I’ll start by saying I’m not a doctor. This is my layman’s understanding.

Historically, vaccines have been samples of either weakened or dead viruses. Through trial and error, we’ve been able to determine how to weaken or kill these viruses, then inject them into ourselves in the hopes that our immune system can learn to recognize and kill the virus. This has worked really well for a long time, but it’s costly and can be difficult to scale. For example, horses have very strong immune systems. It’s quite common to inject a virus that hurts humans into a horse, then harvest the horse’s blood to acquire the material needed to produce a vaccine. The horse’s immune system learns how to kill the virus, and we can use the to teach our immune systems.

mRNA vaccines take a whole different approach. They kind of co-opt the mechanism that viruses use to replicate.

First, let’s tall about what RNA is. You might know that DNA is used to produce proteins, and proteins are the tools that life uses to do… stuff. Almost everything, really. Thing is, DNA is stored safely inside cells’ nuclei, but protein production happens outside the nuclei, in ribosomes. So if DNA is needed to produce proteins, but DNA can’t be moved to the protein production center, how do? Our cells can produce another molecule called RNA. It’s basically half of DNA. Since you can derive one half of DNA from the other, it essentially carries the same information. Inside the nuclei, RNA is produced based on your DNA. That RNA is then moved to the protein production center to be used as the blueprint for protein production. Voila! Your cells have proteins now and can do stuff.

What did that have to do with viruses? But first, how do viruses work? Funny thing: at their core, viruses are kind of like protein missiles with an RNA payload. (This is why people argue that viruses aren’t really alive.) Viruses pierce your cells and inject their RNA into your cells. That RNA provides the blueprints to produce more RNA and the protein module, effectively, a copy of the virus. The viruses uses your cells’ infrastructure to reproduce.

With me so far? Here’s where it gets cool.

What if we could capture a virus’ RNA? What if we could then isolate just enough of the RNA blueprint to get some part of the protein missile, without the payload? And then what if we could get so specific that we could make sure that part of the protein missile is something your immune system could learn to recognize and kill? Lastly, what if we could package this harmless but recognizable part of the virus in a manner that your cells could mass manufacture it?

This is mRNA, the “m” standing for “messenger.” mRNA vaccines basically give your cells the blueprint to produce a recognizable part of a virus that won’t hurt you. Your cells then produce that virus part, and your immune system learns how to recognize and kill the virus based on that part.

The best part? We can do this fast. No need for trial and error on how to weaken viruses. No need to manage livestock like horses specifically to harvest their immune system material. The COVID vaccine was an mRNA vaccine. I haven’t actually checked the numbers, but I’m very confident that the COVID vaccine R&D was the fastest humanity has ever had for any vaccine. We’d been researching and experimenting with mRNA vaccines already, but they weren’t yet approved for medical use. For good reason, medicines go through a huge amount of testing before we start injecting ourselves with magic feel-good juice. Given the emergency that COVID was, most countries fast-tracked their approval process for the COVID mRNA vaccine. In the long run, this may actually have been a benefit, as we’ve learned a lot about how to produce these types of vaccines rapidly, at scale and even update them for new variants of a virus.

So yeah, mRNA vaccines are super fucking cool. They’re also a remarkably clever innovation, copying an idea from viruses and adapting it to a way to kill viruses. Theoretically, future vaccines should be produced faster, be better targeted, and have fewer side effects.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk? 😅

But that’s an arbitrary distinction. You could also argue, “what’s the difference between a vaccine and medicine?” Or “what’s the difference between medicine and physical medical treatment?” mRNA vaccines involve more innovation and impact than bloodletting via leeches.

But I won’t respond to that line of thought anymore because you didn’t answer my question.

You can choose to answer my question or just not reply. Do you know what the differences are between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines?

Are you familiar with the differences between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines in terms of production?

I live in Korea. How do you define “loyal to workers?”

Sorry for the delay, busy days.

Yeah, fake postings are total bullshit. I still don’t understand the motivation for them.

As for having jobs up for months, I can understand that when a role has very specific needs. But if the roles specific needs haven’t been made clear in the job description, then yeah, that’s total bullshit

My job postings are usually up for two to three months, and the rejection rate is maybe around 80-90% for the resume review stage at the beginning. I’d like to think the job descriptions are clear, but that’s subjective. But do those sound like reasonable numbers to you, though? What do you think is reasonable? (Like I said, I want these opinions for my improvement)

Unfortunately, I haven’t hired for a service job, so I don’t have a complete perspective here. You mention “one of the first to apply.” For an imaginary job that requires no background, what do you think would be good reasons to reject a candidate or choose one over another?

Got it. Okay, that makes much more sense. Nothing new there for me, then.

When you say companies shouldn’t be “this selective,” what are you referencing that they’re being too selective about? If I’m being more picky than I need to be, I should stop, so I’m eager to learn something here

Can you share what kinds of questions you’re asking? Or at least generic versions of them?

100% this

And the same thinking applies to interviews, but that’s very difficult. My leadership sometimes gets surprised about how much I help interviewees, and I have to clarify to them that I don’t care about how good they are at interviewing. I care how good they are at the job.

Unfortunately, this makes my interviews super long, but we have arguably the best engineering team in the company.

Our new CTO was very skeptical of our long interviews and ordered us to shorten them. Fortunately, we had one scheduled already. He sat in on it and is no longer worried about our long interviews. He understood the value once he was able to see where the candidate stumbled and excelled in our … simulations? of the work. We try to simulate certain tasks in the interview, especially collaborative ones, to see how they would actually do the work. It’s really hard for us as interviewers to prepare and run, but it’s proven highly effective so far

All of this. When I tell people I meet that we don’t do coding tests, we instead do tiny assignments, they often get quite excited. It also seems to be way, way more effective

Do you have any qualifiers for that? Like “with sufficient time to learn” or something? Is there some kind of personal development that you think could enable that?

In my understanding, asking a chef to be a doctor or a software engineer to be an artist often doesn’t work great.

How selective do you think is appropriate?

To be clear: I’m a hiring manager for some specialized stuff. I’m genuinely curious about your perspective because I hope it can help how I do that work. I’m not trying to argue with you or prove you wrong or anything.

I run a group that does free software programming education in Seoul. There’s a similar group in LA. When I came to Korea, I just set up a meetup account, paid the fee, rented some space, and started teaching people stuff and studying together. Great way to make friends. Been running it for 7 years now. I’ve had about a dozen or so people come say the group has helped them change their career to IT for the better. A dozen sounds like a small number, but it’s a huge impact on those people

So be the change you want to see. If you have a skill that can help people improve their lives, whether it’s career or life stuff, share it! Learning a new skill is hard, and having a community to support you in learning, goes a long way

Very cool! Tough jobs. I have a new SQA engineer starting tomorrow. I’m really hoping I can support her well. Wish me luck

I hope all your bugs are easy but interesting and that the customers are kind

Ahahaha this is so obtuse. I love it. Bit of a brain teaser to parse that.

Let me see if I’m understanding correctly. Are you software QA or machine learning validation? Or am I totally off?

I work with machines to create lessons for other machines to learn how to figure out you’re sick before you feel sick.

Yeah… that sounds like bullshit haha

Not the original commenter, but I would guess that the goal would be to reflect the population. Women are about 50% of the population, so assuming all things created equal, they should be about 50% of any other population, like those with a specific job title.

100/100 for 22,000 KRW/month (about $16.50 USD).

Other options with my provider:

• 500/500 for 35,750 KRW ($26.85)
• 1000/1000 for 41,250 KRW ($31)
• 2500/2500 for 44,000 KRW ($33)
• 5000/5000 for 55,000 KRW ($41.31)
• 10000/10000 for 82,500 KRW ($62)

And that 100/100 is effective. Shit downloads fast

One of many, many reasons I’m not fond of going back to the US. Maybe Europe next, we’ll see. For now, Korea is pretty sweet

It’s not a matter of reward or punishment. It’s a matter of the skills required for continued success.

Early startups require big risk-taking, progressing at an absurd speed, charisma to get investor capital, and really just being a little crazy.

Once the concept is proven to be viable and potentially profitable, the focus needs to shift from proving it can work to making it sustainable. This involves less risk, process improvements to avoid issues like getting sued, better money management, more careful time management to avoid burnout of non-founder employees, and generally just being more rational about things.

It’s rare that a person can exhibit both of these sets of behaviors, so companies will often swap out the former for the latter as a company matures. If they didn’t, the founders might unintentionally drive the company into the ground by taking unnecessary risks after finding something that already works.

Does that answer your question, or did I miss the mark, still?

And I’m guessing a smaller chip makes it even harder to detect. Makes sense. Thank you

Can anyone inform me regarding the purpose of preventing China from producing these more advanced chips? Is it protectionism? Is it anti-China policy? Is there some kind of particular military application?

Their arguments assume businesses operate in good faith. We fundamentally know that it’s not true, from overseas child labor by fast fashion to coal mining to IT security. This economist of theirs can fuck off