I think the bigger lesson is probably something along the lines of:
First, make sure they can do the job technically, within some sort of parameters of what they can currently do and what can be learned on the job. That's your baseline.
Then, try and suss out if they'd be good to work with. That will come naturally through the way they interact with you in the interview and how they answer questions (whether they are the questions in the article or completely different ones).
If you reckon they tick the boxes for those two major attributes, it's then just a matter of weighing up how much of each attribute they bring to the table and if the balance is right.
I have seen very prepared people from flagship universities that shine in interviews but have zero intention of learning and complying with industry standards and good practices and do not care about details.
Those people also feel entitled to be promoted as quickly as possible, even if they're still too green to understand how software works. This is how bad engineering managers are born.
I think that like in most industries, the low-end has become commoditised.
Want to sell stuff online? It used to cost thousands of dollars to get an online store up and running.
Now you can sign up to Shopify and start selling your stuff the same day using a theme that, to be honest, is more than good enough for what it costs.
The same goes for brochure sites, a space now filled by Squarespace and Wix and so on. Cheap or free options have always been around, but now you can get a theme that is more than good enough.
But that's great for web designers, right? Anyone wanting to only pay $25/month for that kind of product is going to be a terrible client for anyone trying to make a proper living in the space.
Work for web designers isn't drying up overall, it's just that the low-end – the work we didn't want to really do anyway – has become commoditised.
The higher-end work – the more challenging problems to solve, the ones that need proper design thinking to solve – is still around, and it's become much more specialised.
>Work for web designers isn't drying up overall, it's just that the low-end – [...] – has become commoditised.
>The higher-end work – [...] – is still around, and it's become much more specialised
The specialisation means that work for "web designers" has declined IMO.
I used to do sites for local charities and SMEs. They tend now to use Wix or WordPress with a template, something along those lines.
Those who can afford something more bespoke have much greater expectations and web design as a field has grown. Just keeping up with the pace of change of browser tech is hard now, never mind everything else that goes in to a "simple" webpage - one needs a team to do it properly IMO. So the generalists, as I once was, are really not in demand anymore.
The web designer has been killed off by commoditisation and specialisation and there increased expectation and possibilities that are now part of the everyday web.
> The specialisation means that work for "web designers" has declined IMO.
Yep, exactly. There isn't really such thing as a "web designer" anymore (or rather, there isn't going to be). The job has been split into several different specialised roles.
It's no longer enough to just be able to design and build a good website, because that level of service has become commoditised.
I agree that at some point (probably reasonably early on actually) it would start taking longer to say the number out loud than one second, so you'd fall behind.
However we're talking about counting which is not necessarily saying it out loud. You could just be pushing a button every second, or watching a drop of water fall from a pipe at a constant rate.
Anyway, I remember learning this little fact as a kid and it making the numbers (and the difference in magnitude between them) much more tangible.
For context, at a rate of 1/sec/sec:
1 = 1 sec
10 = 10 sec
100 = ~1.5 min
1000 = ~17 min
10,000 = ~3 hours
100,000 = ~1 day
1,000,000 = ~12 days
10,000,000 = ~4 months
100,000,000 = ~3 years
1,000,000,000 = ~32 years
Interesting - what trouble did you have with the banks here?
I am a NAB customer and when we got married it was one form to fill in (with associated documentation) to update my wife's details across all of the accounts, including having new debit/credit cards sent out by post within the week.
My parents were incredibly insistent that my sister and I understand how they did their personal and business finances and it's among the best things they taught us (neck-and-neck with how to cook).
They ran their own business until I was in my mid-20s, so during school holidays we would often go with them to work. In addition to us helping out in their warehouse, they also used to get us to do things like writing up the deposit slips for incoming cheques to take to the bank.
They seemed like menial chores at the time to keep us busy, but it really did help us understand how the whole thing worked. They essentially showed us "this is how we do it and why" rather than saying "this is how you must do it" and considering nothing like that was taught to us at school, in hindsight I am very grateful for it.
So yes, definitely bring your kids in as much as possible on finances - even the most basic things like budgeting to live within your means is essential.
You needed iTunes to act as a conduit to get songs onto the iPod, but you could either sync it with one iTunes library, or leave it in manual mode and load songs from any iTunes.
It worked then exactly the same way as it does now[1].
You couldn't sync songs on the device back into iTunes though[2] - if you had it in manual, put some songs on it (from another iTunes library, a third party app or anywhere else) and then tried to sync it with your iTunes, it would remove everything on there before syncing over your iTunes library.
> The fact that the Apple Watch doesn't "fit beneath the shirtsleeve" as OP points out is a major ding: form is as important as function for such a jewelry/tech hybrid. A 2x slimmer second generation of the Apple Watch will get /everyone/ on board.
I agree. I think they will sell a boatload of the first generation, but two or three years down the track it will get its equivalent of the iPod-on-Windows or App-store-for-iPhone moment and take off. Everything will suddenly click and everyone will want one.
I'm not sure your follow up clarifies your point, but it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding it.
Are you saying that the only way Apple can sell their products for such a profit (over the raw cost of materials) is because of the Reality Distortion Field? We know that they've been working on this for years with all of the associated costs of designing and developing a product in that time.
No what I am saying is that the much talked about "reality distortion field" is nothing Apple specific. It's simply the ability of a company to charge a higher mark up due to premiumness of its brand.
People don't buy Mercedes cars because of the high tech in the cars (although that's a bonus). They but them because they're Mercedes cars.
In the same way people don't buy Rolexes to tell the time (although that's a bonus). They buy them because they want to wear a Rolex.
As easy as it is for some of the snobbier techies to dismiss Samsung's or LG's R&D I am pretty sure their smart watches didn't come out of thin air. They simply end up charging less for them because they never imagined them as premium products but rather utilities. They didn't start with a "reality distortion field".
I think this is a key point that's further backed up by Apple's recent hiring of people from the high-end fashion space.
It certainly seems to me that Apple aren't even trying to directly compete for the audience that Android Wear attracts.
Ben Thompson[1] has been talking for months about Apple moving properly into the luxury goods sector. The Watch seems like their first real push in that direction.
First, make sure they can do the job technically, within some sort of parameters of what they can currently do and what can be learned on the job. That's your baseline.
Then, try and suss out if they'd be good to work with. That will come naturally through the way they interact with you in the interview and how they answer questions (whether they are the questions in the article or completely different ones).
If you reckon they tick the boxes for those two major attributes, it's then just a matter of weighing up how much of each attribute they bring to the table and if the balance is right.