I work at Google and the who promotion culture is very toxic. People are incentivized to "Launch" things just in time to get promo and only to abandon it or switch teams in search of the next promo. It also gets hypercompetitive and harms teamwork sometimes. The promotions are usually B.S. anyway, they add stress and usually remove a good functioning engineer from doing good work into more "non technical leadership" work.
The Truth is, people really want promos for the extra money and more stock. I say, just give them the extra money and stock privately, and only promote people when there's a job to be filled for that position.
The dual-ladder system exists to fix something that is broken but ends up breaking it more.
In essence, there's the E9/O1 problem. An elite engineer with 25 years of experience simply knows more than an entry-level manager. Organizations try to solve this by dual-laddering and saying that there are "Director-equivalent" engineers (e.g. Staff or Principal) and so on, to rectify the obvious injustice of a scenario where a fresh MBA is seen to outrank the best engineers because he manages a team and they don't. The problem is that this dual-laddering makes it worse, because it's so much harder to move up the engineering ladder. If you're a Software Manager I at Google, you have to shit five or six different beds not to make Director within ~6 years and VP within ~12. On the other hand, making Principal+ Engineer is quite difficult, especially if you're not in MTV. So it perpetuates a false equivalency in which the managerial and product folk are gods (because of their swift, easy promotions) while most of the engineers are leftovers.
In the military the E9/O1 issue is at least understood. Not so much in corporate life.
The parity between the two ladders is something of a myth. At most companies, you can see that clearly if you count heads.
A director might oversee 150 to 250 people. There will likely be five second level managers reporting to the director, and maybe twenty first level managers reporting to those second level managers. So 30 manager level people.
And there will be maybe four or five Staff and one Principal engineer in the same organization. Sometimes even fewer.
Parity is not identity (nor equivalent to it, lol). The two jobs are importantly equal in their difficulty and (more directly) their value, and not - among the many other differences - the number of people they manage. This thinking is why valuable individual contributors move to companies where progression isn't defined in terms of the number of reports you have (respectfully).
My point is not number of reports, but number of people.
A directorate might have 25 managers, and maybe 200 developers. Of those developers 4 or 5 might be staff/principal, and it might be as small as 1 or 2, or even zero.
So far fewer people move up the technical ladder than up the management ladder.
There are influencers making 6+ figures. They are mostly Youtuber's, IG accounts with 500K to 1M+ subscribers. 1 million views can garner near ~$10,000 in ad revenue (depending on your partner level) and they also can monetize further with sponsorships/patreon pages. There is money but you have to build a very large audience on Twitter, IG or Youtube.
Similarly, I don't doubt that the NSA has the ability to attribute an attack to an attacker. What I doubt is that the NSA has the ability to tell the truth in public.
The NSA having the information leaked is more beneficial than saying it directly. If at any point something shows it clearly wasn't North Korea, the NSA can claim they have made not official statements and the leak was using bad information. But if such information doesn't come out, then we get what we currently have, which is the public having been informed that North Korea is responsible. What more could the NSA have asked for? Well maybe North Korea directly claiming responsibility, but besides for that.
Very possible, but any refusal/dissuasion against considering such possibilities can equally serve propaganda. This observation is no more profound than the insight that advertising is usually trying to get you to buy something.
The idea that the US needs to actively spread propaganda about North Korea is pretty ridiculous. You are aware that they have been sending missiles on a regular basis and inviting criticism from pretty much everyone.
Who exactly is pro-North Korea that the US is trying to sway ?
While I don't think this is the case here, specifically, propaganda isn't always about swaying people from anti- to pro-; it could be for swaying people from "they are bad, but not that dangerous" to "they are dangerous enough that we should intervene with force"
Right. Watching the Noam Chomsky documentary, Manufacturing Consent, on YouTube really opened my eyes to this phenomena. Based on what I have observed recently, I think the decision was made some time ago on this, and we're being told what to think.
It's good to be skeptical but I think when you have preponderance of evidence in one way, it's not unreasonable to reach a conclusion. Remember Noam was the same guy who for political reasons did not want to believe Pol Pot was mowing through millions despite large amounts of information filtering out of the country corroborating the atrocities others claimed were taking place.
Additionally, there is no need to "manufacture consent" as only a very small minority would object to any action against N Korea at this point in time.
If the best criticism of Chomsky is from 40 years ago, and about Pol Pot - a person Chomsky believes is a mass murderer, I think Chomsky is doing quite well.
> Additionally, there is no need to "manufacture consent" as only a very small minority would object to any action against N Korea at this point in time.
>If the best criticism of Chomsky is from 40 years ago
He's a politically, nay, ideologically motivated individual --i.e. he presents his version of a story to which there could be multiple sides with multiple interpretations, but his is "right".
You can witness the same again when he more recently shrugged off 9-11 because he said, oh, well, the US committed similar atrocity by bombing a pill factory in the Sudan. He can be downright intellectually lazy when it's opportune.
Oh, and he also sympathized with Milosevic. Why? Oh, well, because he saw him as the one guy in the Balkans who was anti-American. Yup, he sympathized with Milosevic. that's your Chomsky.
>Consent has already been manufactured!
If you call that manufactured consent then that term has lost all meaningful distinction.
> You can witness the same again when he more recently shrugged off 9-11 because he said, oh, well, the US committed similar atrocity by bombing a pill factory in the Sudan.
Citation required. As far as I remember, he clearly called 9/11 an atrocity, how is that shrugging it off? If you provide a citation with a link, explaining exactly what you mean, I can comment further.
> Oh, and he also sympathized with Milosevic. Why? Oh, well, because he saw him as the one guy in the Balkans who was anti-American.
> He's a politically, nay, ideologically motivated individual
> He can be downright intellectually lazy
> He also sympathized with Milosevic.
Ad-hominem is all well and good, but is there any specific objection that you have to any claim by Chomsky. The only specific objection anyone has is that he did not fully believe the scale of atrocities by Pol Pot as reported by US authorities in 1975. Reports that he subsequently accepted - Chomsky later stated, "I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978 - that atrocity - I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury."
It is hard to take any criticism of Chomsky seriously if it always devolves to comments about what kind of person he is and what he always likes to think, instead of specific objections to any claim he has made.
This is Chomsky's take, what is your specific objection?
https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse
> Or take the destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, one little footnote in the record of state terror, quickly forgotten. What would the reaction have been if the bin Laden network had blown up half the pharmaceutical supplies in the U.S. and the facilities for replenishing them? We can imagine, though the comparison is unfair, the consequences are vastly more severe in Sudan. That aside, if the U.S. or Israel or England were to be the target of such an atrocity, what would the reaction be? In this case we say, “Oh, well, too bad, minor mistake, let’s go on to the next topic, let the victims rot.” Other people in the world don’t react like that. When bin Laden brings up that bombing, he strikes a resonant chord, even among those who despise and fear him; and the same, unfortunately, is true of much of the rest of his rhetoric.
> Though it is merely a footnote, the Sudan case is nonetheless highly instructive. One interesting aspect is the reaction when someone dares to mention it. I have in the past, and did so again in response to queries from journalists shortly after 9-11 atrocities. I mentioned that the toll of the “horrendous crime” of 9-11, committed with “wickedness and awesome cruelty” (quoting Robert Fisk), may be comparable to the consequences of Clinton’s bombing of the Al-Shifa plant in August 1998. That plausible conclusion elicited an extraordinary reaction, filling many web sites and journals with feverish and fanciful condemnations, which I’ll ignore. The only important aspect is that single sentence—which, on a closer look, appears to be an understatement—was regarded by some commentators as utterly scandalous. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at some deep level, however they may deny it to themselves, they regard our crimes against the weak to be as normal as the air we breathe. Our crimes, for which we are responsible: as taxpayers, for failing to provide massive reparations, for granting refuge and immunity to the perpetrators, and for allowing the terrible facts to be sunk deep in the memory hole. All of this is of great significance, as it has been in the past.
> Unfortunately, it is not a thought experiment. It happened. The only inaccuracy in this brief account is that the numbers should be multiplied by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, the appropriate measure. I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the U.S. succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s brutal regime in office. The goal, in the words of the Nixon administration, was to kill the “virus” that might encourage all those “foreigners [who] are out to screw us” to take over their own resources and in other ways to pursue an intolerable policy of independent development. In the background was the conclusion of the National Security Council that, if the US could not control Latin America, it could not expect “to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world.”
>> If you call that manufactured consent then that term has lost all meaningful distinction.
> I mentioned that the toll of the “horrendous crime” of 9-11, committed with “wickedness and awesome cruelty” (quoting Robert Fisk), may be comparable to the consequences of Clinton’s bombing of the Al-Shifa plant in August 1998
There is still a moral difference: Al-Qaida tries to kill as many american civilians as they can. The US doesn't try to kill as many arab civilians as they can.
> The only inaccuracy in this brief account is that the numbers should be multiplied by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, the appropriate measure. I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the U.S. succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s brutal regime in office.
I'm trying to imagine what Chomsky would have said if the US had supported a coup against Hitler, a democratically elected socialist leader in an alliance with russia, before the second world war.
There would have been a civil war in germany, and even the right side of it would have mistreated some prisoners, caused some collateral damage, like every side in every war.
Like Hitler, Salvador Allende was democratically elected, but he was turning Chile into a dictatorship. Chile's Parlament literally wrote a letter to Pinochet asking for the coup.
> There is still a moral difference: Al-Qaida tries to kill as many american civilians as they can. The US doesn't try to kill as many arab civilians as they can.
Terrible argument. Consider several events from Al-Shifa bombing, bombing of Nagasaki etc. targeting a purely civilian population to achieve political and military goals.
> I'm trying to imagine what Chomsky would have said if
Criticisms of Chomsky would be taken far more seriously if it did not involve imagining things Chomsky would have done in imaginary scenarios. He has been active for 50+ years, why don't you just point out any particular claim by Chomsky that you disagree with? He has published copiously over 50 years!
> Salvador Allende was democratically elected, but he was turning Chile into a dictatorship
Upon assuming power, Allende began to carry out his platform of implementing a socialist programme called La vía chilena al socialismo ("the Chilean Path to Socialism"). This included nationalization of large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking), and government administration of the health care system, educational system (with the help of a United States educator, Jane A. Hobson-Gonzalez from Kokomo, Indiana), a programme of free milk for children in the schools and shanty towns of Chile, and an expansion of the land seizure and redistribution already begun under his predecessor Eduardo Frei Montalva,[31] who had nationalized between one-fifth and one-quarter of all the properties listed for takeover.[32] Allende also intended to improve the socio-economic welfare of Chile's poorest citizens;[33] a key element was to provide employment, either in the new nationalized enterprises or on public work projects.[33]
The rate of inflation fell from 36.1% in 1970 to 22.1% in 1971, while average real wages rose by 22.3% during 1971. Minimum real wages for blue-collar workers were increased by 56% during the first quarter of 1971, while in the same period real minimum wages for white-collar workers were increased by 23%, a development that decreased the differential ratio between blue- and white-collar workers’ minimum wage from 49% (1970) to 35% (1971). Central government expenditures went up by 36% in real terms, raising the share of fiscal spending in GDP from 21% (1970) to 27% (1971), and as part of this expansion, the public sector engaged in a huge housing program, starting to build 76,000 houses in 1971, compared to 24,000 for 1970.[41] During a 1971 emergency program, over 89,000 houses were built, and during Allende’s three years as president an average of 52,000 houses were constructed annually.[42] Although the acceleration of inflation in 1972 and 1973 eroded part of the initial increase in wages, they still rose (on average) in real terms during the 1971–73 period.[43]
As further noted by Ricardo Israel Zipper,
"By now meat was no longer a luxury, and the children of working people were adequately supplied with shoes and clothing. The popular living standards were improved in terms of the employment situation, social services, consumption levels, and income distribution."[40]
Throughout this presidency racial tensions between the poor descendants of indigenous people, who supported Allende's reforms, and the white elite increased.[65]
The United States opposition to Allende started several years before he was elected President of Chile. Declassified documents show that from 1962 through 1964, the CIA spent $3 million in anti-Allende propaganda "to scare voters away from Allende's FRAP coalition", and spent a total of $2.6 million to finance the presidential campaign of Eduardo Frei.[23][24]
The possibility of Allende winning Chile's 1970 election was deemed a disaster by a US administration that wanted to protect US geopolitical interests by preventing the spread of Communism during the Cold War.[73] In September 1970, President Nixon informed the CIA that an Allende government in Chile would not be acceptable and authorized $10 million to stop Allende from coming to power or unseat him.[74] Henry Kissinger's 40 Committee and the CIA planned to impede Allende's investiture as President of Chile with covert efforts known as "Track I" and "Track II"; Track I sought to prevent Allende from assuming power via so-called "parliamentary trickery", while under the Track II initiative, the CIA tried to convince key Chilean military officers to carry out a coup.[74]
Additionally, some point to the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency agents that allegedly secured the missiles used to bombard La Moneda Palace.[75] In fact, open US military aid to Chile continued during the Allende administration, and the national government was very much aware of this, although there is no record that Allende himself believed that such assistance was anything but beneficial to Chile.
During Nixon's presidency, United States officials attempted to prevent Allende's election by financing political parties aligned with opposition candidate Jorge Alessandri and supporting strikes in the mining and transportation sectors.[76] After the 1970 election, the Track I operation attempted to incite Chile's outgoing president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, to persuade his party (PDC) to vote in Congress for Alessandri.[77] Under the plan, Alessandri would resign his office immediately after assuming it and call new elections. Eduardo Frei would then be constitutionally able to run again (since the Chilean Constitution did not allow a president to hold two consecutive terms, but allowed multiple non-consecutive ones), and presumably easily defeat Allende. The Chilean Congress instead chose Allende as President, on the condition that he would sign a "Statute of Constitutional Guarantees" affirming that he would respect and obey the Chilean Constitution and that his reforms would not undermine any of its elements.
Track II was aborted, as parallel initiatives already underway within the Chilean military rendered it moot.[78]
The most prominent United States corporations in Chile before Allende's presidency were the Anaconda and Kennecott copper companies and ITT Corporation, International Telephone and Telegraph. Both copper corporations aimed to expand privatized copper production in the city of El Teniente in the Chilean Andes, the world's largest underground copper mine.[81] At the end of 1968, according to US Department of Commerce data, United States corporate holdings in Chile amounted to $964 million. Anaconda and Kennecott accounted for 28% of United States holdings, but ITT had by far the largest holding of any single corporation, with an investment of $200 million in Chile.[81] In 1970, before Allende was elected, ITT owned 70% of Chitelco, the Chilean Telephone Company and funded El Mercurio, a Chilean right-wing newspaper. Documents released in 2000 by the CIA confirmed that before the elections of 1970, ITT gave $700,000 to Allende's conservative opponent, Jorge Alessandri, with help from the CIA on how to channel the money safely. ITT president Harold Geneen also offered $1 million to the CIA to help defeat Allende in the elections.[82]
After General Pinochet assumed power, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon that the United States "didn't do it", but "we helped them...created the conditions as great as possible". (referring to the coup itself).[83] Recent documents declassified under the Clinton administration's Chile Declassification Project show that the United States government and the CIA sought to overthrow Allende in 1970 immediately before he took office ("Project FUBELT"). Many documents regarding the United States intervention in Chile remain classified.
US installing a dictator to prevent dictatorship in a democracy has to be the most insane arguments that I keep seeing that makes me question the entire education system!
> US installing a dictator to prevent dictatorship in a democracy has to be the most insane arguments that I keep seeing that makes me question the entire education system!
It worked though. Chile is a democracy now, no communist country is.
Chile was a democracy and US helped overthrow the democracy and install a dictatorship. The citizens managed to resist and recover their democracy after 20 years at a great cost to the country's poor and privatization of Chiles public mineral wealth. Also known as Chiles 9/11. What exactly "worked" here?
Also, are you seriously suggesting that no former communist country is a democracy now? How is this completely random false statement relevant to this discussion?
There was lots of skepticism but in the end because of lack of good humint a lot of weight was placed on his behavior (his continued pretense/bluffing for the purpose of not disclosing weakness to Iran), the international community with the US at the lead reached a faulty conclusion.
With regard to DPRK S Korea has great humint and we have multiple defectors corroborating each other (whereas Iraq there was basically one guy feeding intelligence services lies) so I would say it's not the same.
In addition, the regime provides all the evidence necessary (not just boastful claims) we sample the atmosphere as well as have seismometers corroborating their claims of nuclear development. There is no question as toward their progress nor their intentions.
"the international community with the US at the lead reached a faulty conclusion"
Mistakes can happen and be forgiven but deception is seldom forgotten. It didn't go down quite so innocently as you portray. It appears painfully obvious that there were/are many parties with economic and other interests who were behind what turned into a giant expensive catastrophe and killed hundreds of thousands. No one has even been reprimanded much less punished. A lot of them are still around trying to beat war drums for Syria. Trust was broken. The effects of that will go on for a long time and they aren't good.
re. North Korea
"There is no question as toward their progress nor their intentions."
Fully agree. Very much unlike Iraq (or even less Iran and Syria) NK is truly dangerous and leaving them to continue their present course doesn't seem wise.
Supporting almost no military adventures the US has engaged in over the last 30 years I would fully support any action necessary against NK. But hopefully it doesn't come to that.
It's a shame someone has been calling wolf every few years for economic gains and now when a real wolf is at the door lots of people won't listen. Look at the comments on this thread. People don't trust. And with very good reason. But in the case of NK I think they are mistaken. If there is a place a germ or technology comes out of that kills half the globe it will be there. ISIS are a bunch of circus clowns in comparison.
There is lots of blame to go around with re Iraq. Our intelligence, Saddam himself (calling a bluff he could not possibly win, the cat-mouse game, in addition to just being a tyrant), opposition, Shiites, many western countries (but curiously Russia opposed) etc.
It may not seem like it from the way I write, but I was utterly devastated when the congress approved the plans. But I take one incident at a time. I try not to color unrelated things.
I Can see how saddam's brand of pan-Arab socialist nationalism combined with Iraq's oil wealth could be irksome in some circles.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that NK presents a real and present danger. A continuous stream of bellicose rhetoric combined with progress on ICBMs and a current nuclear + LEO satellite = EMP capability troubles me. I don't deny the facts there. A change of course seems perfectly reasonable, necessary, and prudent. I will celebrate liberty for the North Korean people, and Kim's return to dust. My feeling is that the least palatable options to thinking and feeling human beings are the most probable at this point (for various reasons), hence the need for the narrative.
It just seems to me like a bug in our democracy that we don't get a clear accounting, representation, and participation in grave decisions like these, and I hope someday that bug gets patched.
So it's not North Korea testing ballistic missiles capable of destroying Tokyo, Seoul, Hawaii etc. Or the fact that they are actively developing nuclear weapons capable of hitting anywhere in the US.
No it's not billions of lives that are the impetus to use force. Rather it's the huge sum of a few million dollars worth of Bitcoins i.e the cost of one of their more expensive bombs.
US, Russia, and China have ballistic missiles capable of destroying all the cities you mentioned and some more. And what are you going to do about them?
All this talk of "North Korea may have missiles that can hit us!" is getting tiresome and, frankly, worrisome. The only reason people talk about North Korea and, say, not Russia is that the US can preemptively attack North Korea and they can do nothing about it.
Everywhere you live, your place can be incinerated in 30 minutes if one or another national leader decides to push the red button. And it has been like that for ~50 years. Deal with it, and if anybody feels extra warlike and feels like they have to invade yet another country to save the civilized world from WMDs, remember Iraq.
You are both entirely logical and entirely foolish. The DPRK is dangerous and may make our lives materially worse even if they never detonate a nuke in a city.
So the logic conclusion for you is not that North Korea did this who has no foreign currency and minimal income. But rather it was the NSA who is bankrolled by the US government and who will be receiving additional funds in the upcoming budget process.
One of those groups has the funding and experience to create malware that finds its way into 150000 computers. This group already monitors billions of other devices.
The other is an isolated nation that's decades behind on technology, only recently building weapons that can compete on a global scale, and struggles to feed its starving population.
It wouldn't be the first or even hundredth time that the US gov did something shady and pinned it on an enemy. It's less about the money and more about justifying their expanding powers.
I don't know who did it. I'm just saying it's not a stretch to accuse the NSA given their history with hacking tools becoming public and the Snowden leaks.
To use the revenue generating argument from the OP article as a good indicator of the author is weak at best.
And what has the US been doing for the last 50 years exactly ? If not dropping missiles and bombs on civilian populations abroad under the pretence of "spreading democracy" and "stopping terrorism"
Among other things, yes. I'm fairly sure you'd rather live in the US than North Korea, though. And I say that as someone who's not American and has a very dim view of capitalism and imperialism.
1) The US does not actively target civilians. That's a war crime. There are incidental deaths absolutely but if the US was intentionally trying to cause mass deaths they would simply drop a nuclear bomb a few more times.
2) What does this have to do with spreading propaganda, cyberattacks or North Korea ?
Re (1), it is worth noting that the GP didn't say the US was actively targeting civilians. The GP said "dropping missiles and bombs on civilian populations abroad". You are in agreement with that multilevel nonsense.
Btw I'm not defending NK and their government nor am I saying that it's heaven on earth, but a bit of balance and fair treatment doesn't hurt sometimes.
Well they refuse to bend to your will so you desperately need a way to portray them as the ultimate enemy to justify the use of force against them as someone mentioned in the comments up above.
This sounds to me like the internet version of "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, we absolutely must obliterate them to protect our freedoms", yeah right.
> Redux is such a simple idea that I accidentally invented... >put your app's state in a global immutable object, then use values to represent actions that transform the state. It's not ugly or complicated.
i agree that react is fairly simple..it's the other pieces to get it to be a complete solution that are just ugly and complex.
I'm sorry but flux and redux are another layer of abstraction that are much harder for new starters to grasp.
The advocates are so deep in the echo chamber that you don't realize how daunting all this.
> I'm sorry but flux and redux are another layer of abstraction that are much harder for new starters to grasp. The advocates are so deep in the echo chamber that you don't realize how daunting all this.
As always in a large enough population, there exists multiple dichotomies. Its a difficult problem; In this case, some people want better(more specific) tools, and others want less choice and time to learn one tool well. There is no really good answer to this, given that you can't please everyone, and software empowers minorities to fulfill their visions regardless of the majority. Ideally we can just hope that all evolution is cyclic (explosion of ideas, consolidation of ideas, repeat) and overall we stay in a healthy equilibrium. However, this is a problem in all aspects of life, from fashion to food. Even within computer science its not a problem unique to JavaScript.
JavaScript without Babel, React + (Flux | Meteor | Redux | Relay) is a non-starter. Some may also swap out for: Angular | Ember | Backbone + jQuery. And almost always there are additional "custom"[0] homegrown frameworks on top of or alongside everything else.
Java without (Spring | Guice), Lombok, (AspectJ | Spring AOP), Guava, (JodaTime | Java8), ApacheCommons, (Log4J | SLF4J), (Hibernate | ...) is a non-starter. Some may also swap out for: JavaEE + (Glassfish | JBoss). And almost always there are additional "custom"[0] homegrown frameworks on top of or alongside everything else.
I'm just using Java because I have to deal with it daily. However, undoubtedly this is a problem across any language or tool that has a large enough population.
[0] "custom" is in quotes because developers that create them always claim they are general purpose, regardless that in reality only one application has ever used it in production.
The Truth is, people really want promos for the extra money and more stock. I say, just give them the extra money and stock privately, and only promote people when there's a job to be filled for that position.