In order to bring understanding to this discussion, we can separate unions into two types: vertical unions and horizontal unions.
Vertical unions are hierarchal. They have administrative staff that are not necessarily workers and they reproduce the characteristics of our electoral system in a smaller scale. This includes corrupt elected officials who have back deals with companies, etc.
The horizontal unions are non hierarchical. They are based on the practice of anarcho syndicalism. The union is just a collection of smaller unions, each has autonomy to make their own decisions. The delegates can be recalled at any time. All staff are workers and decisions are collectively being made.
For horizontal unions, the person you are responding to is correct. You and your colleagues are the ones that decide how it is going to run.
For vertical unions, you are correct. A few influential members have all the power.
You are both correct but just not talking about the same thing.
Do you have an example of a horizontal union in practice? Or is this one of those "You can't say X is bad because true X has never been tried!" situations?
From a compute standpoint I guess I'm wrong. But from a modeling power perspective, I definitely prefer the clarity and uniformity of Clojure's standard library functions. Maybe that has something to do with its distinct data types, maybe not.
Data structure types. In standard CL and Scheme, data structures are implemented at their base using cons cells, and their interpretation as tables, trees, queues, etc. is up to library functions. Unless I have somehow misinterpreted the selling points of classic Lisps, because Clojure and Janet data structures sell themselves as being not built this way. Clojure makes a different trade-off by building all its data structures off of hash array-mapped tries. But Janet goes out of its way to use efficient and closely-mapped base stores, even if the contained elements are dynamic Janet objects.
> In standard CL and Scheme, data structures are implemented at their base using cons cells
That's not true. Both CL and Scheme have other data structures besides cons cells, and that's been true for the Lisp family of languages for nearly 70 years now.
This bizarre belief that everything is a cons cell in Lisp and Scheme needs to go away.
For someone who initiated hostility, you're a dismal failure at supporting your arguments. I'm not reading two entire manuals to find the citations you're referring to and should've cited yourself.
> I'm not reading two entire manuals to find the citations you're referring to and should've cited yourself.
C-f that PDF for "array". For the other manual, I linked the TOC. It's right there on the page (arrays and hash tables, and you can follow up with structures and objects) and there's no reason to read the entire manual. I figured most people knew how to use a table of contents, I apologize if I expected too much from you.
Ok, so I am sorry but this is an extremely uninformed take. Please have a look around in Racket's documentation before going any further: https://docs.racket-lang.org/
Yeah, there was a similar bug in HexChat and other (pango?) stuff some years back. I remember even though I was using irssi, it could crash my Termite window.
So you are saying it is better if the candidate lies.
Otherwise you will be forced to reject him because there might be a possibility that the problem was him.
Seems like you are hiring the best liars. Or at least the best at playing an arbitrary game of saying and not saying the correct things that won't trigger a rejection.
At this point, are you even needed? Maybe we could replace the interview process with a lottery system. Same result, less expensive.
> So you are saying it is better if the candidate lies.
This is a toxic framing of an essential test. Constructing polite fictions is an essential skill for collaboration - no less essential than coding. Saying you're leaving in part because "your vision for the product has drfted from leadership's" tells me you probably think they were a pack of moronic baboons and that if you feel that way about some of your future team mates you can keep it under wraps.
Exactly. It sounds like this test is working as expected based on the comments here. "Honest" might mean telling your coworker that their code sucks and you could do it better if they would just get out of your way. Tactful and positive would be saying they're off to a good start but here's some feedback. If someone can't describe their current or previous job in somewhat positive terms, I don't expect they'll be able to tactfully navigate difficult social situations in their new job.
Imagine if any other field operated this way, holy shit, how does tech only get away with this toxic shit? Good try their Joe, you only nicked the artery a little bit! Umm nope thats not how we cut the lumber Bill, don't worry though the rafters are invisible under the roof!
Notably, in aviation, when things go wrong it is generally looked at in a non-blame way so that training cam be updated to prevent similar problems in the future.
It might not be what makes you happy, but ATC isn't in the business of making you happy. They're in the business of saving lives, which this method accomplishes better than what you're expecting.
This isn't a "tech" thing, it's a "professional managerial class" thing.
This same tests is applied in banking, finance, consulting, sales, or any number of other highly renumerative white collar professions. The farther up the ladder you go the more important it becomes.
Even if the complaints are about things which are individually valid, the pattern is toxic.
Imagine a sports team. After running around for 45 minutes you're all probably tired. Would you rather work with someone who says "I'm tired, it's hot in here" or someone who focuses on encouraging those around them and talking about the team's accomplishments?
Part of the interview is proving you can avoid griping and focus on positives for at least 30-60 minutes, which is an essential skill anywhere.
Yes, and toxic positivity obliterates morale - being unable to acknowledge the negative outcomes of decisions means that you are just working towards some idiot's dream until you go play the roulette wheel again to figure out what the next people are not telling you about this place.
This is what literally makes tech workers go dream about farming.
Somewhere between toxic negativity and toxic positivity lies a middle ground and I think some of the comments here are presenting a bit of a false dichotomy.
When interviewing people, it’s usually possible to identify both extremes.
I’d prefer to hire someone who is not toxic. That goes for both extremes.
So going back to the originally assertion about not saying anything negative about the company when asked for reasons why you didn't like it? Why is saying something negative in that situation toxic? Crazy making man!
Saying something negative isn't inherently toxic. But saying something negative in a job interview is walking a line. Everyone everywhere has experienced negative factors in a prior job, so it's not exactly a revelation if someone has some war stories.
But what a person chooses to focus on does say something about how that person thinks.
If I ask someone what they dislike about their previous job, and they say something like "there were times when management would change directions at the last minute and cause the whole team to scramble", that's relatable and not necessarily a red flag.
If someone starts venting about low quality coworkers and shitty management, that's probably a red flag.
If someone volunteers negativity unprompted, that's probably a red flag.
My point here is that discerning between toxicity and honesty is usually possible, and what a person chooses to be negative about is a signal that helps tell the difference.
What I don't want on my team is a culture of negativity. A negative/pessimistic default is a wet blanket that shuts things down before they have a chance to get started. It creates tension where it need not exist. And it requires significant effort to counteract once it exists on the team. And to reiterate, I'm not looking for toxic positivity either. That's a separate problem.
I have never had a work environment ruined by toxic positivity—the normal healthy human reaction to that kind of environment is gallows humor, which hits the sweet spot between acknowledging the problem and showing a willingness to be there with your team.
I'm sure there are people out there who do have a toxic positivity problem, but my own anecdotal experience leads me to prefer to err on the side of rejecting unnecessarily grumpy people, because they tend to more frequently be a problem.
I think that may be a very cultural thing. I love gallows humor (I understand, enjoy, and cultivate it myself), but some cultures don't even understand it.
Toxic positivity in startups means the people not looking at the real issues role play startup while everything crumbles around them.
Maybe it works out in big orgs but if it infects the team of a small org your work environment will be ruined when you are all laid off after months or years of overworking to make a blind optimist happy. Unemployment coincident with burnout is worse than some negative feedback during the process.
What you're describing as toxic positivity is refusing to criticize things as they're happening. That's very different from not badmouthing people and teams behind their backs when they're not around to respond.
Well you are insanely lucky, its the default in most startups and many companies that I have seen consulting, working directly with, or otherwise. Leadership has no strategy, the business is growing or shrinking regardless of their decisions, the rank and file are restless because its obvious they are led by folks who have no idea what's going on, and nobody is allowed to talk about it.
Precisely. Fuck "yes people", and the commitment to lying to ourselves / to each other about broken things, as an institutional strategy. If we always dismiss the negatives, then responsibility and accountability have no meaning. Every organization needs a few people who act as the org's mirror and conscience.
Nobody is asking you to lie. Your previous job and coworkers may suck enough to pull watermelons through a garden hose sideways but the job interview is not about your previous job or coworkers. It's about showcasing how awesome _you_ are and how well _you_ accomplished whatever you managed to accomplish despite the suck. Keep the gripes to yourself even if for no other reason that it takes time away from tooting your own horn in a time limited situation.
Maybe, but I think there's a piece where you can be genuinely demonstrating in the interview context that you know how to reflect positively on an experience which obviously wasn't that all great or why would you have left it.
As an interviewer I'm not looking for IT WAS THE BEST WOO but rather "these were the elements I most appreciated, these were where I had opportunities to grow and push myself and here's what I ultimately got out of it." Yes, the "what went wrong" will be discussed too, but that's a different question, and as interviewee I look to pitch the downsides less in terms of "I had the worst boss/colleagues/projects/clients/whatever" and more of a circumspect kind of "elements A and B that had been really good early on were less of a priority later in my tenure, and I felt that management and I had differing priorities which was increasingly leading to unhelpful compromises in how things were done; although I stuck it out for some time to ensure as smooth a transition as possible, ultimately I came to feel that my seat would be better filled by some more aligned to the company goals."
Of course, but many of the interviewers are looking for you to be a fresh faced young pup whose had nothing but love and kisses from every previous position, hell I had my new job ask if they could call my last boss and talk with them in an interview like format - its wild.
Central planning and authoritarianism can be very effective at changing the course of an organization, government, or country; once the choice is made.
What they don't always do well is make the choice to change when conditions change. There's also usually a limited bandwidth for deciding and forcing change, so you tend to end up without economic diversity and without great results in areas outside of policy.
A democratic/distributed decision making process tends towards slower changes and less alignment, but more diversity.
If you decide to be the world's production line, economic diversity may be less important. But having diversity is usually a good thing when economic tides change.
Central planning is very good for pulling a country out of an a poorly developed state into a highly developed state. The USSR experience this under Stalin (setting aside that he was a mass murderer) which created an industrial power. Even in the US, during WW2 the industry was centrally planned and that pulled the US out of the Great Depression.
However, central planning as proven to be bad once you reach a developed state. Lots of reasons for this which would be too long to get into here, but has a lot to do with people willing to follow a sacrifice when there is a crisis or the country is working together to get itself out of a bad situation.
It does - he’s talking about the philosophical difference between free software and open source, and I’m criticizing the moral argument he makes with regard to free software. If somebody decides to use GPL because they want to prevent others from copying their work and competing against them (which actually seems less open/free? besides the point) then that’s a pragmatic/economic reason, not a moral/idealistic reason. They would still be in the “open source” camp even if their license was written by Stallman.
> which actually seems less open/free? besides the point
You can't have freedom (or at least won't have it for long) if others have the freedom to take it away from you.
Copyleft gives you every possible freedom, except the freedom to withold those freedoms from the next person that comes along. It's not just a way to give freedom, it's a way to enforce it.
You could say that anarchy, where everyone is free to do everything, is the ultimate freedom. Then you step out of your bunker and get shot because someone wanted your shiny watch. So we trade a few freedoms in exchange for being able to enjoy the rest of them unimpeded.
The problem is what happens after you’ve established that ideal of using force to only ensure everyone maintains their basic rights. Without a way to prevent it from being co-opted, it inevitably becomes an even bigger evil. Now I’ve traded stepping out of my bunker and getting shot for my watch with having my bunker ransacked because I didn’t keep up on my monthly dues. Clearest example is every country that’s ever adopted communism, but you can even look at what happened to the American colonies immediately after forming a central government - higher taxes and stolen land (and I’m not talking about the Indians), not to mention what’s it’s become today.
Me saying there's not a distinction between forking and writing your own project from the "why don't you just" perspective has nothing to do with a slippery slope.
Vertical unions are hierarchal. They have administrative staff that are not necessarily workers and they reproduce the characteristics of our electoral system in a smaller scale. This includes corrupt elected officials who have back deals with companies, etc.
The horizontal unions are non hierarchical. They are based on the practice of anarcho syndicalism. The union is just a collection of smaller unions, each has autonomy to make their own decisions. The delegates can be recalled at any time. All staff are workers and decisions are collectively being made.
For horizontal unions, the person you are responding to is correct. You and your colleagues are the ones that decide how it is going to run.
For vertical unions, you are correct. A few influential members have all the power.
You are both correct but just not talking about the same thing.