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jmort253
jmort253
1:54 AM
Hey @jcmeloni, I'm really leaning towards a reopen on J.Hayward's question but wanted to give someone who sees value in it a chance to edit and make it sound more applicable. Would you mind taking a look, and if you do edit, ping me? I really appreciate it. :)
11
Q: Is a prospective boss who is hiring after firings a "proceed with caution" or "do not proceed"?

JonathanHaywardI have been contacted about a position where the boss hired a recent college grad at $55k for Front End Developer work, fired him as unacceptable, increased the salary and fired someone else, and now wants to hire a better FED for $70-75k. The salary raises a minor question: I've been told that ...

management applications firing
(That goes for any of our other talented editors as well) :)
 
jmort253
jmort253
I thought I'd drop a little comment flag feedback here. On comments that help guide new users, I typically leave them be, even if they may seem "obsolete". For example:
> Hi user, welcome to the Workplace. We're not a forum for discussion, so all questions should fit a Q&A format. My suggestion is to [edit] and make it 100% clear what your question is so we can answer it in Q&A format. Also, it helps to be more concise, so I suggest going through and removing anything that isn't necessary to your question. This will make it easier to read and digest. See How to Ask and [about] for details. Good luck!
Since 90% of a healthy Stack Exchange site's traffic comes from search engines, and since these comments are read by new contributors, they help embed the "rules" in these folks minds so that when they become contributors, they have a better idea of what traps to avoid.
I also treat guiding comments from any user in this manner. For more information, please see A Theory of Moderation.
Thank you for flagging!
 
jcmeloni
jcmeloni
2:24 AM
@jmort253 I'll give it a go. I do seem to have read it differently than everyone else. :)
 
jmort253
jmort253
Awesome!
 
jcmeloni
jcmeloni
@jmort253 I gave it a shot
 
jmort253
jmort253
@jcmeloni I don't think it's a "should I take this job", at least not anymore. I can see how it could have appeared that way before.
I can see there's some "it depends" in the answers, but they have objective reasoning and convey how to make a decision based on different factors. I'm going to go ahead and reopen. Thanks for the edits, @jcmeloni.
 
jcmeloni
jcmeloni
2:41 AM
@jmort253 no prob
 
 
4 hours later…
jmort253
jmort253
6:15 AM
So, @RhysW and @jmac (and anyone else I missed who expressed interest in starting a blog), we have a lot of positive momentum right now. This may be a perfect time to bring this back up, get bethlakshmi and HGLEM possibly interested, and others who expressed interest in writing.
Here's the Trello board for the blog: trello.com/b/dbDNztpy/workplace-blog-board
 
jmac
jmac
@jmort253 Good idea.
 
jmort253
jmort253
I know a lot of folks expressed interest in editing and vetting ideas and such, and that's awesome, but to get something like this rolling what we really need is writers who can produce content. We do have some material linked into Trello, so we have a start, but we need sustainability and some folks to put some energy and enthusiasm behind this idea.
 
jmac
jmac
I think with us being new, a lot of our FAQ content can be tossed in as blog posts to help explain how we do things here.
And then we can use the posts to help refine the actual FAQ content we have to be friendlier to new folk
 
jmort253
jmort253
I'm going to throw out a number off the top of my head... maybe 1 out of 5 posts about rules and regulations. :)
That can of course be tweaked, but ideally the blog should be an additional attention-grabber that focuses or highlights what we do well, who and/or how we've helped, who can benefit from this site, and things that really stay focused on the positives.
Not that rules and regs are negatives :)
 
jmac
jmac
Those are the types of posts that are quite a bit of work. We have several questions with lengthy follow-ups from the authors, it may be helpful to revisit those.
 
jmort253
jmort253
6:21 AM
Great ideas.
 
jmac
jmac
I'll toss them up on Trello.
 
jmort253
jmort253
The best blog posts will be ones that take the topic and either focus on results or maybe on things that just didn't really fit the Q&A scope but were worth mentioning.
As an aside, blogging in general is beneficial
Even if people make "Congrats Workplace SE on your graduation" blog posts on their own blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Reddit, etc. All of this helps direct more attention this way.
 
jmac
jmac
You assume we all have blogs and want to be associated with our posts here.
I am on the fence about just putting my real name up.
 
jmort253
jmort253
Some do.. some don't. Some won't want to, and that's fine.
Anonymity is something to treasure for sure.
 
jmac
jmac
Perhaps when I leave my current job I will. Japanese companies are super-weird about the internet.
 
jmort253
jmort253
6:25 AM
Well, sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry... there are many stories of people's careers going horribly wrong for something they said or did on the Internet.
One of the reasons I put up a photo is because I figured it would be a great way to make me think about what I'm posting....
If an employer, future employer, or colleague ever comes across my posts, I want to feel like I'd be okay having my face associated with it.
But I definitely can understand anonymity... so no pressure there.
Just thought I'd toss out that as an idea for people looking for content for their own blogs.
On that note, it's 10:30, and my New Year's resolution was that the next day begins at 9 o'clock at night, so I need to get some sleep. :) ttyl
 
jmac
jmac
Sleep well.
 
 
2 hours later…
RhysW
RhysW
8:30 AM
@jmort253 Count me in, had a few ideas recently for some posts, will get them written up
@jmort253 I try to stick to this too, its amazing how many people use their real names and don't seem to care what's associated with them
 
Alex M.
Alex M.
9:18 AM
hiya
 
 
1 hour later…
RhysW
RhysW
10:18 AM
@AlexM. morning
 
 
2 hours later…
Hugo Rocha
Hugo Rocha
12:26 PM
Morning!
Carrier has arrived
 
Hugo Rocha
Hugo Rocha
12:44 PM
0
Q: Salesforce.com Admin/Developer Career Track

SalmonerdFor those working in the industry or with the force.com tool set. What does the career path look like for Salesforce admins and developers. I am currently working as a SAP Business Warehouse/HANA studio developer and am looking into other opportunities internally available at my company. Want to ...

software-industry career-development
Aim the cannons!
Good one boys :D
 
 
1 hour later…
jmort253
jmort253
2:07 PM
To be more specific, address whether or not the asker should mention to the manager of his/her departure and why. I'd also elaborate on the buyout, as it's not immediately clear what you mean by that. We generally look for 2 to 3 paragraphs in answers on our site. You can also jump into The Workplace Chat if you need more guidance from members of our community. Hope this helps. — jmort253 44 secs ago
I want to make sure I'm not missing something here, so if anyone else can help "Crash" with some suggestions for improvement, that would be really cool. I'm not sure what the user means by a buyout on this question as it just doesn't really seem applicable, but if you can tell what it is this person is trying to say, perhaps you'd be able to help?
 
jmort253
jmort253
@RhysW I added some more post ideas to Trello. Not sure how many are original ideas, but I just had a simply before-bed brainstorming session and wanted to write them all down before calling it a night.
 
RhysW
RhysW
@jmort253 if you are on in my evening, remind my to bookmark that trello link, i forget to do it Every time
 
jmort253
jmort253
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
hi everyone
 
RhysW
RhysW
2:33 PM
@DavidKernin Hi David
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
Is there anyone willing to give a piece of advice regarding the following

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/226534/how-to-convince-prove-my-manager-that-a-rewriting-is-needed-rather-than-a-refact

and that perhaps has some experience with huge spaghetti-code-bases refactoring/rewriting..
 
RhysW
RhysW
@jmort253 I'll star that for now! :D
@DavidKernin There seems to be lots of information given and linked to your post on programmers, is none of this helpful? I ask only so we dont suggest the same things here in chat
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
I think that we kind of might have a different problem altogether, like a 'management problem'
last week we tried something completely nonsense to me: incapable of refactoring that huge bulk of code my boss suggested to design a new interface... and then copy-paste it right in the middle of the big codebase, breaking everything, and "slowly fixing our way out".
Needless to say, that didn't work and after 3 wasted days we had to give up on his idea.
 
jmort253
jmort253
@DavidKernin Joel would say to slowly move things around.
And IMHO that's always what works best for me.... find a way to refactor that always keeps the build in a constant working state.
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
@jmort253 and that was my following idea, which we're currently pursuing. Unfortunately the management decided that every part of the program needs to be "refactored" (in the meaning of "rewriting" since interfaces are all changed), so everyone is working on a different series of files and waiting for any other to finish its work first since anyhow it goes.. nothing will probably "stack up" with the rest
 
jmort253
jmort253
2:47 PM
Hi! and Welcome! I did some editing to your question - a lot of the focus of the original was on whether your proposition of varying pay in order to fit insurance demands would be legal/ethical. We can't answer legal questions here, we're not a legal forum. And ethics can lead quickly to opinion based answers that don't fit our style of voting on answers. I took a try at editing to focus on the need for an equitable solution, rather than the yes/no of a single proposition. Let me know if that doesn't fit your need in the comments here. — bethlakshmi 8 hours ago
 
jmort253
jmort253
@DavidKernin That's an odd management calll.
I mean, in my experience anyway. :)
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
@jmort253 I can only agree with that. And I'm not the only one complaining it seems..
 
jmort253
jmort253
Whenever I've suggested refactoring I get odd looks... if anything, I've learned refactoring is something you do as you go.
Maybe suggesting a more conservative approach would be better?
like refactor one part of the system every week/2 weeks/month, whatever sounds reasonable to the team....
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
could be reasonable, but if they haven't done that in years...
and what is worse: management wants unit tests right now. Even for code that doesn't exist yet.. so we'll make sure to "somehow rewrite/refactor/whatever it" to conform those unit tests
I'm not an experienced programmer but...
 
jmort253
jmort253
@DavidKernin As far as refactoring, (I just now looked at your post), does it make sense if I were to suggest writing interfaces at either the top (top down) or bottom (bottom down) and then replace all the unnecessary layers in the middle?
In other words, can you write stubs with some "fake data" and then implement it as you go so nothing breaks?
I recently converted a Chrome app to a node-webkit app, and I wrote some interfaces on top of the Chrome API's so that the code would temporarily run on both platforms.
I didn't have to gut the whole program to move it, in other words.... not sure if that would work here.... just a thought.
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
2:53 PM
do you mean writing something like a "side-version" of that stuff and just use it for the new code?
(and ideally sooner or later dump the old one by changing it into the new one)
 
jmort253
jmort253
Sort of. In my case, if I need to deploy the Chrome app (which is still in production) I can do so. All of my bug fixes and enhancements carry over to both platforms since I used the interfaces/stubs.
In your case, you're actually trying to rewrite stuff, so this would allow other developers to continue working while you concurrently refactor stuff.
I think of it like the monkey bars on the playground.....
You don't throw out the older method until the newer method works.
And you don't let go of the bar behind you until you have a firm grip on the bar in front of you.
There may be some areas where it might make sense to stop development, if you know what someone would work on would become obsolete....
but that's a call you+team + management would have to make.
I gotta run folks, time for work. Hope this helps, @DavidKernin.
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
Thanks! I'll think about it :)
it's really not easy to apply such a concept with the mess I'm working with..
 
RhysW
RhysW
3:23 PM
@jmort253 That's a good analogy, i'm going to steal that for one of the blog posts!
 
David Kernin
David Kernin
3:38 PM
@RhysW I'll take that literally: I'm going to tie my manager into a children playground
 
 
1 hour later…
enderland
enderland
5:03 PM
@DavidKernin The Workplace. Teaching people to tie their bosses up since 2014.
 
RhysW
RhysW
5:14 PM
@enderland What! since before that i'm sure :P
 
enderland
enderland
@Chad good point
1
Q: How should I approach my boss after offending him?

EllesaI made a small joke which offended my manager. It wasn't racist, sexist or anything of the sort. Here's what it was. My manager is the head of an extracurricular club at work. Since it's the start of the year, he asked his team (us) to sign up for the club and to help him out. We willingly supp...

manager
slap the boss!?
 
Chad
Chad
6:20 PM
@enderland Of course it was it was from me :)
@enderland The question is a duplicate though.
@enderland Sleep with his wife
 
Chad
Chad
7:05 PM
-1
Q: As a supervisor, how to deal with micromanagement of team member?

FendyThis question maybe similar with this one. However my condition is different. Moreover I think this question better suited for workplace rather than pm, since I'm not yet in role of manager. This question does not limited specific to programming, while in my condition it is programming activity. ...

team micro-management
I think that question would be better at programmers.
 
Jim G.
Jim G.
7:16 PM
0
A: How to factor health insurance cost into salary decision?

ChadThe way to compare this is to compare it to what it would cost you to insure yourself at a level that you are comfortable with out side of your works group policy. Generally you will find that a group policy is less expensive than a comparable policy offered to the public like through the Health...

^^^ +1
 
 
2 hours later…
gnat
gnat
8:57 PM
1
Q: Are "hot questions" being moderated too heavily?

Chris HayesIn fact, in addition to moderation, do we have a problem with people editing these questions? This question is largely provoked by two questions I've seen on StackOverflow: Is a Java string really immutable? What is this operator <=> in MySQL? In the first question, there were some good and u...

discussion moderation hot-questions
Is this really something that matters on SO? — ben is uǝq backwards Feb 10 at 20:26
ah-ha. Upvotes, upvotes...
great experiment! To help in testing, I plan to visit Stack Overflow questions in the hot list and actively vote up posts I like. This way will let SE team study how effective it works against "lemming effect" using familiar material (instead of obscure questions at smaller sites like Programmers, Workplace, Math, Code Golf, UX) — gnat Feb 4 at 5:48
 
enderland
enderland
9:28 PM
1
A: Are "hot questions" being moderated too heavily?

enderland Do we have a problem with too-heavy moderation on hot questions? The Workplace has had to deal with the repercussions of the "hot questions" list for a long time. I generally will proactively protect any question that hits that list and has 2 or more "on way to deletion" answers on it. Which...

 
RhysW
RhysW
@enderland Wooo, workplace representation
 
gnat
gnat
Just be thankful you don't have questions which anyone and their mother can post an "answer" to -- wish I could upvote this twice. SO guys just don't value how lucky they are to have concrete implementation questions; once hot list hits more subjective sites like Workplace or Programmers, brainless meh answers from passers by turn into nightmare — gnat 1 min ago
 
RhysW
RhysW
@gnat gah, made me delete my comment that was almost exactly what you wrote
 
gnat
gnat
@RhysW great minds think alike
 
RhysW
RhysW
will just upvote yours instead, community solidarity and all that
 
gnat
gnat
9:35 PM
37 mins ago, by gnat
ah-ha. Upvotes, upvotes...
 
RhysW
RhysW
hint hint, i catch your drift
right, time to see if i can tackle any of these blog posts
you know what is really good? the amount of first time posters we are getting, more attention to the site seen in the last week than ive seen for a long time
 
enderland
enderland
@RhysW yeah I don't know why but we definitely got a lot more posts recently
I wasn't aware SE really publicized this launch though?
 
RhysW
RhysW
An insane amount more posts and users, not that ive seen stats, but still, its noticeable through solely the review queues
@enderland I don't remember seeing any, though i cant say i pay attention to the blogs and podcasts that actively
 
enderland
enderland
@RhysW yeah I was thinking to write a dataexplorer query and check site visits
wonder if that has daily visits?
 
RhysW
RhysW
I don't think it has daily visits
I could be wrong though
19 first time posters ive seen today at least
 
enderland
enderland
9:50 PM
wow I just realized almost no one can delete answers anymore
you guys need way more rep!
 
RhysW
RhysW
yeah, its somewhere around 15 users isnt it? excluding mods ect
 
enderland
enderland
I think you need 20k rep to delete answeres
 
RhysW
RhysW
@enderland yeah, 20k for deletion
 
enderland
enderland
just need to make y'all mods
 
RhysW
RhysW
wait, 10k for basic deletion, 20k for expanded
 
enderland
enderland
9:52 PM
basic is just questions at -3 and over a certain age
 
RhysW
RhysW
also, congrats, you are are 17th best answerer
 
enderland
enderland
@RhysW ?
 
RhysW
RhysW
@enderland searching through data, found a query that calculates average score per answer for each user, ranks by average descending to give a list of the 'top' answerers for a site
every answer of yours gets you an average of 11.65score! :D
:O enderland you wont guess what kind of data i just stumbled over
 
enderland
enderland
where is that query? that's what I think is most meaningful honestly of all the data
 
RhysW
RhysW
@enderland another one i stumbled over, for most prolific editors, literally just lists the main users of this chat room
 
enderland
enderland
9:57 PM
I'm only at 76? sad
wow average answer score of almost 12? recent answers are killing that I think hahahha
 
RhysW
RhysW
I'm dissappointed it doesnt include edits to the tag wiki's!
@enderland I don't think it can math properly, add the question edits and answer edits together, and its different from what it says your totals are
for example, you are 52 and 17, last i checked, that made 69, not 76 :L
@enderland oh its also only counting ones where you are the last person to edit! so all those ones where you edited, then i added a title edit, aren't counted for you
 
enderland
enderland
2,000 VOTES CAST
that's rather nifty
 
RhysW
RhysW
here is one @gnat will like
data.stackexchange.com/workplace/query/2777/… users who are good at asking popular questions
he knows who to watch now :P
 
enderland
enderland
I've had 7 myself ;)
 
RhysW
RhysW
ive had 1 at best
50% of my questions though! xD
you might like this one: data.stackexchange.com/workplace/query/785/… how many upvotes you have for each tag
wait scratch that! youll love this one im sure
always wondered which posts got you the most passive rep over time? data.stackexchange.com/workplace/query/8116/my-money-for-jam
 
enderland
enderland
10:07 PM
hehehe that's neato
 
RhysW
RhysW
sorry, im as bad as @jmac once i get my hands on data
 
Chase
Chase
10:55 PM
Quick question: how much do companies care if your interview code isn't 100% correct? I just did an upper-medium difficulty interview. I know I got the general logic right, but I didn't get the extra constraint totally right.
I'm just gonna assume I've been rejected anyways. No point in getting my hopes up.
 
RhysW
RhysW
11:17 PM
@Chase In every interview i've had i made a mistake somewhere in the tests, never stopped me getting a job though, a lot of places will have an incremental list of questions and keep going until you fail, i wouldnt worry about it too much unless the mistake is a glaringly huge one like dropping a table or sending all the money to a nigerian prince
 
Chase
Chase
@RhysW Yeah, this was the sort of deal where my solution would fail for certain string inputs, but not for the majority of cases. What worries me is that the problem took up most of the interview. But I may have accidentally given away about $10b of the company's money within collabedit :P
I've had worse interviews, so at least I have that going for me.
 
RhysW
RhysW
Few people can write a program that operates 100% flawlessly after hundreds of tries, let alone a perfect program in one attempt, on a short time constraint under pressure
mistakes are expected, and are actually a really good discussion point for the rest of the meeting
______

Wow i just got shut out of the review queue, didnt even know there was an upper limit on how many you could do a day!
 
Chase
Chase
Yeah, I hear that especially for interns, interviewers care mostly about how I approach the problem and how I communicate my thoughts, both things I think I did fine on.
It was a twist on the classic palindrome checking problem. I definitely got the typical part of it down--like I said, it's the twist that caught me, in which I can't preprocess.
 
RhysW
RhysW
I find that when interviewing for internships, showing an attitude of willingness to learn and being easygoing gets you far
@Chase im curious, what was the twist?
 
Chase
Chase
@RhysW I wasn't allowed to preprocess the input string before running it through the function. I always practiced the typical problem with some regex magic, like str.toLowerCase().replaceAll("\\W", "")
But this is a big 4, so they're weird like that.
 
RhysW
RhysW
11:28 PM
ahh i see, couldnt you just make the first part of the function do that instead?
though that isnt really in the spirit of things
 
Chase
Chase
nope, I wasn't allowed to modify the input or make a modified copy of it.
 
RhysW
RhysW
cool, did they explain how they would do it afterwards?
 
Chase
Chase
No, but the interviewer seemed to indicate I was on the right track.
It's funny, I always get asked harder questions than the ones on Glassdoor or CareerCup.
 
RhysW
RhysW
Did you ask how they would do it afterwards? That always gets a big tick from what i've experienced
 
Chase
Chase
I didn't, since we were running out of time and I had to rush to my next class.
 
RhysW
RhysW
11:32 PM
Ahh fair enough
 
Chase
Chase
Like I said though, definitely not my worst interview. I'm just happy to get the practice.
 
RhysW
RhysW
Definitely agree there
Anyways, its getting late where i am so i best sleep before i lose my job and need to interview for a new one!
 
Chase
Chase
Night. Good luck!
 
jmac
jmac
@RhysW You may want to edit that query to not look for badges, but rather to look at how many views per day a question has gotten instead. The current query will reward older posts significantly more than newer ones, just because views trickle in on any question over time.
 

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