I agree that suddenly adding a formatter to existing code could be disruptive. But how does "buy in from the team" work over time? If you hire someone new and they don't like the format rules, do you stop using the formatter?
I think it depends on the situation. If it's just not their preference then there's probably no need for a change. However, if it's going to prevent the new person from doing their job then a change is probably justified.
People being prevented from doing their job because of code formatting? In my nearly 20 years of development, that statement was indeed true, but only before the age of formatters. Back then, endless hours were spent on recurring discussions and nitpicky stylistic reviews. The supposed gains were minimal, maybe saving a few seconds parsing a line faster. And if something is really hard to read, adding a prettier-ignore comment above the lines works wonders. The number of times I’ve actually needed it since? Just a handful.
Code style is a Pareto-optimal problem space: what one person finds readable may look like complete chaos to someone else. There’s no objective truth, and that’s why I believe that in a project involving multiple people, spending time on this is largely a waste of time.
For example, "nit: maybe call the function updateCreditCard instead of updateCard"
If you disagree and think your function name is better (or that the two are equally bad), then I'm happy to go along with what you've got. But maybe you didn't think of this name or maybe I've convinced you. Either it's a quick fix (and no re-review needed) or you just dismiss my comment.
> As an American, a lot of UK geography and history questions are beyond my ken
But note that the UK-based contestants have no problem with sequences like "US vice presidents ordered by number of terms served" or "US capitals ordered alphabetically by the state they're in".
First, that archers can actually be more effective against mounted troops than foot: the mounted troops ride close together, horses are hard to fully armor, and one horse getting hit in the leg can cause a lot of chaos.
Second, at Agincourt, the French knights _walked_ through the arrow-fire quite successfully, but the effort (physical, mental, cumulative effect of small wounds) tired them enough that the English soldiers could beat them hand-to-hand. And that this ability to inflict small damage before the main fighting is why archers were valuable.
"Maybe the memes making fun of this person are, in fact, an exaggeration."
Sure. I don't need much convincing that Ballmer was only "bad" rather than "uniquely terrible". It seems a pretty normal thing that the negative reaction was outsized.
But I also think it would be more interesting to look at cases where the reaction by the haters was _spot on_. Or even where it _undersold_ how bad things were.
Maybe. In my experience, a more common case is that the buyer has no way to evaluate value other than quoted price and so they're actually _much happier_ with a huge price than they would be with a smaller price for the same work.
You think they’re happier to pay more than to pay less? I’m having a hard time believing that hypothetical.
Regardless, companies that don’t know how to evaluate the value of quoted work will eventually figure out the value later. A client that that is initially happy with a price will likely become retroactively disappointed when they deal with another contractor in the future who has more realistic pricing.
In my experience contracting, I’ve encountered a lot of “You paid how much for this!?” situations when dealing with work from prior contractors. Once they realize how bad and/or overpriced the work of a prior contractor was, that person’s reputation is done. Ironically, the contractor will often try to use them as references for other clients because they were initially happy.
> You think they’re happier to pay more than to pay less? I’m having a hard time believing that hypothetical.
I believe it. Here's an anecdote which blew my mind when I saw it as a kid, and which illustrates the point.
When I was growing up, we had a guy in our church who made guitars. Beautiful instruments (seriously, look up Petros guitars sometime because they're really beautiful), and played/sounded good to boot. Bruce was charging between $3000 and $6000 at the time depending on specifics, so while pricey they weren't expensive by guitar standards. He told me that he got feedback from customers that they weren't sure whether or not his guitars would be good, because they were priced so reasonably (compared to what one would expect to spend on a custom made guitar).
So Bruce decided to raise his prices, and see what happened. He said his sales went up after raising prices, presumably because the guitars were now at a price point where people went "yeah this is what a custom handmade instrument should cost" rather than "what's the catch here". Weird, but hard to argue with results. People aren't always rational buyers, as someone else pointed out.
Tl;dr: Payless Shoes, a discount shoe retailer, opened a fake high-end store under the Palessi name and got fashion influencers to gush about how great the shoes were. People who actually bought such Palessi shoes probably were happier with them than if they’d bought them at Payless.
Years ago, a luxury car company (I believe it was Mercedes) did a study measuring demand with the same car across a relatively wide range of prices. Contrary to economic models that assume rational actors, there was a point where lowering price further made demand go down. People apparently assumed the higher price tag on a car made it more attractive as a consumer.
Probably why Mercedes does not bring their lower-end or lower-optioned car models to North America. They want to maintain their image as a luxury marque so they can command premium prices that their customers are happy to pay.
IME you could have gotten the higher number if you'd avoided saying it.
Because you surrendered a number almost immediately, they have decided that you're inexperienced and so deserve less money.
I think a better strategy is to not answer: "OK, I think it's fine if you don't want to talk about salary right now. I'm sure you pay competitively. Let's focus on whether I'm a good fit with the team first."
After the engineering team has told the recruiter that they want to move forward with hiring you, you have more leverage to negotiate.
If you're finding that your opening bid is always rejected, it's probably because you don't know what's a good number to name. (Lots of people sneer at this but I don't think this is some failing on your part--companies pay tons of money for this kind of salary data which is how they know it.) In this case, you should just do anything you can to avoid naming a number first.
Sorry, I guess my brief summary wasn't clear, I basically do what you say and avoid the discussion as long as possible. You are 100% correct you are in a much better position when the technical folks want you vs some random recruiter.
Sure. Some candidates are extremely experienced in negotiation and know exactly how much they are worth. Those people should absolutely name numbers from the start to avoid having their time wasted. But those people also know who they are and know that they don't need to read advice about negotiation.
Most candidates have no idea what they're worth. Here's what I imagine is happening behind the scenes in your scenarios, assuming a normal candidate:
Scenario 1:
Recruiter: Great news. The candidate was happy with the offer and I didn't even need to ask for permission to offer higher comp. It's always extra time and work when I have to ask for $x+$y+$z.
Scenario 2:
Recruiter: Ha ha. This candidate has no idea what the market rate is. They must only be interviewing at crap companies. We'll offer the bottom of the pay band and they'll be overjoyed because it's 10% higher than they were asking for.
Scenario 3:
Exactly the same as scenario 2, except there was a brief moment when the recruiter wondered if the candidate knew how much they could get.
I entered your prompt and got the same reply from ChatGPT. Then I changed "4 liters" to "4 gallons" and got this:
To measure 4 gallons of liquid using a 3-liter and a 5-liter bottle, you would need to convert gallons to liters first. One gallon is approximately equal to 3.785 liters, so 4 gallons is approximately equal to 15.14 liters.
Since the available bottles have capacities of 3 liters and 5 liters, you will need to fill and empty the bottles several times to reach the target of 15.14 liters. Here's one way to do it:
Fill the 5-liter bottle with water.
Pour the water from the 5-liter bottle into the 3-liter bottle until it's full, leaving 2 liters of water in the 5-liter bottle.
Pour the 2 liters of water from the 3-liter bottle into a separate container.
Repeat steps 1-3 two more times, which will leave you with a total of 6 liters of water in the separate container.
Fill the 5-liter bottle with water again and pour as much as possible into the separate container until it's full. This will add 3 liters of water to the container, for a total of 9 liters.
Fill the 3-liter bottle with water and pour it into the separate container until it's full. This will add another 3 liters of water to the container, for a total of 12 liters.
Fill the 3-liter bottle with water again and pour as much as possible into the separate container until it's full. This will add 1 liter of water to the container, for a total of 13 liters.
Fill the 5-liter bottle with water and pour as much as possible into the separate container until it's full. This will add another 2 liters of water to the container, for a total of 15 liters, which is approximately 4 gallons.
Keep in mind that this method is approximate and assumes that 1 gallon is equal to 3.785 liters. If you need a more precise measurement, you may need to use a measuring container that is calibrated in gallons.
Starts off OK. Notice that it's eventual goal is to get 15 liters: good! But then it doesn't understand what it's doing so it messes around with the 3 liter bottle instead of knowing 3*5=15. Additionally, one of the times it fills the 3 liter bottle and pours all of it out but somehow only produces 1 liter.
And it uses the 5 liter bottle to top up the separate container leaving 2 liters, and then proceeds to fill up the separate container.
Looks like it's mixing up elements of the solution to the original problem without understanding how the topping up works, with the solution to a different problem that it felt was sufficiently related. It's a wild guess based on similarity.
Every person in both the student body and the administration knows that nothing will be done to address this. There will be no action taken to reduce shootings. Since any apology letter is just mouthing lies, I feel like it's a sign of respect to tell people "here are some lies that a robot wrote about caring about you."
