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12:48 AM
Baffled as to why this was re-opened without an edit:
1
Q: Former Employer wants to offer me a job and has invited me for a meeting

FionaMy previous employer who is direct competition with my current employer has requested that i visit them as they apparently have a number of roles i can take up. I have not applied for any of their jobs. We had worked together very well and very close personal relationships up until the time cam...

1) The title is not a question
2) Asking, "What can I do to protect my self if I choose to persue this opportunity?" is essentially asking for legal advice given the context
Pings for the above @RhysW, @Chad, @enderland (the other 2 don't visit this room so I can't ping them)
 
1:00 AM
(I gave it a serious scrubbing to try to clean it up)
 
1:56 AM
@jmac it was opened with an edit
 
@enderland The edit was cosmetic, no?
 
2:18 AM
@jmac Protect does not have to mean legal and I am not aware of any rule that says title must be a question.
That said I have no objection to your rewrite
Though a solicitor is not the same as an attorney i dont think
@jmac It was not off topic... is why it was reopened
 
2:50 AM
@Chad In the UK there are two types of lawyers. Solicitors are office lawyers, barristers get in front of the court. But they are both attorneys.
A Barrister (also known as Barrister-at-Law or Bar-at-Law) is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialize in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings, and giving expert legal opinions. They can be contrasted with solicitors – the other class of lawyer in split professions – who have more direct access to clients, and may do transactional-type legal work. Barristers are rarely hired by clients directly but instead are retained (or instructed) by solicitors to act on behalf of clients. The histo...
 
 
5 hours later…
8:19 AM
Wait, no the above says they aren't both attorneys. Man, now I have to look up the difference between a lawyer and an attorney!
 
 
5 hours later…
1:30 PM
-2
Q: Introducing yourself in an interview

learnerCurrently I am going for some job interviews. What could possibly be the very first few introductory lines to express myself?

30
Q: How should I respond to the classic "Introduce yourself" question in an interview?

SongoAlmost any interview begins with the classic question of "Introduce yourself". Somehow I found mixed levels of detail as answers to this question. How should you ideally respond to this question professionally? Should I talk about college? family? private work? other activities? I'm currently ...

dup? I don't think so, though the new one is pretty low quality
also I need to get enough rep to VtC on SO
 
@enderland wanna see something cool?
 
sure
 
The extent of my programming skills:
6
A: Where in the world do Stack Overflow users say they are from?

jmacSince this hasn't been remade since 2009, I figured it was about time to update it. I ran this query to gather data on all Stack Overflow users with over 1000 reputation. That got a total of 4,711 unique locations for 48,924 users. Of those 48,924 users, 13,138 did not list a location. Of the r...

 
I manually inputted the country for 28,490 (almost 80%) holy wow
 
It was 400 lines @enderland ;)
Pareto's law, and all that
or is it a rule?
anyway, the whole 80% of users are from 20% of the places.
10% in this case.
 
1:40 PM
oh - I read that as "I manually input 28000 countries"
 
Nope -- it sounds good though ;)
You can see the data dump at the end of the post
those are the ones I coded by hand
 
ahhhh
 
Yeah, not so bad
though I realized afterwards I coded "Georgia" as the country
when the state is probably most of them
(but whatever)
and that I miscoded netherlands entirely
 
It's better than what I did for that ;)
 
Possibly.
 
1:45 PM
I linked it in the programmers chat, all hail meaningless meta rep! :)
 
1:55 PM
lol
Thanks?
 
well meta rep is kinda.... meta! :)
 
Very true. I never really thought about it since we don't have it here.
 
2:21 PM
@jmac A solicitor is kind of like a paralegal/legal assistant in the US. They get the information get the forms filled out and deal with the client.
 
2:54 PM
I just realized the natural light from outside coming over my monitor is giving me a headache
I wonder if bringing a poster or something and putting up to block my desk and make it a cube would go over well...
 
3:11 PM
@Chad Only they are a full-fledged lawyer -- it's a different legal system. You wouldn't hire a paralegal to write a contract for you in the US, you would hire a solicitor in the UK.
 
writing my first unit test. woo
 
4:01 PM
bangs head on desk who the hell goes onto a server and deletes a folder called production!?!?
 
@RhysW LOL
 
im working with morons
no, i WISH i was working with morons, that would be a step UP
/me rants some more
Hi guys, hows it going?
:P
 
hahaha
 
guess who nominated themselves to be a mod (pro tem) on astronomy today? :D
 
@Chad?
 
4:12 PM
...yes...yes chad
 
I'm awesome.
2
 
wont argue with that :P
but i dont think chad is even part of the astronomy beta
 
Haha, you going to be a mod then eh?
 
not guranteed, id like to be, but its not up to me :P
 
4:58 PM
@enderland can you imagine the chaos i could cause? shudders
 
5:24 PM
@enderland I declared my self king and messaih of the Astronomy SE then quickly abdicated when i remembered i am afraid of the dark
If only we could study the stars during the day
 
you can, just wait for an eclipse
 
@Chad you joined astronomy?
 
@enderland Around here we call them the false coming of the apocalypse... though we react like it really is the apocalypse
@RhysW Kind of but only because I got it confused with Astrology
 
@Chad :P well fair enough then!
 
Maybe you could increase the scope to Astronomy and Astrology... that would be a fun clash of cultures
 
5:31 PM
honestly id merge astrology with skeptics, but thats my own bias speaking :P
 
6:08 PM
be interesting to see how much overlpa there is on SE sites
 
space, astronomy and physics all share similarities
 
obvoiusly programmers and workplace do too
 
gamedev and SO
 
@RhysW Is there a space SE?
 
@Chad well, space exploration
 
6:16 PM
yeah i am kind of surprized that SE and Astronomy did not get merged
 
two different things, it was suggested but decided against
 
0
Q: Does relation between years of experience and job changes matter?

LogicaljI heard about this a lot - that there should be a proper balance between your experience and job changes. Lets say a person is very sound and has experience of 3 to 4 odd years but he also has 3 to 4 job switches i.e. he spent about 1 year on average in every organization, not more than that. So,...

i wonder if this question would have different answers from hiring manangers in silicon valley vs the rest of the world
also... for the record. Open office layouts are absolutely awful
I do NOT understand how people can function without headphons
 
@enderland ive only ever worked in open office
i am the eldest of 4 children, i am really good at blocking out background noise without headphones!
 
I just have a hard time focusing for any extended period required for programming when people are chatting away on phones or otherwise being distracting
 
 
1 hour later…
7:46 PM
0
Q: is it safe to give 3 digits of SIN number

KaushikSometimes recruiters call me for new job offers and tell me that the employer needs date/month of birth and last 3 digits of SIN (social insurnace number). I am in canada. Am i opening myself up to identity theft?

Want this?
 
8:03 PM
@YannisRizos that strikes me as more... security.SE than workplace
 
8:54 PM
@enderland i jokingly threatened to hand in my resignation today and my boss said he just wouldn't accept it and make me work...i dont think thats how resignation works xD
 
nice. that might get awkward then if you end up actually resigning...
 
i will be...
will be the most awkward discussion of the day
 
"well I'm underpaid and don't have any work so..."
 
hes got this really really bad system thats been worked on by 1 guy for the last 11 years, 3 people (me and my 2 coworkers) have told him we will resign if he tries to give it to us (its that bad)
the guy resigned the other day who had been doing it
 
yikes
 
9:08 PM
he decided hes going to give it to me anyway, hence the pretend resignation
i dont think he knows about my interviews and my pending actual resignation, which will occur right as he gives the project to me... will seem like i really am resigning because of that!
 
interesting, well I guess that's nice
though won't make the discussion any less awkward
 
definately not!
this is all very new and odd xD
 
@RhysW Muhaha! Give it to 'em @RhysW! :)
@RhysW I am too, but I still detest open office configurations, and I won't tolerate one again unless I'm paid a very large premium.
@RhysW Even in a non-open office layout, I still wear headphones to block out the chatter.
 
9:24 PM
@JimG. how odd, i went from classrooms, to an open plan course, to open plan offices, ive never known it to be any different
 
@JimG. I'm basically building a cube - I brought my own whiteboard and my monitors are another wall, sorta
 
@RhysW Well you might have lucked out to some extent. You might have semi-courteous, self-starter coworkers.
@RhysW If you have co-workers (particularly software developers) who need a lot of help, it's really difficult to get anything accomplished between 9 and 5.
 
unfortunately my boss is the loudest person i know, he puts boat horns to shame
 
loudness isn't the problem
"hey can you help me with this?" is the problem
 
the new team lead is like that
 
9:27 PM
@RhysW Yeah... I had that a couple of years ago too. Never again.
@enderland I agree that's the worse of the two problems.
 
@JimG. you can block "IM GONNA TALK REALLY LOUD" with headphones
you can't block "INTERRUPTION INTERRUPTION INTERRUPTION INTERRUPTION" with them
 
@enderland oh no, not this boss, not at his volume and proximity
headphones dont go loud enough for that
 
@enderland Mostly, 'Yes'; except when you have a guy who insults and ridicules developers for trivial capitalization and CSS bugs.
@enderland I agree on this.
 
@enderland im building the ability to shoot tazers from my headphones, Then they will have this ability
 
it's just hard
sometimes it takes me nearly an hour to get into "the zone"
sometimes less, depending on how isolated what I need to do is
 
9:33 PM
43
Q: In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points

gnatIn current version of “hot” questions formula (Qanswers * Qscore) *, all answers are assumed to equally contribute to question "hotness score", including even those downvoted into oblivion. I suggest discarding answers when there is a strong evidence that these do not provide good data points fo...

in The Whiteboard, 1 min ago, by gnat
again looking for volunteers to put "draw attention" bounty on a request about fake hotness score. I plan to do it myself on Monday, but won't mind if someone else does, to indicate a broader community effort...
in The Whiteboard, 1 min ago, by gnat
For those interested, here's an explanation why I consider this important. And, if you plan a bounty please don't forget to pick the value from dropdown - I'd recommend minimal value
 
hey i think i know just the guy to help here, bounty wise
 
@enderland It probably takes me 10 minutes, but I hate paying that tax.
 
and, @enderland - thanks!
 
@JimG. it just depends on what
 
@enderland 10 minutes to get into the zone.
 
9:35 PM
@JimG. yeah, but I mean depends on what I'm doing - generally it's not an hour, obviously, but coding somewhat snowballs on itself
 
@enderland Sure. I can understand that.
 
@gnat got some support from friends at space/astronomy
 
@RhysW wonder how much would dropdown show to you. Given your prior bounty was 250, I'd expect either 500 or maybe nothing at all, in the sense of not enough rep
 
@gnat i dont even see the bounty button
 
@RhysW wow that was fast, thanks! as for invisible button, now that bounty is there, nobody will see it
 
9:41 PM
No worries, i have to return the favour apparently but i'm sure itll only cost me one limb!
 
 
1 hour later…
10:43 PM
I love that so often I read answers which make me go, "yeah pretty much this" on this site - that either means we have totally awesome groupthink OR people putting really awesome answers
 
11:25 PM
4 votes for too broad:
1
Q: What should be covered in a performance review?

jmacThe small company I am working for never had performance reviews. Because the employees were either part-time or co-founders, there was never a need for them (each person had a stake in the company, and any things that needed to be worked on were discussed relatively openly in company-wide meetin...

FYI, there are about a zillion pages on the net that answer a similar question with bullet points and/or under 500 words. I don't see this as a huge hurdle...
@RhysW 'In July Mercury retrograde will mean that your assertion is probably baloney.'
 
:P hi there
 
@RhysW Hi!
 
ive decided to come invade your timezone :P hence why im here
 
I see
it is 11:36 there?
I have an even 1000 reputation on meta. I feel special.
 
11:43 PM
its nearly 1am
and nice!
 
It just went about 1000. Hrmph.
You should sleep sir! Beauty sleep and all that.
 
haha, waiting for 1am, need my rep cap to be reset
but after that, much sleep will be had!
 
Why do you need your rep cap reset before sleep?
 
Astronomy site, still in beta, got some more Q's to ask and answer but like to make sure im meeting the rep cap per day, so waiting til its reset, asking some Q's then sleeping
plus i get my votes back xD
 
Ah
The rep cap resets at 1am UK time?
That seems...odd...
 
11:57 PM
unfortunately!
resets midnight UCT
or UTC, whichever way those letters are
 
GMT?
 

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