True, it could be a cultural thing. His ad is more or less legal in China. Other preferences he could have added include height and weight requirement.
This was discussed in slack and as far as we can tell, it's legit. His responses were to the similar effect, he did soften it saying he would give bonus points to the applicants who meets the 'preferences'(!). That was until his apology of course.
Context: This ad first appeared in a slack channel and straightaway people called him out and why it's wrong. Someone decided to call him out on twitter instead. Twitterstorm.
In addition to ensure they typed their email address correctly, I am happy with email verification as users seem to have taken my (short and sweet) address as their catch all email registration. And there's nothing I can do about these reminder emails apart from one provider as there's nothing in the email to tell them 'it's not me so go away'. They just tell me to ignore the email. It's just annoying I have to 'ignore' 100+ emails in my inbox that keeps popping up.
Another gripe I have is some of them don't even care whether or not you verify the address. I receive receipts and shipping status all the time.
Great guide but I want to highlight the employer's responsibility for home-working employees (self-employed would cover this themselves) as your first employee, Hannah, falls into this category.
The employer is still responsible in providing suitable office equipments for the home-worker, i.e. office chairs, desks, lighting and computers. If the home-worker is using their personally-owned equipment for work, the employer is still liable in ensuring the equipment is fit for purpose and get it test/certified for electrical items.
It is up to the employer to ensure the home office is at the same health and safety and data protection standards as they would in the office and yes a H&S risk assessment will have to be carried out.
You may also have to purchase public liability insurance if they receive business visitors into their homes as well.
I'm not trying to put a downer to home-working (I do some myself) but few SMEs realise the true implications of offering home-working until they get a letter from the lawyers demanding compensation for their employees' injury from tripping on some cable they placed themselves in their home office whilst working.
Agree with you about Codecademy's assumption/expectation of a layperson's understanding is ambitious but your expectation of what needs to be explained kinda deviates from their aim. Yes, they should've expanded on some concepts but Codecademy should really concentrate on the 'what' and not the 'why' as that can be developed afterwards. Spending most teaching on the 'why' (like most adult learners would do) early on will put off some users off as they do not feel they are 'doing' much and quit/move onto something else.
It is obvious the users' background covers a wide spectrum so Codecademy would have to draw a line somewhere and say here's the pre-requisites prior to starting the intro coding course. They may need to provide this background knowledge via a pre-sessional/foundation/principles course (or pintpoint users where to go if they don't) covering the barebone basics of computer science and computing as a task.
Whether 'the hard way' is the best is really up to the learner - people learn in different styles so whatever gets their attention really. As a suggestion , Codecademy should provide a list of additional resources for eager learners who wants to understand the underlying concepts and/or provide links to other courses if this particular course is not useful for them.
As Codecademy is targeting a large demographic with varying ability of coding (i.e. from basic MS Office users because it's part of their day job to people who are more switched on with tech stuff but never bothered to learn coding), they need to work out how to cater them all. I'm personally in the 'I use Office in my day job and have some interest in the latest tech trends but no knowledge of how things work' segment.
Adding more expansive instructions should help as their current one/two-liner approach doesn't really explain anything for the absolute beginners. However, this can put some slightly more knowledgeable learners off by being too pedantic so Codecademy needs to find the right balance. Within their existing UI, they can probably do this via offering more 'Show Hints' per task like certain computer games where Hint 1 is the cryptic-ish hint, Hint 2 gives slightly more context and Hint 3 for really struggling learners. Users can then self-select how much help they need and don't feel like they are being spoonfed. If Codecademy is really targeting the absolute (but willing) beginners, they need to realise these users are unlikely to google for help as they are used to self-contained courses a la CBT courses in their day jobs.
Agree with imjared about the sweet badges - if they want to get the crowd (or maybe just me) going, they should start offering the options for users to buy some embroidered patches or 3D printed versions of the achievements!
"All options are open to me, and I plan to decide in the next 48 hours."