> CrowdStrike followed up with Delta on the offer for onsite support and was told that the onsite resources were not needed
> Even though Microsoft's software had not caused the CrowdStrike incident, Microsoft immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge following the July 19 outage," the letter said. "Each day that followed from July 19 through July 23, Microsoft employees repeated their offers to help Delta. Each time, Delta turned down Microsoft's offers to help, even though Microsoft would not have charged Delta for this assistance
Two vendors offer you free on-site help, during the biggest outage in history, and you turn it down?
This isn't the CIA, it's Delta Airlines. Bring those overpriced security monkeys in, make em sign an NDA, and have them sit there and watch you type.
To not do that... even if they were useless... I can't find a justification ....... other than being able to later claim it wasn't Delta's fault it was down so long, and nobody having evidence to the contrary.
Realistically speaking AWS and GCP are not that different and anyone who has 5 years experience in one can quickly pick up the other. But teams will often go with the person who has experience in the stack they use, just because it's an easier way to weed through the stack of 300 resumes. Hiring is broken mostly because of reliance on resumes.
Makefiles fill that great need for a high-level 'scripting DSL', where you have a lot of different programs (or scripts), with a loose set of dependencies or order of operation, and you want a very simple way to call them, with some very simple logic determining the order, arguments to pass, parallelization, etc. Their ubiquity on all platforms makes it even easier to use them.
I much prefer Make to alternatives like Just or Taskfile. Besides the fact that more people know Make, Make actually has incredibly useful functionality that alternatives remove 'for simplicity', but then later you realize you want that functionality and go back to Make. Sometimes old tricks are the best tricks.
Make is conceptually great but brings a lot of legacy baggage. You often need to set up .PHONY targets, reset .SUFFIXES, and/or set MAKEFLAGS += --no-builtin-rules. There's also dollar-symbol variables (which plague Perl and shell as well) which made lots of sense in the 1970s with teletypes but hinder readability today (what the hell was $@ again?).
Or the fact that $FOO interprets as $(F)OO without the slightest warning. And of course if you're in a script line, you probably meant $$FOO..
Make certainly has some obscure variables, but of all the basic knowledge of Make you need to learn, $@ is near the top of the list (it's "target". an @ sign looks kind of like a bullseye. If you want to see it as visiting a dependency graph, it's the dependency you're currently "at").
Sure, if you use make enough, you likely remember the most important dollar-symbol stuff. But $@ is "all arguments (obeying quoting)" in bash, which is nothing like what it means in make.
That of course becomes "$$@" in a Makefile recipe if you want bash's behavior and not make's... which is one of the reasons I tend to keep my shell scripts in separate files, and only grow a Makefile to wrap them later if I have to. These days I just have the directory of scripts and no Makefile. Even the rare times I do C, I prefer a script that recompiles everything and slapping ccache on top of it (but usually I'm dealing with an existing Makefile, and I just pray that it's not generated by automake)
Practically any language will do for running a set of tasks to compile a program. Unless you already love this "wheel" intimately, just learn a real language and use that.
US Law often requires power generators to operate separately from distributors. Even when it's the same company, they have to operate as two separate businesses, and it's illegal for them to even mention certain information to each other as it's considered anti-competitive. The purpose is to allow the market to provide competition. This is not specific to NYC.
First of all, feedback is not a great way to build relationships. If it's positive feedback, and it's not perceived by them to be demeaning/dehumanizing/etc, most people will like it, regardless of relationship. But if it's negative, nobody likes to receive negative feedback, but especially not from someone they don't already trust. First build a relationship, then give negative feedback, when appropriate (which is a very qualified when).
Second, asking if you can give feedback is like asking if you can ask a question. The other person is going to feel rude if they say no, so they will instead feel pressured to say yes, and now you have a position of power over them, they feel bad, and you haven't even given the feedback yet. If the feedback is positive, just give it, don't ask them if it's okay. Nobody will legitimately complain about praise. If the feedback is negative, keep your friggin' trap shut, unless you feel the feedback is absolutely necessary, from you, right now. If it doesn't need to come from you, or it's not absolutely necessary in this moment, then wait until you have a normal conversation with them and allow it to enter conversation naturally and gracefully.
Third, don't offer feedback if the person has not already requested feedback. You can offer to them that they can give you feedback, but if they don't provide the same reciprocal offer to you, don't push it. Feedback isn't a right, it's a privilege.
Fourth, you absolutely should be afraid of giving feedback to people who might use that feedback against you. In fact, just sharing your thoughts about things in general, out in the open, can unintentionally hurt people's feelings and turn them against you. I have personally found out on several different occasions that I somehow hurt someone's feelings unintentionally, just because of my opinions on some topic (engineering-related, business-related, etc) that wasn't personally directed at anyone. Your tone, messaging, content and context can and will have unintended consequences, so think before you speak. If you're unsure of the outcome, either don't speak, or accept the consequences.
Fifth, this is general knowledge, but always complain up, never down. On the other hand, praise everyone: your boss, your direct reports, your peers. Praise costs nothing but does make people like you (and others).
If the only thing people hear you say is positive things, you will probably be one of the best-liked people at work. Giving negative feedback generally won't help you, and many won't be open to it, so choose wisely when you give it.
I think what he's suggesting is that "at first, she was fine with it, but then somebody convinced her not to be fine with it" or some such thing. Which may have some debatable merit, depending on the circumstances... except that she was a minor. Any kind of defense or explanation goes out the window when you're that kind of creep.
That weirds me out, because it implies that she's not her own woman who can take new evidence (Celine's complaint) and go "wait a second, that thing years ago that he did to me was actually also shitty and unacceptable".
I think that is a complex and worthy thing to debate as it addresses many different points; agency, regret, information, intent, consent.
I think the law deals with similar concerns by not basing a judgement on how someone feels, but rather on actions and agreements. Did they lie, cheat, steal, deceive, coerce, manipulate, intimidate, threaten, abuse, etc in context of some agreement or lack thereof. But that's just the law; obviously there is an entire world of morality/ethics that exists outside the law with different considerations.
I'm just saying, he hit on a minor, and he doesn't appear to be a moron, so screw this guy.
Shouldn't be an issue. Like, if your act was so marginal that a friend saying "no seriously, that sounds like creeping to me" can tip the balance from okay to not okay, maybe you shouldn't be doing that.
I get angry too. I also struggle with it. I have found that thinking of myself as an Observer as well as a Participant has helped. Two very different hats. For example, when you are "in the shit" you can easily get angry. But if you consider yourself (if even for a moment) as just "watching the shit", you can gain a sense of impartiality and calm. It may be enough to get off the anger train. The second thing I do is to convince myself that I need not get angry at people. It's the process that I should be angry about. Don't get mad at people...assume positive intent. If people are doing what looks like a Dumb Thing, then perhaps there is no process/rule that allows them to do Smart Thing. I get mad at dumb processes, or the lack of smart ones. This is a lot less personal. No one wants anyone mad at them...but getting mad at a process story is a lot more freindly. It goes without saying...don't get mad at the people responsible for processes. Just illustrate, in as neutral as possible a fashion, what you perceive the gap might be. Empathize. Enable. Entrust.
Agile is a generic umbrella term that involves a vast array of complex, subtle knowledge and skills. It's like saying "Engineer", or "Chef". Each has a shared skillset, to be sure. But each category's members can't just work the same way at all jobs, and there's no book on how to be an Engineer or Chef everywhere.
The Agile Manifesto is a failure at trying to make Agile happen because it can't tell you how to make it happen, because it varies wildly. No manager can read a book on how to "Agile-ify" their org, they have to apply their brains and figure out how their specific version of "Agile" will work. But the skill-set required to do this is not a Managerial skill, it is a lower-level-worker skill. But it's also a very advanced lower-level-worker skill.
And that's why things like "Agile", "DevOps", etc will fail. People at the higher end have no clue how to make it happen, and people at the lower end who have an idea how to make it happen don't have the power to make the organizational changes to do so. You need a way for the lower-end people to tell the higher-end people what to do, and have the higher-end people listen to them, and make the changes happen. This is very hard in a traditional organizational hierarchy, because higher-end people have big egos and bigger concerns over things like politics.
The product and engineering managers I've had in the past have generally been humble, acting as a touchstone of coordination for the folks on the ground rather than a controlling force. And the engineering managers have all just been former engineers who decided they preferred doing this kind of facilitation work instead of writing code.
I do enterprise consulting for a couple of years, the kind of organisations that buy Oracle or MSDN licenses without thinking twice about it.
The best I have seen were mini-silos that managed to de-couple themselves from the org chart.
However I also have seen that it hardly lasts more than a couple of years, because as soon as someone noticed the success of the business unit they were re-integrated so that they could teach the reasons for their success to others.
You can imagine how well did they usually fare afterwards.
> And that's why things like "Agile", "DevOps", etc will fail.
I completely disagree. Most team leads and technical managers where I've worked get promoted up from within a highly technical position. I wouldn't have any respect for my team lead or my PM if they didn't know what they were talking about.
If my PM is going to try to tell me that I should work on this feature over this other feature or I should implement it in this way over this other way do you really think I'm going to listen to them if it's clear they have no idea what the implementation details are let alone the tools? Of course not.
I'm making DevOps happen and I do that by knowing the tools and practices. I'm being given the power I need to make it happen. I earn the respect every day I come in and write the code or identify the weaknesses we need to shore up to move faster.
One was a CEO who hadn't any technical background, but he knew what ICT could and could not do for his company.
One day we rewired all of our network, a massive weekend job. He was there, even if the only thing he could do was pulling network cables out of bags and straightening them. He saw who and what worked or not, he saw where we struggled even if he didn't understand a word of our technical mumbo jumbo.
I found out he was always there on the ground for every major operation in his company, not only ICT. The result was he knew the company inside out. Nobody ever tried bullshitting him. I still have massive respect for him, years later.
Then there is exhibit B, a manager from the 'you dont have to understand ICT to manage it' school. Everybody under him spends 3/4 of the time in meetings or filing useless forms. Nobody dares touching important things, so hard decisions get pushed in the future. It happens urgent work needs doing and the only person capable of doing it sits twiddling thumbs as the spreadsheet says maximum team capacity has already been reached. He redefined the words 'major incident' as there were to many under the old definition. His teams keep losing important members, everybody hates each other, work that should take 10 minutes takes months. But he always has a spreadsheet demonstrating it is not his fault.
That's not a CEO job. His job is to make sure the enterprise is funded and sets a vision.
The first example must be a small company.
2. This sounds like a manager in an enterprise level company
If you choose to work where a multi-level manager structure exists you should give that manager respect because he has to navigate a political landscape that takes certain skills.
Besides managing people and knowing what customers want have nothing to do with knowing your specific skills. Should the CEO know marketing, accounting, legal, etc as well as the experts in their positions?
And how many hours per day does it take to "set a vision"? How do you develop this vision if you know nothing about the company you're running? This is how you end up with these awful celebrity CEOs who wouldn't notice if you swapped the company they're running with one that produces toothpaste. They're too busy on CNBC and Fox Business talking about their amazing "vision".
1 was for a 500 people company. Not small not large. The company grw while others in the sector shrunk, so he did well.
Considering 2,this demonstrates what is wrong with big enterprise. If the politics are more important than the work, the work won't get done. Just like I don't have respect for Trump just because he managed to rule the most powerfull country in the world, I don't have to respect a manager who's team fails again and again, after which they get thrown under the bus just to save the face of a higher up.
Note how the CEO mentioned had no ICT knowledge, he just knew enough to knew where he stood. Same for marketing, accounting etc..
My PM does know more than me. And he's good at directing where the team should invest it's efforts. That's why he's my PM.
You seem to have completely missed my point, which is that technical leads and PMs should have domain knowledge and that this is why DevOps is not in danger of failing at competent companies.
I get your point that someone rose from your ranks and you respect them over someone who who has a background in pm but not your product.
That technical pm is a luxury and will move on at some point. You don't need him your team with a strong lead or more senior developers could work with a regular pm and get the job done.
> I get your point that someone rose from your ranks and you respect them over someone who who has a background in pm but not your product.
No, that is not the point your parent seems to be making. Your parent talks about "earning respect by learning on the job", but you are stuck at "having respect because of background".
Your parent leaves open the possibility that a PM without technical background can still become a good PM, and even lays out what they think is required for that to happen. You're stuck at "you don't respect them, got it".
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I'd like to remind you of this point from the HN guidelines: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> ... your team with a strong lead or more senior developers could work with a regular pm and get the job done.
Let me show you where this slippery slope ends: Teams with a strong lead or more senior developers could work without any PMs and still get the job done.
Oh. Wait a second. This happens all the time! Does this mean those teams achieved their success without any management happening? Or does it mean that technical people in those teams who did do the management work did it without the title?
If work activities is about titles, I hope yours is multiple lines long.
We are talking about what is the most efficient. One of the point of Agile was to attempt to lower the division of tasks (and I'm saying that even if I don't like the way it was attempted nor the overall effect 20 years later) because having a broader vision of things is more efficient than trying to communicate (to what I would add: IF the project scale is reasonable enough to do that...); thus: a little bit of PM tasks, a little bit of working with customer, etc -- at least more involvement than if crappy requirements were produced after crappy contracts were signed, and neither of them could be revised.
So if that means more people do "management", in a context where this is beneficial, then... good? What is exactly the problem? You think they are paid too little? Maybe, but then it switches from a work methodology to a salary negotiation problem.
It isn't, and I'm not going to go there. But discussion about work activities does need appropriate and accurate labels, for it to be effective.
> So if that means more people do "management", in a context where this is beneficial, then... good? What is exactly the problem?
Who said it's not good or that there's a problem? I didn't.
> You think they are paid too little? Maybe, but then it switches from a work methodology to a salary negotiation problem.
I don't know what I wrote that leads you to believe this, but I said nothing like this. You seem to be reading too far into things I wrote; or worse, things I never wrote.
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To try and clarify what I meant and where I was going: I was talking about accurately identifying the work that actually happens. Specifically, I was trying to show my parent commenter, ipaddr, how their erasure of such work leads to poor results for everyone involved, including the people trying to even talk about it.
I'm not trying to argue for a better salary or title — I've already got too much and too many of those, as you hope. But I've seen this very discussion happen too many times with clients of mine, with the same devolution. People think their problems will be solved if they get a good "PM". If said PM lacks technical background, they think they can just pair them with a good senior engineer and all will be good. I've seen this fail enough to know that's not how it works; and not because the senior engineer wasn't "senior" enough or "good" enough. As I said elsewhere[1] in this thread: There does exist a big difference between "lead or senior developers" who are good at development and those who are also good at using their technical knowledge to manage a team's work. A non-technical PM lacks that essential latter part, and if they have to rely on a "developer" to step up and fill that role, they're still a PM, but they're not the sole person doing PM any more.
Failure to identify when there's more than one person fulfilling management responsibilities can and does lead to poor planning and hindered execution.
I ran my company like this (and have recommended to clients a similar approach). It still doesn't work the way you are thinking.
The "strong lead or senior developers" you're talking about: I call them TMs. Technical Managers. Because that's what their job becomes when the PM isn't technical enough. In the end, it's not the PM who "turns out fine" when paired with TMs; it's the combo of PM and TM who turn out fine.
There does exist a big difference between "lead or senior developers" who are good at development and those who are also good at using their technical knowledge to manage a team's work. A non-technical PM lacks that essential latter part, and if they have to rely on a "developer" to step up and fill that role, they're still a PM, but they're not the sole person doing PM any more.
Thank you! I could not put it into words, but yes this is pretty much what I observed.
They turned out fine if somebody else do that technical management work. Except that if not recognized as such, that someone else is not paid appropriately, does not have official authority nor ctual support of boss nor is he present at higher ups meetings to speak for himself. It makes the leading part much harder and is breathing ground for resentment or simply getting tired and giving up. And then it all starts failing.
It is kind of like saying that senior developer does not have to know all that much, if juniors are very good. Sure, but then your juniors are actually on underpaid senior positions. And it ki d of works, until junior senior figures and finds better place to work at.
For consultancy, the hourly rate the customer is paying to the employer versus what actually lands on the bank account at the end of the month.
For product development, the price of licenses and support deals per month, correlated to the hourly cost of everyone on the office, and then what actually lands on the bank account at the end of the month.
As for how much money it costs me an FTE to play around something outside the planned roadmap, their monthly salary divided by the amount of hours they are supposed to be working per month, correlated with the time spent on said activity.
Actually I have been in a couple of projects, where instead of sprint points or hours, we actually had euros as ticket efforts.
> For consultancy, the hourly rate the customer is paying to the employer versus what actually lands on the bank account at the end of the month.
No, that is just accounting of salaries. That doesn't calculate the value/worth of the work and hence can't be used to determine salaries. That's circular logic.
> For product development, the price of licenses and support deals per month, correlated to the hourly cost of everyone on the office, and then what actually lands on the bank account at the end of the month.
That is not really what I was asking for or my parent talking about. We were talking about specific salaries. Engineer X wants Y salary. justified or not? You are suggesting revenue/hours.
With that logic, everyone gets the same salary and you would also value the identical work differently depending on the revenue (which might or might not be justified)
Too many Java devs to chose from? Salaries going down.
Can't get hold of them? Salaries going up.
Whatever engineer wants is driven by market prices in land, and offshoring prices as well.
And yeah in countries with collective agreements across the industry, regardless of your actual job, everyone on the company building gets their tariff XYZ salary as per yearly industry agreement.
i might be missing something but you are still equating value of work with salaries for some reason. this is the context we are discussing, the original quote:
"How much of each dollar you make for the company with your hard work do you take home?"
i was asking how you calculate how much you make for the company. you specifically. not 'revenue/hours' or whatever. you and you only. salaries do not factor into this. how could they?
> And yeah in countries with collective agreements across the industry, regardless of your actual job, everyone on the company building gets their tariff XYZ salary as per yearly industry agreement.
that isn't true though. this might be the case in some countries (please provide a reference) but in europe with strong unions and collective agreements, it is wrong. it sets the minimum standard and companies pay over that agreement all the time.
The old Microsoft (the new one is much better at this), you couldn't just go around sharing department knowledge, if you on lets say Visual Basic team wanted the deep knowledge for a Windows feature as means to product improvement, it was easier to have a neutral contractor somehow get hold of the information across departments, than asking directly as Microsoft employee.
I love the BMA. It's a free museum with a great restaurant, cool exhibits, a nice park across the street. Nearby is The Book Thing, a free book store. Also another (non-free) book & record store, Normal's. And another, Urban Reads. And another bookstore/coffee shop, Bird in Hand. And a farmer's market. And a vegan restaurant. And the quirkiest diner ever, Papermoon. And a small rock venue. And a worker-owned co-op coffeeshop that President Obama visited. All in a four block radius.
there is this tee - Baltimore, Actually I Like It - you need it fam. Been here for 31 years, working in IT now, raising a family and all that. Balto is cool.
I've seen this t-shirt around. As a Baltimore native, it sort of irritates me even though it's tongue in cheek! It assumes that Baltimore is a bad/unlikable place that people need to learn to love (or need to convince others that it's worth living in).
In fact, I think there's a lot to like about the city right off the bat and that many people are drawn to it without feeling like they're being forced to live there.
I don't know, maybe we can start with the positive image of the city rather than having a base assumption that it's some kind of hellscape. Doesn't mean we should ignore the negatives, just that the negatives don't need to precede the rest. I don't hear NYC residents say "New York...it isn't all rats and homeless people!"
Certainly, there is a media component to it. I live in Minneapolis. If you ask my relatives in wisconsin, they’d say that ‘Murder’apolis has been, and continues to be, a flaming hellhole of constant arson and carjackings ever since George Floyd was murdered. They watch local television news (with a sprinkling of Facebook garbage newsfeed) and don’t know enough to realize their entire mental model of the place is wildly skewed.
Likewise, I’ve never stepped foot into Baltimore, but I’ve watched The Wire so…
Portland, Oregon here. For a few years now if I'm out in the suburbs or conservative exurbs and tell people I live in the city, I hear, "sorry for you. Portland's a shithole." That view went national over the summer of 2020, with a lot of help from Fox news. (The president declaring our city an anarchy zone and sending in unmarked humvees with DC plates to black bag protesters didn't help). And yet it's an incredibly livable, fun, interesting town. Outside perception rarely matches the reality.
Resident of Washington, DC, here. When we moved into the city, a friend of my father's--both men had lived in DC in the 1950s--resident in Arlington said dire things. Now, parts of Arlington are great, and in other parts of Arlington gangs were going after each other with machetes. I cannot say that my part of DC is as safe as I'd like, but a lot of suburbanites--including some who could throw a football across the city line--have a pretty lurid picture.
My grandparents came from Baltimore and I spent some time there with cousins. My grandpa owned a bar in West Baltimore during segregation. He was Russian. Lot of stories there. It seems like a cool town. It's definitely got a depressing, kinda inward vibe about it. I should probably go back and hang out again, but most of my family has moved away now.
Having lived in Baltimore for 8 years, I consider it a hellscape. One of the worst things about Baltimore imo is the way its fans idealize it as some kind of regular town where bad things only happen to bad people. There's an unbelievable amount of crime and danger. I invite any skeptics to check for yourselves: join a Baltimore community like /r/baltimore on reddit and see how often people post about break-ins, muggings, shootings, carjackings, not to mention corruption in the government.
In matters of taste like breweries vs vineyards, it doesn't matter if you encourage strangers to move and that they might like it; the risk is just that they find they preferred the other option. When the risks are becoming a victim of random crime just walking down the street or having an apt with ground-floor windows, it's irresponsible.
Johns Hopkins APL is not far south on 95 from Baltimore. It does MIC stuff, but is also involved with various space programs. There are a bunch of small and large tech companies in and around Baltimore and Baltimore county. I've worked in Columbia, Linthicum, and Rockville MD. (Rockville commute was insane before the new highway, now it would doable for folks who don't mind driving a lot).
I lived there for 12 years. Generally speaking, Baltimore is good if you want relatively affordable housing. A number of neighborhoods are great for DINKS (dual-income, no kids). Public schooling is a hard no-go unless you really get involved and enroll your kids in a carefully selected charter or magnet school. There are some excellent private schools. Baltimore county has options too if you want something that's more suburban.
As far a crime goes, the city has some really profound problems that are the result of white flight and systematic disinvestment. It was hit hard by the crack epidemic and has not really recovered. The TV shows "The Wire" and especially "The Corner" capture the flavor of the rough parts of Baltimore more than residents would like to admit. As far as safety is concerned, like other big cities, it's not really a problem for folks that would read HN, unless you enjoy hanging out in bars at 2am and getting into arguments with armed drug-trade people. Don't leave anything in your car, get a security system for your house.
> The TV shows "The Wire" and especially "The Corner" capture the flavor of the rough parts of Baltimore more than residents would like to admit.
I think The Wire was pretty accurate and a lot of Baltimoreans aren't in denial about what kind of city it was/is. However, if you're only hanging out and working with folks who don't leave the White L[1], you'd think the rest of Baltimore is pretty awful and if it wasn't for work/family, they'd leave ASAP. Not to discredit the concerns folks have, just saying that the loudest voices also seem to be the most negative without being constructive (just check various FB "safety" groups, e.g., Mt Vernon Safety, or Nextdoor).
I recently moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia and in many ways it seems like a bigger version of Baltimore. Lots of white/black segregation, crime (it's already above 300 homicides for 2021), potholes and generally poor road maintenance, poorly run city gov't, etc. Yet somehow there doesn't seem to be the same level of negativity about the city here.
I think part of the reason is that Baltimore has pumped up murder rates due to it being an independent city. The situation is bad, but that inflates the number.
You mean Jobs? Philly definitely has more. But I found Balto to have more going for it, despite being tiny in comparison. Culture-wise, Baltimore has loads of everything (except the "we're pretending we're NYC-lite" that DC and Philly push). There's loads of green spaces, festivals, multicultural cuisines/neighborhoods, industries. Baltimore even exceeded Philly in things like hackerspaces/makerspaces/tool libraries. And Balt has [some] free public transit! And though the history isn't pushed much, there's a ton of it all around. I'd also argue the Inner Harbor exceeds any Philly tourist district in terms of interesting ways to waste a saturday for a wide range of people. Then you've got the stadiums right near the harbor, the light rail to whisk you up into the lush suburbs, and more quirkiness and charm than practically any city in the US.
All good points, except Baltimore was/is a heroin town, not a crack town, and The Wire was more like 80s/90s Chicago than Baltimore. Baltimore's drug trade (when I lived there) was run by many little gangs largely made up of childhood friends and just claiming a few blocks as territory. This actually makes it more dangerous, not less. The Corner is accurate, however, probably because Charles Dutton was involved.
Just like every city, it works hard to make sure upper-middle class white people are safe, but definitely don't leave anything valuable in your car. Don't even leave pennies in a tray visible from the outside.
The Avon Barksdale gang is a professional, almost corporate empire. The inner circle is family but it runs from neighborhood boys as foot soldiers all the way up through a “COO” type (Stringer Bell) attending business school in the evenings. At one point the various gangs of Baltimore are amalgamated into a trade association that meets in hotel ballrooms and follows the Roberts Rules of Order. Leading to one of the greatest exchanges on TV ever:
“Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?”
“The Roberts Rules say the meeting got to have minutes!”
I love these commments. Now the distric attorney needs to tell the police to do their jobs. (Really tired of resources being wasted on marginal tickets/dui's, instead of zeroing in on real crime.)
> Public schooling is a hard no-go unless you really get involved and enroll your kids in a carefully selected charter or magnet school
You can go to these schools, ultimately it is about whether you are okay with your child being a racial minority. BCC is one such example of a school (maybe you would put that in the carefully selected magnet category).
>You can go to these schools, ultimately it is about whether you are okay with your child being a racial minority.
You're assuming crispyambulance is white. If crispyambulance is black then crispyambulance wouldn't be a racial minority in these schools (I think that's what you're saying). If crispyambulance is Indian then crispyambulance has no choice and will be a racial minority at every school.
> As far as safety is concerned, like other big cities, it's not really a problem for folks that would read HN, unless you enjoy hanging out in bars at 2am and getting into arguments with armed drug-trade people.
Again, completely inaccurate and misleading statement, despite yourself pointing out how residents don't like to admit how bad Baltimore is. Having worked in IT in Baltimore, a coworker of mine got mugged, a black eye, and had to take the next day off work just because he was strolling through a very popular park on a weekday evening. Wealth and education don't protect you if somebody targets you on the street, and it happens way more than Baltimore residents will admit.
What happened to your coworker can and does happen in any large city with lots of people. Are you saying this could not have happened in NYC, Los Angeles, DC, or Philly?
I perhaps should not have said "not really a problem". Crime/safety is a problem in Baltimore, but it's not drastically different than many other urban areas.
Since you bring up NYC, LA, Philly, Baltimore is top 3 in list of total violent crimes whereas the other cities top out at 24 for DC, 25 for Philly, 32 for LA, and 59 for NYC. So Baltimore is in fact drastically different from NYC/LA/DC/Philly. You only proved my point.
"Total violent crimes" per 100000 population is a very blunt statistic that tell you very little about a city and virtually nothing about any particular neighborhood. It mashes together a lot numbers that mean different things to different demographics. And most importantly, those stats say absolutely nothing about the actual context of these crimes.
Sorry you had a rough time in Baltimore. I was there through the O'Malley years and saw amazing improvement in my old neighborhood, Patterson Park/Butcher's Hill. Some other places didn't fare so well despite occasional promising signs (Sandtown-Winchester, Hollins Market).
Baltimore is not for everyone, and that's OK. We all have/had our reasons for being there. There's no good reason to trash Baltimore or call any city "a hell-scape". It didn't get the way it is overnight, and it won't improve overnight. It will take many years.
I gave numbers and I gave context, and you have shown that you're not genuinely considering the idea that Baltimore might not be a great city for most people, you just have your opinion and aren't entertaining any alternatives. If you love Baltimore, great. But saying Baltimore is just another city when only 2 other cities in the entire country have more violence is like saying some country in the middle east some city in Pakistan isn't so bad because every city has bombings. Glad that comforts you, but it isn't true.
> There's no good reason to trash Baltimore or call any city "a hell-scape"
I will call Baltimore a hellscape 7 days of the week and I consider it 100% justified. I actively hope people don't move their for their own sake; I already left, it doesn't matter to me what happens there anymore.
I also encourage anybody who hasn't visited and doubts me to check for yourself and make your own opinion, not believe me or crispyambulance. Look up crime/violence statistics, reddit.com/r/baltimore, facebook groups, government corruption, illiteracy rates, crime maps, etc and decide for yourself whether what happens in Baltimore is "normal" for the US (let alone the entire world when there are many cities much bigger than Baltimore with a fraction of the crime).
To respond to applications. Even when you have good leads it's 3 months to get a second round of interviews. I'm not so comfortable that I can choose to not work in between moves.
A few off the top of my head. I'm currently working (remotely) for a BigCo that acquired my startup employer last year.
Technical.ly can be a good resource for local postings. I've worked as a SWE in Baltimore for 10 years and have never had employment issues. I don't quite make SV money, but I make solid 6 figures and can afford a very nice home on just my salary and send my kids to private school, etc.
If you (OP of the parent's parent) do interview in the area be sure to dig in to find what the company's lines of business are. CloudTamer, for instance, is ostensibly a commercial product-based company but does business with federal agencies and contractors (per their web site) and was at the AWS Public Sector Summit a few years ago. A different company that I interviewed at in an adjacent space (security vs CloudTamer's compliance) was in a similar position... they were selling their product to the Air Force but swore up and down that they'd never contract with them outside of being a vendor. I was skeptical and my suspicions were proven correct six months later when they put out a press release announcing the award of an Air Force contract.
Maryland/Northern Virginia are _not_ the places to be if you want career options outside of government [contracting] work. It's not un-doable but you'll be much better served looking for work in a place where 80% of the value of the economy doesn't revolve around Washington-type work.
Maryland/Northern Virginia are _not_ the places to be if you want career options outside of government [contracting] work.
While it's true that .gov work is huge in DC metro (and extending to Baltimore), there are MANY companies completely outside, or on the periphery, and even more if you just want to eliminate military jobs.
Amazon has large AWS offices, plus HQ2 is spinning up.
Google and Microsoft both have substantial presences (albeit much of that is .gov work). Walmart has their innovation centre here (Walmart Labs?).
Oracle. VW of A. Several universities. Smaller companies like Ellucian (my employer). Freddie and Fannie (.gov-adjacent). The list is long.
I would add that there are financial technical jobs at T Rowe Price, Legg Mason, Morgan Stanley etc. Not to mention that there are computer security jobs at those places where the stakes are high.
Oh yeah, info-sec jobs abound. Many are .gov consulting gigs, but lots of law firms, banks, and hospitals too.
And Capital One Bank has a massive complex in McLean/Tysons. It's not their HQ (which is in Richmond), but there has to be a few thousand employees here.
TBF, "Washington-type" work also includes journalism and NGOs, so it could be the place to live (along with NYC) if you want to do tech in either of those fields.
Can anyone give a perspective why is it the case? In Europe it seems impossible not to have commercial software positions in a big local hub city - and in US whole areas seem to be devoid of them as HN crowd implies.
It's because Washington, DC is the nation's capital and where our legislative bodies, heads of state, and our various departments (ministries) are based out of. There are also many military bases in close proximity and the military headquarters (Pentagon) is across the river in Virginia.
I think people are misinterpreting my comment... there _are_ non-defense/government jobs in the area but they are dwarfed by the number of such jobs because of the pervasive nature of the aforementioned entities. When I lived in the area more than 90% of LinkedIn recruiter messages that I got were about these jobs. This ceased being the case after I moved even when I was still in the defense contracting industry.
See my sibling comment. I think the OP overstated the lack of non-government jobs in the area. I've lived here (Dulles tech corridor) most of my life and work in non-government software.
There are quite a large number of well regarded universities and hospitals. In addition, Under Armour and a few other Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Baltimore.
Baltimore is a cool town. People have a perception of it based on national media, and don’t get me wrong, it has it’s share of issues, but every city does. It is one of the quirkiest, weirdest cities in the US. It is not quite a northern city and not quite southern either.
Columbia is 22 miles south of Baltimore, home to an entity sometimes known as The Fort. 40 miles south is DC if you want to work GovTech. TRowePrice has/had a datacenter in Owings Mills, 20-some miles northwest of Baltimore. CapitalOne has offices in Baltimore but HQ in Virginia. Constellation Energy (not sure what they're known as now) used to have a datacenter south of Baltimore as well. It's not SV or Boston or NYC, to be sure.
Our startup (Cortx) does natural language generation work, is located in Fells Point, and is currently hiring Machine Learning Engineers and Full Stack Engineers :)
I am living in Baltimore and work out of DC as an ML engineer. The commute sucks, but with because of covid, I have been WFH. DC has a lot of tech companies, but lots of connections to defense.
The city. I considered the MARC, but I have to go out to Herndon, VA and Fairfax, VA area so its just more convenient to drive. It's a tough commute at times, but a good podcast gets me through the drive. I have been WFH for all of 2020 an 2021, so now I just stay in Baltimore. WFH shift is working out great!
Yep, that's the case for me. The plausible choices for me personally are basically remote work, commuting to DC on MARC, or starting a company with a remote cofounder.
A fair amount for someone on the hardware side, surprisingly. Analog Devices and a mixed bag of test/measurement and signal integrity companies.
The answer is the one you would most likely guess: two body problem. We both miss NH quite a bit, but we're along for the ride until they finish their PhD.
I'm a lifelong resident, but I can't say I share your optimism. the per capita murder rate is still well above the worst years in the 90s, with 2019 setting an all time high. the population is still falling, rapidly in poorer neighborhoods but offset somewhat by growth in the wealthier ones. our current mayor has not been convicted of any crimes committed while in office (a low bar in other cities), but otherwise does not seem far from the standard fare. at least one key employer (t rowe) is hedging its bet with new offices outside the city limits. what exactly are you seeing improve? I guess it's a great time to sell property in the white L or be employed by the johns hopkins medical system, but other than that, I'm not seeing it.
My optimism is based on the consistent development in the L and it's expansion outwards. Hopkins medical will soon be connected to harbor east with the Perkins development. Station north continues to fill out. There's also been lots of development in federal hill and locust point.
The murder rate is indeed ridiculously high, but I think it will subside as more development happens in the city as there will be more opportunity available.
you're right about t rowe, I confused the story about them moving their main office (to harbor east) with the fact they've opened an office in owings mills. apparently the reason for the move is safety concerns downtown, which is still not a great look for the city, but whatever.
I'm not entirely sure how to feel about the expansion of the L. it's definitely good if you already live there (I do) and plan to stay (I hope to), and some of the areas being annexed are/were fairly close to hell on earth. it's not clear to me that the butterfly residents will benefit from the increased opportunities like you suggest; I think it's more likely they get gradually pushed out to less desirable parts of the county. but we'll see, and I'd rather be wrong!
Gentrification is too broad of a word to mean anything. Baltimore has a glut of housing due to the massive population drop caused by white flight in the 70s.
I used to head out there annually for... convention stuff, but I quite liked the city when I was passing through. Conditions there seem to be improving rapidly, too!
> Even though Microsoft's software had not caused the CrowdStrike incident, Microsoft immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge following the July 19 outage," the letter said. "Each day that followed from July 19 through July 23, Microsoft employees repeated their offers to help Delta. Each time, Delta turned down Microsoft's offers to help, even though Microsoft would not have charged Delta for this assistance
Two vendors offer you free on-site help, during the biggest outage in history, and you turn it down?
This isn't the CIA, it's Delta Airlines. Bring those overpriced security monkeys in, make em sign an NDA, and have them sit there and watch you type.
To not do that... even if they were useless... I can't find a justification ....... other than being able to later claim it wasn't Delta's fault it was down so long, and nobody having evidence to the contrary.