• 7 Posts
  • 82 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Got a couple.

    The first bad interview I turned up and had to wait for the owner who rocked up 15 minutes late. We had a discussion and he was happy with my IT skills, we then got into a discussion of how to run the business.

    He asked me what would I do if a salesman kept selling Linux support to businesses but the company had no one that had experience of it, I said it didn’t feel morally right to sell something that you can’t actually fulfill currently, put a cork in the salesman regarding Linux support, train/hire staff and when ready then continue to offer it. He said that’s not how his business works and to drive the business the salesman was doing the right thing.

    During that interview I saw someone walk into the office that I had worked with in the past, they were incredibly unreliable, bad at the job and were fired, this one guy appearing gave me the final sign this was not the workplace for me. After the interview they gave me an offer that I declined.

    The second interview probably a out 2 months later I turned up to was a small company of maybe 3 people. I turned up and it was a shared office space they used, he walked up to the receptionist and asked if there was a meeting room available, she said no. So he led me to the kitchenette area where he offered for me to sit on a sofa not to dissimilar to this…

    Thee casting couch....

    Having the hum of a vending machine in the background added to the ambience. We got to chatting and it sounded like the guy didn’t really know what he wanted to do with the business or how to run it, generally seemed disorganised.

    Towards the end of the interview wouldn’t you know it, the same guy I used to work with walked into the kitchenette wearing the t-shirt of a company in the building, gave me “the nod” and proceeded to use the vending machine, which failed to dispense his choice and he stood there shaking the machine.

    This guy must have been some kind of angel in place to stop me from taking bad jobs. I declined the offer they gave me. A year or so later I was telling a friend about this and we checked on the company, it went out of business.

    They were bad interviews, but I still got something out of them.




  • My employer has already been putting measures in place to what seems to be potential loopholes. Hybrid working was bundled as part of “flexible working”, they have separated it out into a different terminology. The term Flexible Working is now purely for those who want to change their hours like removing a day once a week and getting paid less, or moving hours from one day into the other 4.

    A large number of companies are pushing to get people to RTO and I get the feeling these workers rights won’t counteract that.







  • Thanks for this. As part of onboarding I have been trying to update where I can. There are times I wonder if I am adding to docs what others may perceive as fluff as it may be something obvious to them. I like to work with a “If we’re all on a bus that goes over a cliff, does someone new have everything they need?” mentality.

    At present the team is using GitHub Pages, which almost feels like a hurdle itself in updating the documentation quickly and keeping it organised and consistent. Being a junior I personally prefer a WYSIWYG. From your experience is there any pros/cons in using a WYSIWYG vs Markdown?





  • As adults we are dubious of the results that AI gives us. We take the answers with a handful of salt and I feel like over the years we have built up a skillset for using search engines for answers and sifting through the results. Kids haven’t got years of experience of this and so they may take what is said to be true and not question the results.

    As you say, the kids should be taught to use the tool properly, and verify the answers. AI is going to be forced onto us whether we like it or not, people should be empowered to use it and not accept what it puts out as gospel.