The Water Cooler

12:08 AM

@Shog9 Gentleman and a scholar.

12:54 AM

@RhysW I've nominated myself as per your request. After we see all the nominees, I'll decide whether or not I want to still be in it (if there are other candidates I deem better than myself, I will likely let them take the lead)

BVR

1:32 AM

@enderland ,What difference it makes? To answer your question those are "Work goals"

jmort253

3:21 AM

in Workplace 2014 Election, 10 hours ago, by Shog9

@enderland voting to delete individual answers is a sucker's game. You delete the question and all the answers go with it for free!

This is a really great point.... if the amount of energy being put into a thread is greater than the value of the thread, perhaps it's time to take a different action...

Monica Cellio

3:46 AM

@jmort253 for weak questions with no good answers, that makes sense. If the question is well-asked but just happens to have attracted crap (as happens), or if there's a good answer there, I prefer to do the extra work to keep the good parts.

jmort253

4:06 AM

@MonicaCellio I can say that there have been a few times I've fixed or removed answers, and then after the 3rd or 4th one I scroll up to the top and find out I've been suckered...

Not all the time, of course.

And I'm sure there were some times I was suckered and never realized it.

One thing Shog's comment does highlight is to not forget to check the question first. :)

jmac

4:23 AM

@Shog, on the post notice testing hypothesis, I have been a bit under the weather as of late but tossed together my testing request here

@jmort253 The issue is that questions can often be saved far more easily than answers can, but after collecting a few bad answers, it's tougher to save the question. I would advocate we aggressively close questions and then get around to editing them, but when our community moderation is overburdened we get the closing part, but don't bother to go back an edit.

jmort253

@jmac Thinking about Shog's comment, it reminds me of the saying "walking over dollars to pick up pennies"

jmac

Case in point: this question is posed as, "Should I...?" but is definitely able to be salvaged with an edit. It already has 2 answers in an hour. If it continues to pick up bad answers, it probably merits being culled, but only because it wasn't fixed early.

jmort253

The general premise that you might save more of something by focusing on something else may very well be relevant to our situation.

@jmac One thing I know, since graduation, I've spent very little time looking at questions.

Too many flagged answers...

jmac

@jmort253 Ditto. There is too much volume backing up, and it's killing my ability to browse the front page (or rather, tossing it behind on the priority list)

jmort253

So maybe the next step in the experiment is to recognize that maybe we're spending too much time on answers and not enough on questions...

jmac

4:37 AM

@jmort253 I think the issue is less that we're spending too much time on answers vs. questions, and more that we have a community moderation debt right now, and that debt results in us taking easy action rather than appropriate action

It is much easier to close a question than it is to edit it, so people go through the close queue, clean it out, and we end up with more closed questions, rather than spending the time to figure out how these questions can be improved (and if they can be improved)

jmac

4:50 AM

Hey user, and welcome back to The Workplace. I'm a bit unclear on the question here -- it sounds like these people were unhappy with the management decision to remove them from your project. That, to the best of my understanding, is beyond your control. That makes it very difficult to answer. If there is a specific situation you have trouble with that you can control, an edit to focus on that may get you better answers. Thanks in advance! — jmac 8 secs ago

This is my issue -- Amy's comment has 5 upvotes, but I cast the first close vote. Clearly the question has issues that need to be solved if it is sitting at +1/-1 and there are 5 votes on a comment already...

(it would be nice to create a dashboard of questions with fewer votes on the question than on a single comment on the question -- I think it would identify a lot of pretty poor posts)

jmac

6:30 AM

Hey Beechwood, and welcome to The Workplace! As explained in our help center, "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face." If you edit your question to ask something like, "How should I follow up if I haven't heard back on a job offer?", you will get better answers. Thanks in advance! — jmac 20 secs ago

jmac

6:54 AM

@jmort253 Perfect example:

5

Q: Does there exist a management strategy that purposefully employs favoritism?

Favoritism on our team has reached unreal heights. I'm wondering whether there in fact exists a management strategy where one team member is set on a pedestal, similar to management strategies where the manager sets the team at odds with one another (in order to encourage internal competition.) ...

management

RhysW

@jmort253 So will you be running for a mod position jmort?

jmac

@RhysW He'd better, or else you'll have to fly to the US to encourage him to.

Great example of a question that could have been saved with an edit, but now has a lot of answers and is at the point where it would probably be quicker and easier to just kill the question instead...

18

Q: Is it normal to be marked "Fired" regardless of how you leave the company?

I just recently resigned from a position on what I thought was good terms, but I was told that no matter when or how I quit, whether I give 2 weeks notice or not, I will be considered "Fired" or "Terminated". Is this something common? Will it affect my professional reputation?

professionalism termination

RhysW

8:36 AM

@jmac I get the feeling I will end up doing lots of flying to lots of countries

RhysW

8:52 AM

Ooh, thought of a potential blog topic, 'Paying employees more money is, at best, a temporary solution to your high turnover rate'

CMW

-2

Q: Android ClassCaseException , MainActivity cannot be cast to ActionBar$TabListener

MainActivity.java package com.gatescode.activity; import android.support.v7.app.ActionBar.Tab; import android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity; import android.support.v7.app.ActionBar; import android.support.v4.app.Fragment; import android.support.v4.app.FragmentActivity; import android.suppor...

professionalism resume management communication motivation

lolwut?

Yannis Rizos

9:30 AM

@CMW Stack Overflow and a couple of other sites have automatic question bans. This is probably someone trying to evade such a ban by posting on another site, and hoping the question will find its way to Stack Overflow via migration. Which, can't happen, the system automatically rejects migrations for banned accounts.

Jim G.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about code, not a workplace issue; and it doesn't deserve to be migrated because it doesn't include any attempt to solve the issue. — Jim G. 9 mins ago

8

Q: 2014 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary. Here's how it'll work: During the nominati...

discussion featured election

^^^ @Rachel: Do you have anything to contribute here? I feel like you might have some good questions, given your history/experience with NPR.

CMW

9:47 AM

@YannisRizos Ah, that's good. I wasn't aware the migration system paid attention to that

RhysW

@YannisRizos smart migration pats on head

CMW

:D

In my nomination post I probably should have mentioned my fondness for

•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)

emoticons.

RhysW

I had to cut my nomination speech down :/

CMW

10:02 AM

too few characters, I know the problem

I used them all up

(so typos are intentional to squeeze everything in)

RhysW

haha

I blame yannis, apparently its his fault there is a limit

CMW

Good to know

RhysW

Shakes fist @YannisRizos

CMW

/me wonders if /me works in here

nope

RhysW

/me apparently not

CMW

10:13 AM

I consider that a core feature of every chat. Note to self: make feature request.

enderland

10:32 AM

@jmac this drives me NUTS about workplace. closing unclear questions ASAP is really important for this reason, sometimes even really bad questions initially have really good core questions but if they pick up answers before they get closed then it's problematic

close early, close often!

people need to vote more too, if everyone downvotes bad answers then flagging is lots less meaningful (who cares if an answer is flagged if it receives lots of downvotes)

Yannis Rizos

10:49 AM

@RhysW The canonical tl;dr nomination: stackoverflow.com/election/2#post-8042214

CMW

11:17 AM

@YannisRizos Thanks for the limit!

enderland

12:32 PM

@gnat, regarding this chat message of yours, I am not going to run for moderator here for a variety of reasons

gnat

1:06 PM

@enderland ah, all right then. As long as you have reasons to abstain, I am fine with this decision. Hope you'll re-consider this for next year elections :)

Monica Cellio

@jmort253 yeah, that happens -- especially when an answer is what comes up in a review queue. I'm just saying (and I think you agree) that jumping to "must be a bad question; nuke it" (as was suggested) isn't a good idea either. That sort of decision requires actually reviewing the question and making a decision.

enderland

@gnat I have two unique and very independent reasons, both of which are meaningful and important to me

gnat

that's totally understandable

Monica Cellio

@jmac another factor to consider in the "kill it or fix it (and nuke a bunch of answers)" decision is the people involved. If the owner of the question is an engaged user we should try harder to fix it; nobody likes having his contributions removed, especially if they could have been fixed. On the other hand, for drive-bys of dubious merit it's less worthwhile to invest the effort; if somebody from the community later asks the question better then great, but no loss otherwise.

And, of course, if there are any good answers that should factor in.

@YannisRizos yeah, seems likely. A couple weeks ago we had somebody posting SQL questions on Writers. What? Killed that.

Yannis Rizos

1:42 PM

anyone around?

I'm trying to think of a good tag for situations involving past employees. Any ideas?

how does [former-employees] sound?

gnat

Alumnus

An alumnus (masculine, plural alumni) or alumna (feminine, plural alumnae) is a former student or pupil of a school, college, or university. Commonly, but not always, the word refers to a graduate of the educational institute in question. An alumnus can also be a former member, employee, contributor, or inmate, as well as a former student. If a group includes both sexes, even if there is only one male, the male plural form alumni is used. Etymology The Latin noun alumnus means "foster son, pupil" and is derived from the verb alere "to nourish". Usage An alumnus or alumna is a former s...

^^ alumni

CMW

Aluminium

Aluminium (or aluminum; see spelling differences) is a chemical element in the boron group with symbol Al and atomic number 13. It is a silvery white, soft, ductile metal. Aluminium is the third most abundant element (after oxygen and silicon), and the most abundant metal, in the Earth's crust. It makes up about 8% by weight of the Earth's solid surface. Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminium is bauxite. Alu...

aluminium ^^

gnat

and, well, it makes sense to create and immediately synonymise it with former_employees - because, well, people will try to use it for that purpose

CMW

(sorry, one of those days)

gnat

@CMW no need to sorry, wikipedia tried to bring me to aluminium when I entered alumni into search box :)

Yannis Rizos

1:55 PM

@gnat went with [former-employees]. I've never heard alumnus in a professional setting, only in an academic one.

CMW

What do you guys think of this one? Warrant a reopen?

-2

Q: What job titles should I be searching for if I want to do development without design?

I am recently returning to system development after more than a decade in other things. I live in Peru but would like to find work with a company in the UK that allows developers to work remotely. Can anyone give me some advice on job searching? I have a general description of the type of job o...

career-development job-search applications

@gnat trollpedia!

enderland

@YannisRizos escapees

2

gnat

@YannisRizos linkedin has official feature "Find Alumni", and three of the groups I have in profile there have word alumni in their names

CMW

@YannisRizos From two former companies I'm in respective XY-Alumni groups on facebook. It's more of an ironic use, though, showing you survived the time there

Monica Cellio

@YannisRizos my (now-former :-) ) company has an "alumni" page on its wiki, FWIW.

enderland

2:00 PM

1

A: Why tailor CV and cover letter to a specific company when generic template with few enhancements is less risk?

I can sympathise with your situation. A lot of advice on resumes is written for experienced programmers looking for a better job. In that case, you really need to target your resume, as senior engineers earn a lot, and companies are very picky about who they hire. So while targeting your resume ...

this answer seems like, "because I didn't tailor my resume and got underpaid in my first job, it seems to have worked, so you should do the same thing"

Transcript for