IPinfo.io | Data Engineer | REMOTE (Anywhere) | Full-time

IPinfo is a leading provider of IP address data, including geolocation, VPN and residential proxy detection, mobile carrier data, and over 20 other context tags. Our API handles over 120 billion requests per month, and we also license our data for use in many products and services you’ve likely interacted with.

We are looking for a Data Engineer to work on our Places product (https://ipinfo.io/data/places), adding detailed location context to IPs from around the world. This work involves complex BigQuery SQL pipelines to process and clean diverse and messy source datasets. We value simple, readable code and look for subtractive solutions over bloat. We are building something completely new, so the work is very empirical we approach it with an experimental, iterative mindset. Geospatial skills/background is a plus.

Reach out to XXXX if you are interested. Please share a CV and tell us about your background and why this role is interesting to you.

> Unlimited self-belief > History of feeling like an imposter

How is this not contradictory?

I know that I can achieve anything I put my mind to. I feel like I can shoot lightning from my hands and I wield 2 lightsabres.

However, as a primarily computational and business-oriented founder, I am trying to disrupt an industry that is dominated by scientific PhDs and institute spinouts. So even if my science is really novel, I'm still an outsider.

I'd imagine that most founders are, to an extent, outsiders. You kind of have to be in order to develop a radically new thing. You have to be dissimilar to the status quo.

"I can accomplish anything, but I won't be really worthy until I accomplish that next big thing."

Rinse and repeat after every significant accomplishment.

Not a founder (yet) but I think it's relatable. I believe in myself that I can learn and achieve anything and be really good at it but when I see the seniors and people doing amazing things, I feel like I still have a long way to go and prove myself.

I don't see a contradiction. Self belief means you believe that you can accomplish what you set out to so are willing to bet on yourself and take risks. Feeling like an imposter is a motivational drive from the other end of the spectrum pushing you to continuously improve, holding yourself to a progressively higher standards, and never resting on your laurels.

> Feeling like an imposter is a motivational drive from the other end of the spectrum pushing you to continuously improve, holding yourself to a progressively higher standards, and never resting on your laurels.

And also making you depressed. It’s something real to look out for.

Agreed. Doubly so for ggplot2 over matplotlib.

While it’s not perfect and it’s not ggplot2, Seaborn is definitely a big improvement over bare matplotlib. You can still use matplotlib to modify the plots it spits out if you want to but the defaults are pretty good most of the time.

https://seaborn.pydata.org/

You say that, but if you go to conferences or "think-tank" events (barf, I know) filled with politicians, economists, or policy experts, you'll see a remarkably uniform set of economic and policy positions presented. Is 'neoliberal' the best name for this? Probably not, but it nonetheless is the name that has stuck for a really quite hegemonic way of understanding how governments, the state, economies, and monetary systems, should interact with one another. In many ways, it's an attempt to create an unholy mixture of old-school Keynesian economics with Chicago style libertarianism advanced by Friedman and his proteges during and in the wake of the Cold War.

The Price of Peace by Zachary D. Carter is a recent biography on John Maynard Keynes that is also a fascinating look at the history and transformations of economic thought after Keynes. I highly recommend it.

I would expect any coherent group - any group that goes to the same conferences and events - to develop some common views. "Neoliberalism" makes sense only with some other view to contrast it with in mind.

But the difference here is that neoliberalism is really about class interest, and so the policy is vacillating and inconsistent with respect to the jargon that hides class interests of monopoly capitalists, or better, the diverse interests of multinational corporations or the "member economies" that house them.

I prefer Sison's definition, pretty much that neoliberalism is a set of BS jargon used to rationalize the greed of monopoly capitalists. Neoliberals are monopoly capitalists and their stooges that promote free trade by using free competition logic, when in reality we're in the age of imperialism. For example, neoliberals argue for comparative advantage, and maybe their was a basis for this in the world of Ricardo, but today it amounts to the crippling of developing economies: export-optimized industry for low value additions in the global value chain of large corporations. Take the banana wars for example.

The author says that:

1. OBCs are estimated to comprise 40-45% of India's population

and

2. Exactly one out of 180 CS faculty members across five IITs belongs to OBC category

Those two facts alone make it sound like a pretty big deal to me, even if it hasn't been a part of your experience in India. Or do you think he is wrong about those numbers?

Caste is absolutely a huge problem in India as these numbers show. It’s a different question whether it’s a problem in Western companies, especially outside India, and I’m not sure about the data for that.

That being said, even this statistic shows that we should be wary of mapping our understanding of other kinds of discrimination onto caste without being very careful.

In an idealized version of the caste system (which you will see some bigots use to defend it but in the real world the idealized version is nowhere to be seen), it’s literally impossible for those lower caste numbers to be anything other than 0%, because in the idealized version your caste is defined by your profession, so being a professor means you’re not any of those castes.

The numbers could be right, but you couldn’t exactly argue discrimination tbh.

27% seats are reserved for OBC students in IITs

There is a similar quota for people in OBC categories in govt jobs (which IIT professors are). Maybe there are plenty of OBC professors, but not in CS? Or that they don’t openly identify as OBC? Or maybe, people just don’t qualify/apply to the position?

Lol and why don’t they qualify?

Because of centuries of discrimination that has kept them poorer and less educated.

You might be able to argue that there is no discrimination today and that the hiring process itself is not discriminatory, but the outcomes are entirely the result of discrimination in society.

This discussion made me curious, how is the cause of their poverty and lack of opportunity relevant? There are hundreds of millions of underprivileged people in India, why should those from a lower caste be given precedence over others, even if there is a history of oppression behind their poverty?

So there's basically three views on social welfare. The far right doesn't want it to exist at all, or if it must exist it should be funneled towards the already powerful, because nobody deserves it. The left says that we need to distribute social welfare in order to equalize society, because everyone deserves a good life. The liberals, in between the two, view welfare as a means to make up for societal failures or outright wrongs. It's not about the fact that these people are needy, it's about the fact that they're needy and it's our fault.

Race/caste/etc based welfare distribution comes from that last model.

You’re presuming Anglo political dynamics and cleavages onto a completely foreign culture here. The Indian right wing I wouldn’t characterize as “anti-welfare” at all.

But that is exactly what exists. You could be born in a “lower caste” but a wealthy family, you’d have a preferential treatment over someone who is poor but is born in a “higher caste”.

> Because of centuries of discrimination that has kept them poorer and less educated

No one is denying this. But there has been a reservation of seats for SC and ST categories for about 80 years and for OBC category for 40+ years in education. The reservation in govt job openings exists since the 80s. How can you reasonably argue that the outcomes are entirely the result of discrimination in society?

I think the case is highlighted pretty well, clearly the representation is less because of continued/historical lack of access.

Seems to be something that should addressed asap because this is clearly holding the Indian economy and social progress back, efficient use of labor and capital is key, seems to me this is an obvious hindrance.

The bit about names is interesting, seems like something that has a hold on society and people go out of their way to conform to it. Like it is subliminal, not externally evident like race so it should be theoretically an easier problem to solve, I wonder if education and economic progress can resolve this, ironic as it is.

Can you think of a ethno-religious group, one that has been persecuted for centuries, that is over represented in US academia, media and finance?

Is it a big deal that this is the case and does it imply a grand conspiracy? Or are there other explanations?

Historically and culturally the higher castes are more educationally oriented so it wouldn’t be surprising. The caste system is rapidly breaking down but only for about the last generation. I presume it’s going to take time for representation within college professors being one of the most erudite fields. On the other hand, there is tremendous representation within the government, judges, police, teachers, civil servants, engineers etc. Modi the PM is an OBC, the president is also OBC. A very large number of politicians are from lower castes.