Stryder

You can just say that outright next time. It's an anonymous internet forum so it's really not a big deal, and it's very hard to guess what you mean if you aren't clear about it.

Interesting. Thanks, I didn't go there at all and I believe ambiguous statements like these create a lot of the misunderstanding that we see in today's political climate.

What does that tell us? That HN trends pessimistic? That the HN audience is under-employed? Or something else?

Pretty good English equivalent for that saying: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ymmv

Would be great to see if this one sticks, but I have a sneaking suspicion that managers will just find novel ways to get people to leave.

Whoa, if confirmed this would be really bad. Downtime happens, but data loss is much worse.

Agreed. We can more easily follow the autopilot patterns of commercial flights such that cars can activate autopilot once they have officially entered freeways, and disengages again after exiting.

Doing so can also help spur further investment into the Interstate system, which as an immigrant was one of the best inventions that America had made in creating a higher quality of life than other countries.

Hybrid drivetrains (tiny engines with forced induction and electric motors as a blueprint) plus driver assistance tech is a much brighter near future than trying to wrangle busy city streets and electric charging.

Finish reading first, and then spend some time thinking before responding.

I said: "Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable."

The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives. Realistically and pragmatically speaking, you only ever get to have just one single shot at establishing and maintaining that kind of life/death level of trust. Fuck it up, and you're gone- quite literally, mind you.

This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow. Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable.

Slippery slope here. Why precisely is past performance indicative of future performance beyond some very weak correlations? Analogously, is a person's last relationship truly indicative of their future mating potential?

I understand that /some/ people believe it to be so, but I believe it's wrong to move society towards this. We should be going in the opposite direction- that you are as good as what you are aspiring to and putting in the work to become tomorrow.

It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Thinking about this problem as a larger systemic problem makes me incredibly frustrated and sad about human nature and society overall.

Sounds like software engineering today.

That's pretty cool!

Double-standard is the oldest trick in the book for establishing and maintaining power dynamics.

Money can’t purchase genuine human connection, and that’s pretty much the root of it.

Anything that can be purchased is that much more enjoyable when real human connection is involved, otherwise it honestly doesn’t matter how lavish the thing is, it just becomes kind of boring.

It’s possible to purchase fake connection, but again it’s pretty boring because it’s fake.

Even the money making process is more boring without genuine connections to others.

"Compartmentalization is part of the problem, not the solution."

This, this and this again. We as people are absolutely allowed to be complex, contradicting beings, but it is because of this richness of breadth and depth in our characteristics and beliefs that we ought to consider deeply the consequences of our actions.

Compartmentalization acts effectively in the opposite direction of that.

I don't think they are capable of attracting better talent at this point. Come to think of it, I'm surprised they ever were able to attract any serious talent at all.

I still remember a highly respected veteran industry executive talking to my entrepreneurship class in 2010 about how he couldn't bring himself to work for Zuck despite a strong offer on the table, and the joke he made about missing out on millions in stock options. This person today continues to lead entire businesses at one of the leading companies.

Emphasis: "capable". Mapping one concept into another and between abstraction levels is something displayed by all the strongest leaders I've met.

Bravo.

#5 is basically an overclocked mind running DFS.

As an engineer turned manager, I disagree with this.

While it is absolutely essential that the person managing the domain area needs to be capable of understanding the technical details surrounding it, it's not a requirement to have to have done the exact same work as the team.

What's much more valuable and preferable to me and my team is for the person to understand how to build trust and push/prod/coach/enable folks to do their jobs in ways that are best for the team and for the company while having thought through the strategy of the direction we're heading into, and of course, take responsibility for the execution. In order to do that, being able to talk shop is important, but it's only part of the picture.

From being a good engineer to being a good manager is analogous to going from being a good runner to being a good tennis player: some relationship between the two exists (both are athletes), but it's a different set of skills.

What a shitshow all around. Leadership is dead in today's climate.

I think history has proven enough times that it's hard to maintain power/wealth as you get more and more of it, and that is as it should be, because the complexity of all the moving pieces becomes harder and harder to manage when more and more human beings are involved.

"When you have 1 million dollars, that money belongs to you. When you have 10 million dollars, that belongs to your family. When you have 100 million, your community, and when you have a billion dollars, that's society's money."

We just don't hear that much about all the people who got some of it then lost/gave up a bunch of it. The ones who happen to maintain for long periods of time stand out.

And yes I agree it's good for most of us to not get there- both for the good of others and for the good of ourselves.

It's not stupid. Think about large families with inherent power dynamics- everyone's either been in or knows at least one. It's just a human thing. We know what's right and wrong, but acting according to what we /know/ is a lot harder said than done when human nature is factored in.

Now make the assumption that a group of human beings were doing the right things at the right time in the right place to become mega rich, and then apply the same rules.

People aren't terribly different from one another on the fundamental level- the only different things are circumstances which determine 1) the number of restrictions, and conversely 2) the number of privileges.

The only valuable question is how to minimize this human dynamic as the size of the group grows, because leaving a 5-person group behind to find something different is a lot easier and a lot less consequential than leaving a 5000-person group.

The flaw in your logic doesn't lie in your assertion, but the opposite:

If it's indeed possible for some powerful forces to coerce some engineers into accomplishing certain goals, how possible is it for the same said forces to coerce some other people into accomplishing some other goals?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

There is a distinct whiff of the aroma of propaganda around this one.

"Movement is life."

The "wildly differs from company to company" hits home hard. It's like organizational schizophrenia and existential crisis had a child that got named "Product Management".

The key is to accept that you'll never "earn as much as you should", let it go, and just live your life, find problems worth solving, and solve them. The rat race pays you one price in your hand while simultaneously taking another one out of your back pocket.

As an older engineer currently having fun digging into ML: yep, a well thought-out set of good-ol business rules can do a lot of what teams are applying ML to these days.

Nothing wrong with learning new things, though. I can get behind that. It's important to stay intellectually honest, however.

On the other hand, research efforts on vision, language and autonomous systems are genuinely pushing boundaries.