The Water Cooler

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04:06

1

Q: Why isn't the "star of David" question on-topic?

This question about wearing a religious necklace in the workplace is getting close votes as off-topic -- legal/company policy. I don't get it. We have bunches of dress-code questions (and a tag for them). We have questions about guys with long hair, guys with earrings, and dressing more (or le...

Stack Exchange

09:52

0

Q: Why can I not answer a protected question when signing up with association bonus?

I just created an account here because I wanted to write an answer. Since I'm an experienced long-time user of the stack exchange network, I got the +100 rep association bonus (see profile). However, that still prevents me from answering How to deal with an untrainable junior dev?. One could arg...

bug answers reputation

Reaces

13:38

Is it more likely to get HNQ with The Workplace questions? Out of my 7 questions here 3 have shown up in the HNQ list... Maybe it's because the subjective nature of these questions often ends up generating several answers?

Lilienthal

@Reaces That's the current hypothesis yes. A high number of answers in a short time-span on a non-negative question is one of the few parameters of the HNQ that is generally assumed to still be in use.

That said, the HNQ algorithm has never been published and AFAIK no actual stats have yet been collected.

This answer has a good explanation. It used to be worse than it is now but some sites are still overrepresented

6

A: Prevent specific sites from being overrepresented in the hot questions list

It was bad Old system was designed so that it tended to inaccurately favor questions from sites that differ much from Stack Overflow, particularly smaller and ones of conceptual / subjective-ish nature (for example, Programmers and Workplace). Compared to SO, smaller sites have much less power ...

Aaron Hall

15:46

I wish I could understand why some people get outraged about the term "resources" being applied to people. From my perspective, people need to create value to justify their employment, so if you're not a resource, you're not creating value, and thus you're easily dismissed. If anything, I personally want to be viewed as a highly valuable resource.

On the other hand, I kinda get annoyed when people ask if I have bandwidth. I'm not an ethernet cable.

enderland

@AaronHall quora.com/…

Aaron Hall

eh he!

Lilienthal

16:05

Hit the bandwidth cap twice over today already, but yet more questions are being posted. Must resist!

Hah, my poor brain. reputation cap*

Aaron Hall

What a wonderful resource Lilienthal is to our site.

Lilienthal

Not nearly on the level of some people to be fair :)

1

Q: Interviews during No-Shave November

I am currently a university student in the United States and enjoy participating in No-Shave November each year to help raise cancer awareness. I am currently applying for post graduation jobs and have a couple of interviews lined up for this month. How important is it to either be clean shaven ...

professionalism interviewing

Moderator overreach! For shame! Fight the system! Workplace Users Against Authority Unite!

(Obviously joking @enderland). If anything I'd like to see fast closes like these more often as it results in much better questions coming out the reopen queue if they do deserve to be on the site.

enderland

17:02

None of the arguments there seem compelling @Lilienthal for it not being a duplicate...

> I understand that this question is a duplicate as I did not read far enough down on the linked question. Thank you to all who commented, you were very helpful and answered my question.

nor does that help it not seem like a duplicate :P

Aaron Hall

@enderland I was sceptical at first, but now I'm thinking it may actually be a duplicate. Can you gather more evidence?

enderland

@AaronHall the OP thought it was a dup himself, that seems like good evidence ;)

Aaron Hall

17:41

Oh, you know noobs, most will agree to anything just to make the pain of having their actions scrutinized stopped.

Chad

18:07

25

Q: How to deal with an untrainable junior dev?

The Junior Dev We have a new Junior developer on our team. I think it was a mistake to hire him. This is a career switch for him - he was a System admin, and has been learning Ruby on Rails for the past two months, but he seems to mostly copy-paste code from tutorials without understanding what ...

team

This is nothing but a rant can we please close it.

Aaron Hall

18:43

It might be ranty, but I'm sure there's a question there.

Maybe you could edit it to better ask the question?

Reaces

@AaronHall Personally (if we're talking about the same answer) I mostly object to the way it is phrased. Not just calling people resources, but for example this way the resource always has access to them simply sounds very wrong, I can't put a finger on why though.

Lilienthal

@enderland Oh believe me, I agreed

enderland

there is really nothing like spending your entire day immediately prior to an interview fighting completely obnoxious and pointless fires to get you excited about the interview

Lilienthal

Haha

That's some great motivation I'd assume.

enderland

yes yes indeed

Lilienthal

18:56

@Chad That question is why rants like that should be insta-closed by a moderator for being unclear and forced to go through a re-open queue.

Now it's already a HNQ and the massive edit it requires is probably never going to happen.

enderland

yeah that makes it a trainwrceck pretty much

Aaron Hall

how does it being a HNQ prevent it from being edited and improved?

enderland

tons of votes/answers in a short period of time

Aaron Hall

I'm editing it.

I edited it.

This answer got way too many upvotes: workplace.stackexchange.com/a/56925/12321

What do you do with junior devs who won't invest in learning and thus spend all of their time frantically tweaking random stuff until they get something that works? I had one. His code was terrible.

enderland

@AaronHall hey that's what I'm doing today trying to fix this system! but it's because... literally no one knows anything about how it's supposed to work and the documentation is horrible! :)

Aaron Hall

19:08

The answer is that there's not much you can do, particularly if you're not his boss.

And unfortunately that's the answer to the question.

Lilienthal

19:27

@AaronHall It basically cements the question's current tone and style, even if that isn't a good fit for the site.

Any answers to a salvaged question won't even register with all the upvotes on the existing ones.

Chad

@Lilienthal I agree

Aaron Hall

@Lilienthal but that's not "how it works".

Here's how it works:
Anybody can ask a question
Anybody can answer
The best answers are voted up and rise to the top

See, it's right there in the help: workplace.stackexchange.com/help

I do my best to maintain a child-like faith in the system no matter what.

Chad

This is the time that I feel like a good sarcastic answer is appropriate. Perhaps one that espouses the virtues of corporal punishment, torture and other feindish penalties that grossly exagerate the penalty compared to the crime

Reaces

As someone who doesn't use the workplace very often, I didn't really see much wrong with the question... Should I be removing my answer?

Aaron Hall

which answer are you talking about?

enderland

19:38

@Reaces questions like that which are super popular but not really good fits are just... trainwrecks for a Q/A setup

Reaces

10

A: How to deal with an untrainable junior dev?

Who is actually responsible? It sounds like you're stuck in a mentoring position, with someone you don't want to mentor, and perhaps no real experience or interest in doing so. Perhaps you're simply the person he ended up being sat next to, and as such the role fell on you. Your post however...

Aaron Hall

No, with 10 upvotes the community values your contribution.

Reaces

It's hard to judge on The Workplace... Judging by ServerFault standards every question looks subjective and close-able.

Aaron Hall

I may disagree with the ordering, but that's what my upvotes and downvotes are for.

People seem to forget they can downvote answers.

enderland

whaat? you can!? :P

Aaron Hall

19:40

It's true. It's there in the ~~help~~ tour: workplace.stackexchange.com/tour

Reaces

To be honest, I really dislike down-voting other answers... I believe I shouldn't down-vote because I disagree, only if I think the answer is dead-wrong or harmful... And again, on The Workplace with everything being quite subjective it's hard to truly find something dead-wrong or harmful.

Aaron Hall

I think most people dislike it because it costs a rep point. But since I'd rather not have my Workplace account eclipse the others, I sort-of have an incentive to down-vote more.

enderland

Sep 30 at 20:18, by enderland

Also don't let that 1 rep for downvoting discourage you from downvoting bad answers... :D

Kit Z. Fox

Hi.

enderland

sup

Kit Z. Fox

19:53

sky. you?

Aaron Hall

@enderland my humor is very HHOS - perhaps too much seriousness in it...

enderland

20:05

:)

Aaron Hall

I typed up some nice devil logic suggesting it is, but I can't ethically post it. :)

Kit Z. Fox

I'm not sure why you would want to.

Aaron Hall

Will it improve you as an employee, whether your stay with your employer or not?

enderland

sure

why not

Aaron Hall

Then why should your employer mind? "What if we train all of our people and they leave? What if we don't and they stay?"

enderland

20:12

also, I'm not asking a super serious question, I'm planning on doing so regardless. :P

Aaron Hall

I think you're ethically bound to ask the question on the main site so I can get credit for seriously answering it. :)

That's a joke, please don't actually do it and tempt me.

enderland

hahhahaha

Kit Z. Fox

I guess I'm confused what you are planning to do. I thought you meant you wanted to print interview questions that your company uses to give them to some different other company.

enderland

nah. I'm going to print material I put together for that other interview

Kit Z. Fox

Oh. Well, in that case, no, it's not unethical.

You're printing materials for your employee record. And you need an offsite backup. Plus, you are allowed to have free access to information in your file.

Aaron Hall

20:27

In what country?

enderland

I mean, I work at X, and am going to pritn materials for interview with Y

Aaron Hall

Well, when you put it like that, it just sounds unethical.

enderland

:P

Aaron Hall

what on Earth kind of materials do you need to print?

enderland

some resumes, some questions, some supporting docs

Aaron Hall

20:31

Why would you want old stuff? Wouldn't you want new stuff?

Letters of recommendation?

enderland

I have:

Aaron Hall

I'd update my resume, and print it at some office supply place on nice paper.

enderland

resumes
"first 90 days" blueprint
Joel test list
specific questions
info from S-1 form (related to questions)
financials I have questions on
glassdoor salary information for position I'm applying for

Kit Z. Fox

I don't see how that is unethical.

Aaron Hall

first 90 days?

Kit Z. Fox

20:34

Because you are using company resources?

enderland

@AaronHall a blueprint to discuss "is this what you expect over the first 90 days?" type of thing (works great with manager types)

it's a great convo starter

"so I was wondering what the first 90 days normally look like, this is what I was thinking"

Aaron Hall

If the printer is considered a perk of the job, go for it. If they're rationing paper, I'd print it at an office supply store.

enderland

managerial types eat that up since it means "this guy won't require me to micromanage"

Aaron Hall

I kinda consider the printer to be a perk so long as the interests nominally align. I printed up the entire R language spec when I first got to my current employer, even though I don't use R (though we do have people who do.)

enderland

I'm being somewhat sarcastic about this too, I give my company way more time than they "pay me" for (assuming 40 hours week)

and so... if the 20 cents at most that I print per month hurts then. ffffffff

Aaron Hall

20:38

I wouldn't print my resume here unless they were letting me go and told me to make use of their resources so I can seamlessly transition away.

enderland

:P

Aaron Hall

But resumes are usually emailed around, and if I wanted a hard copy, I'd get a half-dozen of my latest from the office supply place across the street.

enderland

I'll probably just print it

meh

no one I work with knows me anyways :P

Kit Z. Fox

What are you talking about? I know you.

Aaron Hall

Anyways, is there a particular "first 90 days" template online you'd point me at, or should I just rely on my google foo which seems to be pointing me at a book mostly...

This search seems a little closer: google.com/…

enderland

20:43

>First 30 days:

Introduction to team
Introduction to software and tools
Begin meeting with mentor figure
Introduced to existing bugs/minor features
Begin attempting to fix them

First 60 days:

Continue meeting and getting to know team
Begin looking at adding functionality (perhaps small)
Start to take ownership for part of product
Continue looking into bugs and becoming more familiar with product

First 90 days:

Begin taking ownership of new product as well as parts of existing product
Finalize added functionality

thats what I use

Aaron Hall

starred it! :)

A man a plan a canal Panama!

Kit Z. Fox

21:07

A man a plan a camelopardalis!

enderland

21:17

@AaronHall I've been astonished how useful something like that is for managers

the few times I've interviewed where I could use that, it was... a golden ticket into a job offer

Aaron Hall

what, a written plan? imagine that.

I used to be a financial planner salesman, you know. I know all about the salesey power of having a "process."

I need to build a process for myself and think more about it.

enderland

@AaronHall iwillteachyoutoberich.com/the-briefcase-technique

that article is a great perspective and could be required reading for all technical types

Aaron Hall

21:34

That guy's got a great entrepreneurial spirit.

enderland

He has a lot of great stuff

Aaron Hall

You've got to set yourself apart from your competition, but you still have to be qualified.

enderland

My decision to (hopefully) change jobs is based somewhat off of his blog

he's really dogmatic about finding your "dream job"

Aaron Hall

It sounds like you need a change.

I read "Fire Your Boss" and it really affected how I view my career.

enderland

while I think that's somewhat idealistic to chase that forever, it is not unrealistic to recognize that anyone who can breathe and code has a lot of flexibility (even those who are terribly bad)

@AaronHall it looks like that is a bit of the "find something which makes money, become excellent, and you'll enjoy it"

Aaron Hall

21:39

what, "Fire Your Boss"? amazon.com/Fire-Your-Boss-Stephen-Pollan/dp/0060583940

enderland

There are many self-help career guides that extol us to find a job within our passion. Their logic is that if we love our work, then the money will follow.

However, "Fire Your Boss" takes a different tack. Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine instead recommend that we work for the money, and then the love will follow. From that foundation, they craft a career plan that they contend will lead to occupational success and personal well being. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but the authors make a compelling case.

Aaron Hall

Yep.

enderland

I'd probably enjoy that book

Aaron Hall

I can afford to help friends on the weekends with their Natural Language Processing stuff because I work on core Python stuff at a firm that pays me to do it.

enderland

It's a delicate balance - living to work, or working to live

those of us in tech are blessed in that we can do both

Aaron Hall

21:43

well his book does not just speak to those in tech.

enderland

sure. I mean more in general

Aaron Hall

It addresses people in every field.

It has shaped some of the answers I've given here.

I think there's a great depth of wisdom in that book.

enderland

I've pondered the concept of employee loyalty a lot recently

Aaron Hall

I agree with Pollan (author of that book) - loyalty is a thing of the past. There's ethics and agency theory, of course, but beyond one's day-to-day duties, one does not put the interests of the firm above your career.

enderland

Yeah, my current company is probably higher on the end of loyal to employees than most but.. they did lay off nearly all their contracted employees in the last few years, so...

it makes it really hard for me to think about committing to them out of a sense of, what, loyalty? the minute my job affects the bottom line negatively I'm gone - regardless of how "loyal" they are to me

Aaron Hall

21:49

that's why you hire contractors - so you can easily get rid of them.

So there you have it, they are not "loyal" to you in any sense other than they will give you your pay-check as long as you are on their rolls, and they will take you off the rolls as soon as they believe it makes financial sense.

enderland

Yeah

Aaron Hall

I just gave an answer that draws from our discussion today. So thanks for that. :)

enderland

22:18

:-)

I just wrote a book of an answer on a HNQ money question...

Just printed about 20 pages. lol. :D

Aaron Hall

Don't forget rule 72t bankrate.com/finance/retirement/…

unsophisticated advisors don't know about it, but I guarantee anyone bugging about getting their 401k money early learns about it.

@enderland also see investopedia.com/terms/r/rule72t.asp and irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/…

I forget when they extended 72t to IRA's, but that's pretty new

Alright, good luck, cheers! I'm outta here!

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