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Daniel Gentleman

danielgentleman.com - Reliability Engineering, DevOps Culture, Deep-Dive Ops, Infra as Code, and Incident Lifecycle. Read "About" section before contacting.

Daniel Gentleman is a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Slack with over 12 years of experience in the field.2 His LinkedIn username is thoughtfix. Here are some key points about Daniel:

Professional Background

  • Currently works as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Slack2
  • Has over 12 years of experience in site reliability engineering and related fields2

Views on Tech Hiring Practices

Daniel has strong opinions on improving the hiring process for tech roles:

  • He advocates for making code interviews better and less discriminatory1
  • Suggests giving candidates the option to opt-out of coding tests and challenges1
  • Believes companies should allow applicants to demonstrate competency on their own terms1
  • Argues against cramming design, implementation, testing, and CI into short timed sessions1
  • Recommends companies hire more people to properly evaluate applicants rather than relying solely on automated code tests1

Other Professional Interests

  • Researches potential employers' investors before applying to jobs3
  • Shares content related to technology, engineering, and design on LinkedIn4

Daniel appears to be passionate about improving hiring practices in tech and creating fairer opportunities for candidates. He leverages his experience and platform to advocate for positive changes in the industry.

Highlights

Jun 1 · linkedin

I broke from social media when this was released so missed it, but a friend and Evil Mad Scientist Windell Oskay put together one of the most beautiful, educational and geeky photography books ever. Check it out.

Apr 3 · linkedin

I want to share a warning about rip-offs in adult education. (And my old Chegg friends may be interested in this.)

Quick background: I've been taking a post-Slack sabbatical to handle health, sanity, and family concerns and to refocus. Now I want to get back in the work mindset, and I researched structured coding classes just to refresh myself in everything.

Searching around, the UC Berkeley Extension code course was highly rated, even though it's expensive ($13k, 12 weeks.) I went through their "application" flow which felt more like CAPTCHA than a test. The next day, I was phoned by an "enrollment counselor" who answered all my questions about it. Sounded good, but I looked deeper. It felt a bit sales-heavy with a lot of pressure to put in the non-refundable $1,000 deposit. I found the problems:

The course isn't by Berkeley professors with a Berkeley curriculum. It is made "in partnership" with edX, who is for-profit owned by 2U and previously used "Trilogy Education Services" branding. It doesn't take a lot of time to find a stack of horror stories about all three of those brand names and even anecdotal stories about the incentivizing instructors to keep students on and engaged until at least the refund time runs out.

In addition, 2U is in a financial downward spiral. NASDAQ:TWOU has gone from $6.79/share a year ago to $0.35/share at market close today. I do not trust them to even complete the program, much less follow through on the "ongoing career support services" they allegedly offer their customers.

UC Berkeley should be ashamed, but they signed a long agreement with EdX before they were owned by for-profit companies. This company does the same for Harvard, MIT, Boston University, and others. They even list AWS and Google as clients. The majority of those "high ratings" for the Berkeley extension came from before the for-profit acquisition.

I am still interested in taking a structured, rigorous class for my own benefit and to sharpen my interview-passing skills. I'd prefer something that gives me a certification at the end. However, I'm going to spend extra time scrutinizing for-profit education providers. I don't consider myself primarily an application developer (more of a solutions provider for application developers) but having in-depth knowledge in more than just Python, Go, Terraform, etc. would allow me to better relate to the people I help. Open to suggestions on that.

[ Above is my interpretation of news articles, user reviews, forum posts, and similar sources but I encourage anyone to further investigate anything they read online. Including this. Here's a good WSJ article on 2U https://lnkd.in/gJAV-kMM ]

Related Questions

What are some of Daniel Gentleman's key contributions to Slack's infrastructure?
How does Daniel Gentleman approach code interviews differently?
What are Daniel Gentleman's thoughts on neurodiversity in tech interviews?
Can you share examples of Daniel Gentleman's projects or achievements at Slack?
How does Daniel Gentleman suggest making coding interviews more inclusive?
Daniel  Gentleman
Daniel  Gentleman, photo 1
Daniel  Gentleman, photo 2
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Location

San Mateo, California, United States