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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

If you're trying to convince me that I was somehow part of the problem, it's not reaching me. I was as low(ly) as you can get in the "tech industry stack". While I still had some measure of agency as an engineer I added a crayon color picker to MacOS, added most of the PDF features people like in MacOS Preview. That was as much "driving the ship" as I was allowed — until I wasn't even allowed that.

I could have skipped sooner maybe?

Once I had kids though I found I had a higher tolerance for a job getting shittier, a lower tolerance for restarting in a new career. So I put up with a worsening job for them.

I quit the moment my last daughter left for college.

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> added most of the PDF features people like in MacOS Preview.

I'm not religious, but for this alone you deserve a life of blessings and happiness. The fact that I never ever have to fuck around with Adobe PDF apps to juggle PDFs is one of the load-bearing things keeping me sane in an insane world.

Yes. I used these features in Preview several times today. You have made my life easier on many occasions. For that, sir, I salute you.

May you enjoy your retirement tinkering in your software garden.

For tax season alone! I'm in and out of Preview constantly, looking at PDFs, sorting the pages out, flipping scans. Utterly indispensable software. It feels crazy that it just comes free with the OS.

I second [third?] this.

I can’t stand Adobe Reader, and use Preview, all the time.

I don't think they're blaming you per se, they're saying the reason you didnt enjoy it is because you did it for money.

Hmmm... Is it because I came to tolerate it for the paycheck that it sucked or is it possible it began to suck first?

I get it that money coming into the industry made the whole industry suck. Honestly, Apple was a much more fun to place to work at when there was no money to be made there (no more than a paycheck anyway). Others may disagree, but I found its success made it increasingly a shittier place to work. (Others though, as I say, may have enjoyed the wider reach the platform enjoyed with its success.)

> While I still had some measure of agency as an engineer I added a crayon color picker to MacOS

Oh, that was you? One of the few bits of skeuomorphism I can still find in the OS. I wish we still had more of that.

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