Codeslinger

Preface: This observation is not intended to call out any specific people. Something I've observed in the work environment: a tendency from some types of people to provide what I would term "toxic answers". This is when, broadly speaking, someone on a team asks a question (re tech, process, how to do something, etc.), and someone else provides an "answer" which is not really helpful. This can take several forms: Reference to existing documentation which is out of date, incomplete, or inaccurate Reference to process which is surface-level related, but not germane to the actual question Reference to something which someone else has stated to be the answer, but is not actually the answer, and the person echoing it has not personally verified Some related commentary which expresses opinions on the topic, and pretends to answer the question, but isn't actually actionable Commentary which expands the scope of the question to include more questions/work, without an...

So I was recently doing some casual employment opportunity exploration (as one should do periodically, even if the situation is not pressing if nothing else just to see what else might be out there, and to keep one's interviewing skills updated), and a funny thing happened. I was being screened by a developer as part of a normal process, and got a typical "test" problem to write an implementation for. In this case, it was something which would be real-world applicable, but still small enough to be feasible for an interview time slot. Germaine to the story is that, for this interview, the other party was not using an online shared text editor for sample code, but rather just having me share my favorite (or handy) IDE/editor from my local system to write the code in. Now, for this instance the position I was being evaluated for was primarily Windows-based, so naturally I opened Visual Studio, and switched from my default most recent personal project to a new blank file, whe...

For various reasons, I find myself once again at a point in my career where I am considering both searching out unbiased feedback about organizations, and potentially providing such myself. I perceive a considerable amount of value in the general existence of such information, in a few different ways. From the employee perspective, obviously, it can bias where you take a job, help align the working conditions with your expectations and desires, and consequently increase overall job satisfaction and potential for a good fit. From the general economy perspective, transparent information can be a powerful force in motivating companies to create better working conditions, by aligning that goal with economic incentives (vis-a-vis the ability to recruit better people). It's a general objective good thing. It's also a hard thing, mainly because there are a lot of bad actors in the corporate space, and companies can be very punitive and litigious when it comes to negative feedback abou...

I posted an answer recently on a reddit post, where someone was asking if they should stay at a company which fired them, but then offered to rescind the firing after discussing the situation with the employee. Thread is here (at time of post): https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/15or3du/got_fired_from_job_and_then_rehired_within_an/ I figured I'd copy my response here, though, since it's general career advice (not developer specific, but within the sphere of development as a profession). My advice is/was as follows. You will have a general "working relationship" with every employer, which is a combination of how you are treated, how your input is valued, how you are evaluated, how well your perception of "good work" aligns with that of you management, etc. In a job where you have a good working relationship, those things are broadly positive, and of course there's a spectrum. A company taking significant actions to undermine/damage the working relati...