On March 5 I moved from Russia to Switzerland and now work for Google Zurich. I guess this makes me available for new and exciting plots :-) Any LWers nearby?
Congratulations! But frankly I’m a bit concerned. You described your previous job as leaving you plenty of free time to work on problems of interest to yourself (or perhaps more to the point, problems that are of interest to me :). Does it look like Google will be working you harder?
Yeah, it does so far. But even in my first three days at Google I’ve found plenty of free time to solve some problems concerning Solomonoff induction and managed to prove a tricky point to paulfchristiano :-)
We were discussing at the London meet on Sunday how everyone on LW is called Vladimir or Dave. Thus, everyone who isn’t should seriously consider changing their name forthwith.
I worked once at a small startup (very small; I was employee #6) at which two of us were named Dave, which led to many funny moments, or at least moments made funny by stress and sleep deprivation.
Some time afterwards we hired a developer named Dave, which resulted in a development group composed entirely of Daves.
We then hired a QA engineer into the group, who wasn’t named Dave, and we decided that this was an unacceptable violation of development-group polymorphism, so we officially renamed him “Dave.” I think we even gave him a certificate.
This got even weirder than I thought. When I came to log in, I made an account and typed my first post as OtherDavid, and just before hitting send noticed that one of the most recent comments in the sidebar was from TheOtherDave.
My new username is an attempt to be slightly more distinctive within the Dave subset ‘people referencing they are called Dave’.
It’s not LW’s fault, mind. I recently started a new job and was the third David there, in a team of under 20. I didn’t want to be ‘Dave’ or known by my surname, so ended up calling myself D3.
Congratulations. Were you headhunted or did you get a referral or apply? IIRC from some thread on HN before you don’t interview well. Good you got over that.
I was referred by someone who found me online (on LiveJournal, of all places). It’s true that I often fail interviews where they ask about technology specifics like API calls, because I’ve given up memorizing this stuff long ago. Math and algorithms, on the other hand, are easy and I never failed an interview on those. The best interviews are the ones where I get to write code and explain it :-)
It’s true that I often fail interviews where they ask about technology specifics like API calls, because I’ve given up memorizing this stuff long ago. Math and algorithms, on the other hand, are easy and I never failed an interview on those. The best interviews are the ones where I get to write code and explain it
This sounds like a good filter to get hired by the right sort of software company.
On March 5 I moved from Russia to Switzerland and now work for Google Zurich. I guess this makes me available for new and exciting plots :-) Any LWers nearby?
Congratulations! But frankly I’m a bit concerned. You described your previous job as leaving you plenty of free time to work on problems of interest to yourself (or perhaps more to the point, problems that are of interest to me :). Does it look like Google will be working you harder?
Yeah, it does so far. But even in my first three days at Google I’ve found plenty of free time to solve some problems concerning Solomonoff induction and managed to prove a tricky point to paulfchristiano :-)
If you want someone intelligent to argue with, look up Adam Wildawsky @your office—he’s a devout Randian :)
Politics is the mind-killer.
We were discussing at the London meet on Sunday how everyone on LW is called Vladimir or Dave. Thus, everyone who isn’t should seriously consider changing their name forthwith.
I worked once at a small startup (very small; I was employee #6) at which two of us were named Dave, which led to many funny moments, or at least moments made funny by stress and sleep deprivation.
Some time afterwards we hired a developer named Dave, which resulted in a development group composed entirely of Daves.
We then hired a QA engineer into the group, who wasn’t named Dave, and we decided that this was an unacceptable violation of development-group polymorphism, so we officially renamed him “Dave.” I think we even gave him a certificate.
This is why tech support is called Bob—all tech support at Demon Internet at one point in the mid-1990s were called Bob.
More generally, it’s the London Dave Problem. (e.g. I get “Diva”. This was the name of my cat.)
[I’ve just worked out what function the Open Thread serves now!]
Exactly: it’s for discussion of topics too trivial for the Discussion section.
Beats waiting around for an opportunity to hijack a comments thread from some other post, I suppose.
It’s a conspiracy, I tell you!
This got even weirder than I thought. When I came to log in, I made an account and typed my first post as OtherDavid, and just before hitting send noticed that one of the most recent comments in the sidebar was from TheOtherDave.
My new username is an attempt to be slightly more distinctive within the Dave subset ‘people referencing they are called Dave’.
It’s not LW’s fault, mind. I recently started a new job and was the third David there, in a team of under 20. I didn’t want to be ‘Dave’ or known by my surname, so ended up calling myself D3.
Armor digivolution!
I mostly got R2D2 type jokes at work. Which then led to a whole Star Wars “who in the office is the Dark Lord of the Sith’ thing.
Congratulations. Were you headhunted or did you get a referral or apply? IIRC from some thread on HN before you don’t interview well. Good you got over that.
I was referred by someone who found me online (on LiveJournal, of all places). It’s true that I often fail interviews where they ask about technology specifics like API calls, because I’ve given up memorizing this stuff long ago. Math and algorithms, on the other hand, are easy and I never failed an interview on those. The best interviews are the ones where I get to write code and explain it :-)
This sounds like a good filter to get hired by the right sort of software company.