SEEKING WORK - Montreal. Remote / local / relocation ok. Contract / fulltime ok.
I'm a programmer with over 10 years of experience, mostly in the game industry, mostly in C++. Resume and references available by contacting me by email. See my profile for the address.
(1) Don't take jobs where the company isn't willing to
tell you what you'll be working on. That usually means
you're going to be allocated to the least desirable
projects.
I passed on a job at Google precisely because of this fear. I wonder if they've since changed that practice.
No, they have not. There are very many good reasons why they do things this way - I can elaborate if anybody cares.
However, you do get to talk to 4-5 hiring managers based on your skillset and their interests, and you get to rate them based on the group you want to join.
I've done that and it's worked out pretty good for me.
So Google doesn't let hiring managers interview their direct hires because of incentive mismatch.
(Btw, this is all in the public - Stephen Levy's In The Plex is a pretty good resource)
If you have a fairly impartial interviewer, he's most likely trying to hire competent people - he doesn't have any other sort of incentive except to not hire stupid people.
However, if you're a hiring manager, you're under pressure to produce software and fill open recs. So, if you have an open position, the natural thing to do would be to hire a mediocre person cause hey, he's better than nothing, and we got a hole we need to fill for our next project.
As for my personal experience, I'm a bit of an outlier. I'm older (mid thirties), know a couple dozen people who already work here (know which groups to avoid), and my friend who I've worked for before personally recommended me to his current team (I know I'm landing in a good position).
If you work at Google, keep your head down for 12-18 months. Don't pay attention to big-company politics and (unlike me) stay the fuck away from eng-misc. Work hard and (unless you're on a good project) figure out what transfer opportunities will be available, and which ones will be good. At the 18-month point, try for a promotion. It makes it easier to transfer. If you don't get the promo, you can still transfer; it's just somewhat harder. If your performance ratings are still at "Meets Expectations" you should have a good story as to why. In that case, you need to find that middle ground of (a) making it obvious that your manager's appraisal of you is boneheadedly wrong, (b) without throwing him under the bus.
The objective sign of a decent manager is whether his or her reports get promoted. Good managers (at Google) get their reports promoted and bad managers don't. It's that simple. Look into this when you're evaluating transfer opportunities. If you find that a group has a lot of really good people stuck at SWE 3, stay away from it, even if the work sounds interesting. The truth about Google is that no one will consider you qualified to do anything actually interesting (i.e. you won't be considered a Real Googler) until you climb that ladder a bit, so your first few years should be focused on making Staff SWE. (The Real Googler line is somewhere between Senior and Staff.)
I've worked for large companies that do it both ways. When I knew what group I was going to, it often ended up changing within the first year of my arrival anyway through restructuring, re-prioritization, etc. So I've decided it's generally irrelevant - nice to have, but not actually that important. It's more important to be ok with the larger company culture.
I did that the first two times Google contacted me. The third time, I took the plunge - and I must say, they were great at finding a fit for both my skills and my interests. YMMV, but I don't feel like I've been shuffled of to an undesirable project. I get to work on some pretty cool stuff.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, management at Google listens very carefully if you say to them "I don't think I'll be happy doing that" or "I'm not happy doing what I'm doing." The thing is that you have to be the one to say that. If you let them move you around like an interchangeable cog they will. If you help management find you a job/project you'll enjoy, you'll probably find one.
I believe that there are two main security objectives while designing a new system: one is to protect the system itself against attackers, another one is trying to limit damage (especially data exposure) in case an attack actually happens.
Nowadays I think the first one is a must... from this point of view I wouldn't say it's important to check user input... it's a must! (while building a system, I don't usually think how can I check user input, rather how can I assure that my system will always check user input).
But since we can fail, the second objective is really important too and many design choices should really be done with security coming before functionality.
A simple example is password storage. The guidelines are good in pointing to bcrypt (another fine solution is pkcs5), but often just a hash function is used (sometimes even md5 that we can no longer consider a robust hash) or the salt is replaced with something which is not random (e.g. timestamp). These bad design choices could lead to easier password recovery.
Another aspect that I try to enforce in my neighborhood is protecting sensitive user data at least with user password. Of course this requires the user to enter her password every time the data must be accessed, but often this is already the case (think to a payment, wouldn't you ask the user for her password before doing it? So why her payment data shouldn't be protected?)
F-35 lacks the F-16's agility in the air-to-air mode and
the F-15E's range and payload in the bombing mode, and it
can't even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude
close air support for troops engaged in combat.
You sound like my wife... she says I lack the good looks of Hugh Jackman and athletic abilities of Michael Phelps, and I can't even compare to Bill Gates in the amount of money I bring in.
Not defending the F-35 though. My main issue with it is that I can't see that it is needed at all.
> "My main issue with it is that I can't see that it is needed at all."
I don't usually find myself defending defense spending... but war-related technology is something you don't know you need, until you do, by which time it's too late to procure it.
If the US is going to continue its M.O. of attacking countries whose military air presence can be counted on two hands, and consists mostly of old Soviet cast-offs, then sure, the current level of tech is more than sufficient. Overkill, even. I don't think there has been a single loss of U.S. military aircraft to enemy action since... Kosovo?
I think a main impetus of this particular project is because both Russia and China are rapidly developing their own 5th-generation fighters, and while a head-to-head with China doesn't seem entirely likely, it's certainly less farfetched than the idea was 20 years ago.
Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not defending this particular boondoggle of a project, but the need for a 5th-generation fighter is entirely understandable.
On the plus side, it doesn't look like other countries' 5th-gen fighter projects are doing much better... The Chinese project has faced delay after delay after delay, and the Russians too.
If there was a war with China (thankfully far-fetched) why would they want to use 5th generation fighters at all? How many drones could Foxconn make in a day?
A few years ago, in a wargame predicated around the persian gulf, this retired marine who was playing the bad guys launched a low-tech attack on carrier groups which consisted of a ton of drones and fishing boats filled with high explosives. He won.
Result? They did a "redo" with a new rule that he can't do that stuff. Because carriers are awesome and admirals want to command them.
The good news is that, at least at the time, we still had someone like General Van Riper on our side. If you look at military history, many major wars have an opening stage where outdated doctrines are conclusively beaten and the military suddenly gets really interested in out-of-the-box thinking.
I'm not convinced we're better off for it, unfortunately. Read 'The Guns of August' sometime, it's very instructive on just how many people need to die before the generals start changing tactics.
The US is never going to fight China because both countries have nuclear weapons. That tends to put a damper on things. As a Chinese general reportedly put it back in the 90's, "You care a lot more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei."
Even if you did compare the two, the US is a richer country (so it costs comparatively more to train and outfit the same number of men to the same amount) with a stronger cultural valuation of human life and a stronger cultural and political desire for short-term victories. If the Chinese got into a prolonged military conflict, not only would they be less sensitive to heavy losses, but if it took more than a couple years, no one would be worrying about reelection the way American politicians would. China is content with simply being able to win; the US needs to immediately overwhelm the enemy while suffering minimal friendly losses, or else the war will be lost politically if not militarily.
That's why we have things like the F-22 and F-35; in combat exercises small numbers of F-22's can singlehandedly wipe out entire wings of enemy aircraft without the enemy getting as much as a missile lock on the F-22. The US is in a weird spot--if [one telegenic fighter jock gets shot down](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_OGrady), it becomes national news for a week!
> I don't think there has been asingle loss of U.S. military aircraft to enemy action since... Kosovo?
Not only there have been many, the enemy isn't that needed. Everyone seems perfectly capable of destroying their own machines. Actually it looks like investing in general safety would be a better option for everyone than investing in high tech radar protection.
Of course these are mostly helicopters rather than planes, but still - aircraft.
How is a fifth-generation fighter, getting deployed at the end of this decade, going to possibly evade the AUVs that are going to exist then? It doesn't look like it's at all skating to where the puck is going to be...
It is needed because it is designed to replace all those.
Imagine your wife had Hugh Jackman, Michael Phelps and Bill Gates as her husbands in some strange polyamory type setup (hey you brought your wife into the conversation first ;-) ). And then one day, all those husbands disappeared and she was left with you.
The F-16, F-18, A-10, and Harrier are aging airframes that won't last forever. They need to be replaced. And frankly, stealth is such an improvement in terms of survivability in combat that the marginal expense of stealth technology is easily worth it just to protect the monetary investment the government makes in a trained pilot.
The F-35 might not be the best design (they'd be better off with a cheaper F-22 derivative and a separate replacement for the Harrier I think) but it fulfills a real requirement.
I think a lot of people underestimate the differences between the F-22 and the F-35 on a price standpoint. The F-22 costs $2 billion per plane. The F-35 at $18X million per plan is a pittance in comparison for 80% of the capabilities.
I stand corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor. If you divide the number of aircraft built by the amount spent on the program, the GAO puts that at $412 million per plane. You can still buy more than 3 F-35's for each F-22.
That's not the marginal cost per plane, because that amortizes the cost of R&D over the current production run. If you ordered more F-22's, they would cost far less since the R&D is already done.
They're stealthy because they're new - if a real war breaks out, I have no doubt anti-measures would be developed pretty quickly, just like the radar during WW2.
Why would they need to make such an overly complicated plane is beyond me, it's like the F-14 situation all over again. Plus, the F-22 works (and looks) pretty well already...
The F-14 served its purpose. You might say, well, there was never any opposing navy that even thought about making air attacks on an American fleet when the F-14 was in service, but my answer to that is "exactly". The whole point of an overwhelming advantage is that no one ever challenges it.
In simulations the stealth (MADL, IFDL, and low radar profile from the front) and the fire-on-remote fused tactical picture the F-22 and F-35 present play out huge. It's mostly about the avionics. Conversations about these fighters are generally uninformed.
The US doesn't need them– but they'd love to sell them to other countries to recoup some of their costs. Too bad their pricing difficulties have pretty much ruined any chance of that working though, as Japan's already announced that they don't want them for more than the original projection.
More or less, yes. The thing is only being built because Labour managed to make it barely any cheaper to cancel the contracts than to actually build a second, unused & unusable one.
The F-35 is stealthier and has far better avionics than all of those aircraft. It could detect and shoot down an F-16 before it knew it was there, and do the same to ground targets. It doesn't have the low-speed loitering ability of the A-10, but that feature makes sense only for a pre-MANPADS era or battle.
Actually, the STOVL variant of the F-35 has exactly the low-speed loitering ability, not of the A-10, but of the Harrier. That's what it was designed for.
Depends on how data-nuts they can actually go. If they wanted to get really nuts and they actually stored all the data they can track, from your house, car, phone calls, etc... think what any extremely intelligent and powerful (i.e. resources– ATT or NSA, doesn't matter) could do with that kind of information. If enough people subscribed and they could start plugging in external data such as sex offender registrars, it would only be a matter of time before they found a decent model for pattern behaviors. When there's a crime in the area or someone is suspected of X, they could simply compare their base model to John Doe's log, timestamps and all, and determine that hey, those 5 phone calls and 3 garage exits in one hour do seem fishy to us! *knock knock
The good: That's a lot of work for anything that isn't "major" crime. I can't imagine it would help them any more for cybercrime either. BUT, it would be super interesting to see such a system implemented if you're never on the receiving end...
The bad: Everything else. Regardless of how advanced it is, how they use it is everything. And given their track record (sourced above), privacy/trust doesn't seem to be their forte.
<opinion> Probably Nokia would demand north of $20 billion to even be in the game. A few more bad quarters can lower the price, but still, it's Nokia.
MS has enough patents to scare the crap out of any rational company: they have been working in OS for decades and they patent everything. Long before the iPhone, MS came out with portable and mobile computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile . The fact that their work never caught on, doesn't matter, the underlying tech is probably all patented. Add to that Nortel and Netscape patents (hello cookies, SSL and everything we take for granted now) and they are loaded with patents, especially since Android is an OS. Any win against MS is temporary; they don't mind opening their checkbook to license and to hire lawyers. As for Nokia's patents they can probably "buy" a few select ones to go after Motorola /Google instead of spending billions and billions
Edit to add: If not for Google, Motorola would have undoubtedly kissed the ring too, like Samsung and almost every other company did.
Re-reading my comment it seems like I dissed Apple. I didn't mean to, actually I meant to say that OS developers (Apple obviously included) have a lot of patents that pertain to smartphones.
https://developer.apple.com/downloads/