It's pretty simple really. Traditionally this happens because whatever service or function they provide is way cheaper to produce than what they can charge for it. How it got that way is usually some historical mistake, rent seeking/monopoly behavior, etc.

I once worked for a company that wrote mail servers and email marketing software. They charged an outrageously high cost for either buying the software or having us host it and paying per email. Just ridiculous. I couldn't believe it. But basically there was an unlimited market of clueless marketing people with multi-million dollar budgets who really needed to get those emails out about political campaigns or movies/tv shows or whatever. (I remember being really confused when I saw that Dunder Mifflin was one of our clients, but it ended up just being a mailing list for people who, uh, wanted news about the show "The Office")

Even now, I see what people will pay in advertising dollars for specific things and I'm always pretty surprised.

That company wasn't called ClickAction was it?

I wish the first 1/3rd of Ruby on Rails podcast wasn't them bull****ting about main guys frog infestation.

Yeah when I listen to music, mostly walking to work and to places to get food/tea during the day.

It's easy to have it in their background at work and take it on their road as well.

Fortunately I got it to work after filing a ticket with google, which ended up requiring opening up the play store and getting an available update there. I think it was a hardware specific upgrade that the sync process didn't account for, or something.

Look at the iPod and its contemporaries. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you make the ****tiest device with the clunkiest interface.

For our algorithm's project, we have a total of 3 projects. The first two projects were pretty fun since it was competitive. Our professor would rank us in terms of efficiency and distributed points that way.

The 3rd project won't have a competitive aspect to it, but now it's a major "wtf did I get myself into" problem. We have to implement some kind of Lempel-Ziv sliding window file compression in c++.

whats the deal with these giant conferences, do people pay out of pocket for these or do most attendees just get their companies to pay for them?

Never personally paid to go to a conference.

Some of the higher ups on our team each got 1 conference a year to pick. They would usually be lame and do SalesForce

I'm guessing 95%+ is the companies paying for them. At my company we generally get one conference or class a year.

If you want to go on your own dime you can try writing the conference and telling them your story. They might have a deal. I offered to speak at node summit (we had spoken as a group the year before). They turned me down for speaking but gave me 2 free tickets.

https://cemerick.com/2010/09/10/a-cl...s-to-the-conj/

Raynes going to Conj for free is a warm and fuzzy story. I think he ended up giving a talk there. Really nice kid to boot.

trying to get the company to send us to ReactEurope

Or not - I've tried to negotiate and they moved up very slightly and seem to be indicating that there's no room (as in higher ups will not approve it) to go any further. I think I'm accepting this offer though - $$$ is probably not the most important thing for me at this juncture and I have other ways to solve the $$$ problem.

Then congrats then!

Thanks! The process has been painful, but there's much to be excited about.

Congratulations candybar. It is exciting to find a passion item that is more important than money. Any small details on what this passion may be?

Thanks! I wouldn't call it a passion play (pun intended) - more like calculated risk-taking to put my career on a better footing in the long run and create more optionality for the future. The path I'm on at my current company, I don't think, leads anywhere.

Technology evolves so fast. Last thing you want is to be working on obsolete technology. Hopefully your new employer will have a decent onboarding process because onboarding can be a PITA. Congrats on the new job, hope things work out well. Thanks for sharing your experience in looking for one.

Thanks!

Makes sense. I never figured this stuff out. Pretty sure my last 3 jobs were career suicide.

Double congratulations!

Good stuff.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687548

Well this isn't what I want to read two months before I start a San Fran bootcamp. >.>

Don't worry, you can't get laid off when you don't have a job

There are jobs outside the bay area. Bay area needs to cool down anyways. It is due for a market correction. The bottom 25% or so will be sent packing and others will see easing housing and a better standard of living.

Whew!

I'm used to being top 5% of, like, everything. But I'd be top 5% of the newbies. Does that fall inside the bottom 25% or outside?

This question was confusing!

Tech companies need decent beginners, right? Gotta fill them jobs the people moving up the ladder vacate, eh?