Big fan of Will Larson's book. I once recommended it to an Eng director I worked under who had foisted 5 reorgs in four years on his team, and had proposed a sixth.
I didn't last long there as a subordinate leader. The tales I hear from friends made there following my departure, very few did
Which the article indicates, at least as it relates to the US and her companies, is no longer the case:
> In July 2020, the KBA was dropped, and now the US government allows American companies to provide far higher-quality images of the region (so that objects the size of a person can be readily picked out).
KBA wasn't dropped, it still applies. The law is still on the books.
KBA gives the regulator (NOAA) the authority to set a resolution limit for images of Israel. They are supposed to set it to be the best resolution commercially available from non-US providers. In 1998, NOAA set it at 2 metres. In July 2020, NOAA dropped it to 0.4 metres. NOAA had been dragging their feet about that – in 2018, evidence was presented to them of commercial availability of sub-2m resolution images of Israel from non-US providers, but they didn't accept it. Their argument apparently was that even if sub-2m resolution was commercially available, it wasn't "commercially available enough". One factor that changed their mind this time is widespread resale of foreign imagery by US resellers (the KBA only applies to sale of US-acquired imagery, US companies are legally free to resell foreign-acquired imagery.)
KBA still limits US providers to a 0.4 metre resolution of Israel. When foreign commercial providers start offering better than 0.4 metre resolution of Israel, NOAA may drop the limit again. But they may drag their feet that time too.
That's one such agreement between two governments; there are numerous other laws and agreements that would impact anyone attempting to provide real-time imagery of substantial portions of Earth.
I thought the KBA was an amendment to US statutory law, not an 'agreement' between nations? What are the other laws and agreements to which you're alluding to, but weren't referenced in the article?
So the whole "quitting smoking" thing was...a happy coincidence? Did you go cold turkey? What were the nicotine withdrawal nightmares like? I had fierce ones when I quit
I thought this sounded familiar and had to Google things and because I initially thought this was the same person I read about in 2020 who had this happen to them.
Instead it was the same behavior happening to a different homeowner.
When you put it like that...I still think the strip club comparison was weird because I can think of at least one other other common and far less contentious career-path with an interview/try-out process similar to this:
Acting.
Is there perhaps something deeper you want to say about sex workers that’s going unsaid right now?
Acting is apt; however, at least in principle you’re doing a screen test given you want to ensure acting ability as well as photogeneity. But we also know the colloquial acting couch.
Strip clubs don’t care what your skills are, they mostly look for the eye candy their clientele seeks. Video is similar in that it doesn’t care about skills other than maybe being able to present yourself at the cost of all other attributes.
Well, we’ll have to wait and see how it gets used but I see potential for this being abused.
It’s not different from TV news vs Daily newspaper. One is more fluff than the other. When was the last time you saw an “ugly” news anchor. In the papers you don’t care what the reporter looks like.
During a sit down interview you at least have a chance to make your argument if the interviewer has misconceived something or it needs elaboration.
>When was the last time you saw an “ugly” news anchor. In the papers you don’t care what the reporter looks like.
To be completely honest, I don't care what the reporter looks like in either case. But I'm going to presume this was a rhetorical question and not meant as a reply or question to my specific manner of news consumption?
You'll have to forgive me (or, well you don't have to, that's up to you) but this still feels like putting the career carriage in front of the job prospect horse to me-for some reason. Perhaps said another way: none of what you said speaks to me to be a problem with the medium of interviewing (in this case video, ostensibly via tiktok), but instead rather the individuals participating in the process.
I can't quite pin down why, but it's a very strong sensation. I'll take this elsewhere and find a way to reconcile it without going turtles all the way down here in the thread.
I've been having this problem with push notifications for quite a few apps, but Slack just seems to genuinely do whatever the hell it wants, regardless of whatever I've set preferences to.
Yeah I know what you mean. Like sometimes I'll get messages hours after they are sent. Even when my main computer is off so would be considered "away". Now I just have to frequently check slack and that in itself feels like a dark pattern.
How do the conversations typically go when asked "did you know this could happen"/"did we see this coming" or has no one bothered to ask that question yet during the RCA process?
If you haven’t been shot down by an expendable in the past, the best course of action is to find the most complementary position historically taken by leadership, twist to your objective and then credit them publicly with the vision.
You missed that part. "Here is the email chain it was discussed in, including the bit where I raised the concern of what could happen" is generally pretty solid CYA.
I actually did not miss that part, but thanks for calling it out regardless. The question was instead borne out of curiosity as to know how the follow up and subsequent discussions fare even with CYA in pocket.
What has your experience been? Have you had success reprioritizing necessary and critical fixes that were previously not in scope postmortem?
Oh yes. There is nothing quite like "it cost us money" to suddenly change leaderships' priorities. I've watched as product priorities went from "keep bolting on features" to suddenly "we should rewrite this problematic monolith" when thigns fell over and money was lost.
See that makes sense, perhaps it make too much sense. My last two jobs I fought the same battles of "I discovered x, we really should do something about it because it can have really bad outcomes" and having the concern depri'd and ultimately blow up in all of our faces.
And in both situations even when said thing exploded in a bloody mess I struggled to get the buy in to give the fix the full attention it needed because "we're losing money not having these features" (I mean no, you're not, but ok)
Hence my incredulity but honest curiosity, being an ops guy who over-prepares and tries to keep his leaders as informed and prepared to make a decision as possible, but still feels like he's often left holding the bag is dang exhausting, you know?
Maybe I'm overthinking it (this happens sometimes, I'm working on it), but waiting around for a security crisis to happen when a solution is in sight, even when facing difficulty prioritizing the work seems dangerous to one's career.
But I admit not knowing a lot of things most engineers just assume are a given, lately.
It's the difference between working in a push vs a pull shop.
In a push shop (e.g. most non-tech businesses / legacy tech), one is forbidden from working on a thing without management signing off on it and pushing the task to you.
In a pull shop, management communicates priorities (increase reliability) and engineering teams pull tasks to fulfill that.
Believe parent is talking about the former, which is always a cluster&#+@ of technically clueless middle management.
I like that dichotomy. If you or anyone else reading this have any thoughts on it, what are some good questions I ought to be asking during interviews to determine what kind of shop I'm talking to might be?
That's been a real struggle lately, and I want to get better at this to avoid these kinds of push shops you're describing
IMHE, people who work in push shops typically don't realize there's an alternative, which makes identifying them somewhat difficult.
On a side note, I've found push shops tend to be highly correlated with length of position (i.e. "What's the longest someone has ever been on this specific team without transferring or pursuing new opportunities?"). But that's probably more accurately identifying heavily regulated industries, which tend to be push shops do to the Byzantine sign-offs required.
I would say don't ask, "Tell me about a time your team originated an idea, took it to production, and the net impact." Because even push shops have the odd exception that can be rattled off. It's more talking about the typical workflow.
The best I could probably come up with is "Take me through a normal task for your team, from idea origination to prod deployment."
If they start with "We were told to do X", then "By whom? And what did they tell you?" (To the latter, did they specify exactly how or just the end goal?)
You’re not overthinking it. Those of us who wait for catastrophe aren’t silent until it happens. We’re just ready and willing to reiterate what’s wrong when it shows up.
Everything about that situation is dangerous to our careers: saying something, saying nothing, saying a lot, stomping our feet, saying we told them so.
But don’t second guess yourself. You’re expressing exactly the right attitude toward addressing things before they’re an emergency. The people who are using those emergencies to get things done agree, we’re just accustomed to getting shut down unless there’s no other option.
I didn't last long there as a subordinate leader. The tales I hear from friends made there following my departure, very few did