You pass, Elon fails
7 Likes
“… containing salt” ?
5 Likes
actually no. I also had that thought, but it comes from the latin saltare, meaning to jump. A bunch of writers constructing their own incommensurable extended metaphors on jumping
“Code that jumps out at you” is one way of interpreting it-- though I don’t know if that’s really desirable.
2 Likes
Nah, most tech workers have good insurance. (At least if you’re not a contractor.) But they are also the same kind of people that will demand discounts or free stuff everywhere they go despite making well above median income.
It’s a weird culture where you can make a lot of money, constantly complain about not making enough money, and then living like a cheapskate even though you can afford better.
6 Likes
What the fuck does that even mean? It’s like he thinks he can look at a few lines of code as if he was Keanu Reeves in The Matrix and decide someone’s worth as an engineer? As an experienced software engineer I can tell you the best code is no code and some of the best code measurements are in negative KLOC.
20 Likes
These were basically the standards he used to ruin 3700 people’s christmas/holidays, so… yeah. He does. He absolutely thinks he’s better than every single one of those people working for him, because if they were better than him why aren’t THEY the multi billionaires? That’s his thought process.
13 Likes
I learned decades ago that if the boss doesn’t respect you NOW, he never will.
Time to leave.
14 Likes
He doesn’t even see the code any more. All he sees is “blonde”, “brunette”, “redhead”.
To be fair, it’s not personal. He doesn’t respect anyone.
At some point that’s probably going to end up being an issue with Prince Bonesaw.
5 Likes
sure, but I can’t work with someone like that. It just isn’t worth my time or talent.
1 Like
it’s a “life hack” 
10 Likes
‘salient’ in this case is being used in the military sense: if you have two armies facing off along a front-line, a salient is a piece of land that you hold that projects into the enemy’s territory (or vice-versa). An example would be the notorious Ypres Salient. Someone writing in 1936 would still remember the salients of the Western front, and would expect their readership to recognize the reference.
The thing about a salient is that while it’s advantageous in the sense that you can use it to push through the enemy’s lines, it’s also very vulnerable. If the enemy can attack at the base of the salient, they can pinch it off and encircle your troops, which pretty much never ends well. Salients tended to be the most active part of the battlefield in WW1, and the scene of some incredibly bloody battles.
I think what the writer is trying to say is that attempts to make social progress are over-extended in certain areas, and that – in their view – the job of an industrial psychologist is to help create a more even ‘front line’, i.e. unified social progress rather than piecemeal.
Elon is presumably using ‘salient’ as an adjective rather than a noun, where it means something between ‘relevant’ and ‘significant’; the salient pieces of your work would be the ones that actually matter.
10 Likes
or so we infer
he could have thrown any obscure latinate adjective in there and we’d assume that’s what he meant
4 Likes
Sounds like he was trying to find a perfectly cromulent word to embiggen the point he was trying to make
13 Likes
they get insurance from their workplace, and at most tech companies it’s gold plated. it tends to help tie people to their jobs, even when they might not like their job
3 Likes
Homeowners? 
2 Likes
ive always despised that particular arrangement where “core hours” is actually just a work day. in that case, there’s no “core”. it’s just hours.
core hours should mean something like 10-3, and you can arrive at 7 if you want, or you can arrive at 10. you just need to work 8 hours regardless
when core hours are the full day, it seems to be saying people should regularly work overtime. or it’s just buzzwords for the sake of buzzwords
14 Likes
I think his point was that the tech workers who sneer at joining a union are the same who sneer at getting insurance. The hotshots think they don’t need the protection. I would not be surprised if some of them groused about how they’d rather have the cash than the insurance.
3 Likes
Yes.
Which is exactly what it was for my last 3 employers in UK, all of which were US multinationals - entirely incidentally.
3 Likes
not in silicon valley at least. i think even the engineers ( especially the engineers? ) are #vanlife 
i honestly think it’s just lack of familiarity. most american software engineers are coming from middle class or higher income families. probably not many of them have families in unions, with the exception perhaps of the teacher’s union
it’s just not something they see as part of their lives, and i don’t think they grok what benefits it would bring them. they are already showered with tangible benefits, because tech workers are in such high demand
contractors are the odd ones out. they have zero protection, and few benefits. but i’m sure it’s hard to organize when you’re gig’ing it.
7 Likes
What contractors need is a guild more than a union. An organization that provides legal aid and works to negotiate insurance for its members, and in return promises that its members meet certain standards.
I could see some sort of developer’s guild arising, as most devs work in smaller shops and not at Twitter or Amazon. Being a guild member could help the dev figure their actual market value, and if freelancing be a sort of quality assurance seal.
5 Likes
