The Water Cooler - 2014-03-17

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3:20 AM

-1

Q: What can scripting do for me?

What are scripting's uses? What exactly do scripts do, and how do they work in things like games? I guess what I'm trying to ask is how do scripts work in conjunction with other systems to create a better end user experience

learning development-process scripting software-education

^^^ Any programmers in here tonight?

-4

Q: Is the Macbook Air good for java coding, web apps, html, css, and etc?

Next year I'll be taking the Computer Science A (AP Java) class offered at my school and I currently do not have a laptop that I can take to school with me. I also work with HTML, CSS, Javascript and am planning to finish learning jQuery, PHP, Python, and Ruby by the end of the year hopefully. I'...

java mac macbook laptop

^^^ Another programming-related one.

5 hours later…

7:59 AM

May I recommend some close votes?

0

Q: Should i Die ,bcoz I get less salary than my friends?

I am Indian(Bhartiya).I am a Computer programmer by Profession.My Friends are getting 4 lakh Rupees salary per Year ,and i am stuck here with 2.5 lakh. Company gave me PHP as platform ,and it will still be the same till Bond ends with the company(2 year bond is there in Our company ,1 year is now...

job-search salary

8:18 AM

@jmac if memory serves, we had a meta post dedicated to questions like that (IIRC it's second or third time stuff like that this falls at Workplace)

no, it's at Prog meta...

27

Q: Do we have any responsibility to take any action if someone says they're thinking about suicide in their post?

There's a post that was closed as off-topic, which it is. It's a rant, one that definitely doesn't fit within the scope of our site. The author of the post mentions he's contemplating suicide. Is there anything that we should do in these situations? Amy makes a great point that it would be a sha...

discussion specific-question

56

A: Do we have any responsibility to take any action if someone says they're thinking about suicide in their post?

I hate to sound callous about this, but... This isn't a support group; y'all probably aren't trained to deal with the outpouring of grief and despair of someone you've never met and may have absolutely nothing in common with. I'm certainly not. Indeed, there's a decent chance that leaving a post ...

8:35 AM

@jmac Primarily Opinion Based?

10

A: A coworker rejected my romantic advances and I got her fired, how do I recover from this?

What you should do is confess, recommend the fired employee get her job back, and start searching for a new job.

needs more..everything really

3 hours later…

11:39 AM

did I miss something or there is a sensible reason to upvote this "answer"?

0

A: How do you tell your boss that being cheap is affecting morale?

Also, Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

it's at +1/-1 now

12:01 PM

@gnat, well, I enjoyed it. — Phil H 25 mins ago

@RhysW Except more upvotes

Hi @user3416398. Unfortunately, we're all going to die... someday... But you definitely should not hasten your death simply because you are programming with PHP. To be sure, PHP sucks... But it's not worth dying over it. Hope this helps ! blog.codinghorror.com/php-sucks-but-it-doesnt-matter — Jim G. 50 secs ago

^^^ @Yannis - How'd I do?

12:18 PM

-2

A: Should I die because I get less salary than my friends?

See, The point is are you unhappy about your current salary and current technology. But the thing is that in most cases a software professional can't stick with one technology throughout his life. Eventually your technology will be changed. Same goes with your salary. It will be increased eventua...

^^^ Does anyone have any downvotes left today?

downvotes are limited?

12:41 PM

'mornin

hey hugo

1:03 PM

hot list audience consists mostly of SO users, by far the largest site in the network. From this perspective, smaller sites carry the same "exposure risks" as these at SO - but, while SO has 17 moderators, thousands of 20K/10Kers, tens thousands of 3K users with close votes, smaller sites do not have anything like that. To say that such an equality in exposure risks coupled with such a striking difference in abilities to protect from these is unfair, would be an understatement... — gnat 47 secs ago

...What's more, smaller sites of subjective-ish nature are additionally limited in their abilities to moderate low quality answers because flagging system is designed with primarily technical / coding Q&A model in mind. — gnat 13 secs ago

1 hour later…

2:15 PM

time to protect this question from hot list lemmings: 2 low quality answers there are already deleted and at least 2 more look worth deletion

17

Q: Dad jokingly told boss that I called him dumb to my shock

So I have a bit of a transportation problem and I work at a startup. It was a Saturday night and my dad came to pick me up but I had my phone on silent. So he came in and had some small talk with my boss and another one of his colleagues (They are close friends). Anyways while my boss, and I we...

work-environment

6

Q: Make hot questions with multiple answers age away faster on smaller / subjective-ish sites

Due to extended exposure to wide SE network, hot questions tend to attract certain amount of low quality answers 1 2 3. These answers would better be (and eventually are) removed, but on smaller / subjective-ish sites removal takes quite a lot of time due to limitations in moderation power and in...

feature-request hot-questions answer-quality sidebar

2:29 PM

it looks totally technically possible for SE team to make it easier for us by introducing sort of self-correction here, but they apparently prefer us to stay on 24/7 watch fighting garbage waves from hot list. Oh well...

Mar 13 at 5:40, by gnat

...no need to waste time convincing Shog or whoever there. No need to invest effort into lengthy meta posts. No rep points to loose. Not much time to spend. Just make it a habit to open hot list once or twice a day, pick SO stuff from there and do the lemming ride. Every upvote you cast doing it, makes a step towards educating people about the pain we feel here...

any down/delete votes, flags?

-1

A: Dad jokingly told boss that I called him dumb to my shock

tell him you got a huge wiener

^^^ welcome lemmings

this SO question could become hot and redirect lemmings from Workplace if upvoted as enthusiastically as "dad joke": stackoverflow.com/questions/22453460/…

1 hour later…

3:35 PM

yo

peace

dropping some interesting news that are relevant to the topic of this site:

GitHub puts founder on leave, kicks wife out of office after harassment claim
Engineer Julie Horvath quits, alleging sexism and bad behavior. http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/github-puts-founder-on-leave-kicks-wife-out-of-office-after-harassment-claim/

March seems to be big on such issues, at least where I live

this month's issue of Careers (a local magazine) is full of articles about women CEOs and their performances and such

or whether or not it's possible for women to reach the same positions as men, generally

well not exactly full of them, there's this article about a guy, yeah

but that's about it

I wonder who it was @ github

I know tpdubs is married but from what I read I didn't have the impression, his wife would be that kind of person

still reading through it, will get back in a bit

@AlexM. It'S always a great topic to milk for eyeballs and extended discussion bordering on flame wars. I would love to see someone talking about all the initiatives trying to level the playing field for both genders instead of rambling on about the differences

4:10 PM

finished reading

well dang it's not rocket science to tell romance is bad in the office

@AlexM. Is it though?

What bad did romance ever cause in an office?

taking a rejection wrong sure causes bad

It's rather how people deal with rejection that causes bad

yeah but without romance being allowed, incompetent people wouldn't have to deal with that and the problems would be gone

but I guess that's impossible to do

That's like saying driving cars is bad because people who can't drive cause havoc

4:12 PM

men are wired to like women no matter how you put it

well the other way around, too

yeah I'm biased because this was a man -> woman thing in the article

@CMW not really; cars are necessary for a lot of things in their environment

I don't think romance in the office actually helps the business

or maybe I'm inexperienced

if it goes right, it's just something that happened and didn't help the company increase its productivity

if it goes wrong, people go mad

I got rejected, got hit on, had office relationships, had office breakups, nothing ever caused any disruption

yeah but you're a particular case :D

It's reacting immaturely that causes bad

4:16 PM

I dunno, if I were to decide, I'd choose to ban any romance than to have to deal with any eventual matters caused by it

It's the easy way out

I remembered about a colleague of mine from college; at an interview he refused to get hired if his girlfriend was not going to get hired with him (they're working on the same stuff)

so in the end the company got them both hired

I wonder how stupid that would seem to them if they'd break up now

actually, in the github story, it's about the boss' wife harrassing the female employee that caused the bad. Her rejecting her colleague has caused more problems, according to her, but that wasn't the core issue.

good point on that

re your college colleague: That would depend on how mature they behaved. If they couldn't take it anymore, one, or both, might just leave that company, without causing any ruckus

or they just work alongside as colleagues

or they go claws first in each others' faces :)

4:21 PM

yeah I guess the only answer is "it depends"

this sorta pisses me off at times

most of what is dealing with the workplace is really dealing with other people

and when dealing with other people the outcome usually "depends"

That unfortunately is the nature of people

Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest (COI) occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs. A widely used definition is: "A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest." Primary interest refers ...

@gnat Again I move that it's (generally) not romance that causes the COI, but immature behaviour associated with it

Could someone clear this chat?

8

A: A coworker rejected my romantic advances and I got her fired, how do I recover from this?

What you should do is confess, recommend the fired employee get her job back, and start searching for a new job.

:O Shouldn't we?

I cleared out my parts, as it just became ridiculous

4:33 PM

@CMW immature behavior? for someone passionately in love, this is totally normal (been there done that)

it's immature because you're doing it at the office even though you know it doesn't help you with your work cough

as in, you're not mature enough to sort your priorities and do the romance after office hours

gnat has a point though

once you're in love, you don't see things this way even if you did before

Should work always be your priority at work?

I think so, that's why you're there

don't take it as if I was a saint though, I sometimes open up stackexchange at work :P

:D

I mean, even at work there is human interaction, and other people matter, too, even if they don't directly benefit your work

I must think slightly differently because I'm the guy coming half asleep in the morning and wishing everyone around him just shut up for a second lol

4:39 PM

If my colleague suddenly felt sick, for example, I would help them, even though it's not my job.

I do enjoy talking to my colleagues about work only, but I am aware not everyone is like me

That's a valid attitude. I have a select few colleagues who I constantly exchange jokes and other equally much job-related stuff with

watching from afar

Didn't we have some article in meta about extending others' answers via an answer of your own instead of a comment and why to not do that?

can't find it

4:56 PM

I sense a great disturbance in the force in some of this last question comments.

The one you mentioned?

Some people seem to be taking these questions and situation on the personal side. Also, it seems some good folks are considering other opinions as something that... offends them?

3

Q: Workplace Stack Exchange - Top User Swag (With A Surprise!)

As a thank you for being awesome by working so hard to launch a successful site, if you are on page 1 or 2 of: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all ... I'll be reaching out to you this week to get your information to send you a little care package. What's in this s...

discussion featured

Talking about this question:

10

Q: A coworker rejected my romantic advances and I got her fired, how do I recover from this?

So this was a while back, when I was working as a Project Coordinator (I've been promoted now), a new PC joined our team and it was my job to train her. I was attracted to her and we talked and laughed as I was training her. Eventually, I made the decision to ask her out on a date and she squarel...

yep, that one

4:59 PM

Am I the only person here who thinks this is a troll? — Carl Witthoft 20 hours ago

8

Q: Should anything be done about a user posting fake questions

I believe we have a user posting questions based on the plots of soap operas that are not broadcast in the US or Europe. Several of the questions have been popular though not really believable. Is there anything we can/should do? Is this a green light for me to post questions as though I were ...

discussion asking-questions

Um...

That's a point of view, yes

At this point I'm not even sure that this is not a campaign to smear somebody

Should I pick my lawbringer?

This made me think; It could really be a troll...

Look at what that person asked in personal training

who would ask such stuff in their own name?

Lol

lol²²³

-1

Q: Diagnosed with HPV, safe to exercise?

Recently, I've been diagnosed with HPV by the doctor with warts around my genitals, I've been wanting to exercise. but afraid it will only make things worse. Are there any exercises that is considered safe?

5:02 PM

aye

unrelated: how do I invite someone into a chatroom?

maybe I'm too blind to see

go to their profile thingy

like, click on me and click on go to profile

Thank you!

user profile, sorry

awesome

it seems that only gives you a shortcut to start a room with that user

dang I remember inviting some users to a chatroom not long ago, how did I do it

5:05 PM

nono, it does what it should

I'm in another room and managed to invite someone via that

aight, awesome

or rather. I clicked their face in the list on the left

and it gave me the option to invite them

2 hours later…

6:51 PM

-1

A: Solo Developer at a Startup

I would go back to the old job for now, and would try to find a better start-up place/company with people that enjoy building things. The way you described they gonna suck you off in months.

^^^ welcome lemmings

4 hours ago, by gnat

it looks totally technically possible for SE team to make it easier for us by introducing sort of self-correction here, but they apparently prefer us to stay on 24/7 watch fighting garbage waves from hot list. Oh well...

@HugoRocha You should face book stalk her until she blocks you...ohh you already did that... well youcould stalk her in real life... ohh did that too?

2 hours later…

8:36 PM

15

A: Dismiss flags on the same posts with different validities

As a stopgap until we get Tim's new mod interface out, you can now dismiss individual flags (or really, same-type flags) on posts. Just click the flag text on an active flag to bring up the normal dismiss UI - the flag you're handling will be outlined in breathtaking maroon: Note that while...

^^^ long awaited feature to help moderators better communicate with flaggers

0

Q: My supervisor treats me and my team as a "resource"

I've been reading some e-mails from my supervisor and I've noticed that he always call me and my teammates "resources". For example, answering a manager's demand, he answered At the moment i don't have any resource available for completing this assignment. How can I approach him and tell ...

management terminology

am I the only one who found the collaborators bit a tad funny?

like, "I'm not an employee! I'm a collaborator!"

8:57 PM

@AlexM. partner! friend!! mate!!!

oh yeah thanks for reminding me, I was out of stuff to listen to

I like the new version of the robots better

trying hard to avoid posting this in comments to the question. "We are resources"

I deleted my answer because Kevan's kinda contained mine and also added upon it

the original text was

> You don't have to take resource as something that has a negative connotation or seems insulting. The workforce within a company comprises that company's human resources. That is a widely used and accepted term, and very appropriate for official communication, which your supervisor seems to be doing.

If you believe your supervisor thinks too little of you, or the thing starts to look like bullying (which, by the look of your situation, it does not), you will have to get some more evidence on this, as him calling the company's workforce a resource is definitely not enough to hold your claim.

@HugoRocha LOVE ME OR I RUIN YOUR CAREER

dang the robots got starred, I was hoping you guys would keep the stars for what I think is kraftwerk's best

9:03 PM

cough I mean, im afraid your application to join this workplace has been denied due to unforseen circumstances, such as your rejection of my advances

so did you guys hear they discovered evidence for gravity waves?

yeah the news tile showed something about that today

didn't read it yet

basically, gravity waves, strong evidence it exists, it supports the idea that the big bang expanded the universe 100 trillion trillion times instantaneously, this is evidenced by patterns in very old light that has been stretched in a way that only waves of gravity could stretch it

I dunno science LOL

does that mean gravity comes in waves or something?

thats why i gave the summary! :D

yeah even the summary is confusing to me ^_^"

let's leave it at that

9:08 PM

probably best, as i dont realy understand it deeply either,

It's awesome tho

I could use a gravity wave

it is indeed, rules out a lot of theories on the creation of our universe

I've got some mass left that could need a stretching out

by 15-20 cm or so

2 hours later…

11:34 PM

@gnat Did you or someone else send an e-mail to the CMs then? I hope someone else did, but will send one myself to be sure.

11:47 PM

@gnat The catch: All users who put in a requisition for swag must properly fill out their TWP report prior to any receipt of goods. Failure to properly file the TWP report in a timely fashion may result in the confiscation of your red stapler and a mark on your permanent record.

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Mar '1417

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