Yep. Inside Meta there was a robust network sharing offer and raise/promo letters. Someone hired in at your same level today would be making 10-20% more per year that you had been employed there.
So the hiring bump was going up faster than inflation? So after 2-4 years a new hire at the same level would be making almost at least 50% more than you...
Huh? This must have been in equity, right, given that the bands were consistent for everyone when I was there. I find it hard to believe that they changed that.
As a manager, it seems true to me. It's much easier to convince HR to pay $X for a new employee than to give a current employee a large enough raise to hit $X.
Because they have to answer about the budget in aggregate. If three developers are paid $100k each on year 1, and they hire a new one on 120k on year 2, the average salary has only gone up 5%. If they don't hire and just bump the veterans to 120k, overall expenditure is lower but the average salary is now 20% higher and it looks bad (and you're not growing).
I assume it will always be true outside of employees who are exceptionally VIP or employees selling to union/government roles that are compensated strictly according to length of tenure.
The employer gets labor at a lower price, and the employee gets lower volatility.
If you want the best price, you have to do the work to keep buying and you have to do the work to keep selling, only way any market can work.
There is volatility due to the buyer changing the terms of deal (including ending the deal), and there is also volatility due to the seller choosing to sell to different buyers, such as working in a different location or getting along with new colleagues, etc.
The former is not controllable from the perspective of a labor seller, but the latter is. Whether or not the tradeoff is worth it is dependent on the seller and always in flux.
Strangely, I first heard BB, all thanks to Napster. I just thought that is what jazz sounded like when I was very young, since I hadn't heard much of it at all except what came on our local NPR radio station.
It took me a few days on a 56k modem (thanks to failed downloads) to finally get one of the full 20+ minute tracks from the album. I think it might have been Pharoah's Dance mislabeled as the track BB... so many mislabeled songs on Napster back then.
This was around the time the Complete BB Sessions [1] came out... so that was one of the first albums I ever asked my parents for as a gift.
A few years after I got the album, I was traveling to a city, and while walking around downtown I heard one sound that sounded like it was identical to a sound from Pharoah's Dance. Whether intentional or not, I thought some of the cacophony of these tracks was intended to represent the chaotic energy that a big city can have.
I've had the opposite experience. Kind of Blue never grabbed me. I've always been drawn to Avant Garde jazz first and foremost. I was introduced to it via Flying Lotus and heard him mention BB in an interview. I recognize that Kind of Blue is a beloved album, but I've listened to BB a hundred times.
If you're a fan of both Flying Lotus and Bitches Brew, you should check out Miles Davis' album On The Corner, which came out two years after Bitches Brew. It feels like a direct precursor to hip-hop and a lot of the sample-based music that gained popularity in the 1980s, partly due to the tape splicing and looping that was done in the studio and partly because of the extremely wide set of influences that got stirred together on that record.
Googling OTP it Erlang comes no 9 in the results. The first three are One Time Password. I think there should be a rule to avoid unexplained abbreviations unless the meaning comes up easily in Google.
Sure: you could just have a list of links with the text "click here" that you hover over to see the url, too. If you haven't worked in the BEAM world those terms packed into a URL might not grab your attention enough to trigger recall, and what are headlines for if not telling us what's on the other side of the click?
Sure, if I spent more than half a second deciding if I want to click something, which I usually don't. This isn't "I can't tell this is Erlang without clicking". This is "there are no obvious signs that it's Erlang without clicking".
“adoptingerlang.org” shows up on the discussion page and the HN main list. No need to click, just to read the word “erlang” that is literally right there. It’s pretty easy actually.
Dude, not everyone knows everything. I'd have to have run into this situation before in order to know to look for erlang in the URL here. Plus, do I ever look at the URL before I click something on HN? no.
I had assumed "OTP" was so incredibly obvious that there was no need to look at the URL, that's all.
> It’s pretty easy actually.
Hindsight is 20/20... blaming user error is pretty cheap when my entire point is that it's easy to make user error.
Quoting the article: "OTP stands for _Open Telecom Platform_, which is literally a meaningless name that was used to get the stuff open-sourced back in the old days of Erlang at Ericsson."
That would be unfitting. OTP started as "Open Telecom Platform", but today the long form is not in use anymore. To quote Wikipedia (with emphasis from me):
"The name OTP WAS originally an acronym for Open Telecom Platform, which WAS a branding attempt before Ericsson released Erlang/OTP as open source."
Today, OTP is the name.
To avoid confusions, it would have been best to add "(Erlang)" before the title.
> "OTP" can stand for different things depending on the context. However, in the context of transportation, it commonly stands for "One-Time Password". In the context of fanfiction, it can stand for "One True Pairing". In the context of Atlanta, Georgia, OTP stands for "Outside the Perimeter", referring to the areas outside of the Interstate 285 loop that encircles the city. Please provide more context if you meant a different usage.
Erlang OTP makes no sense... just like X, or Alphabet as company names
The article itself has a blurb that says what it stands for:
> OTP stands for _Open Telecom Platform_, which is literally a meaningless name that was used to get the stuff open-sourced back in the old days of Erlang at Ericsson.
of course it has to, because no one knows about it... too bad they didnt use it in the title, because even with HN's highly limited title length, I think it would have fit
Judging by the condition of the records shown in the picture, and by the description of the records as "late-70's to mid-80's", a not particularly collectible vinyl era that produced mass amounts of low-grade (thin) vinyl, I would bet these records are not worth much. You would be lucky to find any gems in those crates.
(author) Most of them are in pretty rough shape, too. Covers disintegrating, warping, dust, etc. A couple are even cracked. That's why my current plan is to hang on to them, catalogue them, maybe give a few away to friends and family as birthday presents — and of course, if the rightful owners are ever found, return them. Selling them just seems like a really big hassle, honestly they'd have to be worth a few bucks apiece for me to consider dealing with all the logistics of it.
There's a company called Seamzeazy that sells adhesive sleeve repair patches, but they're fundamentally just creased cardstock with double-sided tape.[1]
Discogs is a decent and easy-enough resource for checking if any of them are notable. There are often etchings in the runout (the inner groove near the label) that you can search for on Discogs to identify specific pressings. You can also sell through Discogs, but it sounds like you're leaning toward keeping them and LA is full of local shops that would buy or take them.
A record clamp can mitigate warping without costing a ton, though it won't work miracles.[2]
There's also always using the long-gone ones as wall art.[3]
I would go so far as to say it isn't worth your time to catalog them. If you can find a 2nd-hand record store that will take them, accept whatever they offer. Otherwise, throw them out. Don't hoard them in your home beyond the point where the novelty of it wears off.
The novelty is still pretty darn strong for now, so I'm planning on keeping them for a bit. I also do music production as a hobby, and am really looking forward to finding obscure/lesser known records and sampling them in my own songs! I figure eventually I'll get rid of most of them one way or another, but I'm not in any rush.
If they even make an offer. When my dad died a few years ago, I combed through his considerable music CD collection for stuff I wanted (not very much), then tried selling the rest to a 2nd-hand store. They didn't even make an offer---the guy said "This is, hands down, the worst CD collection I've ever seen." He refused to let me throw them away in the nearby dumpster. Ouch.
Wound up being ~1200 bucks because they had to fully replace the lock, the ignition, and the battery. Also because they charged me 120/hour for labor, but what can I say—LA repairs for LA prices! I also didn't spend time getting competing quotes from different shops, so it's totally possible they charged me way more than market rate, but at the end of the day I have my car back and I am fortunate enough to still be able to pay my bills so it all worked out in the end.
so it's totally possible they charged me way more than market rate
At $120? Any software dev in LA with any experience is probably at $75/hour, and they don't have to outfit an entire shop with compressors, lifts, and pricey alignment racks. At $120 in Southern California, you ought to be crowing about the deal you got.
It reminds me when I was a pro mechanic years ago, and the biggest whiners about the hourly rate were doctors and lawyers. Excuuuuse me, Mr. Bills-at-Twice-the-Rate-I-Do?
At the end of the day, I didn't care too much about price because they did good work, were friendly, and got me my car back! You're right, highly skilled labor like mechanics work has the right to command higher rates.
I am trying to compare them. I know the software dev might not be as high, but it is directly comparable and can be expressed in USD for easy comparison.
My dev machine was about 5k, and I will build another one in another 3-4 years. My tablet was 1.5k. My phones for dev purposes are numerous and run 5-800 each. These get replaced every year or three. My primary laptop was 3k, I will buy another in another 3-4 years. My secondary laptop was 1k, it will probably last 4-5 years. My monitors were 1.5k each. I’m sure I’ll use those for 6-7 years. I have three. My test server was 5k. I will probably build a new one in 5-7 years. My sit/stand desk was 1k, my chair was almost 1k. Etc, etc… All of my tools are expendable on a much shorter time table than your mechanic tools.
dallas / ft worth you pay about $125 an hour for shop labor.
lot's of places have a placard with a $200 rate, but they never charge that much. (replaced headlights, they broke a wire, spent all morning on the car, cost was $250 in labor).
at least my experience, dealing with independents. i am sure a dealer has no shame on the rate and the hours.
> Employing this interpretation, he found the Panini's "language machine" produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.
If there are exceptions, I would think the problem isn’t solved. Perhaps the article is being loose with the wording. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Languages are generally not very amenable to these things.
If you want to construct the entire field of linguistics mathematically that would certainly be interesting to watch. Since a function that is described by a simple equation is mathematically equivalent to a function that is described by a table assigning the appropriate values to each element of the function domain, you could try to come up with a definition for what constitutes the "optimal" way to describe a function. Do the same for any kind of relation.
Until you've done so linguists will sadly be stuck applying nothing more than common sense.
Close also counts in computation, where we routinely handle infinite (or at least combinatorially effectively so) numbers of possible inputs with a few general rules and a finite ("almost no", to use a technical term) number of exceptions.
Perhaps my impression that this grammatical problem should be treated with logical rigor, where even a single counter-example invalidates the solution, isn’t the way this is being treated. The way it was presented in the article was like it was a kind of logic puzzle, for which an elegant solution has finally been found. Sounds like it’s more like a better rule of thumb was discovered that reduced the error rate, not to zero.
In English, the exceptions to the rules are arbitrary and numerous. English is also a moving target. From a logic problem perspective, English grammar is more of a practical brute force endeavor than an interesting one. When I read the article, I was wasn’t comparing the problem to English grammar, but rather comparing it to a logic puzzle that has a perfect solution.
One of the often repeated pearls of wisdom from How to Win Friends and Influence People[0] by Dale Carnegie, is people like to talk about themselves and they’ll like you more if you let them do that in a conversation. I’m paraphrasing. This research seems to counter that.
> from How to Win Friends and Influence People[0] by Dale Carnegie
Implementing the advice in this book too literally makes for very inauthentic sounding conversation.
After reading this book, I found it easy to spot other people who had read it and were trying the techniques on me. For example, when someone uses my name 10 different times in a private conversation for no obvious reason, I have a good idea that they’re trying How To Win Friends techniques on me.
It also feels awkward when someone is trying to shape the conversation to meet some arbitrary goal, rather than having a natural and engaging conversation where both parties are actually interested in the topics being discussed. When someone is just asking me questions not because they’re interested but because they think getting me to talk about it will help them achieve some personal goal, it becomes obvious quickly.
I've also experienced this and I've mentioned it in comments here in the past. I once recommended the book to a (former) colleague and it was maddening to talk to this person after they finished it. FWIW, I'm also always on edge when I talk to someone who I know has read the Rosenberg non-violent communication book(s), so it's not just the books or it's contents but a certain personality type, I guess.
Wouldn't the unnatural thing be a phase? Consciously practicing something is awkward almost by definition. But then hopefully you internalize it and become more natural and fluent in your application.
I'm sure that's true for some people. What's also true is that some people actively seek out ways to manipulate others and these 2 books in particular can be misconstrued as blueprints to achieve that end.
IMO the book itself addressed that point by suggesting that you try to find something to genuinely like about each person you engage with. The formulaic approach isn't meant to be the end goal, it's just a way to go from zero to some sort of common ground, from which a genuine connection can develop. It's really helpful for people who are totally inept at human conversation (like me) but it's just a starting place.
Nonviolent comms is similar... techniques for lowering people's defensiveness upfront and finding connection so that you can actually move forward with discussing the meat of the issue instead of being caught up in mutual dislike based on first impressions and preexisting biases.
Maybe they're not for everyone, and I certainly don't think they should be followed literally to the T like a cookbook recipe.
But Dale's book helped me go from virtually no friends to having many treasured relationships in my life, across interests and divides that I never would've even bothered to have explore if not for that book. It made me receptive to actually getting to know people outside my interest groups, and was as illuminating as it was humbling. It was the book that helped me realize there was so much more to people than the tiny bubble I was in. What may be common advice was, to me at the time, completely unheard of to me. If your parents and social groups don't naturally teach you this stuff, and you're an introverted computer nerd, it's a whole lot better than nothing. Are there better books out there? I'd love to hear about them.
Nonviolent comms can definitely feel cult like and wishy-washy. But it's been tremendously helpful for me in engaging with people across ideological gaps (chasms these days). And it may have saved my life on occasions when conversations got especially heated and emotional and violence was a very real possibility. For all of its teletubby tendencies, in the real world, it is much more able to establish slash remind people of human connection than the bitter street protests we've seen over the past few years. Its underlying message is to simply seek common ground and work outwards from there to solve common problems, rather than digging further into ideological trenches and seeing everyone outside it as the enemy. That particular part isn't necessarily cultish. It's just really hard to practice in the heat of the moment, so the rest of the book is a bunch of deescalation techniques mixed with, yes, fluffy feel good stuff.
Shrug. Just my review as someone whose life and relationships were made much more enjoyable after those two books. Not because I can manipulate people (still can't and wouldn't even if I could), but because they opened ways of thinking and feeling about people that I didn't have before. Together they taught me way more respect and empathy for people outside of my own comfort, interest, and ideological zones.
You've put to words an intuition I've always had, but been unable to verbalize: it irritates me when someone converses with the intent to reach some end... or just enters a conversation with some notion or emotion that they're holding tight onto, and will not waver no matter what.
Worse are those people with canned lines and vocal inflections... the same ones on repeat over and over again; like they've built up a toolbox of sound bites to navigate them through all of life. It's unbelievably grating to hear.
It feels vulgar... to make one's presence and desires so known and obvious... instead of having a conversation for its own sake... for the sake of amusement or personal expression...
It's as if they're treating socialization as a constant string of business deals to be navigated... gross.
To summarize the book in a line would be, "Pay attention to the other person." There is little formulaic approaches, mostly just advise to stop thinking of yourself throughout the conversation and give the other person attention.
I haven't read this book, but I do try to mention a person's name. Not because of them, but because otherwise I will have forgotten their name in 2 minutes.
I think it highly depends on with whom you are conversing. Extraverts, well, some of them probably could chit-chat with a telephone pole. After working myself out of elective mutism as a teen, I realized I had gotten very physically expressive as a kind of adaptation. As an adult, I invented a slightly cruel game wherein, should I get snagged by one of these kinds of extraverts, I wouldn't say any words, merely react with my face, gestures, postures, that kind of thing. Little nods. The idea was to see how long they would go on talking without any input from me.
Some were of the opinion that I was a good conversationalist, which I find darkly amusing.
I hadn’t thought of formalizing that little game; but I’ve definitely started counting that women can tell me their life story for 1.5hrs and sometimes 3hrs without me finishing much more than “I… I… So you…”.
It’s double-dark: It awakes misogyny in myself (“speaking 95% of the time shows how little importance they give others, and I want room in my relationship”), but it also shows that we have a lot of speech debt towards women (=everyone needs to speak, but not everyone gets their share”).
Your stance is refreshing. You judge everyone! I used to be timid, then went half-extrovert, so it’s encouraging to see there’s room ahead!
I find the conversations can be awkward if you go too far in that direction. And it can feel like an interview. The best conversations are give and take where both sides talk almost an equal amount of time
Some of my most enjoyable conversations have been pretty uneven, where the subject is of mutual interest, but one person knows much more than the other. If my conversation partner knows way more than me about the subject, I want them to talk way more, and if I know way more, it's OK if the other person doesn't do 50% of the talking, but keeps inviting me to continue, or gently steers the conversation to areas of particular interest.
My own personal and very much anecdotal experience of this is that's a very American view of conversations; they like to talk about themselves, what they're doing, what they've just bought, their aspirations, etc, while Europeans (and especially Brits) would find such questioning to be bad form and even privacy invasive. Obviously exceptions exist on both sides, but speaking generally.
Assume they are insecure and looking for a passive-aggressive way to cut you down to their level. The British^W English are quite adept at doing this in a way where you won't realize until the next day that they were insulting you.
Additionally, don't attempt to banter even if the Brit initiates it. Brits think that Americans cannot banter and will assume that any banter from an American is intended as a sincere insult. Don't try to explain that Americans frequently banter among each other and no offense is intended, they won't believe you.
It is better to remain cordial as they 'banter' at you, but to never reciprocate.
Using advice like that as suggested conversational entry points is fine, but they're abjectly oversold as "rules." Repeated attempts to steer the conversation towards yourself or another person (even skillfully) will yield vastly different results in a b2b sales call with a bored MBA in NYC than at a working class football party in Morocco or a rushed business meeting in Japan or an introvert-heavy sci fi book club in Colombia. No set of rules replace EQ and social savvy when interfacing with different personalities, cultures, contexts, and even moods.
I believe the conversational meta has shifted in the last 80 years. But more than that, people like to talk about themselves IFF they feel safe and unjudged.
Agree that this seems to be true. Especially in white-collar / middle-class society, I suspect (no idea how to quantify this) that styles of conversation have dramatically changed and everyone has gotten much more polite and... docile? and, basically, unappealing.
Yeah, I think there is this unspoken assumption that the answer to this question does not depend on the specific cultural milieu, or the specifics of the context in which engagement occurs.
Most of it is garbage!! People talking about conversation, especially online, is total crap. It's all small blogs, and the ones who aren't trying to sell you something are this weird combination of unsure and self-inflated.
I agree with ajkjk, people have gotten safe and boring.
The only advice I have is to try more, and push the envelope over time. Social restrictions feel intense but yield to sustained (unintentional) effort. Most people are some combination of cowardly and egotistical as a default position. Be like flowing water. Negative consequences don't last if you don't feed them, and positive ones build and compound.
This is my Everyone Likes Dogs philosophy. If you meet someone and they tell you they like dogs, they have provided you essentially no new information. The status quo is that everyone, everywhere likes dogs. On the other hand, if someone tells you they hate dogs, now this is new information, that is suddenly quite interesting. How can you not like dogs? Did you have a bad experience? So on and so forth. A memorable tidbit about their personality which makes them less forgettable.
The trick is to find those social cracks where the contrarian viewpoint is interesting but does not make you a pariah. That is, even if you hate dogs, I would advise keeping that one to yourself.
The only real meta is to treat everybody as an individual. Pay attention to how they react during different stages of the conversation and tailor your own behavior to make them more comfortable. Some people respond well to being asked about themselves. Other people become nervous and evasive. Pay attention to how they respond and react accordingly.
Besides that, there is no "one size fits all" approach. The only approach that works for everybody is to treat everybody like an individual with a unique personality.
I talk with a few too many people who take the "let other people talk about themselves" rule as gospel. While it's nice to be given the spotlight, the point of a conversation is that it's an exchange, not a soliloquy. Conversations with people who listen a lot and don't give a lot back start to feel a bit uncomfortable as well.
Your conclusion about the research counter that is wrong. Here's a direct quote from the paper.
> High-question askers were
liked more because they were perceived as more responsive
to their partner, confirming Carnegie’s advice to focus on the
other person in a conversation.
I only read the abstract because the rest of the article is behind a paywall. So I didn’t see this. However, it too, seems somewhat inconsistent with the idea put forth in the title and abstract. Perhaps the advice is: To be more likable, talk less, and focus your talking on lots of questions about the other person.
I think you could probably thread the needle on this, and say that both are correct. For example, if you talked a lot about things the other person had expressed interest in, and supported their own opinions, and made them feel like the conversation was "about" them even if you did most of the talking.
But, it's more likely that that's not the case, and the two are in conflict. Between the sources, I tend to think Carnegie is right, both because it's a strategy that has been working for long time, and because it accords with my own experience of the world, and because ... you know... a single social psychology research paper is sort of hard to credit when it conflicts with common sense.
I've been unable to behave around people, a need not to harm their feelings, or maybe a fear of expressing my self (trauma based upbringing or something). This means I get locked in with verbal flooders regularly and they indeed seem to love having me around to spill their mind out.
Another pearl of his is to be "profuse in your praise". Even if it risks sounding empty or pure flattery, because it always leaves a good impression and works.
Profuse praise is so weird and off-putting to be a recipient of. I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe this was true however many years ago but it doesn't feel true all the time today.
The man who gave that advice also paired it with being authentic: "Give honest and sincere appreciation."
That advice was actually given in the context of a supervisor or superior working to improve a report: 'Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”'
So in context, its about noticing the things you as a person like about people and vocalizing them, and separately drawing attention to when someone improves. Pretty sound advice
If you read the actual book, its as much about not being a bore, and how not to piss people off. Some people take the advice in it WAY too far, and that's when it comes across as off-putting and inauthentic.
Nothing spikes my anxiety like when my supervisor out of nowhere starts to praise little things that don't matter (especially when the thing being praised is not new and has not changed).
Because you know they took the compliment sandwich advice to heart, and the other shoe is about to drop.
I’ve apparently been doing this for a long time without noticing. I just like telling people that appreciate them or reminding them that they’re doing well, etc!
Had no idea it had a name or “strategy” associated with it… I just like other people to know when they’re having a positive impact on me (or something else). And people always seem to like knowing that, and get into a better mood in response!
Edit: maybe I’m not understanding the concept very well, and “profuse praise” the strategy is more belligerent than I thought
Also, if you are of the personality type/disposition that this doesn't work on, don't underestimate the huge percentage of people on which it does work.
It needs to be subtle. So maybe "profuse" is the wrong word.
For example, throwing in phrases like "with your experience, you would know that..." or "that thing you said was hilarious" make people feel good, hopefully while also being true. This is a huge part of likeability.
I wonder if this works because true-ringing praise has to be about the particular person, and the production of it demonstrates that you're paying (sole) attention to them, and the attention is what causes them to enjoy the interaction, not necessarily the praise itself. If so, "active listening" might produce the same results.
I mean, i suspect its because true ringing praise doesn't come with strings. Inauthentic praise is often used as a strategy to manipulate someone into doing what you want.
Dale Carnegie already had a well established reputation when he allowed the others to speak about themselves. Apples and oranges if you are not already famous.
It's not about the others knowing who you are or your reputation, and thus not needing to establish that if you're already famous, etc.
The insight is rather that others could not give less fucks if they knew about you more, what they like is to talk about themselves.
This is true even if you're totally non famous and unknown to them, like a random taxi driver and you. They still like to talk about themselves over hearing about you.
It IS about your reputation. Peoples’ motivations are selfish. They want to be perceived as higher status and are constantly assessing “what’s in it for me” through their personal frame of reference.
Having someone they perceive to be influential, powerful etc. listen to them spill their guts about themselves means a lot more than if they explained their worldview to a homeless person on the street. They wouldn’t shut up about the former experience at a dinner party, but wouldn’t even engage with the latter!
The point is, if your reputation does not already proceed you, talking more about yourself (assuming you aren’t a dolt) increases your perceived social value with a stranger. If your reputation is good and proceeds you already, listening more matters.
