1. The kind where you have to advertise all over and work hard to convince people to come to. You're happy with whoever shows up.
2. The kind where you have so many entries that you need to filter out the non-serious people and save your limited space for people with the actual skills and motivation to show up and contribute.
The second kind is usually associated with some big institution or influencer. It might have a history of participation from people who went on to be successful.
In this case, it's associated with universities. Different universities probably encourage their students to apply and compete.
When you realize it was supposed to be a graphic novel, that makes the over-the-top scenes make so much more sense. It's a comic book without the comics.
No. You discuss it with your manager, and you do it at the appropriate time. Having both created, refactored and deleted lots of technical debt over the past 25 years, trust me: you just don't get to go rogue because "you're the engineer". If you do that, it might turn into "you were the engineer".
What if you spend a week or month refactoring something that needs a quick fix now and is being deleted in 1-2 years? That's waste, and if you went rogue, it's your fault. Besides, you always create added QA burden with large refactoring (yes even if you have tests), and you should not do that without a discussion first--even if you're the founder.
Communicate with your manager and (if they agree) VP if needed, and do the right thing at the right time.
> No. You discuss it with your manager, and you do it at the appropriate time.
Sure, if you're not sure if it's the right thing to do, talk to your manager or TL. A good engineering manager can help.
If your manager "would never allow" it, they're not a good manager. Even for jobs much more menial than engineering, a good manager recognizes that autonomy/trust are critical for satisfaction and growth.
If you're working someplace where you're "not allowed" to make the changes you "wish you could," you're doing yourself a disservice. Find someplace where you're not only "allowed," but expected to have (or develop) the judgement required to make these decisions.
To be clear: "the business" expects (and in the medium/long term requires) engineers to make these decisions themselves. That is the job
Maybe the young men measured have low enough testosterone ranges that the high/low cycles have less effect, but the more likely explanation is that the methodology of this study is pretty laughable...
This reads like something from The Three Body Problem :)