment on WebStorm and Rider are now free for non-commercial use in ~comp
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Comment on WebStorm and Rider are now free for non-commercial use in ~comp
regularmother LinkMan, I love JetBrains products and am happy that more languages get to be trialed by new users. My experience with JVM language IDEs have been universally excellent, PyCharm has the best static...Man, I love JetBrains products and am happy that more languages get to be trialed by new users. My experience with JVM language IDEs have been universally excellent, PyCharm has the best static linking of any Python IDE I'm aware of, DataGrip is chef's kiss, and RustRover is delightful. Their navigation capability really shines in strongly typed languages or languages with type hints on and available. Excited to see some more uptake in the community for my personal favorite group of IDEs.
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Comment on The massive US port strike has begun: 'We are prepared to fight as long as necessary' in ~transport
regularmother Link ParentThis happened with computers in industry generally and especially with programming. In the 70s, software engineers lamented that the invention of compiled languages would mean fewer engineers...This happened with computers in industry generally and especially with programming.
In the 70s, software engineers lamented that the invention of compiled languages would mean fewer engineers would be needed to write a program. Instead, the opposite happened. Lower costs of production massively increased the value of what software could bring to people and led to a surging demand in the software industry.
I'm not convinced this will happen here, however, because I don't think there's this huge unmet demand for shipping.
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Comment on Has anyone worked at <20 person startup before? How was it? in ~tech
regularmother Link ParentI've also joined two startups, one as pre-seed employee 4 (murdered by COVID at 7 employees) and another as seed-round employee 8 (current role; 14 employees @ A). I also joined two "startups" of...I've also joined two startups, one as pre-seed employee 4 (murdered by COVID at 7 employees) and another as seed-round employee 8 (current role; 14 employees @ A). I also joined two "startups" of 30-50 people (series C and B, respectively). I think @teaearlygraycold has the most nuanced take in this discussion but I wanted to add a few things.
Fundamentally, startups are about asking the question "do people want to buy this thing?" Sometimes, the answer is no and they fail. Rarely, the answer is yes and everyone is happy. Most often, the answer is sort of, but not the exact thing we built and we have to change some fundamental aspect of our business. It's this last part that most startups struggle with and it's called product market fit or PMF.
Every time a company doubles in size up to about 150 people, it's a completely different company. At 5 employees, everyone is everything. The likelihood that one of the founders is committing code before a sales call is very high. The lone engineer is working hand-in-hand with the first customer and the CFO soliciting feedback on designs. Day 1 at work is "get a code repository and a CI pipeline set up." At 10 people, the founders are probably focusing on sales and the 2-4 engineers in engineering are maybe making their first major iteration on the first minimum viable product. At 20 people, there's an org chart and maybe a filled out C-Suite of people. You might have a product manager. The engineering team is struggling to break down silos and even talk to each other. It is likely that the company has still not found PMF. In the 40-80 range, you're probably doing great! There's a lot of traction but you maybe haven't figured out how to cross the chasm. At 160 employees, congratulations, you probably aren't a startup anymore! There may be a funding around but the mission isn't "does anyone want this thing" but rather "how do we sell a LOT more of this?"
Every person at a startup has an outsized impact in a startup because there are too many hats and too few people. This leads to the learning that @teaearlgraycold discusses. My first stint at a pre-seed company fundamentally changed me and launched my career. I initially joined the company with a 1% stake and a salary of $120k in 2018. In 2021, I was making $45k and had a 3.5% stake of a now-worthless company. It was the most heartwrenching, stressful, fulfilling, engaging, technically and emotionally challenging, time of my life and I learned so much. When applying for the next job, in late 2021, my experience let me increase my base salary to $175k (and some other stuff). Fundamentally, every company pays you twice: there's the paycheck you get to put food on the table today and the skills you get to put food on the table tomorrow.
It also means that the interview is really, really, really important. That guy who's an asshole? You can't not work with him- he's the person who does those 5 things and has no real manager to speak of! Interpersonal skills- the management of humans and relationships, plus setting expectations and communication- plays an even more outsized role in a startup. How do you get people to listen to your insight and integrate into their insights? How do you get their insights? Are these roadmaps even remotely viable or are we throwing everything away in a month or two on the next pivot? How do I get John to not be a raging piece of shit? Startups do not fail because technology didn't work. They fail because of mismanagement and poor communication.
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Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech
regularmother Link ParentAlso look at Wellfound for startups.Also look at Wellfound for startups.
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Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech
regularmother LinkI run the AI team/department at an early stage startup. I've hired 2 employees in the last 5 months and am looking to hire a platform engineer/MLOps/DevOps/Data Engineer type person next month....I run the AI team/department at an early stage startup. I've hired 2 employees in the last 5 months and am looking to hire a platform engineer/MLOps/DevOps/Data Engineer type person next month. I'll talk more about that below.
Are your recruiters now pre-filtering resumes before you see them?
Absolutely. I've stopped bothering with actually reading any applications from LinkedIn jobs but I do use LinkedIn to get colleagues of colleagues to reach out to me. I get 600+ applicants with 5+ page resumes and maybe 2-3% of them are even a remotely good fit. I have better things to do with my time than sift through that morass.
What is being used to determine whether a candidate gets an interview now?
I'm a first time manager at an early stage company doing some extremely specialized work. I care about breadth of experience rather than depth. An ideal candidate has done at least 1 or 2 career pivots, has 10+ years of experience, and at least tangential experience in any of the several hyper-specialized fields we're operating in. They're definitely not a jerk- I hope to be working with them until our equity is good enough to retire on. An ideal candidate also has some metrics to back up their success- things like "increased X by Y%" rather than "did X."
- The more experienced a candidate is, the more likely they are to successfully manage me. Management is about disappointing people around you to a level they are comfortable with. Experienced candidates can stem off disappointment in ways that more junior candidates can't.
- The more experienced a candidate is, the less I have to manage them.
- The more experienced a candidate is, the more likely they are to be less wrong. No one is ever perfect- so aiming for less wrong seems like a good spot to be.
My first ML Engineer, for example, was definitely not the strongest at ML nor at Software but their Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and 2 years of digital hardware design meant they could work closely with the hardware team and do data capture experiments on their own when needed rather than tie up the only other person who was previously capable of doing that. This was recently validated because these skills are now critical to de-risking the next generation of our hardware design. Their 5 years of experience in industry, their graduate degree, and their postdoc meant they've probably had at least one awful manager and know how to manage up.
This next candidate will be somewhere on a continuum between Platform Engineer and Data Engineer and MLOps Engineer. Where is anyone's guess- I'm flexible- but these early round startup roles always need people comfortable with wearing a lot of hats.
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Comment on Most reliable privacy-conscious notes app? in ~tech
regularmother LinkSurprised no one has suggested Logseq with sync. Should have end to end encryption and it's way better than Obsidian.Surprised no one has suggested Logseq with sync. Should have end to end encryption and it's way better than Obsidian.
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Comment on Norwegian and or European salary expectations? in ~life
regularmother Link ParentThank you! That is super helpful! No. I or, more likely a lawyer, would be setting that up. Is LinkedIn as prevalent in Norway as it is in the US for tech jobs/roles? Likewise, are there...Thank you! That is super helpful!
Does the company you work for already have a legal entity that can hire you in the EEA?
No. I or, more likely a lawyer, would be setting that up.
it might be good to already have some feelers in the local job market.
Is LinkedIn as prevalent in Norway as it is in the US for tech jobs/roles? Likewise, are there recruiting agencies you or friends have used before- either as a client or as a prospective employee?
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Norwegian and or European salary expectations?
Short version: is there a levels.fyi or equivalent for employees in the European Economic Area (EEA)? How do I figure out what an equivalent employee in Norway makes vs one in the US? Long...
Short version: is there a levels.fyi or equivalent for employees in the European Economic Area (EEA)? How do I figure out what an equivalent employee in Norway makes vs one in the US?
Long version: I just found out my partner got the offer for a job that'll force relocation to Norway from the US for a new role. My current role, schedule, and responsibilities will likely work just fine in Norway and I expect that I can keep my job if I pitch it correctly to the executive team. I need to figure out what:
- I should be making
- What potential hires from Norway or the EEA would need to make
I work as the Head of AI running a team of 4 technical (ML Engineers) and non-technical (Data Capture technicians) people in a Series A startup. I am the Engineering Manager, the Team Lead, the Tech Lead, an IC, and periodically do pre-sales and technical customer support/onboarding. My team is all new, basically, having been hired in the last 90 days or less, and I am excited to delegate after finishing their onboarding! Currently, I have 1% equity and make $200,000. My role is remote and requires 20-30% travel. Where I live now is actually more expensive for flying across the US than from Oslo and about the same time factoring layovers, so travel costs will decrease. Due to how meeting schedules work out, no meetings will have to be moved to accommodate me at all. Is advocating for maintaining the same salary correct or should it decrease given the higher worker protections and benefits required by Norwegian employment law? Separately, what would hiring Norwegian employees look like from a comp perspective? I'd really like to keep this job and make a strong case for why it won't be a huge net-negative for the company.
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Comment on NHL Board of Directors approves "relocation" of Arizona Coyotes in ~sports.hockey
regularmother LinkI am totally out of the loop on this. What happened to the Arizona Coyotes that caused them to be bought out beyond the normal buy/sell stuff?I am totally out of the loop on this. What happened to the Arizona Coyotes that caused them to be bought out beyond the normal buy/sell stuff?
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Comment on What AI tools are you actually using? in ~tech
regularmother Link ParentPhind is phenomenal for code. Figuring out stack traces or how to do something is great. The more popular something is, the better these models are, for better or worse, even with RAG. K8s? Great....Phind is phenomenal for code. Figuring out stack traces or how to do something is great.
The more popular something is, the better these models are, for better or worse, even with RAG. K8s? Great. DCOS? Go fuck yourself. AWS? Amazing. GCP? Noticeably worse.
The real life saver has been plotting. Matplotlib has an interface that can kindly be described as esoteric. I frequently copy and paste my schema, some sample data, and what I want my graph to look like and bam. Works 60% of the time every time. When it fails, it gets close the remaining 35-ish%.
Again, as another user said, because I'm a domain subject expert, I know what to ask and how to ask. I also know when I'm getting answers that are probably wrong.
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Comment on US Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan is fighting for an anti-monopoly America. Some say Khan – who’s gone after Kroger, Amazon, and Nvidia – has redefined the US antitrust landscape. in ~finance
regularmother LinkI'm glad that someone is making the economy productiveI'm glad that someone is making the economy productive
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Comment on Cities: Skylines II | Official release trailer in ~games
regularmother LinkThere's a lot of negativity in the comments so let me be the positive one: this game is really, really fun. I am loving the road tools and terraforming. The zoning breaks can be a bit frustrating...There's a lot of negativity in the comments so let me be the positive one: this game is really, really fun. I am loving the road tools and terraforming. The zoning breaks can be a bit frustrating sometimes but wow, I just love the freedom and creativity afforded to me by this game. It's, like, nearly perfect.
The performance woes are overblown mostly by people expecting that games are only playable at max graphics settings. With a few simple graphics tweaks, I'm playing the game at a smooth 50 fps@2k on my 6750XT at mostly low and medium settings and the game looks great!
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Comment on Office chair recommendations? in ~health
regularmother Link ParentAnother vote in favor of it with the addendum that the HM Aeron will survive any moves you do. By and large, it's not flimsy plastic- it's basically cast aluminum. I've moved at least once a year...Another vote in favor of it with the addendum that the HM Aeron will survive any moves you do. By and large, it's not flimsy plastic- it's basically cast aluminum. I've moved at least once a year for 6-7 years and it's the only thing I've got that hasn't been appreciably damaged in that entire time.
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Comment on Smart home automation - tip, tricks, advice? in ~life.home_improvement
regularmother Link ParentDo you have your home assistant tied to central station monitoring? If so, what provider do you use?Do you have your home assistant tied to central station monitoring? If so, what provider do you use?
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Comment on Surviving vegetarianism as a non-vegetarian chef in ~food
regularmother Link ParentI used to get my MSG directly from meat. The additional flavors, textures, and fats also add a lot of depth to the meal. Literally 1 slice of pork belly and you have pork fried rice! A startling...I used to get my MSG directly from meat. The additional flavors, textures, and fats also add a lot of depth to the meal. Literally 1 slice of pork belly and you have pork fried rice! A startling number of transitioning vegetarians talk about throwing in some MSG as that works as a replacement.
As you said, I talked a lot about alternatives to pure MSG but I do use MSG in addition. I just want to highlight how a lot of that can be maintained. The crispy, crusty, smokey meat flavor and texture? Toasted rapeseed oil or butter and mushroom of some cut size suitable for your dish at medium heat is a great substitute. Add MSG if it's not enough!
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Surviving vegetarianism as a non-vegetarian chef
My SO decided that she'd be a vegetarian after watching the most recent Avatar movie almost a year ago. I am the kind of person that will spend hours perfectly managing a charcoal smoker to make...
My SO decided that she'd be a vegetarian after watching the most recent Avatar movie almost a year ago. I am the kind of person that will spend hours perfectly managing a charcoal smoker to make the perfect brisket and whose COVID hobby was making the perfect steak. I love chasing technique and incremental improvements. I hate instant pots and think making soups are boring- I want action and creativity rather than strictly following a recipe. I also enjoy cooking for others but cooking food I don't like to eat and don't like to make saps a lot of the joy out of it. This has been a challenging transition but I just wanted to share what's been working for me so people who are in a similar boat can survive, too, and hear what other people are doing to survive the transition as well.
- Embrace the wok. Every meal from here on out can be a 1 pot mise-en-place made by action star. There is so much in making the perfect wok meal that it is crazy. Chinese cooking demystified is a great place to start, as is Kenji's book "The Wok." This single-handedly made me realize that I, too, could love cooking vegetarian.
- To add meat flavor and texture into your meal without MSG, embrace the mushroom.
- Wheat-started ferments are the next level down on the umami flavor chart without a lot of the vinegar of lacto-fermentation. Fermented soy beans are dope as are various fermented chile peppers (both korean and sichuan are delightful in different ways).
- To add meat flavor into your meal without MSG, fermented everything is your friend. The Noma Guide to Fermentation is a great place to start and the pao cai pickle jar is the easiest way to have that on hand if you aren't eating pickles every day. Fuschia Dunlop goes into great detail on that in the Food of Sichuan.
- "Alternative meats" never work if the meat is not the centerpiece of your meal. For example, impossible or beyond pork does not work ever in a pork fried rice because fake meats don't have the required fat content. Personally, I also really taste the pea protein flavor and have given up on them entirely. Use fresh mushrooms instead. Vegetarian mapo tofu isn't omitting the pork but rather adding wok-fried diced oyster/shitake/enoki/chanterelle mushrooms (removing some moisture is key- mushrooms have a lot of water in them) and increasing the amount of oil used since the mushrooms are so absorbent. Basically, impossible meat is impossibly bad- embrace vegetarian meals and their offer of totally unique flavors and textures.
- A Nakiri or Usuba and a thousand little stackable steel mixing bowls makes the prep experience a lot better. Also, those bowls are like, $2-3/bowl at restaurant supply stores- don't buy them at amazon or walmart. Online restaurant supply stores offer similar prices+shipping.
- When making dishes, particularly in a wok, your dish can still have fish sauce and other peoples' can have chinese light soy sauce or japanese soy sauce. BTW- another umami bomb- fermented sauces. Thai fish sauce or garum analogues are for you and soy sauce is for your vegetarian buddies.
- There do exist good vegetarian broths that can mimic the flavor but not the gelatenous texture of a homemade chicken stock. AFAIK the only way to come close to that homemade broth mouthfeel is to thicken the soup in a finishing step with some type of flour (white wheat, teff, arrowroot, whatever you have on hand!). My greatest broth successes have involved a mirepoix, shitake mushrooms, piles of garlic, and tons and tons of nori, roasting or broiling it in an oven to add char, and then boiling it down with black peppercorns.
- Your new burger recipe is Kenji's black bean burger. It's really good.
- Most importantly, you can still cook for yourself sometimes. Just because other people don't eat meat doesn't mean you can't on occasion. You can still make The Dish even if you're the only one eating it. Accept that, when you move, you won't become friends with your butcher anymore and get weird cuts on the sly (h/t to Primal Supply of Philadelphia, the best butcher shop in the world).
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Comment on Experiences with low FODMAP diets in ~food
regularmother Link ParentMy wife was diagnosed with Chron's and we did a low FODMAP diet for a while. For people who like food, low FODMAP is, like the above poster suggested, cannot be a permanent state of affairs. My...My wife was diagnosed with Chron's and we did a low FODMAP diet for a while. For people who like food, low FODMAP is, like the above poster suggested, cannot be a permanent state of affairs.
My recommendation is to follow low FODMAP strictly and reintroduce slowly. That thing you can't do without may be your trigger. My wife said, "I'll do low fodmap but keep coffee." She was still having symptoms. Lo and behold, her triggers were caffeine and other stimulants found in coffees and caffeinated teas, plus alcohol! Now we live a perfectly normal life of eating and drinking whatever we want except she drinks white tea and suffers the consequences of wine on occasion.
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Comment on Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - July 6 in ~news
regularmother Link ParentI'm going to quote Michael Kofman here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1677435161514737665.html The US and the EU dragged their feet for a year on scaling up artillery production. Now, when...I'm going to quote Michael Kofman here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1677435161514737665.html
A few thoughts on DPICM. Providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, at this stage, could have a significant impact beyond what other capabilities might achieve. Despite the drawbacks, unlocking this stockpile has important implications for the course of Ukraine's offensive. 1/
Ukraine's offensive is limited by the artillery ammunition available. The US, and other countries, provided a significant amount for this operation. Much of this was borrowed from South Korea. Without this ammunition it is difficult to imagine this offensive taking place. 2/
Progress has been slow, difficult, and without sustained breakthroughs thus far. While UA retains the bulk of its combat power, artillery use rate is likely higher than anticipated, especially as the past weeks have seen a largely attritional approach. 3/
Consequently, Ukraine's hardest limit is proably not manpower, or equipment, but arty ammunition. This is foremost about the numbers. Providing DPICM gives access to a sizable stockpile of artillery ammo that can alleviate the time pressure on UA operations. 4/
With DPICM the US is also in a much better position to sustain Ukraine's war effort into next year, which requires significant amounts of artillery ammunition on a monthly basis. While other capabilities may be great to have, providing DPICM may prove more impactful. 5/
While UA retains options, the offensive may culminate whenever the ammunition runs low. Extending that timeline is critical. I wont get into the debate on effectiveness vs the risks, dud rates, etc. My view is these considerations are ultimately best left for Ukraine to weigh.
The US and the EU dragged their feet for a year on scaling up artillery production. Now, when Ukraine is desperately low on 155mm artillery ammunition and trying to push an attritional offensive, that inaction has shown its consequences. The Ukrainians face a choice between tube-launched 155mm cluster munitions with no Russians and the inverse. That's the Ukrainian's choice to make!
For me, on the balance of it, I would rather lose an arm or a leg to an errant cluster bomb than my life and end up in another mass grave like those in Bucha, Irpin, and others.
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Comment on Are there any good programming podcasts to listen these days? in ~comp
regularmother Link ParentI've also been looking for one for years and never found anything that was, well, anything other than reviewing some basics for a handful of episodes and then giving up. I think ML & AI is just...I've also been looking for one for years and never found anything that was, well, anything other than reviewing some basics for a handful of episodes and then giving up. I think ML & AI is just really hard to have a casual discussion about for people that aren't explicitly research scientists. It's even sometimes challenging for people that aren't in the same subfield to have a deep discussion! While I'd love a podcast like that, I'm not sure how wide the audience would be.
While not a podcast per say, the tutorial sessions at the start of, say, CVPR and ICML are really good for passive listening and are often more in the vein of "Annual Review" rather than bleeding edge papers which can often be kind of meh. They're usually put up on YouTube or kept on the conference site.
For sure - nothing beats zed.dev there- and their AI Assistant is awful in comparison to cursor.ai, but for core development experience, I think Jetbrains still has it. Most code work is maintenance except at the very start of a company and I think optimizing for the 80% over the 20% is right in general.
That said, if Jetbrains doesn't step up their AI game by leveraging their static linking and tree analysis into improving their automatic context window input to LLMs, they'll fall behind to Cursor and Zed (the latter of which Anthropic is contributing to directly). This is my biggest pain point but they've made good progress quarter on quarter so I'm bullish here.