Musings of an anarchist misfit
Published at 09:11 on 13 August 2015
Arresting one of your own because he wants to volunteer to fight against terrorism? Mainstream news article here, anarchist news article here.
To make matters even worse, he could potentially face life in prison.
Published at 09:18 on 5 August 2015
Just had a phone screen with a Seattle employer that lasted all but a minute or so.
Reason was the second question asked, which had nothing to do with technical competence. It had to do with a (very conservative, East Coast-ish dress code), which is something of a surprise to run into on the West Coast.
And no, I am not interested in such things. First, I find such garb physically uncomfortable. If I’m distracted by (lack of) physical comfort, my concentration and thus my job are negatively affected. Why would I want to limit myself like that?
Second, such apparel is expensive. Expensive to purchase, and expensive to maintain (dry cleaning doesn’t come cheap). So such a requirement basically amounts to an additional tax on my salary.
It’s not just me, either. I don’t abide by many stereotypes of software geeks but the above sentiments would probably be echoed exactly by the vast majority of software professionals.
Which brings up a third, yet more insidious reason to avoid the place. There’s basically two kinds of people that such dress codes screen for:
Those in category one are basically harmless. So Joe or Jane Programmer enjoys dressing up in business suits? So what? If it makes them happy and they do their job better as a result, fine. Dress codes are something of a plus for this crowd as it lets them work on the West Coast, enjoy dressing up, and yet avoid this problem.
Those in category two are the problem. They’re at the place with the dress code because a huge chunk of everybody else in the programming field is not, thus removing more technically-competent competition from the picture.
Prevailing attitudes amongst software geeks mean this crowd probably ends up being in the majority. That my interviewer ended up asking this question very early in the process indicates it’s a show-stopper for many candidates, which validates my suspicion.
Why would I want to limit myself by working with subpar talent?
Published at 22:00 on 4 August 2015
List a job that I would otherwise want, but make the only way to apply for it be to fill out a web form that demands you supply an expected salary range.
It’s almost as bad as demanding you furnish your salary history. Particularly if, like the two jobs I just ran into this for, it’s either a public-sector job or one at a nonprofit. The former typically have more generous benefits packages and less generous salaries. The latter typically have less generous salaries. In neither case is simply plugging in a market-rate number (of which I have a fair idea) appropriate.
In this case, the nonprofit’s mission is such that I’d be willing to take less money in return for my work being particularly socially valuable. But, I have no idea what their budget is. So my choice is to either sell myself short by putting in a low number that they will take advantage of, or to sell myself short by putting in something higher that will scare them off from interviewing me, even though if the job is appealing I’d be willing to bend on that figure. There’s no way to specify that latter fact, either, of course. A number and just a number must be entered.
A similar conundrum exists for the public-sector job. The easiest solution is for me to just pass on both and move on to someone who doesn’t use such sleazy tactics. Which is probably just what I will do.
Published at 21:04 on 1 August 2015
The best thing that happened on the Deer Park camping trip was the new experience of being on a mountaintop as the sun set.
I’ve been on mountaintops many times, but always as the part of day hikes that involved the goal of getting back to the trail head before nightfall. This time, the summit was only 1.2 miles from where I was camped, most of the route back was on a road, I had a light and spare batteries with me, and the moon was nearly full.
So it was easily possible to stay until the sun had completely set, which is exactly what I did, watching the colors change on the mountain slopes, the fingers of darkness creep up the walls of the valleys, and the sky turn colors in the west.
It was a new and magical experience, and the light from the moon meant I didn’t even need to use my light on the way back to camp.
Published at 10:36 on 31 July 2015
Finally went camping at Deer Park after wanting to for over 20 years. Granted, many of those years I wasn’t much into camping in general and just kept procrastinating on it, by choice. And for a good chunk of the other ones, I was in either California or Oregon.
But for the past few years, I have been in this area, but I just haven’t had the time. There’s no reservations for the Deer Park campground, which means that a quick weekend getaway is impossible: if you attempt one, you’ll find that every spot is already occupied for the weekend by people who took a day or two off to get there early and secure their spot.
So it was a natural idea of someplace to go now that recent circumstances mean I might as well make my getaways on weekdays, when it’s less crowded.
It’s a beautiful spot, and I plan on returning, but it’s not quite as idyllic as I imagined, because even on random weeknights the campground completely fills up, so you don’t get the privacy you would at some spot with lighter use.
Published at 07:41 on 27 July 2015
That much seems sure.
Yes, that’s what the experts said last year, too. But not really: If you dug into the details, last summer there were signs of a possible El Niño, but many of them were muted and wavered. It was a “this is probably going to happen but we’re not completely sure” type event.
This year, the signals are strong, and are consistently getting stronger over time. That means something is almost certainly up. The question this year is not whether the coming winter will be an El Niño winter, but what sort of El Niño winter it will be.
Many in journalism are playing up the angle on how strong the signs are. The rub is that super-strong El Niño events are super-rare. The 1998 event was the strongest in history. So the chance of the coming winter being as strong or stronger, while it exists and is actually plausible given the evidence, is still a pretty remote chance.
Odds simply don’t favor it; they favor something weaker. So far, the signals have been growing and growing over recent months. But there’s nothing to say they won’t stop growing, and start wavering. Mind you, everything will still be squarely in El Niño territory if that happens, just not a super-strong event. More of a garden-variety one.
What’s up for us in the Pacific Northwest? If you go here, you’ll see that the overall correlations are not as profound here as there are in California. Temperatures have very little signal, and precipitation seems to end up slightly drier. If (and note the if) it’s a super-strong event, as it may turn out to be, then temperatures end up distinctly warmer than normal and it ends up slightly wetter than normal.
That’s bad news for snowpack in our mountains, particularly after last winter being so terrible. But odds are it will be less terrible than last winter, which was so bad that even most El Niño winters had far better snowpack.
What’s interesting (in the overall situation) is the temperature disconnect between coastal and inland areas of the Northwest. (Inland areas end up distinctly warmer, but there’s little or no overall temperature signal on the coast.)
That’s explainable by there being far fewer arctic air outbreaks in El Niño winters. (In fact, the warmer winters in the while US from the Midwest east are.) It’s rare for such outbreaks to make it past the Cascades, so the loss of one such event (if an arctic front makes it across the mountains, it’s rare for it to happen more than once in a given winter) doesn’t affect temperatures here on the west side much. By contrast, arctic outbreaks are a typical winter feature east of the Cascades, and in particular east of the Rockies, so the loss of a good fraction of those would be expected to have a major effect.
Published at 15:12 on 26 July 2015
Did a little ritual today: went through all my clothing and rooted out all the swag with my old employer’s name or logo on it (they were fond of issuing such things, particularly T-shirts). I made two exceptions: one older T-shirt, issued back in the era when the company was true to its stated values and a great place to be working for (and which had a retro 1980ish design I always really liked), and the hoodie that I was issued when I was first hired.
Goodwill Industries lets you assign your own value on their receipts. I chose $1/shirt, because they usually sell for at least that much in thrift stores.
Published at 18:53 on 25 July 2015
The code I was working on has its tricky aspects. Moreover, my departure has made an already short-staffed team even worse so. That means its maintenance will probably at least partially end up in the hands of those who consume its data.
Those are the same people who tended to have a lack of respect for me, so it’s reasonable to expect my (incomplete; I was asked to leave before I had finished comprehensively updating it) documentation and cautions will be ignored. And one of the modifications that software needs should prove very tricky (I know, I tried to make it).
So I expect things to blow up messily in the next month or two, as fools rush in where angels fear to tread. At that point, I might get called for a consulting gig, who knows. And who knows if I’ll accept it; that depends on many factors. The last time that happened, many years ago, when they first asked I simply needed a break from the place, and by the time they asked a second time I was working at another job and simply didn’t have the time.
Published at 18:47 on 25 July 2015
It lasted another day. They told me to leave. More details later, possibly.
Looking back on the past 3¼ years, it’s been a time in my life, in many ways, that mirrors most of the 1990s, when I was working for the University of Washington. That job was in many ways unpleasant, but it did have the great boon of mostly varying somewhere between ⅔ and ¾ FTE, which kept me there for years despite all the dysfunctional aspects of that job.
It was great to have one or two extra days per week off, particularly for outdoor activities. Things are much less crowded in the mountains on the weekdays. Plus there was the stability of being in the same place for a number of years. I think that latter aspect has been a big part of the same feeling now; this is the longest I’ve been with one employer since then.
My goal was to stay for five years before moving on (which I probably would have; I didn’t want this job to become a rut like that UW job did). But it was not to be: not only did the company change from what it had been, the job did, too. It was evolving into more and more of a systems administration position, something I simply loathe. So it was not to be.
It would be great if I could get back to working less than full time again. Even half-time would work, given that there’s now Obamacare (if a job is half time or less, typically it does not come with benefits). Though in the latter case, I’d probably have to take a roommate to help with housing costs.
That latter option is possible, should I so choose. One of the things I was looking for in a house was something that would work well for a roommate situation. Though I’m not really sure yet if I want to do this, it’s better to have it as an option than to have painted myself into a corner with an inflexible house.
Published at 20:41 on 23 July 2015
Trying to make a capitalist corporation treat workers ethically and humanely is like trying to build a castle on sand. Even if you manage to erect the castle, it’s doomed to not last very long. Even if you find an astoundingly exceptional CEO who’s both supremely dedicated to treating people well and to negotiating the obstacles to doing same that the authoritarianism of the capitalist workplace presents, no CEO lasts forever. Odds are, the next one simply won’t be so exceptional.
It’s now become crystal-clear to me that the latter has now happened at my employer. As such, I’m certain to not last there much longer. Maybe I’ll leave, maybe they’ll tell me to leave. Maybe I’ll last another day, maybe I’ll last another month or two. Those details are unclear. What is clear is that I won’t be there much longer.
It’s not a surprise that it eventually happened. Going in, I wasn’t sure if everything really was as good as it sounded from the outside. When I found that it basically was, and that I’d really enjoy working there as a result, the “castle built upon the sand” insight was, due to my personal history and my ideological beliefs, pretty much axiomatic.
The surprise is that it all happened so suddenly, within a week. In hindsight I can now see how the problems have been building for some time: individuals whose personal values are antithetical to the founders’ unique values have been hired and promoted to management roles, and those values are now no longer being honored in large parts of the organization.