Discord App does this really nicely. They keep their platform free for basic usage but you've to buy the bling. A vain, yet fun, spending keeps the platform alive.
People buy glittery items like make overs, buttons, or GIFs (not sure), very similar to what reddit gives you when you're gilded.
Probably, a social network can sell virtual tractors & houses to keep their platform alive.
> [1] Opposite is low voltage switching power supplies where the output voltage is low and currents are high. You see people use active diodes to avoid voltage drops despite the expense. Even then 90-95% efficiency is common.
Thanks, I din't know about this one at all. I should have paid more attention during the lectures, missed this part totally.
Also, if you look at the margins with which these organizations operate, the 10 programmers would be getting paid a mere $3/hr each for every $20/hr the organization charges.
Issues with offshoring giants like Tata & Infosys is - Engineers are often discouraged to exhibit autonomy & make decisions on their own.
It's rather an untold rule across the industry to channel all decisions & difficulties via their manager.
I'll give an example - We once asked our offshore-engineer (contractor) to share their personal email ID for a github invite for we knew that he had one readily at his disposal. Using gmail for work is a big deal for IT offshoring companies. The guy, instead of sharing his concerns about his directives & security guidelines directly with us, called his manager who replied to our email asking us to stick to Enterprise email IDs.
Being an Indian myself, I'd clarify, that this might be the case with the Chinese (Long ago watched some Not-real Venice creator's experience on NatGeo), but not with Indians.
Usually the consultants/people-who-pitch at such dollar-hungry Indian firms won't tell you 'NO' because they fear they might lose you. People in-charge of saying 'YES' aren't often aware of the abilities of their team.
And, surprisingly, sometimes, the 'YES' comes out of plain politeness. In some occasions, they don't want to disappoint the clients who've exhibited a lot of trust on these folks.
So, when an Indian says 'YES', they correctly understand the liabilities & responsibilities that are implied, but they might not have what it takes to deliver on the commitments they made.
Agree, often the remarks are heavily opinionated & biased in favor of their own world view, change perspective a little & the whole set up might look awkward.
I've rarely seen a few articles(actually they exist) which talks in terms of data, verifiable facts, empirical evidence, and a forecast based on these.
> I've rarely seen a few articles(actually they exist) which talks in terms of data, verifiable facts, empirical evidence
You will drive yourself nuts trying to understand the essence of a place based on that stuff. It's an extreme example, but can you imagine trying to convey the character of Venice by discussing crime rate, property values, taxes, commute times, and so on?
I think it's perfectly fine to express your opinion in such an article. Everyone's situation and perception are different. You may gain more by empathizing with their outlook than by poring over data about what the optimal living arrangement is.
Damore said higher proportion of men in engineering positions wasn't because of explicit discrimination. And we know Google fired him afterwards stating he was wrong. But All 25 Finalists In Its Code Jam Coding Competition are Men.
In fact, With the exception of 2011, in 14 years of Code Jam, no Female has ever made it to the finals. Google's own non-discriminatory machine tool that evaluates codes, which doesn't take into account one's age, gender, nationality or skin color into account, has shed some light on some embarrassing outcomes.
It could very well be the case that the higher proportion of men in engineering positions is mostly because of discrimination, while the increase in the proportion of men among finalists in the Code Jam competition isn't. (Not claiming that is the case, just highlighting the possibility.)
How? Assume for the sake of argument that discrimination is the only factor influencing the gender distribution among CS professionals. From kindergarten onwards the numbers are slowly winnowed down to 80% men and 20% women.
But now this 80/20 population enters a highly selective but objective contest and comes out with 349/1 (assuming there have always been 25 finalists in the 14 years of the competition and there was only this one woman I can't see in the photo proof). Surely this means that men are just better at programming?
But in fact men are just better at being outliers. The effect is not very strong at small deviations (i.e. the difference between an average person and an average programmer), but can absolutely become significant when you only look at the extreme ends of the distribution. (I have written a comment about that here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997524) When you only look at the 25 top performers, that is bound to influence the result.
Again, I don't think things are nearly so black-and-white, but pointing at one extreme case of men performing better wouldn't be enough to completely validate Damore's memo, if anyone were so stupid to make that argument.
I agree on your point that the discrimination begins very early on.
The aforementioned article, although, bolsters the point that females may aspire to adopt different career options. Therefore, the organizations can't be held responsible for creating the gap/divide. And I seem to agree with Damores's memo because he mentions solutions to the problem of gender-ratio-gap by suggesting programs to attract women to tech.
In conclusion, complaining about the gender ratio alone won't fetch us equality but collectively attacking the root of the problem may.
Also possible that fewer women than the 20% would suggest are going to enter a public contest which may well lead to harassment (if the experience of literally any prominent woman in tech on the internet is any guide.)
Yes, this is a conundrum. The honest assumption has been that non-equal outcomes must be due to discrimination, because that has in fact been true in other fields and in the past.
And so the further assumption was that if we do what other fields have done, make evaluations "blind" (the way it was done in Orchestras) those biases would not be able to express themselves and we would get equal outcomes. Or at least more equal outcomes.
Easy peasy!
The problem is it doesn't seem to be working out that way in tech. In fact, when we "blind" the processes, the needle appears to move the other way. Suggesting that, yes, there was bias, but not the bias we thought.
But that's not in the set of politically permissible answers/outcomes.
So companies are scrambling and trying their best to somehow bend reality to fit the accepted parameters. Which, well, leads to a lot of bending. Of rules, laws, reality.
One of commenters here on HN summed it up frankly in this way: "We are rejecting it not because it's not true, but because it's morally wrong." Yes, these facts are unpleasant. They may be depressing for some. How do you find a way out of this? Whatever Google does or says will be bad in one way or another.
I'm 20 minutes into the video right now and I can connect the dots to one of the most talked about games of 2015, FNAF, Five Nights at Freddy's, the one that made reaction artists like Markiplier insanely popular.
How does such legends begin?
Well, first they begin with a rumor, a rumor of it being real. With the launch of Game I & II, fans started speculations of it being a real story - about a real pizzeria, with real kids involved, and a psychopath who might have murdered those children, or a pedophile.
Then, began the hunt for the plot. Fans began searching for clues in the game play, like the dates on the salary slips, the posters on the walls and artifacts in the halls, the mini games with in the game. Some even sought the protagonist. Some dug of news archives to look for actual events in past that involved pizzeria, kids and murder.
And after v2 launch, some suggested that version II was actually a prequel to version I as the dates were old and the minigames & the game's story line suggested this too. Some even went & tallied the hourly wages during 1960s to validate this.
Fans are fans and they do just anything.
People discussed the game characters and the protagonist. And then began the hunt for the relation between the hotel manager, the purple guy, the kids who died, the kid who wept all the time, the spring lock suits andthe ever-returning-persistent security guard who refused to give up & returned, perhaps with a different name in the sequel. Was it a rebirth? Or did he simply changed identity? Who knew?
Had Paul answered the phone call while he was away on family vacation at some unknown remote scotland country side, there wouldn't have been any space for the frenzy. Since the game creator intentionally lived a life deviod of attentions, fans & their questions went unanswered. And this is the key.
Fans were waiting for the launch of v3 as it would give more clues to who actually was the purple guy. But they were betrayed once again. The game maker, Scott Cawthon, made the plot even more confusing. After the version III, people couldn't place it anywhere. Some said it was a prequel, some said sequel, many said they were confused.
And then came the v4 where fans saw a panting boy running across the house in panic. And some noticed the flowers & suggested it was a hospital & since the kid is in fear, they thought it was a case of schizoprenia & a case of a challenged 4 year old boy.
In the absence of the SSOT (single source of truth), fans began speculating, collecting & piling evidences. They began their own versions of conspiracy theories. The game became "the most talked about game on youtube" by the end of 2015 as fans began making videos with their version of the theory.
Finally, Scott came out of his hideout & made a public comment that this game was not what people thought, and what if all of it was just a dream? And this comment was unhelpful and an insincere attempt to answer the questions of the fandom.
This observation can be carried to more interesting plots of businesses, like stock market trends, venture capital funding, or app usages. Insider trading simply takes the fun out of Stock markets, and hence, it is illegal. Rumors fuel investments. A large group of people with a lot of money without the ability to think what to do about it, often hit with the FOMO, jump into radicalism & make zillion dollar investments. And while the generation X is clueless how to use snapchat, millenials are obsessed with it.
Inquisitiveness is a common trait among primates & us, hominidae aren't excluded from this. All you need to do is, to keep a veil of mystery. As programmers, or physists, or mathematicians, we don't like facts, we love to solve problems & arrive at facts. Fact is a destination where the road ends. Fact finding is a journey where you explore the unknown, meet the unmet, see the unseen and that's what makes life beautiful.
People buy glittery items like make overs, buttons, or GIFs (not sure), very similar to what reddit gives you when you're gilded.
Probably, a social network can sell virtual tractors & houses to keep their platform alive.