Imagine when algorithms (something like https://www.narrativescience.com/) start producing these stories instead of slow humans.

There will be a lag period where everyone believes nonsense, and then hopefully everyone will catch on that inflammatory, low-content articles are usually lies, and maybe even start fact checking a little more so as to avoid looking stupid. And the world will be a slightly smarter place.

I can dream?

You probably haven't sent out ambitious enough solicitations. Like, if your response rate is that good for CS roles, you likely could have busted your ass for getting multiple competing offers from companies with gigantic piles of cash, or much more senior positions, or finding a business co-founder with good skills and connections.

This style is really filtering those who "don't have time," not by age.

As you get away from CS101, you kind of stop getting excited by it. I honestly don't care to look up how to implement quicksort at this point and would rather hack on some deep learning code in my spare time. Friends my age frustrated by interviewing are in the same position. Guess we're too old for a software job :-p

One thing I've found to help me with this ennui is to get excited about implementing the quicksort in another language, or using some newfangled pattern I'm not used to. I interview for fun and this helps to keep me engaged with the same old stuff.

How has your career trajectory been as a remote employee? Do you receive raises and promotions? Are changes in tracks (engineer to engineering manager, etc) a possibility? My biggest fear with working remotely is career stagnation. I've had two positions were I worked in remote offices, and they both turned out to be terrible: laid off at one, left the other after <1 year.

"Even techies, who want to raise a family, can't afford San Francisco anymore".

Dublin/Livermore is pretty cheap. If only more tech companies would take a hint and start building East Bay locations. If your employees can't afford to live close enough to your offices, then you should move your offices closer to them, or where real estate is more reasonable.

I think that's pretty reasonable. An alternative would be to create a culture of working remotely without decreasing productivity. I remember reading something about Buffer and their approach to remote work and having a more distributed team.

I've lived in a dozen cities all over the world and there is something special about the people in the Bay Area.

This is the area where the Gold Rush happened. It was an entrepot for valuable commodities. It still has that dynamic to this day. People come from all over to extract as many resources as possible, sell them and run off to somewhere else not caring about the externalities their opportunistic behavior creates. The political landscape here is mostly about pandering to special interests and never really solving social problems. Whoever panders best uses their constituent base to get elected into state and federal government positions leaving behind the dumpster fire that is the Bay Area.

Counter-counterpoint: Nazi science is one of the main reasons why we have IRBs.

They conducted many unethical experiments to obtain results. If China is researching unethically (by plagiarism, etc), then their work is worthless.

Please don't organize hackathons. They're inauthentic - running counter to coder culture - and a waste of time.

Some people really enjoy them though!

To each their own.

Exactly. It's more like, "Don't show up to the hackathons that you don't like."

What's wrong, exactly, with people saying something is bad and shouldn't be done, when they think it is bad and shouldn't be done?

Quite a lot, if they hold power or influence. One word: Antivax.

This is why it's always OK to call BS. Sometimes you're calling BS, and sometimes you're spouting it. Debate works until it doesn't, and then you get out.

Antivax movement is ignorance of proven science. Expressing the opinion that hackathons are bad is debate.

There's data scientist. You don't need a PhD to pursue that. I mean, you probably won't be researching cures for cancer, but you'll still be applying research methodologies. You'll be getting paid more and probably won't have to wait half your lifetime to get a plum position. I abandoned grad school after seeing the rigor mortis that has set into academia and private research companies.

I work as a data scientist at a nonprofit research organization (rti.org) and have to apply far more skills than the PhD researchers here. While we fall back on them for depth in subject matter expertise, we also have to understand conceptual design, research methodology, stats, newer data sci methods, software development, 3+ programming languages, user experience design, tech stacks, database design and deployment, data visualization, business consulting, public speaking, etc... Often, we lead client engagements, determine project deliverables, co-author academic papers, present at conferences, schmooze with key stakeholders, and so on. ALL of us, however, would lose our minds if we had to focus on a single domain area or spend a protracted amount of time on one problem. I worked on > 50 projects across the biological sciences, social sciences, and humanities in 2015. It can be exhausting, but it is a real blast most of the time.

So... Consider the path of a research data scientist if that sounds fun. It's also very lucrative, which is nice, too, though I'm not personally motivated by the finances of it.

I'm confused. All the skills you cite are exactly the ones I would expect a PhD researcher (esp. in math, comp. sci, stats, etc...) to be proficient in (although, perhaps not the schmoozing). You're saying your PhD researchers aren't skilled in research methodology and stats??

Ehhh. I suspect an information asymmetry problem -- that is, the GP doesn't know what his/her colleagues actually know -- coupled with a tendency of researchers to let work drift by when it isn't in their wheelhouse.

While I've known a lot of PhDs who know nothing about statistics or programming or some other specific skill (nobody is an expert at everything), it's pretty hard to make it through a good graduate program while knowing none of these things. What generally happens is that domain experts try to keep their minds focused on their domains (where their value is highest), and let non-specialist work fall to generalists. Generalists then (sometimes, incorrectly) assume that the specialists are useless outside of their niche.

I'm not going to say that there aren't incompetent PhDs, but it's a bad assumption to make, in general. You don't assume that your CEO doesn't know how to clean a toilet simply because she lets the janitor do it.

What comes with the PhD positions is a requirement to respond to RFPs with concept notes, proposals, etc... and a lot of high level project management. They provide subject matter expertise from an analytic angle (usually without getting involved in the technical aspects) but almost never are involved in modeling, development, or anything else that I listed above. We're seeing change wherein data scientists more often are involved in the proposal and business development process, but not wherein PhD-level researchers are involved in the technical implementation of projects.

These aren't your grandfather's PhD researchers.

I use Google Messenger. Everyone has a cell phone number. No need to enroll. I can share pictures, audio, text, video. Text messaging is the only thing you need.

I have a group chat with 2/3 other friends I've know for 20+ years. Then I usually text others individually.

Facebook is an awful medium to conduct intimate conversations over. After two failed attempts to ditch it in the past, I've been off Facebook for a year. I can attest that you won't miss it. Just use SMS.