What a strange exchange.
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@boomzilla said in What a strange exchange.:
Software is pretty unique in that it can be done remotely
And yet, curiously enough, a lot of it is done in an overcrowded place where people live in trailers on the parking spot or pay literally 10 times my rent for, if @HardwareGeek is to be believed, what is basically "a cupboard under the stairs".
Filed under: and not the one in Privet Drive
Edit: mentions don't work anymore?
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@topspin it makes sense because when you have a lot of density you probably have a better talent pool. But of course then we get all that crazy expensiveness. It seems like someone who could figure out how to decentralize better could get a significant advantage. And while I think some people really are doing that (I know that my organization is), the challenges are still pretty big.
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@topspin said in What a strange exchange.:
Edit: mentions don't work anymore?
There are special cases where they don't work (@mention after a parenthesis is one of the easy to remember ones), but I can't see why the one in your post wouldn't work.
Filed under: NodeBB, that's Different™
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@topspin said in What a strange exchange.:
pay literally 10 times my rent for, if @HardwareGeek is to be believed, what is basically "a cupboard under the stairs".
I may have been exaggerating a little about the lack of amenities in a $2700 apartment, but probably not much. I pay $3700/month for a nice but modest 2br apartment in Silly Valley, and SF is even more expensive.
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@HardwareGeek I pay about €400 for a
modestnot particularly great 80m2 apartment, so it's not far off. But the talent pool / opportunities thing does make sense.Edit: I also make less (net) a month than what you pay for the apartment alone.
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
I pay $3700/month for a nice but modest 2br apartment in Silly Valley
Holy moly. $3700/month gets you like half a skyscraper and several acres of lawn in my area...
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It's possible to do better. In some areas of Silly Valley, it's possible to rent a typical suburban house (1200–1500 sq ft — call it 110–140 sq m) on a typical suburban lot (5000 sq ft, 460 sq m) for $3000–3500/month. But, depending on whether the landlord chooses to rent to the best qualified tenant or, usually, the first qualified applicant, you either have to have the best credit history of the 10000 people who want to rent the house, or you have to submit an application within microseconds of the listing appearing on Craigslist.
I have pets — well, a pet, now
— which eliminates 90% of the rental units, house or apartment. It also needed to be transit-accessible for my kids' jobs, which limited me geographically, mostly eliminating the lower cost areas, and I had a hard deadline to find a place. So I pay for it.
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@Cursorkeys said in What a strange exchange.:
Is that in London by any chance?
Seen that level advertised in Leeds. I'd imagine London would have a substantial premium over that (because of bullshit London prices).
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@topspin said in What a strange exchange.:
Edit: mentions don't work anymore?
It's your
abbrtag. For some reason, it kills the next mention. Putting a link (even if there's nothing in it, i.e.[]()) in between will restore the mention, though.
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@boomzilla It's more that management can't handle people not driving into the office 8-5 every day like robots. Somehow they overcome that fear of losing control when the remote worker is in India.
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@Zenith that's one thing, sure. But I've also known people who have tried to work from home and simply couldn't focus. They need to get out of the house and into an office to be productive.
They overcome the fear with outsourcers because they assume there's someone on the other end keeping the peons in check.
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@boomzilla said in What a strange exchange.:
But I've also known people who have tried to work from home and simply couldn't focus. They need to get out of the house and into an office to be productive.
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@boomzilla said in What a strange exchange.:
@Zenith that's one thing, sure. But I've also known people who have tried to work from home and simply couldn't focus. They need to get out of the house and into an office to be productive.
They overcome the fear with outsourcers because they assume there's someone on the other end keeping the peons in check.
I have a mild case of blinkenlightitis, so I get distracted and occasionally start doing not work stuff. On the other hand, I get a lot more work done in the same time at home, because there are no constant disturbing things happening. Landscape offices fucking kill my productivity, and most places have been going to landscapes while acknowledging that it's horrible.
So, I personally feel working from home is really nice in my case. I've had cow-orkers that could spend two days "working" from home and not having anything at all to show for it repeatedly so I do understand managers that don't allow it at all. Easier to do it that way than to explain that some people can't because they suck.
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So I had another really bizarre call this week. I had basically stopped applying on ZipRecruiter because I kept getting "thumbs up" from people looking at my resume and then no followup whatsoever. Well about a month after I last applied, some place called Puzzle Innovationz (yes, really) decided to call.
When I just happened to be in a doctor's office waiting room of course. Couldn't hear a word he mumbled so I told him to call me back in half an hour. I hate doing this, because I get so few callbacks, but I really couldn't tune out medical advice for some random Indian on the phone. He said he would and then, of course, did not. Whatever.
So two days later, some time around 11, I get a call back. It's this guy again. He stutters for about 5 minutes, where I can barely even hear him, let alone distinguish an actual sentence, and hangs up. Then about an hour later I get another call back, same number but I think a different Indian. Again, I can barely hear through the stuttering. He asks about a position he never sent me, then says "hold on," sounds like he put the phone down to yell across the room, and 30 seconds later the signal goes dead.
So a few hours later I get another call, I think the first Indian, but again, difficult to tell with the stuttering. He asks if I know Java. I didn't apply for a Java job. But, OK, I had college coursework in Java. Then he stutters out something that I answered with "Was that a question? It's difficult to understand you. Do you have a land line?" Then there was something that sounded like words and I didn't answer and he hung up. A few hours later, towards the end of the day, the posting on ZipRecruiter was suddenly closed.
I swear, these phone interviews are like talking to Packleds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeFoGo3N_4g
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@Zenith I've posted before, somewhere (
to search), that I have a contact in my phone named "Fast talking recruiter I can't understand", so that I may more easily ignore his calls. Not that it matters; I ignore almost all incoming calls. If you want to talk to me, leave a voicemail. Maybe I'll call you back; maybe not.
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
If you want to talk to me, leave a voicemail.
This. My phone does not like doing phone things, so much so that most times I don't even get a ring. If you don't leave a voicemail (and the greeting message explosively says this), I probably didn't even notice you called.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in What a strange exchange.:
My phone does not like doing phone things
T-Mobile?
@Tsaukpaetra said in What a strange exchange.:
the greeting message explosively says this
Maybe that's why your phone doesn't work.
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
T-Mobile?
No, the radio firmware I accidentally erased never worked quite right after I replaced it with "stock"
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@Tsaukpaetra said in What a strange exchange.:
I replaced it with "stock"
Maybe you should have used GOOG or AMZN instead of TOY.
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@HardwareGeek Opposite here. If you only leave voicemail with me, I'll never reply back. Every voicemail system I've ever used has had such a terrible UI that I just don't listen to it anymore. I with they did something like smart office phones do now where they forward it to e-mail and print the phone number.
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@Zenith
That’s one thing that I find worth the markup on an iPhone. Their visual voicemail JustWorks(tm) and the carriers I’ve used take pains to make sure it keeps working because they want that sweet sweet iDiot cash.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
Every voicemail system I've ever used has had such a terrible UI that I just don't listen to it anymore.
My phone provider has an ok one: Dial the voicemail number, enter passcode, the voice tells you "you have one new message", press 1 to play it, press 7 to delete.
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@Cursorkeys said in What a strange exchange.:
@Seppen said in What a strange exchange.:
entry-level jobs advertised for £40-£50K
Is that in London by any chance? Out here in the sticks it's far lower.
I've just moved jobs, so I saw a load of IT position listings while doing my due-diligence on EE salaries.
That's not even London. Most entry level jobs in London would be around high 20's low 30's at best. I don't know where people are getting the idea IT offers great salaries these days. Cost of living raises is the most you get in most places too. It's still easier to get a pay rise by hopping jobs.
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@DogsB I've been starting to see postings come up where they don't even require a bachelor's degree. The quality of software that I have to deal with is dropping like rock and they're lowering the bar? If I worked a regular office job, I'd be begging to go back to pen and paper. At least until they manage to fuck that up somehow too.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
If I worked a regular office job, I'd be begging to go back to pen and paper. At least until they manage to fuck that up somehow too.
Has anyone seen my pen and papers?
I'm sure they're right where you left them
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
Every voicemail system I've ever used has had such a terrible UI that I just don't listen to it anymore. I
Wait, you use your phone to listen to voicemail? I haven't dialed into a voicemail system in years!
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
If you want to talk to me, leave a voicemail.
That. Because 99.9999999999999999999999% of all incoming calls are spam. And most are spoofed numbers.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
@Seppen British companies could do something novel and hire British people for those jobs.
From my point of view, the US has many non-technical people that think they should make technical* decisions.
I'm afraid they're in abundance everywhere, perhaps except some low-tech societies in central Africa, where there are no technical decisions to be made.
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@Tsaukpaetra Not only do I live on Earth 72, it's also the 1970s here. Nothing fucking works. I can't even get my Discover balance over the phone anymore because their voice recognition is so retarded. Only way it halfway works is to crank the pitch up into Pinkie Pie range and scream at it. Not something I like to do with other people around.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
the 1970s
@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
voice recognition
Oh, you're
. You need to use the dial-pad in touch-tone mode. 
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@Tsaukpaetra They don't have one! It's awful!
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
@Tsaukpaetra They don't have one! It's awful!
They removed it?!? Typical... Maybe they provide a teletype number instead?
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Yeah. I never understood why so many automated phone systems, in France at least, have started using voice recognition instead of touch-tone.
It's not faster, it's not more convenient, and the reliability is much worse (touch-tone was explicitly designed to be reliable even in bad conditions, after all). The only theoretical advantage I can think of is that it could allow more than ten choices, but it's not used that way in practice (because it would confuse callers).
It's basically a solution looking for a problem.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
I've been starting to see postings come up where they don't even require a bachelor's degree.
Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen...
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@lolwhat said in What a strange exchange.:
@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
I've been starting to see postings come up where they don't even require a bachelor's degree.
Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen...
Not that I disagree, but it's irritating to have both a degree and the experience that was soooo important when I didn't have it, and have my applications round-filed without even a courtesy call. They're going "oh me, oh my, so hard to find anybody anywhere, have to snag those highschoolers, baristas, and parolees just to make our quota." I didn't even get to do a plain clothes interview yet...just drowning in spam from Indians for jobs that don't exist.
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@lolwhat said in What a strange exchange.:
Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen...
If you've not got an actual business plan (like those four), stick with getting the degree…
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@Zerosquare said in What a strange exchange.:
It's not faster, it's not more convenient, and the reliability is much worse
I can see how that might work for customer service phoneline, from business perspective...
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@Gąska: you mean, by discouraging customers from calling?
Hmmm. Now that you mention it, it sounds credible...
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@Zerosquare said in What a strange exchange.:
Yeah. I never understood why so many automated phone systems, in France at least, have started using voice recognition instead of touch-tone.
It's not faster, it's not more convenient, and the reliability is much worse (touch-tone was explicitly designed to be reliable even in bad conditions, after all). The only theoretical advantage I can think of is that it could allow more than ten choices, but it's not used that way in practice (because it would confuse callers).
It's basically a solution looking for a problem.
My guess is "press button 1 to select X" leads to a certain percentage of people going WHAT IS THIS I DON'T UNDERSTAND COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY and hanging up.
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@anonymous234 So instead they scream at a robot that keeps saying "I'm afraid I didn't quite get that, please try again." There are plenty of folks down at Springfield Retirement Castle that can do that.
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@Zerosquare said in What a strange exchange.:
Yeah. I never understood why so many automated phone systems, in France at least, have started using voice recognition instead of touch-tone.
I was on phone with the ISP customer service just this week (I could write a whole
threadbook about the WTFs).
: ... the number you have an issue with is 555-123456. Correct?
: Correct!
: Please answer Yes or No! so you want to play the 
ry game? Fine!... further along the call ...
: If you want us to do stupid thing, please say yes.
:
: If you want us to do stupid thing, please say yes.
:
: I could not hear you
: NO! No, you stupid fuck!
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@topspin said in What a strange exchange.:
I was on phone with the ISP customer service just this week (I could write a whole threadbook about the WTFs).
I've posted before about a previous experience with mine...
I'd called from my work mobile which isn't registered against the account, so it hadn't automatically detected the correct details.
: Enter your phone number, or press zero to enter your account number
: *enters phone number*
: Your account number was not recognisedSpoiler alert: UK residential phone numbers start with zero.
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@levicki said in What a strange exchange.:
More likely it ended like this:
No, I'm not falling for that. But would have been (not) funny.
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@topspin said in What a strange exchange.:
@Zerosquare said in What a strange exchange.:
Yeah. I never understood why so many automated phone systems, in France at least, have started using voice recognition instead of touch-tone.
I was on phone with the ISP customer service just this week (I could write a whole
threadbook about the WTFs).: ... the number you have an issue with is 555-123456. Correct?
: Correct!
: Please answer Yes or No! so you want to play the ry game? Fine!... further along the call ...
: If you want us to do stupid thing, please say yes.
:
: If you want us to do stupid thing, please say yes.
:
: I could not hear you
: NO! No, you stupid fuck!I stand by my decision to leave the OwO extension turned on...
