Interestingly enough, I believe while Kamelot was founded in the US, most of the members are from Europe currently.
One thing I learned ~15 years ago was that Nightwish commissioned lyrics from lyricists (one such commissioned person told me himself I believe a year or two after Dark Passion Play was released - they never used what he wrote for them though) - maybe that helps give the polished impression for some.
The trademark dispute was with the Rhapsody streaming service - I don't think it was ever announced, but I suspect the streaming service paid them money to change their name since the band definitely came first.
I tried googling a bit but I couldn't find quickly enough an article that mentions Rhapsody, the streaming service, as the other party in the trademark dispute.
However, I do remember the whole thing when it happened because I had just discovered the band.
This is a kind of interesting change to see FB make to me (I had heard about this a couple of weeks ago from my brother, who was one of the ICs affected by the layoffs), as recently while I've been promoted into management at a different one of the FAANGs, I'm still doing a fairly heavy amount of coding out of necessity, maybe even moreso in some ways since my team isn't able to handle the amount of projects/work given to us without covering some of the most undesirable work.
Love most of the advice I see here, but there's a few quibbles I have here.
> You’re going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic programming problems.
One trend I've been seeing is the MANGAs have been moving away from leetcode crap - in my org at one of them, I think almost the entire org is against leetcode questions as an insufficient form of candidate assessment.
> Come up with a more, uh, positive reason for why you’re interviewing instead of disclosing that you were laid off.
Honestly, as an engineering manager on the hiring side, I haven't seen any negative perception in these times when candidates disclose they were laid off - its become so common as of late & often not due to the candidates' fault that it's a non-issue for us. I know a manager trying to extend a formal offer to one such candidate who revealed that they were laid off. I especially appreciate honesty in a candidate when they admit they don't know something & try to set the conversation around working with the info they have as presented to them, creating space for an open conversation around questions being asked instead of viewing it as a Q&A session. Those tend to be the candidates who get the highest marks from me.
One of the paths to financial success in the Bay Area is dual income households - the high pay for those families make it financially a no brainer to live in the area.
The compensation though makes take home pay far better than anywhere else even omitting that if you’re at a well compensating place (i.e. FAANG), even for just single individuals.
Where do you get that she is a staunch liberal? I see in Wikipedia this mention
> Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan called Weiss a "professional rightwing attention seeker" and disputed her claim that social media's influence had led to a hostile media environment for conservatives.
In addition, her employment history outlined in Wikipedia seem to be filled with fairly conservative outlets or stints (WSJ, Die Welt, NY Times stint cited as an effort to bring in more diverse ideological views). Nothing wrong with that necessarily, just pointing it out as contradictory to the claim that she's a staunch liberal.
I work at a non-Google FAANG - from what I've seen in my org, "CS fundamentals" (which I assume is some proxy statement of sorts for leetcode-style interviews with emphasis on data structure/algo questions & knowledge) isn't as important for the work or to get hired for us. Our view is hard technical skills can be taught/picked up on the jobs, but behavioral aspects are not so easy to develop.
We routinely have & hire interns from top programs and many lesser known ones, or even non-CS degree holders.
I've heard of airline companies doing similar when interviewing flight attendants - United will fly you to Newark to interview, but often there will be people shadowing candidates to see how they behave during their travels and that feedback is taken into account when evaluating candidates.
A strong part of me believes that United indexes on how much of an asshole the person can be. /s.
But, seriously, I feel like if you're using a potential employer's services, you should assume they're taking that into account when they're hiring you.
Seriously, compare the employees of United vs Southwest and there's a huge difference in attitude. Southwest employees seem happy, friendly, helpful, while United... Not.
I've flown United in every status, from nobody to the highest level of their frequent flyer plan. The problem isn't their people: it's that their airline has shitty policies.
It's a form of the birthday paradox. In a large enough room, there will be at least one person with a horror story about any airline.
All commercial airlines are pretty much awful. I've flown first class on one or two occasions and--while it's relatively more comfortable than flying in the main cabin--on an absolute scale it's still an uncomfortable, terrible experience. Flying sucks and airline management is the reason why.
… but I have far more horror stories per mile flown with Delta than with Southwest.
Granted, I've a lot less miles flown with Delta, but that's because every ride has been bad… (also, I ended up flying less miles with Delta on one of the horror shows because it seemed like they weren't actually interested in fulfilling their end of the bargain, and switched to a different airline: Southwest!)
Pretty uniformly the same experience for me with Southwest (pre-pandemic). I'd sometimes prefer to fly Southwest over other airlines even for longer flights. Consistently decent people; surprisingly so, since you'd assume cheaper flights would bring more difficult customers. But maybe I never flew the cheaper routes.
If I had very young children, or needed special accommodations, I might have a different opinion. The SWA preboarding process doesn't seem very generous.
No Southwest is boarding is great for kids. We all board at the same time (it is after one group) So you end up all sitting together, with other parents. and anyone that sits with you did it by choice, totally lowers the anxiety of bothering other passengers that do not have kids.
People sometimes have nonstandard needs, or get sick, or need to deal with another passenger's overly aggressive behavior. It's more about how the flight attendants react to those situations than to standard service.
I've started using a wheelchair recently so that's fresh on my mind. I haven't flown with it yet, but I'm nervous at the prospect of my delicate $10K power chair being smashed to bits in the cargo hold, or lost, or the flight attendants losing patience with me getting to my seat.
Are you not able to use it on the plane itself? It's been a long time since I've flown anywhere, but I seem to recall there being quite good accommodations for such things.
sadly no. ostensibly for safety reasons actually, I think, but likely more because airlines would have to sacrifice seats for wheelchair space. instead, you either have to limp (if you're able) or transfer to a transport chair so they can wheel you to your seat. it's a hassle.
it'd be a tight squeeze through the aisle if it were possible, but I could make it work in my chair.
Not a horror story but once while sitting right at the back of a rather small local airline flight I found a pair of grimy white plastic jerry cans that had come loose from under my seat and were sliding around. I flagged a flight attendant down and was told they would ask the pilots. Later they told me they usually contained coffee! I was suprised that as the flight attendant they didn't know that but given the plane was so small maybe they were new to the job.
I once had a "There is water dripping on me; can you move me to a different seat and also tell me whether I should be concerned about that?". The flight attendant wasn't too thrilled about that one, probably because it created extra work for whoever had to figure out that it was just condensation. That's the only negative interaction I've ever had with a flight crew.
I had a flight attendant admonish me for being out of my seat when the fasten seatbelt light was on. But honestly, she was right: it was way too turbulent and my butt ought to have been in a seat. Problem was that nature was calling and the turbulence seemed interminable, and wasn't helping with the nature's call part.
(I ended up taking a seat in the rear for a bit & riding it out until a slightly smoother portion. Still had to bend the rules a bit. I owe you for your patience, flight attendant…)
Although, on one flight, there was a child behind us, real young (not really yet old enough to "know better"), listening to a tablet that was playing the ABCs song. But the tablet had to be stowed for take-off (apparently). She forced the parent to take the tablet from child. Child threw a tantrum. I'm eye'ing the attendant like "you caused this. ABCs > bawling kid, and takeoff with the tablet would have been fine"
Stowing large electronic items (bigger than a cell phone) is a safety requirement, and it’s likely that flight attendants have much less leeway in safety requirements than other aspects of the job.
(Please note that I’m not arguing that’s it’s a reasonable requirement, just that FAs likely don’t have the authority to ignore violations.)
It's really nothing - just a different fare code. Gate agents and cabin crew can already tell when someone is a non-rev (e.g. an employee using flight benefits), so looping them in on the backend is just a quick schedule lookup and a couple more people on the feedback system. (N.B.: I'm not saying this actually happens, because I don't know; just that it would be very little trouble using systems that are already in place. I, for one, didn't change out of my suit until after I'd gotten back home when I did an airline interview.)
My own grad school happens to have a top 4 CS program (UIUC), but I went there for math (was top 15 at the time, not sure how it has done since). Some of the stories of people I met in my grad program were fascinating, there were people there who were likely smarter than most students at most of the elite universities - one particular extremely smart person I met even turned down top math programs in favor of a full scholarship at a lesser known public school for undergrad. My own personal background is a bit fascinating in some ways as well, but it never comes up in interviews - I'm at a FAANG with most of the achievements notched for a promotion to staff SWE, and my brother was promoted to staff research scientist at another FAANG for an extraordinary business-wide accomplishment. Neither of us coded before trying to get into the tech industry (my brother has a PhD in Chemistry from a reputed program).
I've learned throughout my life that focusing so much on where people went to school might cause you to miss smart and/or revolutionary people. People don't really talk so much about the schools people like Steve Jobs went to. Lots of very smart people are rejected by the likes of the Ivies, or not gotten the head start in life that would've gotten them placed at the most prestigious schools or programs. Some people's lives took a different turn for reasons that may have caused them to miss out on opportunities earlier in life, but life events created resolve & the will to make a switch & become successful. I think it's very unfair/silly to pass judgment on someone just due to what school they went to (I certainly don't really care when I'm interviewing someone) - there are actually a lot of very smart people who never had any such privileged background out there. We should be striving to find them not only because it could be very beneficial for business, but it's also the right thing to do.
Talk with your manager, and see if you can come up with a plan to take a long vacation (I'd recommend at least 2-3 weeks, if not longer depending on how you handle burnout historically & what the nature of the burnout is) - at worst, maybe consider unpaid leave as well if you can afford to.
One thing I learned ~15 years ago was that Nightwish commissioned lyrics from lyricists (one such commissioned person told me himself I believe a year or two after Dark Passion Play was released - they never used what he wrote for them though) - maybe that helps give the polished impression for some.