The blob in the lower left-hand corner looked like a hand. So here it is with a hand with a cigar photoshoped in.

Working with the hand to make it fit better with the rest of the work.

At this point, the process has tied back an actual image of a cigar to the base images which were used to train the system which produced the proofs.

The post Smoking Hot AI-Based Art appeared first on Remote Coder.

Image courtesy of Jas Sum Kral, Nan Palmero and Jared Tarbell

In this post, I use General Adversarial Networks (GANs), to generate images based on three training sets. All three training sets are image-based and happen to feature tobacco products. As an avid cigar smoker, who works out of cigar shops quite a bit, it’s not difficult to see where the inspiration came from.

Since there are many excellent resources that provide a good general introduction to the theory of GANs, I will refrain from going into depth on the topic. To keep things simple, the general idea is to create two neural networks, one called a Generator and the other referred to as a Discriminator. The Generator creates fakes. The Discriminator passes judgment of whether the output of the Generator is a legitimate example of the class, by developing a data distribution (think model) and judging images based on that distribution.

The two neural networks run in lock-step for a predetermined number of iterations (epochs). Over time as the Generator gets better at producing fakes, the Discriminator gets better at detecting them. The goal, at the end of the process, is to the have a Generator that can fake out the Discriminator every time. This whole process begins with some random noise being fed into the Discriminator and the Generator making its initial adjustments based on feedback from the Discriminator.

Now that we’ve done a “quick and dirty” technical explanation of the theory behind GANs, let approach it from another angle. When explaining this project to non-technical types, I’ve been using the following example. I tell them to imagine the AI like a 12-year-old with artistic talent who has never seen a cigar before. I am basically giving the young artist a set of colored pencils, showing it some examples of what a lit cigar looks like, and asking them to draw some new images of cigars, ideally, without directly copying the originals.

Generated Lit Cigars

To generate our lit cigars image matrix, we started with 85 images of cigars that were either already lit or in the process of being lit. We then trained the neural network over 100K epochs.

Some of the images are quite abstract. Others, especially those which clearly contain images of faces, are close renditions of original photos from the training set.

Generated Cigar Boxes

In generating our cigar box image matrix, we started with 105 images of cigar boxes, and again trained our GAN over 100K epochs. This set of output images is interesting in that the results are more consistent. This is very much a direct reflection of the similarity of the training images.

With our lit cigars example, we had training images with and without faces in the image. That much variance adds a fair amount of complexity to the problem of figuring out exactly what passes for a legitimate image of a lit cigar. Among the generated cigar boxes, my favorite would have to be one of the two “Eye of Sauron” boxes in the lower-middle section of the display.

Generated Pipes

To generate our pipe matrix, we started with 112 images and this time we upped the amount of training to 150K epochs. This set of images was especially interesting in terms of the mixture of photo-realisticness and abstraction. My favorite generated pipes can all be found in the last three rows of this matrix. From left to right they are the “Octo-pipe” (with three stems), the one with two bowls and the pipe that appears to have a “crystal ball” affixed to the bottom of the bowl.

There are a couple of images, which appear to be virtually exact copies of images from the training set. In thinking about these outputs, while personifying the AI, I wondered if the system could be thought of as conceptualizing these examples as “archetypical” pipes. In other words, as the most “pipe-like” of all images in the training set. It’s quite fitting that the pipe example made me think of archetypes, considering that the person most responsible for popularizing the term, Carl Jung, was an avid pipe smoker. How’s that for a synchronicity!

Image courtesy of Arturo Espinosa

Even though GANs are only a couple of years old it’s clear that General Adversarial Network art is now a thing, and it’s here to stay!  The idea for this post was inspired by Fast.ai Lesson 12 (2018 edition). The associated WGAN.ipynb file from the Fast.ai Git Repo is an excellent way to get started with Wasserstein GANs. If you enjoyed to post, come continue the conversation on Hacker News or Reddit.

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There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, a New York Times best-selling author, maintains that most top professionals make most of their decisions in the blink of an eye. His conclusion seems to be a fact of life today, especially in this age of information overload.

To understand how this process applies to your job search, let’s consider the life cycle your resume may take from initial posting to offer letter. Imagine you throw it up on a site such as Monster, and it sits there, on the cloud, not causing any response, until a recruiter or some HR rep has it, along with a host of others, usually based on an extremely focused set of search criteria.

The person who received your resume as part of their search results was given your information based on a virtually instantaneous response that could only be measured in clock cycles. When the recruiter prints up their stack of a dozen or more resumes (including yours), they are likely doing so as part of a search for several concurrent positions.

Yours will get a cursory look, which might last just a couple of seconds. At this stage, the document is being scrutinized for certain technical keywords. For example, let’s say it’s a Ruby on Rails gig. The sourcer will be asking themselves such questions as “How much bootstrap experience does this candidate have?” “Have they used Capybara for testing?” and “Which version of Rails do they have experience in?”

Based on this summary judgment, your candidacy will either land in the “circular file” or be handed to another recruiter, likely the one in charge of managing the client relationship. The few lucky profiles that survive this initial threshing process might be reviewed for a couple of minutes as this senior recruiter considers which of these candidates is actually worth contacting.

By the time your info gets passed on to the hiring manager, you will likely either be quickly eliminated, or if you seem to be a viable candidate, you might get 20 minutes of time during a phone screen. As Gladwell puts it,

Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

This scenario demonstrates the importance of getting past the gatekeepers who stand between you and the job you want. You do that by using your understanding of the blink response to ensure your candidacy isn’t eliminated without getting the consideration it truly deserves.

The post The Blink Response in Software Development Hiring appeared first on Remote Coder.

The famous Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, one of the founders of the anti-psychiatry movement, pointed out decades ago foundational issues in the field of mental health that still plague the industry to this day. One of his most enduring contributions was in the area of family systems, where Szasz coined the term “the struggle for definition.” He used this term to describe the process whereby family members define labels and then develop narratives based on those labels to lower the position of certain family members in the domestic pecking order.

According to Szasz, this is often done by a parent to maintain power or to elevate the status of a favorite child. In this way, roles that can last a lifetime are programmed and defined.

The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines who as troublesome or mentally sick?… [the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.

– Szasz, The Second Sin

Some reading this post will have little trouble making the connection between a dysfunctional family and the average software development team. While not all teams would qualify as “highly dysfunctional,” dysfunction exists in all groups to some degree. Acknowledging this, the question then becomes how can we identify such issues and deal with them to be most effective in our careers.

Many of us have had this experience in companies we’ve worked for–that much of our time is spent explaining which team member is the “problem” and who is not “pulling their weight” and the endless gesticulations and verbal gymnastics we use to explain why we are so busy “moving mountains” for the organization that we could not possibly take on another project.

What many people don’t realize is that the struggle for definition begins well before your first day on the job with a particular organization. It starts with the text of your resume, the contents of your GitHub profile, and the way you frame yourself during the interview process. These frames can follow you around for your entire tenure with an organization.

In working with clients, I’ve often heard such comments as “Yeah, this happens on the job, but it’s bullshit. All I want to do is get to the business of coding, not deal with office politics!” Unfortunate as it may be, politics is a reality anywhere human beings gather. The silver lining to the “struggle for definition” is that by definition it is open to being adjusted, reframed, and hacked.

Learning this type of reframing is a sort of “metaskill” for navigating your career. The time and energy you spend developing it will pay large dividends.

The post Software Development, Thomas Szasz, and the Struggle for Definition appeared first on Remote Coder.

This post was written in response to a question about the /r/cscareerquestions subreddit. 

Would a specialized cs major (bioinformatics) negatively affect chances for general cs jobs?

I don’t think so in the least! Think about it this way. Programming is one of the few fields where you don’t need to have a degree to land a high-paying job. People these days can get hired on the strength of a GitHub profile alone.

A CS degree is a “feather in your cap”–an added bonus. In our economy today, we pay more for specialization. I would try to use a CS degree in bioinformatics to my advantage in a couple of different ways.

First, when interviewing for a non-bio-specific role, I would point out how rare bioinformatics degrees are compared with the already highly competitive CS degree. Second, I’d do some research and create a list of target companies in the bioinformatics space.

–>

Keep in mind that whatever gaps you think you have on your resume you can fill with GitHub projects, online courses, and boot camp certificates.

I had a CS professor in college who was in charge of the university’s bioinformatics program. He told me that of those applying to the graduate program he preferred biology students to developers. He said, “It’s easier to teach a biologist to code than it is to teach a developer biology.”

Bioinformatics job listings tend to want experience in machine learning and big data. If you can get some practice in these areas with projects and some experience with related technologies (Hadoop, MongDB, and PostgreSQL), you should be in incredibly good shape.

The post Bioinformatics vs. Computer Science Degrees appeared first on Remote Coder.

One of the great benefits of using recruiters during your job search is that they are some of the world’s best salespeople. As soon as I start talking to one of them about a position I’m actually interested in, I’ll ask, “So what did you like about my background?”

This question is actually “magical” across the board in all interview situations, as we will demonstrate later. It will cause most interviewers to give you valuable information they might have never mentioned otherwise. Recruiters, as a group, almost never hesitate to answer this question.

Since they have little resistance, they are a great group to start practicing on. I’d strongly suggest getting in the habit of asking this question each time you speak to a recruiter for the first time. This will start them down the path of telling you a narrative about yourself.

Their story will likely be different from the one you tell yourself and others about your skills and background. That’s not a problem. Actually, it’s wonderful! Listen to their story and pay attention to where their version of the narrative sounds better than yours.

If for any reason you don’t like the idea of telling a story, check out the book All Marketers are Liars, by Seth Godin. Seth is an incredibly famous marketing expert, with an amazing track record working for Fortune 500 companies and is also known for his high ethical standards.

In his book, he explains that facts never really sell a product (goods, services, or candidates). Stories are what actually compel people to buy, and good stories are certainly better than bad ones!

Here is where the exponential power of this little trick applies. Let’s say you strike up a good conversation with a recruiter and he places you on three phone prescreen interviews at three companies. Let’s also assume that one of those phone interviews leads to a follow-up interview. That’s five opportunities to ask HR professionals, “So what did you like about my background?” You will at least hear five different narratives about how people directly involved in the hiring process see you as a candidate.

Each story will help you build a stronger and more powerful narrative about yourself. If a single recruiter contact can allow you to reasonably practice this exercise five times, then three recruiter contacts could allow you to do it fifteen times. That’s a lot of opportunities to “rinse, wash, and repeat!”

Every time you interview you’ll be asked questions about your background, and you will invariably get practice telling your own story. The more you do this, combined with the feedback gained from the technique outlined in this article, the better you will get at it, and the better you are at telling your story, the better you will be at selling yourself.

There are no two ways about it. They are inexorably connected. For those not well versed in the formal techniques of sales and marketing, this is a very natural and unintimidating way to learn to sell yourself better and greatly improve your future prospects.

The post Recruiters Can Be Shady, Here is Why You Should Use Them Anyway appeared first on Remote Coder.

The “Never Ready” syndrome is a horrible malady that affects software developers and is closely related to “Impostor” syndrome. Basically, it means that for whatever reason developers often feel there is always one more thing they absolutely must do before making their next significant career transition.

In this case, we are talking about transitioning to remote jobs. Developers with a year or more of experience in a brick-and-mortar setting may feel they need to learn some new framework, complete a new GitHub project, or have spoken at a local Meetup before they can feel personally validated enough to start looking for a remote gig.

The baseline standard we use here at Remote Coder for transitioning into remote jobs is either one year of work experience in your chosen programming language or two years of development experience in another language and at least six months of project work/training in the area you’d like to work in remotely.

If you have those basic requirements, you can hem and haw all you’d like about how your background could be better if only you had experience with <fill in random technology or framework here>, but you’re just wasting your time. The truth is that your background will never be perfect!

The fastest way to a remote job is to iterate through a series of first-round interviews. This exercise will do a lot for you. First, it may just land you that remote job you’ve convinced yourself you’re not ready for. Second, it will give you amazing feedback not only on your weaknesses but also perhaps more importantly on your perceived strengths.

When you have feedback on what prospective employers like about your background and what their concerns are, you can hone and fine-tune your approach so that you can be more effective in your next round of interviews.

If you’re worried about running out of interview opportunities, don’t! The remote development field is exploding. If you’re ready to go on that first round of interviews, we can help. For more information, check out the free ebook available from the banner ad in this post.

The post Combating “Never Ready” Syndrome When Looking for Remote Development Jobs appeared first on Remote Coder.

This situation makes some job seekers dread hearing from recruiters and HR professionals. Since most opportunities will not be appealing, they often cringe whenever an HR rep contacts them. So what options do we have? Are we supposed to just “grin and bear it” every time we hear about a new position?

Absolutely not! We can work smarter!

Our Remote Express services will determine exactly what types of positions you are interested in and then contact our extensive network of industry professionals to deliver you precisely the types of leads you are looking for.

If you want to start saving time and effort in your job search, please contact us today!

The post The Fast Track to Your Ideal Remote Job appeared first on Remote Coder.

One of the best ways to fine-tune and test options is with a remote job. When you remove the daily commute, meaningless office chitchat, and mindless meetings, you are left with lots of free time on your hands. Along with the flextime that many remote gigs afford, you can now work when and where you want.

With this space, you can start building the foundation for the kind of career you want–one where you will be in demand even more, allowing you to become more selective about the type of work you do and your terms for doing it.

Living the dream is a viable possibility, but most people get bogged down in the details of work and life well before they can realize their dream. If you’re having challenges making space in your life with your current development job, you’re not alone.

By using the experiences of others, you can avoid the roadblocks that stand between where you are now and where you’d like to be.

The post Remote Jobs: The Ultimate Staging Ground appeared first on Remote Coder.

For these reasons among others, developers should be in high demand. Why is it then that even in these highly selective and specialized fields that so many coding professionals are dissatisfied? Some love their jobs, of course, and some are able to literally live the dream, coding from a laptop on the beach, professionals who are so specialized that industry wage standards don’t apply to them.

But then you have those who work very long hours under incredible strain, bouncing from one scrum meeting to the next, daisy chaining so many software sprints together that the word “marathon” becomes a meaningless distinction. This type of lifestyle should not and need not be the case!

What we do here at Remote Coder is to mix your in-demand background with our methods, strategies, network, and community to help you sidestep obstacles to career success in ways that would be impossible if you “went at it alone.”

As a reward for the hard work and effort you’ve invested in becoming a software development professional, you should be able to count on having rewarding and fulfilling work that allows you to move closer to your personal and professional goals. If you don’t feel you have that, we’d like to hear from you. Please feel free to reach out to us through our “contact us” page.

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