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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

IMO this is indicative of the kind of questions anyone with DOGE on their resume will need to answer at their next interview.

- why did you do it?

- why did you not quit as soon as you realized how dangerous this was going to be?

"I did what I did, I knew there were mistakes, I don't really know what was done with the output of my work and I never tried to find out" are absolutely disqualifying statements for anyone above associate level engineering.

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Employers inclined to ask those questions will more likely just toss any resumes mentioning DOGE at an earlier stage of filtering.

They will probably get a favorable role at a thiel or yc associated company

Incompetent and destructive as they are, DOGE only did what every company and startup in the world is trying to do, aggressively integrate AI in a way that radically upsets the societal paradigm and makes a ton of money. And much of tech buys into the politics and narrative. They're rock stars. They'll never even need to interview to find work, work will come to them.

> And much of tech buys into the politics and narrative.

While I agree I think that's a fatalist perspective. It's on all of us working in tech to push back on that. In the unlikely event that someone with DOGE on their resume comes across my desk I certainly will be.

And if folks are able to clear their mind of ideology, this is an account of someone that was straightforwardly bad at their job. It's rare to get such a confession from an applicant, we should use it!

zero chance that "all of us working in tech" will push anything.. worse, aggressive opportunists know this very well

Again, back to that being a fatalist perspective. It won’t work so there’s no point in trying. IMO it’s always worth trying.

The opportunists are a minority and they should be ostracized. They’ll always hire each other of course but the reality, as we’re seeing, is that they aren’t actually very good at what they do. For years Musk was seen as an Iron Man genius but by any metric you choose DOGE has been an absolute failure.

Ego > engineering.

I’d do it, gladly.

I worked on the Obamacare site after it rolled out, crashing. I gave it my best effort.

I’m in favor of progress and will work for the common good. I think that’s the best way.

> disqualifying statements for anyone above associate level engineering.

Only if you're an engineer. The Silicon Valley folks love this sort of lawless disregard for wider society.

I'm not even talking about the wider societal implications. I mean the job of being a software engineer, including in SV. "I knowingly wrote code riddled with mistakes and didn't ever look into how it's being used" is, IMO, disqualifying. The latter more than the former in many ways, being a good engineer above entry level is a lot more than just bashing out code, you need to be understanding the context in which your code operates.

It would be one thing if we were talking about a fresh out of college newbie. But Lavingia was employee #2 at Pinterest and founded Gumroad. It appears he learned absolutely nothing in either place.

Let me clarify. I agree with you. My point is rather that Silicon Valley bros WONT agree with us. To them it's fine actually if some veterans didn't get healthcare and die, because they don't matter in their grand scheme.

I believe, as a ground truth, that good engineering requires working in the real world. Silicon valley guys do not. They believe their responsibility start and end at the computer.

I understand this sounds extreme, I think so too, but it is the only explanation that explains their fascination with "long-termism". A philosophy that any harm now is justified if it has even a .1% chance of doing something very good in the long term.

> A philosophy that any harm now is justified if it has even a .1% chance of doing something very good in the long term.

Even then, our descendants, who'd finally have the privilege to live in that faraway future that we sacrificed everything in the present for - they'd also be obligated to treat their present as a disposable resource in service of an even further away future.

If you took the "philosophy" at face value, it would actually guarantee that the entire future of humanity will be miserable. But we'll colonize space and number in the trillions. Yay...

I live in Silicon Valley and I don't love lawless disregard for wider society.

"I needed money." Why is that not a good enough answer?

Because he got paid $0. They hired him as an “intern” or volunteer.

It's responsibility-washing. Like GP said, those answers are totally unacceptable coming from an engineering professional. Which is exactly why they took on interns to do it.

Ah, then we got what we paid for.

"I needed money." - Charles Ponzi "I needed money." - Bernie Madoff "I needed money." - Kenneth Lay "I needed money." - Qusay Hussein

Well:

(a) It doesn't appear to actually have come with a salary.

(b) Even if it paid, it slightly stretches credulity given his background that it was the only job that he could get.

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