Antoniocl

When you say the "whole industry", which industry are you referring to? The entire technology sector? Venture-backed companies specifically? Growth-stage VC-backed specifically?

This claim is counterintuitive to me in many business contexts - ex. for an established privately-held company issuing dividends to the owners, what incentive do owners have to emphasize ARR per employee rather than net income?

Well I think that a proper implementation of "disagree and commit" differs significantly from what's described in the article.

The author seems to be suggesting that rather than discussing technical trade-offs and nuance, you instead ship whatever the other person proposes, even if you believe it is wrong, without going through the discussion.

I always interpreted "disagree and commit", at least in a healthy form, to be more about cases where, after both sides had presented their interpretation of a technical decision and both had understood the other's point of view, they still differed in opinion as to how it should be handled a meaningful way that was unlikely to be resolved from further communication. From there, rather than wasting more time on debating, simply agreeing to disagree, shipping to move on.

The key difference being that you aren't simply accepting whatever is told you, even if you believe it to be blatantly wrong, and silently shipping based on that feedback. You're actually engaging with each other and trying to solve the problem together but not getting locked in intractable arguments.

What OP is proposing seems significantly more toxic and honestly like something I would expect from someone playing corporate politics rather than trying to excel as an engineer.

Oh interesting, is it actually covered as part of the standard compulsory public school curriculum? Genuinely surprised, because here in Canada (Ontario) it's covered as an elective in 11th grade physics, which roughly 15/120 people in my graduating class opted to take.

Maybe this depends on the framing? Ex. 18 months is fairly common in some circles, but that could alternatively have been expressed as a year and a half.

6-12 months? Red flag 12-24 months, especially early-to-mid career? Not uncommon

At least in the factory I worked in prior to becoming a software engineer, there was a significantly higher component of physical risk than in any of the software jobs I've worked in

Well, I think in the context of the parent comment, separating out housing would risk overstating changes in its effect on purchasing power because increases to housing would already be captured by inflation (since we're talking about real median income, which is already inflation adjusted)

I agree that housing affordability is a major problem and that looking at it independently could help you quantify if housing specifically has become more unaffordable, but that's a different question then whether the median person's overall purchasing power has declined (considering all of housing, healthcare food etc)

I see your point, and think one of the merits in OP's argument is precisely what you're saying: words have meaning, and saying something like "I think that X is probably the case" when you're virtually certain that X is the case dilutes the meaning of words.

That said, I think throughout the post OP is mixing different dimensions of communicatiom together in a way that confuses the conversation - namely conciseness, directness, and explicitness - which while often overlapping aren't exactly the same.

Interesting, I regularly use chat-based support on amazon.ca to speak with (what I presume is) a real human after none of the control flow paths adequately resolve my issue. I've always found the support quick to reply and very helpful.

Granted, it's been 1-2 weeks since I had an issue, so it may have changed since then, or it could be only released to a subset of users.

Unsure about whether the specific dealership in question supports online booking, but there existing consumers whose preference is for a phone call over a web-based experience is definitely the case, at least in the US.

For example, even with the (digital-only) SAAS company I work at, we have a non-trivial amount of customers who with strong preferences to talk on the phone, ex to provide their credit card number, rather than enter it in the product. This is likely more pronounced if your product serves less tech-savvy niches.

That said, a strong preference for human call > website use doesn't necessarily imply even a weak preference for AI call > website use (likely customer-dependent, but I'd be surprised if the number with that preference was exactly 0)

My read of the comment wasn't that he was "blaming" either, but explaining where the fees come from.

It sounds like the direct increase to the consumer's prices is done by the restaurant itself, but the reason the restaurant is charging higher prices are to make up for the fees they're charged by UE/DD.

In other words, UE/DD restaurant-side service fees eat into the restaurant's profit margins, so the restaurant passes on the cost increases to the consumer to get them back.

To be clear, no idea about how closely these statements correspond to the world, just that this seems to be OP's claim.

So I agree that your inference is probably correct, but it is worth pointing out that the rate which a sex experiences X from their intimate partners isn't exactly the same as the rate at which the other sex does X to their partners, namely because of non-heterosexual couples.

For example, you could imagine a world where men are significantly more likely than women to commit DV, making some subset of that 28.5% men who have suffered at the hands of other men. It would also imply that gay women are less likely to experience DV, which would widen the gap further. That said, I believe many more couples are hetero than not, so maybe it wouldn't make much of a difference.

To be clear, I'm not making this specific claim about men, just illustrating that I think the statistic quoted doesn't _directly_ justify the claim "women aren't that much less likely to offend" (although it does lend credence to it)

How this issue skews probably depends on where you live, but in the area I live, I have the opposite complaint: that bicyclists should re-learn that they are legally required (in my city) to ride on roads, rather than barrelling down sidewalks.

That said, this is coming from me as a pedestrian, so maybe someone who was primarily a driver would have a completely different take from both of us.

I agree that for people who do that type of work, it's engineering

For a typical fullstack dev building views, CRUDs, and simple DB schemas, less so

And you're probably right that most SWEs don't deal with math-adjacent things.

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And just to be clear, none of what I'm saying is a value-statement on the types of work different "software engineers" do. It's just a question of categories, which I view as separate from utility

I agree that the work that CEs do in the vein of what you're describing is closer to my conception of engineering.

I also don't think most people who call themselves a "software engineer" fit that description though. My guess would be less than 10%?

I would say it depends on the specific role and project, but for most people who write code, likely not.

Coming from a mechanical engineering background, I understood "engineering" as the application of science for problem solving - or, put simply, applied science. Some examples:

1. When a civil engineer applies solid mechanics to select a cross beam. 2. When an electrical engineer applies E&M to design a circuit. 3. When a mechanical engineer applies heat transfer to analyze cooling patterns on a laptop.

Under this definition, most "SWE" work isn't engineering - if anything, it's closer to applied math and logic?

That said, definitions are only useful inasmuch as they allow us to make sense of the world and communicate with others, so I'm not sure this is the most useful question

War and Peace was the first book I read as an adult (at 19) and I was blown away. Definitely opened my mind as to how great a great book can be, and raised my standards for what I'm willing to spend time on reading considerably.

I think this was one of the best things that happened to me for my reading habit, and I'm incredibly glad I stumbled upon it sooner rather than later.

The only change I'd make, if possible, would've been to read it at a younger age (12-14) so my perception of what books can be would've been expanded sooner and I could've branched out from my comfort zone at the time.

Seemed like most of the examples would just be due to sloppy implementation / a lack of testing edge cases? This is a good lesson to take away I guess, but "defensive CSS" isn't how I see it. It just sounds like thoughtful, intentional, and correct CSS is what's missing in those examples.

Maybe this is obvious to me from having built website builders and themes for them, but when making a product that displays unknown, potentially user-generated content, it's to be expected that the content will be different from the boilerplate designs. Working around edge cases like image aspect ratios and words/sentences of varying length are a core part of the UI's development process.

I would hope so, at a minimum! I'm shocked that signing an affidavit in a court of law certifying the existence of made-up courses isn't simply criminal.

The relationship between a boss and an employee is so far removed from a classical single-round prisoner's dilemma that I don't think you'll draw reliably accurate conclusions from it. As it sounds like you know, constraints like iteration change the game significantly, as would making it a game with many actors and reputational effects.

All models are wrong, some models are useful, and in this case it seems more wrong than useful.

Edit: thought you were OP, whoops

It's likely highly dependent on the individual. There's a lot of literature is beautiful, immersive, and speaks to deep universal truths that are harder to capture in other mediums. To steelman his argument, even given that all of this is true, it's a harder sell that engaging with the works is useful to him, on an individual level.

For me, Infinite Jest helped me be more empathetic, which was an area I lacked a lot at the time, to the point that reading it was just clearly useful to me.

But other than that? It's hard to say. I derive a lot of pleasure from fiction, and find the experiences I get from them to be highly meaningful and to sometimes stay with me for years, not unlike memories of times with good friends. Whether or not that's of value to you as an individual just depends on your values.

Nonfiction: "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky. It was a fantastic deep-dive into the topic, and despite being extremely long was very readable.

Fiction: "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. I've read other Steinbeck before this one, but this stands out as a clear masterpiece. I especially enjoyed the way he blended the experiences of specific individuals with the experiences of a general population - the narration style was very enjoyable.