Sucks. Sure do wish we had some sort of collective bargaining power to prevent this. Oh, but that one guy over there is really good at Leetcode, so never mind, every man for himself.
Thanks for questioning my motives because of your pre-existing biases. But no, I'm actually disgusted with the state of this industry. But from this point on, feel free to wonder as you please.
Idk, how would you work to alter the play field if you ran a union? I think I'd try to make it harder to compete with union members, and to improve the transparency and standardization of the industry's hiring practices. I'd even say that at least some industries ought to have entirely public-certified hiring norms for certain roles. Maybe that means setting up a standards board or union-linked oversight commission for it.
All the union shops I've heard of have at least a three month probationary period, possibly six, during which you're not part of the union and don't get any special job protections.
Also there are a ton of positions in various fields for which the organization already has someone in mind but still has to advertise the position and do interviews for various legal reasons.
While I'm not particularly pro union, it is not out of the question that a union representing existing employees might bargain for a requirement that all future candidates be union members
> Sure do wish we had some sort of collective bargaining power to prevent this
This feels a bit too extreme but I assume it comes from a place of pain and the effects of being exploited.
A less extreme solution could be increased transparency.
Here are some examples:
- Companies that post "remote" but it's "remote" only if you live 50 miles away from an office location.
They divulge this only in the offer. Why did they do the interview if they knew you were 200 miles away? To find out whether there's another hub worth opening where there are equally skilled candidates but cheaper
- Companies that post take home assignments to see if a problem they have solved can be solved in a more efficient or novel way. They don't intend to hire - they just don't want to share their current solution and also want to find out if there's a better way to solve their problem
Giving out advice for concrete steps someone can take to prevent a problem isn't victim blaming. Unless we're all content with people just sitting and whining all the time instead of actually doing anything to help themselves. And let's be real, we're talking about open source contributions, not getting mugged for wearing the wrong clothing here.
It's important to note that rudeness is somewhat up for interpretation. Rejecting a patch because it's full of bugs might be considered rude to some people, but not to me. There are definitely times where Drew rubs me the wrong way, but I know he's good at what he does, and I know he's just as fed up as I am about the nonsense. He doesn't suffer fools, and that can seem rude and mean if, well, you're a fool. (To be clear, he's been totally out of line before, but I know he's been working hard to change that, and I think he's been successful.)
Boomer hat: it's just toxic positivity, and the frustrating trend lately of assuming that everyone is equally skilled when writing software. Everyone's input is valid, or else you're just being negative and overly critical.
I'm not saying everyone need to be Linus Torvalds circa 2012, but I do think more people need to be a bit less precious and sensitive, especially when receiving direct communication about their abilities.
You don't need ego-boosting yes men, you just need to work with more experienced folks, and that's okay. But the problem is that there is an army of people online who will take offense to that, and I don't know what the solution is. Best of luck.
Another old person opinion: the issue tracker of an open source project needs to be firmly anchored into the needs of the maintainers and not the users. The argument that bugs/issues need to be kept open forever unless they're fixed and the rejection of WONTFIX as a reason for closing them needs to die in a goddamn fucking fire. When the maintainer decides to close an issue because they're just not getting to it in this lifetime the users need to suck it up.
Oh, come on now. You don't have to enjoy Toni Morrison, but to discount her absolute success because she isn't your preference is more than a little ridiculous.
Every school library in the US has 120 copies of this book. I'm just wondering how many non-school / library buyers there were. If her success is government-mandated, it can easily be discounted.
> Every school library in the US has 120 copies of this book.
This seems improbable.
It seems even more unlikely when The Bluest Eye has been banned so often:
The ALA placed it on the Top Ten Most Challenged Books Lists for 2006, 2014, 2013, 2020, and 2022.
Ultimately, it became the 34th-most banned book in the United States 1990–1999, the 15th-most banned book 2000–2009, and the 10th-most banned book 2010–2019.
I admit some confusion of the idea that Toni Morrison is successful only because she was taught in schools. Schools aren’t known to push literature in classrooms published within that year on a nationwide scale (outside of specifically librarian association recommendations or something like this, a scholastic books thing). From a brief Wikipedia read, The Bluest Eye was published with Toni Morrison was nearly 40 and didn’t sell well, so it makes no sense why that’s the one taught in schools.
We can't even support actual critical physical infrastructure anymore, like roads, bridges, and the power grid. And that stuff has very obvious immediate consequences when it breaks. Try explaining to your local octogenarian senator what xz is and why OpenSSH shouldn't just be funded by whatever spare change we find in the couch cushions.
