When I post SWE roles, I get hundreds of applicants from people outside the US who pretend to already be in the US, by putting SF in their LinkedIn. I also get a ton of people who lie about needing work authorization.
I can confirm it also goes the other way. Posted a remote job where we needed applicant to be only one or two time zones away from UTC and 80% of the 500+ applicants in the first 24 hours were from the US. I guess it makes sense as the cost for ignoring the clear notice in the job description regarding location is borne by the hiring side, but very annoying.
Or they just said they were in the US? Resume spammers rarely read the job advert well enough to change tactics. They probably still weren’t close to UTC.
I experienced the same in my previous job. And it makes me wonder: what do those applicants hope to get out of this ruse? It's not like hiring managers will think "oh, we've gotten this far into the process, we might as well arrange a lengthy and expensive visa process for them"
There was a linkedin post floating around a few weeks ago that went in the other direction - a hiring manager who posted "remote" jobs, go the applicant hired, and then did a rug pull letting them know that it wasn't actually remote after all, they were required to come into the office. The hiring manager proudly bragged that most of the applicants just went along with it anyway and the comments were pointing out that it didn't seem like they'd have much choice at that point since they'd have already quit their other jobs.
> It's not like hiring managers will think "oh, we've gotten this far into the process, we might as well arrange a lengthy and expensive visa process for them"
That's exactly the advice that hiring managers themselves gave 10 years ago.
> oh, we've gotten this far into the process, we might as well arrange a lengthy and expensive visa process for them
What about "oh, we've gotten this far, maybe we can work it out by having them work remotely from their country for a cheaper compensation than what we would have had to pay locally"?
From the applicant's point of view it costs very little to try this out.
At this point only 2 of the top 8 companies by market cap will be incorporated in Delaware. As Tesla and Meta move, investors in startups will need to be more open to investing in companies formed outside Delaware.
The question asked how somebody would pay for an unexpected $400 expense. If you answered “credit card” then you were considered to not have the cash to cover an emergency. I’d use a credit card…and pay it off when it’s due.
How are you all discussing this question from memory without linking to the source?
Poorly, that's how.
When faced with a hypothetical expense of $400, 63 percent of all adults in 2022 said they would have covered it exclusively using cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement (referred to, altogether, as "cash or its equivalent")
I suspect multiple things are getting mixed together... I swear I remember reading what GP said much further back than two years ago.
Edit: That said, the part you quoted supports GP, the part in quotes seems to be what they actually asked. Credit is probably not what most would think of as "cash equivalent", that would be debit, checks, and transfers like Zelle.
16% straight answered like that, if you scroll down to the next table for non-cash-equivalent payments:
> Put it on my credit card and pay it off over time
Edit: The people running this survey also had the same thoughts about ‘maybe some people are choosing to not this directly even though they could?’ And added this question:
Based on your current financial situation, what is the largest emergency expense that you could handle right now using only your savings?
1. Under $100
2. $100 to $499
3. $500 to $999
4. $1,000 to $1,999
5. $2,000 or more
This is discussed just below the stats @Jabble sites!
To explore this potential difference between how people would pay for a small, unexpected expense and whether they could pay for it with cash or the equivalent, the survey included a question asking people what the largest emergency expense was that they could handle using only savings. Eighteen percent of adults said the largest emergency expense they could handle right now using only savings was under $100, and 14 percent said they could handle an expense of $100 to $499
So this statistic means most people are not living paycheck to paycheck right? (Although I didn’t think that “paycheck to paycheck” meant you would be ruined by an unexpected $400 expense)
Anyway, it still doesn’t seem like most people live paycheck to paycheck, according to your link:
> Some financial challenges, such as a job loss, require more financial resources than would an unexpected $400 expense. One common measure of financial resiliency is whether people have savings sufficient to cover three months of expenses if they lost their primary source of income. In 2023, 54 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or “rainy day” fund—unchanged from 2022 but down from a high of 59 percent of adults in 2021.
Yep. In the US, I would of course pay for an unexpected car repair (or indeed most any expense) with a credit card. It doesn't mean it won't be paid off at the end of the month in essentially all cases. So one of those meaningless statistics.
YOU would, but a lot of people with credit cards don't even understand that it's a loan, or what compound interest is. They put the expense on the card and then pay the minimum payment, either until it's paid off with insane interest, or they keep racking up debt until they reach their limit and get a worse card, until they're trapped in a cycle of poverty
seriously, everyone in this thread should watch Financial Audit and see how people outside the silicon valley bubble really live. That show has extreme examples to be sure but there are so many people like this
I find it hard to sympathize with people that have enough money to pay off their card bills but don’t actually do so because they can’t be bothered to read.
It is easy to make mistakes when you margins are razor thin. They might be stupid mistakes it still happens and you notice them more because your margins become even smaller. I have been there, being really poor was hard on me.
Not an excuse for using credit cards, just an explanation why you should sympathize.
They aren't, debit cards are the default. Credit cards are just readily available and people like having credit.
Credit access in the US is ludicrous, you can be a terrible borrower (late or even tons of charge offs) and still get credit offers for credit cards. A lot of people then get into trouble because somewhere in their psychology the credit limit counts as money they "have" even though they understand they have to pay it back. That's why you have people talking about literally freezing their cards in a block of ice to control their spending.
Because paper money is inconvenient as hell. Have you seen the size of those 25ct coins! And then you go to buy the cheapest bottle of water, and you need 20 of them to buy half a liter.
Oh I see. But I mean why not just a debit/bank card that allows you to pay with money you have but not with money you don't? You just meant card in general. Yes I agree cash is now very inconvenient.
Basically, you're less protected against purchases gone wrong with a debit card or against fraud. A fair number of (mostly higher income) folks also get other benefits from credit cards--though that may not be relevant here.
However, a debit card usually covers the floor of needing a card of some sort to pay for a lot of things.
I suspect a lot of people in the US use credit card generally to mean card of some sort because credit cards are so common. You do mostly need a card of some sort (and a smartphone) for many purposes but it mostly doesn't need to be a literal credit card so long as you have enough money in the bank.
I disagree: if you are demonstrating your mastery of a language (and with Python, these things are important: using appropriate syntax is the difference between dog slow code and fast code), you should use idiomatic patterns like the above.
Another of Python features is a great REPL: when unsure or confused by an interviewer, I'd just fire python from shell and type in 'x' == 'x' == 'x' to confirm and demonstrate it does the right thing (or write tests).
Obviously, the interviewer should be careful not to sidetrack the candidate much, and let them do the work and attempt to help only if things don't work out.
This is my opinion as well, but unfortunately isn’t always held by others. I once interviewed and by dint of knowing Python’s itertools module, absolutely destroyed the interviewer’s questions that they clearly thought would take some time to do.
I was told later that while I “obviously knew Python quite well, it didn’t give a good signal for my capabilities.”
>I once interviewed and by dint of knowing Python’s itertools module, absolutely destroyed the interviewer’s questions that they clearly thought would take some time to do.
If I see such a situation I usually ask the interviewer whether they want a concise solution using libraries or they want to see how I would do this if I had to do it from scratch.
Or I just offer both, I show that I can do it, but that I know it would be easier to do with x.
I think this is a great opportunity to show you're a good communicator as well as a problem solver.
In this case the candidate evidently didn't understand it either, but was repeating a pattern they had seen before, which IMO is a form of anti-mastery: don't do things that you don't understand, especially when you're supposed to be demonstrating your skill and understanding.
Having a candidate understand all of the edge cases of a language syntax is a very high bar to clear: there is a lot of programmer between a "master" and "anti-master".
I've used Python for 20+ years, and while I'd confidently use a == b == c or 1 < a < 10, I didn't know the specifics and wouldn't use it in cases like 10 > a < 8 (or really, any other case chaining supports).
I believe myself to be an expert at Python and I'll explain differences between different loop types (while/for, ranges/iterators/generators, list comprehensions, functools, external C libraries like pandas or numpy), I think I wouldn't be confused only because I am aware I don't know the details and have a quick way to prove it works.
Maybe I interpreted the article differently than you did.
I got the impression that the candidate was repeating the x == y == z pattern because they'd seen it in other people's code and was pretty sure it worked, not because they knew about comparison chaining. At minimum I'd expect a candidate to be able to clarify that (x == y) == z is not the same thing, not just "idk it works whenever I do it". My reaction to that was: at some point, you do need to at least be able to reason about your own code.
In a more generous light, yes, I agree with everything you wrote. The precise details of comparison chaining are out of scope and I'm sure that most Python developers (myself included) don't know or remember them.
I agree that anyone (including an obviously juniorish candidate) using it should be able to explain it to an extent, but maybe not if you confidently and wrongly claim it doesn't work as an interviewer :)
It's not a trick though. It's normal Python code. It's so common that you don't even think about it. It's just how equality comparisons work in the language.
My usage of "yield" (alongside knowledge of "prange" from numba) in an interview instead of return has sealed the deal on a 200K offer (ML role circa 2020).
"Confusing" the interviewer is a totally valid strategy! It's the only strategy when python async is involved!
I suspect the interviewer would have likely been fine if they’d been able to explain chained comparisons and how they work. I would probably consider the interviewer using them without understanding them to be a negative signal.
In any case, my Amex line of credit charges 6%, and I am preapproved for an Amex personal loan for 8.98%. I presume others on HN can get comparable or better.
> Is Schwab known for being unusually low with its rate for this product?
The Schwab rate sounds high. Fidelity, for instance, charges SOFR + 190 to 310bps [1]. I haven't had an SBLOC for a few years, but I remember Stifel charging no more than 200 bps over Libor.
How do you write “a quick python script” to export data from a Google account across many products and data types, while dealing with rate limits, API limitations, etc?
In 2024 you can probably just paste the API docs into ChatGPT/llama/Claude and ask, it would probably even write a headless chrome script for you. Rate limits aren't real for individuals downloading individual amounts of things, just shove a laptop into a closet and download a file every minute or something and check on it once a day. This isn't a hard problem to solve.
If you’re not pushing code/changes the likelihood of incidents is significantly less. Also, not having a few enterprise contracts that make up most of the revenue, helps ease customer support load.
Do you know what a typical enterprise contract for a nice tool like this could go for? I have an open source saas tool in a different niche but so far the biggest contract I have is 500$ per month and that's for companies who need a lot of customisations, a very white glove service and a few days o work to morph the tool onto exactly what it is they want (typically via plugin so changes are easily manageable). One one hand it feels great to charge 500$ per month but then you sometime see numbers from companies like gitlab who are able to charge 100x that or even more, it's very hard to know how much to charge for something in the b2b sass space and I have that feeling that 1 large enterprise customer is the only thing you need in some spaces to sustain a company of 1 or even 2 that are not aiming for unicorn level
For any enterprise customer, I would recommend to increase their annual fees by two times the rate of inflation (or more if you like). Also: Ask yourself if you can afford to lose some customers during this process.
GitLabs pricing is hilariously, insanely, astronomically high. I'd love to move our org off BitBucket the GitLab, but it's just absolutely not possible, given their pricing.
You should use the best tool for the job, and if that's dotnet go for it. That said, it would be difficult to hire strong engineers, across all experience levels. Your team would probably skew older and have outdated engineering practices.
Any improvements increase the cost basis in the US and reduces the capital gain as well.
I think the 2 bigger taxes difference are:
1. Property tax in Canada is often 80% less than much of the US. (0.28% in Vancouver vs 1.3% in Bay Area, CA vs 2.2% in Austin, TX)
2. Interest on $750k is tax deducible in the US, however with low interest rates, many people just take the standard deduction anyway.
There is certainly a housing problem in Canada, but isn't some of this attributable to the Canadian dollar getting weaker since 2009? It went from 1=1 to $1.4CAD to $1 USD today. Real housing prices will increase as wages in Canada decrease in USD, and asset prices increase in CAD.
