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  • NeoNeo
    edited August 2015
    Can I ask for some perspective and input on a career situation?

    I have been interviewing for a role at a fairly new company (at what point is it no longer a startup?) that has DNA that has credibility with me (many of the founders were the technical genius behind another product I have used professionally). It was a bit of a career gamble I was getting increasingly interested in taking. However I just heard a credible story about a recent hire (not tightly linked to the company DNA) that I would be working closely with that cast serious aspersions on his character and ethics (sales guy) from his previous employment. I had already met him and he seemed a likeable and pleasant guy to me. I am headed to their HQ later this week for a full gamut of interviews and to learn more about the company.

    My question is how much should this story and having to work with this guy dissuade me from what could be a great opportunity in my career? Should I probe into this story or otherwise investigate his behavior and tendencies?

    In my experience who you work with and for has a great impact on your job satisfaction, I've had good and bad already in my career. I have some other possibilities at another large and established company I could pursue, but this one is a rather unique opportunity.

    Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

    *Edit: I am currently employed, but looking for a change.
    Post edited by Neo on
  • Playing devil's advocate, he could have a nice enough personality and just happen to have questionable morals. He might be evil but you might still get along so it could be worth the risk if the job is that much of an upgrade.
  • My opinion is if you are looking to move to to this job, don't mind giving up your position, give it a shot. I would make sure that you would be willing to lose your job and not be like ah shit I should have stayed there. Otherwise if you don't like it you could just get a new job.
  • You can always quit a job at any time. If you find out your fears are correct, you can, and should, just quit. How upset would you be if you had to do that and couldn't go back to your old job? If you would be terribly upset, then this may not be a risk you want to take. If you wouldn't mind so much, then just go for it.
  • I agree with Scott's perspective.

    I've been in that situation of having a job offered while not satisfied with the current one in remuneration and management aspects.
    Switched jobs, ended up with a boss who is a serial liar (he would literally have to correct himself to tell the truth as his instinct was to lie first), I got better money and less work but eventually moved to a 3rd job which was better in the 3 aspects of boss, management and equal remuneration.
  • Thanks for the input. One way or another I want to leave my current job and part of this consternation is over choosing where to go to (out of a couple of options). So, I'm not worried about leaving but of going to the right place. To Scott's point, if it doesn't work out then I can leave and try somewhere else.
  • Neo said:

    Thanks for the input. One way or another I want to leave my current job and part of this consternation is over choosing where to go to (out of a couple of options). So, I'm not worried about leaving but of going to the right place. To Scott's point, if it doesn't work out then I can leave and try somewhere else.

    Yeah, just go. Worst case you quit the next place too, no big deal.
  • Applying for a job with a cheese company as an Assistant Marketing Manager of Social Media. They didn't ask for a cover letter, but I did have to do a general education exam AND a 150 Question Personality/Work Ethic Survey. How often does that happen? I e-mail them my cover letter anyway.

    Still pretty confident with applying to the job. I know the current PR/Social Media Marketer of the company, and we have a pretty active relationship on Twitter. (Organizing events, getting free cheese for promotion)
  • I had to take basically an IQ/intelligence test when I applied to IBM back in the day. The IPAT.

    The results were only shared with your reporting manager, and was used for internal purposes of vague description.
  • Proctor and Gamble has a weird logic test thing you have to do with your application. It was a lot of "here are four dumb shapes, which of these is the fifth dumb shape?"
  • If anyone tries to give me any kind of weird test, I just leave. If you are the kind of people who believe in silly tests, you are not the kind of people I want to work with/for.
  • You should first fill out the test with all write in answers, then leave.
  • Apreche said:

    If anyone tries to give me any kind of weird test, I just leave. If you are the kind of people who believe in silly tests, you are not the kind of people I want to work with/for.

    It depends on what the job is and how relevant the test is.

    So, what if the test for the job was "play against the current CTO in Tigris & Euphrates?"

  • Rym said:

    Apreche said:

    If anyone tries to give me any kind of weird test, I just leave. If you are the kind of people who believe in silly tests, you are not the kind of people I want to work with/for.

    It depends on what the job is and how relevant the test is.

    So, what if the test for the job was "play against the current CTO in Tigris & Euphrates?"

    That's not a silly test.
  • I had to sit for a psychologist for an hour before I got my current job. The CEO is a bit paranoid about balancing personalities and power dynamics in the office.
  • Neural nets.

    image
    image

    Is there a way to a priori determine how many layers are good? Is more always better, but time costs rise prohibitively?
  • Starfox said:

    Is there a way to a priori determine how many layers are good? Is more always better, but time costs rise prohibitively?

    Good is determined by what your minimum support is but why would you use a association mining algorithm for this?
    From what I can remember Apriori algorithm didn't have much in common with classification and clustering which is where you would be mostly using back propagation neural networks.
    BPNN takes forever.
    What machine learning software were you using?
  • Uh, I just meant generally. The pretty pictures are from Google. Is there an actual algorithm called apriori?
  • Yes, uh it's pretty important to a branch of machine learning and data mining.
    Wiki Link
  • Starfox said:

    Is there a way to a priori determine how many layers are good? Is more always better, but time costs rise prohibitively?

    Technically speaking, any number of layers is simply equivalent to one very large neural net layer, and isn't always more efficient - adding layers certainly won't make your classifications worse, but depending on your problem space adding a layer might not make your results that much better anyways.
  • What are the most important factors to consider when picking a GPU?
  • edited August 2015

    What are the most important factors to consider when picking a GPU?

    The number one most important thing is that it fits in your motherboard. If your motherboard is PCIe 3.0 x16, then the video card should be as well.

    After that, just get the best NVidia one you can afford. Unless, of course, you don't plan on playing any games that require a high power GPU. In taht case, get the cheapest that gets the job done.
    Post edited by Apreche on
  • Also, make sure it fits in your case. Don't get some crazy huge card to put in a low profile case.
  • Pegu said:

    Also, make sure it fits in your case. Don't get some crazy huge card to put in a low profile case.

    Oh yeah, almost forgot that one. Good catch.
  • Pegu said:

    Also, make sure it fits in your case. Don't get some crazy huge card to put in a low profile case.

    Unless you want to mount it outside your case, for some reason. In which case, you can get a riser with a longer cable.
  • And since I'm a total layman, is price generally positively associated with quality?
  • To a point, but as you go higher in price, the difference in card quality will not equate to the difference in price. (I couldn't think of a really good way to word this so I hope it makes sense)
  • Pegu said:

    To a point, but as you go higher in price, the difference in card quality will not equate to the difference in price. (I couldn't think of a really good way to word this so I hope it makes sense)

    Well I remember an episode of Geeknights where they discussed some $1K card that was marginally better than some cheaper card so yeah it makes sense.
  • It depends on what you're gonna do with it, really. If you're doing high intensity computational stuff, then you want the most Cuda cores, not the best graphics (Quadro), if you want to run the newest games at 4k at the highest settings, then you want the biggest baddest card you can get (Titan X), but, if you're not the kind of person who will continually drop cash to be able to KEEP doing that, then you should go with a couple notches down (900 series GTX card) and save $500.
  • AFAIK, after the 970 you're really paying to have the best possible. I'm not sure about the Ti series though 'cause I bought my card before they came out.
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