Rob Young

Rando Canadian. Doer of stuff *and* things. I enjoy strange and quirky cameras. he / him

[Janel Comeau 🍁 @VeryBadLlama]

Google and Meta search both report that Cape Breton Island has its own time zone 12 minutes ahead of mainland Nova Scotia time because they are both drawing that information from a Beaverton article I wrote in 2024

[Senior PowerPoint Engineer @ryxcommar]

In the interview for hiring this guy, I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

Naturally I was taken aback by that response. "OK, let's move on then."

He was in his early 40s and had a pretty old-school stats background, so I figured a barrage of tough questions about linear regression, t-stats, etc. was fair game. He was playing a double-or-nothing game. What's crazy is he got every single one right without thinking, almost like he was reading off an answer sheet. I was impressed. You're hired buddy. I still to this day disagree that it was a dumb question, but I secretly loved his unrelenting willingness to be disagreeable.

In the first couple weeks he took on a massive project that touched every single part of the company, just reconciling data science team's internal sources of truth to our accounting. He put all the comparisons in Google Sheets broken out by month, held a meeting, pointed out all the differences, asked people to work on reconciling them. Nothing fancy, just honest to god work with a strong helping of elbow grease. Suddenly all these nerds in the meeting who can tell you what a "convolutional neural network" but can't be assed to make sure their data is of a good quality are looking a little silly. This guy learned *all* of their table schemas and their quirks, and in basically no time, figured out all the errors.

He was a good contributor to the company for a while and garnered the respect of all the other data scientists. But all good things must eventually come to an end. In his case, he went out the way he came in: by being a disagreeable asshole. He challenged management on some internal document. He was 100% correct, by the way. But management didn't want someone calling out their bullshit. 2 weeks later he was let go.

Best data scientist I ever worked with.

[Cameron @thecammyc]

Software engineering gotta be the only career where the interview is harder than the actual job

[Dmitrii Kovanikov @ChShersh]

IDE Devs:

“Python has dynamic typing, so we can’t implement go-to-definition reliably”

Python devs:

“That’s fine, we don’t need THIS ABSOLUTELY BASIC FUNDAMENTAL IDE FEATURE, LET’S BUILD THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY ON THIS TECH, LET’S GO!”

[DHH @dhh]

Cloud computing is the most successful "you will own nothing and be happy" psyop in history. We gave up on DARPA's beautifully, decentralized design for the internet to become renters for life. Tragic.

[Rob Young @bobbotron]

@David_Moscrop I’m in his riding, I know it’s fun to think of him not getting elected here but seems pretty unlikely, feels like most rural people are super aligned with him. (I don’t get it.)

[Rob Young @bobbotron]

@LauraBabcock I feel like there’s a loyal core of Canadians that isn’t buying any good news about Carney, hope things keep shifting away from PP.

[LaurieWired @lauriewired]

“everything is computer” should be renamed to “everything is Java”

Most don’t realize how insanely prevalent the JVM is. Oracle currently estimates 60 billion JVM installations worldwide.

While others chase language fads, Java’s been quietly eating the world for decades.

[Benjamin (offline for a bit) @bschne]

if I ever meet a prepper IRL, my test of their seriousness will be asking them if they have an offline dump of Wikipedia

[Rob Young @bobbotron]

I feel like Pierre doesn’t get enough straight up ridicule. My small attempt to help change this.

#canada #CanadaElection

[Rob Young @bobbotron]

@current_tweet @ChShersh I takes a while to learn this lesson. 😅

[Rob Young @bobbotron]

Bootstrapping a thing in rural Ottawa.

[Rob Young @bobbotron]

@David_Moscrop 🤣

[Kristin Raworth 🇨🇦 @KristinRaworth]

So many of you failed social studies and it shows. John Turner was PM without an election, so was Kim Campbell. We have premiers who became premiers without a general election. Literally begging you lunatics to read maybe one book

[VisuallyBetter @Isuckatpicking]

Canadian Premier, who didn’t immediately call an election after becoming premier by a leadership vote, is demanding Mark Carney immediately call an election after winning a leadership vote.

[Malcontent News @MalcontentmentT]

The White House is setting conditions in the information space to justify a land invasion of Canada.

Someone needs to say it. The messaging is undeniable.

Unless the adults reenter the room, it will happen.

1/9

[Arsenal of Dememecracy 🇺🇲 🇺🇦 🗽 @gaymergir]

Holy
Holy fuck
Holy FUCK

[Robyn Urback @RobynUrback]

Canadians should interpret this as the clearest sign among many that we have gone from being one of the most geographically and politically insulated countries on earth to one of the most vulnerable.

[Sturgeon's Law @Sturgeons_Law]

High IQ govt in action