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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2024

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  • Worst book I’ve quit is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. What a horrible book!

    Worst I’ve finished is Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, immediately followed by Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I’ll throw in a special mention for The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. All terrible books that I finished only because they were required reading in school.


  • sevan@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.mlOpenAI Is A Bad Business
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    25 days ago

    Thanks, I’m guessing the benefit of subscribing is to create that persistent relationship. The free version from MS that I’m using times out after a while. I definitely get the problem of it making up experience for me when it encounters something in a job description that isn’t referenced anywhere in my info. Honestly, I’d probably get more interviews if I just let it make up stuff, but I’m guessing that might become a problem for me later. :)


  • sevan@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.mlOpenAI Is A Bad Business
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    25 days ago

    Can you share a bit about how you used it? I’ve used Copilot a bit to try the same thing, but it makes so many errors that I spend too much time editing and fixing them. Also, after running quite a few cover letters, I found that the text was repetitive and unnatural in a way that made it really obvious that it was an LLM writing the letter and not a person.


  • sevan@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyz👣👣👣
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    1 month ago

    I once had to post a position that was specifically made for my employee, but my recruiter was awesome. I told her there was no possibility I would pick anyone else, so she suggested I make the requirements hyper specific. So, I met with my employee and we worked up a list of 10-20 things that she had done in her career and put them all in as requirements to qualify.

    I received no other “qualified” applicants, so I only had to interview the one. My next meeting with her I said, “this is your official interview, do you have any questions for me?” She said “no” and I congratulated her on being selected for the role.


  • sevan@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzEnglish Ivy
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    1 month ago

    Same. I have a fence that’s barely still standing now that I removed the ivy. I’ve been pulling it and spraying it for several years now. I know I’ll never win, but I’m doing my best to keep it in check. The most painful part is when I go to garden centers and see it for sale. It makes me want to cry.



  • I put on music, preferably with full coverage noise canceling headphones to block as much outside stimulus as I can. Depending on the mood, I might put on something soothing (listening to Sean Townsend on YouTube right now) or I might go with metal.

    If you are in US K-12 education and have a diagnosed condition (depression, anxiety, autism, etc.), you can have your parents request a 504 plan with the school. This requires the school to make reasonable accommodations for someone with a disability or illness that makes it difficult to be successful otherwise. When my daughter was suffering with anxiety and panic attacks, we worked with the administrators to setup safe places where she could go to calm down. The teachers were required to let her go any time she needed a break from the classroom.







  • I recently took a voluntary lay off from my job after almost 20 years with the company. I found out my dept was going to be reorganized and I was not very happy about the direction things were going, so I put myself on the severance list. I had been planning to look for a new role this year anyway, though I originally thought I would be looking for something in the same company.

    It has been a couple of months now and I’m getting fewer interviews than I expected. I still have plenty of time to find something, so I’m not too worried yet, but I do question if I made a bad decision. Of course, I expect more layoffs within the next year, so it was reasonably likely that I would have been laid off eventually anyway.

    Last year’s reorg for my dept, they broke into two rounds, the first round mostly got rid of supervisors and managers and kept more analysts than were needed long-term to get through all the work changes. Then, in December, they came back and laid off the extra staff. They knew that was the plan when everything was announced in April. They actually discussed telling people up front so they would have 8 months notice + severance, but decided not to at the last minute. I’m guessing they were worried those people would leave or not work hard enough through the transition.


  • Long before Covid, the company I worked for started trialing work from home for some call center agents. They had a whole list of requirements for an acceptable work from home space: dedicated work area with a desk, locking file drawer (why??? I don’t know), first aid kit, fire extinguisher, etc. Someone would actually go out to physically inspect the space to make sure every box was checked.

    My guess is someone from legal wrote up the requirements from a workplace safety standpoint. They probably could have just had the employee sign a statement agreeing that they met all of the requirements, but someone in the middle got overzealous about their role. During Covid, everyone got sent home permanently without any regard to any of those rules, so clearly they weren’t that important in the first place.




  • I’ve been applying similar thinking to my job search. When I see AI listed in a job description, I immediately put the company into one of 3 categories:

    1. It is an AI company that may go out of business suddenly within the next few years leaving me unemployed and possibly without any severance.
    2. Management has drank the Kool-Aid and is hoping AI will drive their profit growth, which makes me question management competence. This also has a high likelihood of future job loss, but at least they might pay severance.
    3. The buzzword was tossed in to make the company look good to investors, but it is not highly relevant to their business. These companies get a partial pass for me.

    A company in the first two categories would need to pay a lot to entice me and I would not value their equity offering. The third category is understandable, especially if the success of AI would threaten their business.



  • Research your professional value and have the courage to go after it if you are not being paid what you are worth.

    I worked 17 years for the same company. I was promoted 4 times during those years and received a few extra pay increases along the way, but I was underpaid as soon as I took the first promotion and the gap increased with each additional promotion. I probably walked away from more than $100k in lifetime earnings, plus interest, by sticking with the company.

    I should have changed companies at least once and probably twice. You don’t have to be on a promotion path to run into this. It could be you were underpaid on day 1, but you needed the job or you didn’t have experience. That’s fine, but once you have the experience and have proven yourself, find out what the market rate is for your role and ask for it, be ready to show your research. If you don’t get it, start applying for other jobs.

    Don’t be afraid to talk to your peers about salary. If you are making less, you know there is a gap you can go after (just don’t name your coworker when you ask for more, do market research and make it impersonal/just business). If you are making more, pass this advice on to your coworker.

    If you are being paid fairly for the work you are doing, but know you can do more, start looking into what it takes to make a move. For example, you might be the best fast food or retail worker the world has ever had, but the job only pays so much. What else might you be good at? You could look for training in a trade or try to find an entry level role in a company that has a wider set of tasks available that offers a growth path.

    I agree with a lot of the comments here about saving and investing and keeping expenses down, but growing your earnings is typically easier than shrinking your rent. It still isn’t easy though, especially if you need to relocate to earn more.