Never thought about that angle. I don't think I've dealt with this kind of manipulative behaviour myself, but I don't doubt it.
It's such a dangerous game to play, as the "requirements" don't match reality. At least someone along that chain of communication doesn't know something they should know about their job. The alternative of just being a negotiation tactic would make me consider ending the interview immediately.
Requiring 8 years of any particular tech is ridiculous in of itself. If you haven't learned what there is to learn in 3 years, you won't learn any more in the subsequent 5.
Since you don't know your use case, I'll also mention a different approach that solved a similar problem, which is how I'd go about it if I needed color labels, a lot of labels, or special labels for outdoor use, etc.
Which is to combine a normal, (in my case, a laser) printer, and use something like this: https://www.herma.co.uk/office-home/product/weatherproof-film-labels-a4-white-extremely-strong-adhesion-4581/
The Herma brand were decent quality, and also had templates (see link example, a bit further down on the page). The downside is that you need to put in some effort. But if you want full control, high quality labels, that's not a bad way to do it.
https://phomemo.com/products/m221-label-maker
Is the one I went for. I like the flexibility in being able to use different width rolls. I don't have a lot of suggestions other than that, since it depends a lot on which use case you have.
I think all of them use the same app (don't quote me on it), which had decent enough reviews: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.project.aimotech.printmaster
I'm sure there are other brands too.
Don't know if you'll get something for as low as $20, but a small thermal printer. Functions as a label maker on steroids, there is no ink, or proprietary* paper. Some thermal paper rolls have built in stickers, some are transparent, some have special shapes and colors, etc.
I've used it to label plants, tools, cables, boxes, so-so-many gridfinity boxes. It takes 1-2 seconds from hitting print to having it ready.
* not entirely the case, in that some have set sizes, or markings to automatically feed and count. However, these are low tech, and there are third party vendors.
On a global scale, corporations could double wages, reduce hours to 80%, and it would still only match the productivity output. Only compromise would be for very few people to be slightly less obscenely wealthy.
Keep this up, and more people will wonder if a few heads rolling is all that bad.
Anything special you needed to do? I have the HTC Vive, and I've tried a few times over the years, without any success. Last time was about 2-3 years ago.
SteamVR works on Linux? What headset, if I may ask?
This. Anyone actually seasoned in martial arts will back this up. Exceptions to this are trying to sell something.
My biggest gripe is the lack of respect/understanding for the importance of data models and clear domain boundaries.
Most things that end up as "technical debt" can be traced to this. Sometimes, it's unavoidable, because what the data models changes, or the requirements of the domain, etc.
And, it's very innocent looking differences sometimes. Like "We know that the external system state will change from A to B, so we can update that value on our side to B". Suddenly you have an implicit dependency that you don't express as such.
Or, things like having enum that represents some kind of concept that isn't mutually exclusive. Consider enum values of A and B. Turns out this really represented AZ, and BP (for some inherent dependency to concepts Z and P). Someone later on extends this to include ZQ. And now, suddenly the concept of Z, is present in both AZ and ZQ, and some consumer that switches on concept Z, needs to handle the edge case of AZ... And we call this "technical debt".
Communists just think you are a little bit thick and/or uneducated. Maybe a little bit cute. Like a child who doesn't know what words mean.
Which is why I buy games on GoG whenever it's an option.