I do the same. The last hiring I did, I sent them a homework assignment that shouldn't take more than an hour. Then, we started talking about it. I asked to explain what and why was done. The started expanding into the sides areas of the solution. Then zoomed out and we discussed what would be the implications of doing x,y,z in a wider context of the system. The natural flow of the conversation does a couple of things: their social skills and how they approach unknown situations. I've hear plenty of 'I don't know' which was absolutely fine and much better than some fake confidence.
Our daughter is allergic to a few things,nuts being one of them.
When we ask for food information at restaurants, often staff have no clue. We had cases where they couldn't confirm for sure even after checking with the kitchen( we walked away).
I'm sorry, but why would you expect someone to know all of the food ingredients on the menu - even if they work there - if they don't personally prepare all of the foods? Heck, in the US, most of the places aren't even paying their staff a decent wage.
Servers go by the menu as well. It isn't like there is a list most places.
If the owners cared about your allergies, they'd make sure their staff could find out easily. Blame the folks that own the place, not the servers.
I didn't read GP as blaming servers so much as demonstrating what is effectively systemic ignorance in the restaurant industry. The inability to 100% confirm ingredients is highlighted as not only being due to servers not knowing the exact contents of all meals (which is understandable), but also the fact that those who prepare and cook the meals as also being uncertain.
The problem is a large portion of the food in restaurants is not prepared in the restaurant. If you order a burger meal, yes the meat is cooked on the grill at the restaurant, but the buns, and any sauce were likely made somewhere else. They might purchase the meat pre-seasoned from the food distributor. And the french fries likely even have a seasoning pre-applied to them before they are delivered to the restaurant.
You have the ingredients on a package to check. The head chef can do it while constructing the recipe. And you can explicitly order gluten free substitutes that stay in the freezer until needed.
There are some places that are much better about this than others. I remember in Europe several of the restaurants had _books_ containing all the potential ingredients and cross-allergens for each dish. I distinctly remember Wagamama's in London pulling one out and double-checking it due to my spouse's eggplant allergy. Sadly it removed most of the menu that we were excited to eat, but it was damn impressive.
In many countries, the restaurants are expected to know allergens by law. Each food on the menu is supposed to have list of allergens available. Usually they are available right there in the menu, you do not even have to ask.
> Heck, in the US, most of the places aren't even paying their staff a decent wage.
Getting > 20% of the total revenue in a restaurant seems like a pretty good deal though. I doubt most servers would prefer getting the 2-3x Federal minimum wage and no tips.
And in some states like CA, WA, NYC it’s a (relatively) very well paid job.
I don't expect people to know every single item on the menu and all the ingredients they are made of. What I do expect is if a meal is made in a restaurant, the restaurant ( as a whole) to know whether it contains milk, soya,nuts, bananas, whatever. We have fairly strict regulations when it comes to this, but how they are actually applied is a completely different thing.
This is very true across all businesses layers. I remember some years ago implementing a CRM system for a small training company. The result was great and they successfully use it even today, however at the time we needed one the junior administrators in some of the discovery sessions so we better understand the processes they do,etc. She was absolutely petrified. Even though the system was meant to make her life much easier,instead she only saw it as her replacement. It took quite a bit of effort to convince her that she's staying. I had similar reactions in my team too when I announced that some processes could be completely automated. Instead of excitement,I received ' what will my job be like then?'.
> I had similar reactions in my team too when I announced that some processes could be completely automated. Instead of excitement,I received ' what will my job be like then?'.
That seems like a perfectly rational response. I think the problem is that we think of process improvements in abstract, aggregate, terms; but on the ground they affect real individual people and they are often forgotten in the excitement of saving the company money.
One of my first tasks at Equipmentshare was automating invoice generation, and we did a lot of that basically pair programming with one of the back office specialists that did that work manually - it was super, super fun, we made really good friends, and now, ten years or something later, she’s a manager overseeing whatever systems replaced what we built.
But it was driven by both sides being made clear from the beginning: nobody is losing any jobs here, the goal is to 10x the number of accounts we could do per back office person; their new jobs will be overseeing the software and dealing with edge cases.
I’m not sure this would’ve been possible to do in such a way if the company wasn’t rapidly growing though.
Makes me wonder: what are things that are easier like this in orgs that aren’t in growth phases?
That is a great example. And yes, if you're in an org where things are "tight" it gets much harder because people will assume the worst outcome is most likely. I've always been a fan of being honest with people, not everyone I've worked for or with shared that point of view. But being consistently honest helps when you're explaining things because it is more likely someone trust you enough to try the change you're proposing. Sometimes that means having the conversation of "Once we're done with this change, the thing you're currently doing won't need to be done. But since we want everyone to have a place after this change, these are the areas that will need help once the change is in place, and we're hoping you would help in one of them ..."
I had an engineer tell me once that the reason they wrote really obtuse code was because "when the layoffs come I'll be the only one who understands it so I won't get laid off!" They were quite pleased with that strategy. I pointed out that they would also never get promoted if their manager couldn't get anyone else to learn their code. This was something they hadn't really considered.
I've been playing this for a while now with our daughter. She wakes up in the morning and finds some absurdity written on my account,then she changes it and the cycle repeats on the following day:)
I started using it recently. $30, 50, or even $100 a month is litterly nothing for most companies in wester world. They'll hike up the prices eventually.
Even without any AI, every senior I know( 10+ years of experience) is pretty much trying to shift to architect or similar position and sees day to day programming almost on the same level as sweeping floors. I appreciate this may not be the case in shops doing something truly unique,but in an average CRED app world, this will happen much sooner than a lot of people might think.
I'm currently working on a 'simple' integration between an accounting and crm software. I'm already pulling my hair because of various exceptions, limitations and whatnot. I think Horizon was anything but simple.
Yes, you're probably right. But this is the part that really bugs me :
"The inquiry heard that in 2008, a glitch in a system called CABSProcess, which automatically summarises a post office’s transactions at around 7pm daily, resulted in users working at the same time having balancing issues."
This, for an accounting system is just fucking inexcusable!
I worked on a huge accounting project for a financial institution processing 2M account bookings per day (at that time, it's a lot more now). A lot of effort was put into the audit log (every booking was written to an append only log) and into the reconciliation process. When it was 20 Rappen off there was digging until the inconsistency was found.
That transactions are not completely isolated when that CABSProcess kicked in is just completely and uttelry inexcusable.
Yeah. I work as a PM in a company that builds integrations between ERP and "heavier" accounting systems. It is absolutely not simple, to the point where we are building an ETL-style engine to drive things. It's not "copy record X to Y".
