Thanks for the post Alex. One of the things I do like about being a developer at BigCo is that it's possible to keep the politics at an arm's length - something that I think would be almost impossible in a startup with a handful of people. (Whether this kind of hands-off approach is actually good for one's career is another matter.)

To continue the analogy..once we determine we're in a sim, maybe the next step is to figure out if there are any paravirtualization hooks we can use to optimize our universe.

This sounds like something quite different - a career fair for students / recent grads.

I love this idea. A few more features (like curves/masks) and a faster UI and I can see using this a lot.

It's hard for me to believe there exist companies that have the resources to hire software developers and that don't use source control.

You better start believing it, I've seen it... If you doubt my anecdata, check TheDailyWTF.

It seems to me that the problem is too many people see software development as linear and quality as monotonically increasing, i.e. just save your work and back it up.

I'm interested in how many new people facebook will have to hire as it attempts to grow to justify its $100b valuation.

Perhaps the guy feels his work is important and derives personal satisfaction from it. That might make him happier in the long run and a better husband and father.

Or maybe this guy has become convinced that devoting his most productive years to help a corporation earn more profit is more rewarding than building a business where he owns 100% of his work.

While the process doesn't sound pleasant, a long interview might benefit the potential employee as much as it does the company.

If you're going to be spending a lot of time working with these people..you want to get a chance to get to know them a bit before jumping in. (Same goes for their tools, development process, etc.)

True, though in this example integer overflow would happen first.

I was wondering the same thing. But I can confirm it compiles and runs, though I had to supply a -std=c99 flag to gcc.

Ahhh, useful tip. I've just been using alloca instead...