Snoozle

I have yet to see any convincing case of someone who has the wealth to afford a computer, internet, and time to spend on Twitter whose "lives are threatened", and no hyperbole causes a larger eye roll from me.

I have seen a lot of your comments and articles over the past few months. I don't presume to put myself in your shoes, but my wife works in software engineering, and I work with several other women or wives of friends in the field. They have all had normal experiences, much like mine, with very few instances of anything being different for them because they are women.

I'm providing these anecdotes because you are providing your anecdotes and I figured it might make a discussion. As I said before, I have read your medium posts and your posts to this forum, and it seems that you are always fighting a battle that doesn't always exist (see your comment above that was flagged), but I feel like you are using the 'dismissal' of people viewing your arguments as irrelevant to the conversation as proof that the battle is happening and you're losing.

I don't understand why you might be starving or not making a living unless you are unemployable or have some type of issue that prevents you from performing at a normal level, as I have not known anyone in tech who could not earn a living unless they were struggling with something that prevented them from being able to work properly.

These are my anecdotes and they aren't facts or truths, I am just showing that the experience I have seen of women in tech does not intersect with your experiences, in a way that makes your points very foreign to me and I'm sure to others who don't share those experiences. Perhaps you are also in an 'experience bubble', and the world as you see it does not always conform to the pattern.

It seems to me that the "way people are built" these days is just a lack of discipline. We have grown up soft and effortlessly, and we did not grow the tools to cope with self regulation as it was never necessary. I don't see how "accepting" this behavior does anything to solve it.

Ostracization is a valid social regulation for enforcing certain qualities in a society and it's not always wrong to use it.

Isn't the whole point of things like this to help edge cases? I grew up poor and did badly in school, but I was smart enough to score in the top 3% of SAT scores and that allowed me to get in to many colleges that I wanted, something I would not have had based on my grades and ability to pay.

I think it's easy to underestimate just how large and undeveloped the majority of the USA is.

England has a population density of 275 people per square kilometer, 281 if you consider the entire UK. UK also has an agricultural area of about 23 million acres, at 70% of available land. That means that a huge majority of UK land is developed and actively used, and over an area of 23 million acres.

The US population density is 36 per square kilometer. That is about 1/8th the population density, which is already a huge difference. In addition, the total USA land used in agriculture is about 900 million acres, which is nearly 40x greater an area. So we are currently at 40x the agricultural land, at 1/8th the population density.

The kicker to this is that the US agricultural land use is only 44%. So not only do we have 1/8 population density, 40x the agriculture land mass, we also don't even break 50% of land use for agriculture purposes. This all combines to mean a few things.

1. People that have land in the USA tend to have a lot more land.

2. There tends to be large amounts of unused land all over the place with no development.

3. A lot of land is being developed for the first time, instead of redeveloped.

This doesn't directly answer your question as far as needing a trailer vs a truck, but it should give you an idea that the USA is much less developed and a lot more rugged than the countryside of a much older and more established and smaller land mass like the UK. Trucks make it a lot easier to handle all the unexpected situations that occur from having the land situation we have.

One other point I'll add at the end of this. The USA also has extremely different and varied climates compared to the mild oceanic climate of the UK. This means more of every type of weather and bigger extremes. This takes huge tolls on both the roads and how tame undeveloped land is. For instance, in the midwest, it is not uncommon for large semi trucks and pickup trucks with huge tires to be the only cars capable of driving on the highway as the highway is covered in a foot of snow and they're the only vehicles capable of driving in it.

No, I'm not the one claiming a modern Tacoma is as big as an old F150. Why is the burden on me to prove information presented as fact with no supporting evidence?

Okay wise guy: A 1990 f150 crew cab is 74" high, 232.2" long, and 79" wide. A 2021 Tacoma crew cab is 212" long, 71" high, and 74" wide.

This proves false the the assertion that a modern Tacoma is bigger than an old F150, but glad I could get downvoted by people with no mental rigor.

Can you give examples of model years and decisions to back up your claim? Last I checked this (common) misconception is patently false.

In my experience, certificate issues is a huge tell into organization and treatment of IT folks. Every place I've worked which has had issues with last minute certificate changes or expiring certificates without renewal has had a systemic problem with underpaid and understaffed IT department.

This is not a new problem, organizations will always choose guaranteed profits over possible loss of business unless the loss of business is catastrophic, I just wish that in this case instead of trying to make it seem like a big deal by writing an entire multipage excuse, a company for once would be honest and say 'The risk percentage did not fall in our favor this time, but we're not going to do anything about it because it didn't really impact our profits.'

I used to live in Austin in 2007 until 2013. Even back then the transition to tech hub was well underway. We went from the Portland of the south to a yuppie paradise in fairly short order. Who can say whether the changes are good or bad? They're going to happen either way. We traded weird restaurants and way too much hipster music for tech bros and planned areas like the domain. They both have their charms and their annoyances.

On a related note, we live in an age of mass communication. Cities that become cool become migration magnets due to widespread knowledge and relative ease of relocation. See:

Boulder Portland asheville nashville bend boise missoula Austin tacoma, others I'm sure.

I view it as a net negative because part of the reason these 'weird' cities came to be was the needs of the locals who already lived there. Nowadays some liberal musician will just move to city X instead of giving their personality to the area around them.

On the flip side, as a dev with 10 years exp, I think TDD is a process crutch designed to cover up poor engineering by adding additional time spent to all work.

Does the data you're using include suicides?

I always feel like these types of posts are too kind to generalists. Maybe that's just because I am one and I am falling for the greener grass. It's true I've done well in my career, but I've never felt particularly competent. I can do a half assed job as a manager, developer, product owner, and salesman, but I am not any better at those tasks than someone who specializes in doing those things.

I could argue that I have a little more career resilience, since some creative editing of my resume gives me the ability to apply for 5-6 different careers, but my resume will be suspiciously lacking in details compared to people who have focused.

Generalists are definitely at an advantage when it comes to leadership roles and entrepreneurship, but it doesn't do me any good to be good at a role I have no chance to get without networking or a large cash base.

I think those who specialize have a more successful career, assuming their specialization doesn't die out. If I had spent the last 10 years being a really good C++ programmer instead of doing a little bit of everything, I'd have a lot of confidence in doing a lot of C++ focused jobs.

I haven't heard a spin off of that meme for almost a decade.

I don't usually comment on here but this article seems poorly written and highly opinionated. While I agree that discussion can be had on the relationship between the working class of dying industry and the new wave of highly skilled youths, I don't think this article hits the mark.

Not really. Ads done properly are heavily tracked from appearance on a page to purchase of an item. When campaigns are no longer bringing in more revenue than they are costing, those campaigns are suspended. It has nothing to do with anything else, just if money in > money out.

Economic problems come with a cost on human life. There are numerous studies and paper that show how bad being poor and unhappy are for a person's health. Why WOULDN'T we consider the economic ramifications?

A few things I try to remember about Reddit as someone who has used the site for 10+ years:

1. I keep getting older, and Reddit doesn't just stay the same, they get younger. There are a lot of kids on there from age 10-16, and these kids don't just stick to Teenagers and Memes; they will actively comment and discuss politics, capitalism, society, etc.

2. Upvotes mean agree, downvotes mean disagree. In this way, any opinion with even a slight majority will always triumph. If I took 45 Redditors who were liberals and 35 Redditors who were conservative, and both used the upvote and downvote buttons on opinions, then every liberal comment would have +10 and every conservative comment would have -10, which amplifies the 10 person difference by 20. Every opinion you see is one that the majority of the user base agrees with or likes.

3. In both age and other demographics, redditors lean towards young, liberal males with low/no incomes. This causes a lot of bias against certain schools of thought, the role of government in our lives, and people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum - old, conservative (women?) people with high income. It's just a product of the site demographics.

4. The last point I'll make - since Reddit creates this echo chamber of a certain set of ideas and opinions, people who have differing opinions tend to stop posting those opinions or participating in discussion regarding those opinions. What you're left with are the people who are actively frustrated/righteous/feel like wasting time who are spouting against the grain opinions, making those opinions seem even worse to most Redditors than they already were perceived. (For example, if you were wanting to discuss how great you thought Donald Trump was on Reddit, you were most likely not looking for a productive and informative discussion)

You could even argue that the Dunning-Kruger effect applies MORE to specialists than generalists, as generalists are already approaching problems as if they don't have as much experience as a specialist and are more likely to research and learn as part of the problem solving process instead of assume that they are already experts at this and make a mistake.

I feel strongly about this topic because I'm at the point in my career where I've done several different positions instead of getting better at one and I'm wondering if I made a mistake.

I started off in the software field as a developer. I've been in the software field for almost 10 years but I've only actually spent two years as a full time developer. I've also done project management, product management, marketing, customer support, and management. I find myself struggling to fill one of those individual roles because I don't have the same level of experience as those who have dedicated themselves to those for the full ten years.

I'm currently a VP of Engineering for a small company. I know most would probably say that I've made it, but I'm looking for my next opportunity and struggling. It's hard to get a job at a larger (200+ employee) company as each role filled is expected to be specialized and focused. At a smaller company or startup, though, I kick the crap out of anyone else applying because I know so much more about the business in general and can wear many different hats.

In addition, I feel a strong benefit is that my experience enhances my ability in each other role. For instance, if I'm working on a marketing email campaign, I can use my developer skills to pull relevant data from the application that helps me focus my targeting. If I'm developing, I will specifically build small helpful tools for customer support and marketing departments because I already know what they want and they don't know they can have it. It takes a small amount of time but provides a big value.

I would probably also have a leg up on starting my own business compared to someone who has a deep specialized knowledge of enterprise level applications but no idea how to put together a customer support and good user experience.

Still, we are always looking at the greener grass, and there are times when I wish I could just apply for a senior developer role at a larger company and focus on one thing. Somehow, I don't think that my lack of React experience will be made up for by letting them know that I will be able to directly interact with the customers or set up marketing campaigns. They already have 5+ people doing those things.

I think that regardless of your social or political stance of anything regarding males, females, workplaces, salaries, or sexism, more data is always nice to have.

Now I'm going to figure out how to twist this into fitting my own personal world view and then make a news article about it.