"If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then we treat it like a duck."
I can walk and quack rather convincingly like a duck, but I'm not a duck and any casual observer would agree.
The metaphor provided puts the emphasis on the behaviour of the individual, whereas the behaviour of the hirer/employer is rarely considered... For example, can the contractor be promoted? Can they be given a disciplinary procedure with Union representation? If the contractor has an accident, does the insurance of the company pay for it or does the insurance of the contractor pay for it? Does the contractor have protections from bullying and discrimination?
The point of IR35 wasn't to make it easy for employers to relieve themselves of their usual obligations to people they demand exclusive full time work from by saying "sign this anti-Union waiver and you'll get tax breaks (and so will we!)"
And criteria like whether the nominal contractor has any choice of workplace and schedule is absolutely about the behaviour of the hirer/employer.
"People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week."
This is enforced with surveillance cameras.
As I said in another comment: it does seem to me that enforcing movement like this and adding bureaucracy to drive through certain places is a solid step in the direction of authoritarianism.
The article is titled "Traffic filters will divide city into "15 minute" neighbourhoods"
Long time UK contractor/freelancer here, I've also done a lot of hiring in the UK.
The problem over the past few years has been IR35 which has effectively gutted/killed the UK contractor market (including lorry drivers and temp roles).
Because of this many companies will only take on contractors within scope of IR35 which drives down the day rate. So employers have found it easier to focus on permanent recruitment.
Your best bet is to look for contracts overseas, or just move out of the UK. I've had some success with braintrust (usebraintrust.com) but with US orgs
I'm always put off by sites like these, and eg turing.com, where all the featured developers appear to be from much less well-off countries. It seems like it might be code for low rates and exploi ... wage arbitrage.
I'm a westerner now living in such a country, and the reality is that living a western-level lifestyle, particularly as a foreigner (international schools etc), is actually more expensive than living in your home country.
List your salary/renumeration/offer, or at least the range.
I have issues with some of the steps listed but by far my biggest issue is that companies don't list their offer. Which for potential candidates makes them wonder if it's even worth attempting to apply.
That's not true of any country and it's not about rollercoaster and silicon geography. It's about having stuff to do that isn't going to the mall or to the N-th replica of a Weatherspoon or of a Young's pub. I've lived in the UK for more than 10 years, and I have indeed explored the country and experienced the nothingness that's the UK bar inner London.
On pubs, I was being generous by picking the most common, say, cultural attraction in the country. And yet, you get a better pub offer (in terms of variety and opening times) in Rome or Berlin or even Dublin. On density, try to re-compute that density at 11PM or check in how many of these pubs you can get a Chimay Rouge or a Franziskaner.
The countryside looks more like a nuclear test site than Tuscany or Latium, to name a few places I'm familiar with.
When people say that monopolies stifle innovation, this should surely be held up as the poster-child of that mantra.
Will this be a flash in the pan? Yes
Was this wasted money? Yes
Could, basically, any human have predicted this is a waste of money? Yes
Could the combined cognitive and monetary resources invested in this have been put to much better use elsewhere? Yes
Don't learn AWS this way, learn about general purpose components and networking and then, if you want, learn the AWS API, it is the ONLY part of AWS that matters.
You are misunderstanding what it means to have a LTV of > $100,000. I don't know if you watched the video but you could make that game in Unity/Unreal/etc super easy. They just outsource the dev to some shop for a few million and if you get ~1000 real customers you have made your money back.
Everyone that wants to learn by "general purpose components and networking and then learn AWS API's" has already done that. How do you expand past that?
Is a game the best way to do that? Who knows, but you have to do something. As a sib comment said not everyone learns the way youre saying (I definitely don't)
This game isn't outsourced to any shop. It was created and developed by Amazonians who have been there year. I personally know the people who worked on the game. They all have worked at Amazon for years and are extremely excited about expanding Cloud Quest in a bunch of very exciting ways.
Can you make a game in Unity? Yeah. But this wasn't outsourced.
It almost always shutsdown the discussion of improving or criticizing learning methods. Because, there is this deus-ex-machina of learning "Everyone is different" and therefore we must not question, we must not contest, we must not improve.
Btw, this is also rampant in other dysfunctional fields such as nutrition and product-reviews.
Big fan of the channel, however he also has another about p hacking which I think applies to his evidence in this video. I agree that people learn the same, but desire and attention aren't discussed enough here. Sure if you force people to try each different way of learning, they won't actually have a "ideal way". However, I tend not to learn if I don't enjoy the way the material is being presented. You can't run a race if you never make it to the starting line.
Veritaseum lost a lot of credibility to me when he released his Waymo-sponsored self-driving video where he conveniently acts like certain things (like his own videos on statistics and critical thinking) don't exist and other claims should be taken at face-value (94% accidents are human error).
As for this "different people learn differently", I think it'd be better to say that different modes, models, analogies are better or worse at capturing the attention of different people long enough to learn something.
The popular sensory-based learning styles thing that people are sort of innately programmed to be “visual”, “auditory”, etc. learners is a myth, that people learn better via different totalities of educational methods (material, organization, content, context, timing, structure, etc.) based on a wide variety of personal factors (physical conditions, interests, relation of intellectual to emotional development, etc.) is not.
But people do learn different. The proper way to learn is to get a bachelors in your interest, and meet professionals. Some people settle for books. Others - videos.
Yes, if we are starting at the assumption that the set of people of people who engage in various learning channels are equal. Which isn’t the case. The real world doesn’t always have equal sampling.
For example, someone who doesn’t read a book, learns zero from that book.
You're seriously going to base your conclusion on a Jay-Leno-style "man on the street" YouTube video over the deeply-researched, peer-reviewed academic literature based on the painstaking efforts of trained education researchers?
Did you see the references on Veritasium video description? If not, I'll list it out here:
References:
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological science in the public interest, 9(3), 105-119. — https://ve42.co/Pashler2008
Willingham, D. T., Hughes, E. M., & Dobolyi, D. G. (2015). The scientific status of learning styles theories. Teaching of Psychology, 42(3), 266-271. — https://ve42.co/Willingham
Massa, L. J., & Mayer, R. E. (2006). Testing the ATI hypothesis: Should multimedia instruction accommodate verbalizer-visualizer cognitive style?. Learning and Individual Differences, 16(4), 321-335. — https://ve42.co/Massa2006
Riener, C., & Willingham, D. (2010). The myth of learning styles. Change: The magazine of higher learning, 42(5), 32-35.— https://ve42.co/Riener2010
Husmann, P. R., & O'Loughlin, V. D. (2019). Another nail in the coffin for learning styles? Disparities among undergraduate anatomy students’ study strategies, class performance, and reported VARK learning styles. Anatomical sciences education, 12(1), 6-19. — https://ve42.co/Husmann2019
Snider, V. E., & Roehl, R. (2007). Teachers’ beliefs about pedagogy and related issues. Psychology in the Schools, 44, 873–886. doi:10.1002/pits.20272 — https://ve42.co/Snider2007
Fleming, N., & Baume, D. (2006). Learning Styles Again: VARKing up the right tree!. Educational developments, 7(4), 4. — https://ve42.co/Fleming2006
Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tallal, P. (2015). Matching learning style to instructional method: Effects on comprehension. Journal of educational psychology, 107(1), 64. — https://ve42.co/Rogowskyetal
Furey, W. (2020). THE STUBBORN MYTH OF LEARNING STYLES. Education Next, 20(3), 8-13. — https://ve42.co/Furey2020
Dunn, R., Beaudry, J. S., & Klavas, A. (2002). Survey of research on learning styles. California Journal of Science Education II (2). — https://ve42.co/Dunn2002
My only problem with the cliche of “Everyone does x differently” is that it fits intuition and people can relate to it - thus, it’s popularity. More often than not, it is not scientifically backed. It also robs away attention and understanding when things are truly different for one another.
Perhaps a more accurate statement would be "people prefer to learn things differently." Such data can easily be gathered by polling and is non-controvertible. Preference in learning methods is different from the relative effectiveness of them.
Some people like fast-food hamburgers; some like them from expensive restaurants; others like to cook them at home. But nutritionally, they're not all that different from one another.
Perhaps we can create a system whereby one exchanges skills for products and services? But then how do we scale such a system... money might work, unless you're advocating for communism
No one said anything about replacing something. Fortunately our systems (assuming we're talking about the west) can evolve and change within, without throwing it off the boat. You can introduce public health care without abolishing capitalism. Same goes for paid maternity leave, supporting unions, etc. In my understanding we're having a political discussion here, not a theoretical one.
There is no quick and easy solution to this. You just have to remember that the interruption is not aware of your state of mind, and also that a bad response (from you) will probably cause a greater degree of interruption.
So be kind, handle the interruption politely and happily, remind the interrupter that you're working and then take measures so that it is more difficult for you to be interrupted in the future.
Hi, I'm a real English person, from England (not from London) . I totally agree about all of this, and all of the sentiments expressed by Salvatore.
We say that "English is easy to learn, but hard to master" and I often wonder how people in the world manage to learn it and speak with confidence when using it, they have my admiration and respect.
I have an opposite (but complimentary) perspective to Salvatore, since I spent a few years living in Europe as the only English person amongst my colleagues and friends.
At the start of this period, I quickly learned that no one could understand me. My pleasantries and greetings were met with confusion no matter how slowly I spoke, even to American colleagues. I realised that the English language I had learned was only applicable to the immediate area where I had grown up. This is true of most regions in the UK, you can travel 20 miles from any location on a map in Britain and find the local people speaking in different and sometimes incomprehensible dialects and accents, or using strange words to describe people (like "duckie" or "hen").
I quickly learned to modulate my accent, speak slower and more deliberately.
In later life I moved back to the area from where I grew up and, although people could easily understand me, they often asked me where I came from (since my modulated accent was unfamiliar to them).
Now I have "two modes", one is my incomprehensible native drawl, and the other is much easier to understand and clearer but requires me to concentrate much more.
The difference between these two modes (for me) is that it is much easier to be jovial and extroverted in my native drawl. Whereas I'm much more professional and uptight when using my modulated language, even in social settings.
I now grimace, and even translate, when English colleagues are speaking to non-native English speakers and make zero attempt to improve their use of the language. I wonder how they interact with people when on holiday, do they just shout louder and point at things? How embarrassing.
Worked at three of those. Yes contractors, but also staff. Part of one my roles as delivery manager at one of the 'exemplar' projects was to train up my replacement (which was cool). I'm a massive fan.
"If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then we treat it like a duck."
I can walk and quack rather convincingly like a duck, but I'm not a duck and any casual observer would agree.
The metaphor provided puts the emphasis on the behaviour of the individual, whereas the behaviour of the hirer/employer is rarely considered... For example, can the contractor be promoted? Can they be given a disciplinary procedure with Union representation? If the contractor has an accident, does the insurance of the company pay for it or does the insurance of the contractor pay for it? Does the contractor have protections from bullying and discrimination?