ThalesX

> Being able to inspect the state of systems, and being able to manually change things in software, is incredibly valuable.

I was hired as a CTO for a start-up that had a shitty solution (bad performance, bad practices - such as storing passwords in plaintext and customer service would just copy the password and log in the customer's account manually).

They had a custom back-end where they were basically handcuffed to a couple of flows. They couldn't see the full state of the system. Not even a fraction of it. Everyone hated it to the point where most were using whiteboards to work.

My first move was to normalize the database and throw in an off the shelf back-end where they got access to the full state of the system (with some aspects of course conveniently configured out).

Then, based on their own whiteboard flows and how they were using the new all you can eat back-end, we implemented a number of flows that mapped to how they actually worked. This is on top of being able to manually pull any switch. From what I could tell, they loved it, both the freedom and the ease.

It was truly satisfying to see those empty whiteboards.

They're open about it, I don't see the problem. This is good money for some, meh money for some and bad money for others.

> According to Johnson the US has never endorsed the ICC because it's a "direct affront to our own sovereignty. [...] We don't put any international body above American sovereignty and Israel doesn't do that either," he added.

God I have developed such a distaste for political opinions. Everyone thinks they're right and everyone sees the various maleficent actors in others.

[0] https://www.jpost.com/international/article-802290

This says nothing about their level of wellbeing.

> As is plainly evident, the vast majority of savages have chosen to incrementally create and join civilized societies.

Have they chosen? Or were they civilized?

It's hard to assess, especially from our position, which set of challenges the human soul prefers. But there's an interesting point to be made, touched in both "Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress"[0] as well as "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity"[1] that no 'savage' has been interested in non-coercively joining an 'advanced' society, whereas there are plenty of examples of 'civilized' people choosing the 'savage' life. I don't think the choice is as clear cut as it would superficially seem.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/d... [1] https://www.amazon.com/-/en/David-Graeber/dp/0374157359

Depends on the checks and balances you have in the 'society'. Are vocally succesful peers lauded? Then perhaps you could run into this situation. Are they mocked for having a big mouth? Maybe the chances are slimmer.

> I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor

Yeah, I tend to agree with you in that these are important factors into how things are playing out. And the scale. My God. We used to have inequality and competition between a small subset of people, now we're competing with 7+ billion.

> This imaginary past where most people didn't live in fear of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all their bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist.

I call bullshit... Debt. Bills. And for that matter, money. These are things that our species lived for hundreds of thousands of years without. Furthermore, there are tribes that even to this day live without these struggles.

I've recently finished reading "Civilized to Death"[0] and I can't help feel there's some truth to some of the ideas.

One idea that stuck with me is that shit zoos have concrete cages for the monkeys, and they're miserable in them, showing similar signs to modern humans (depression, addition, anger), whereas nice zoos try to keep the monkeys in similar environments to those that they evolved for, where the monkeys are pretty much chill. The author argues that we're constructing concrete zoos for ourselves and in the process making ourselves miserable. We're so far detached from what our bodies and minds evolved for, that it's an alien environment for our species.

If this holds truth, it's really no wonder that the more we pile on and the further we stray from our true species' preferences, the more horrible we will feel, and this hikikomori is a fine illustration of that.

As some comments pointed out 'what about the great depression', 'what about 'nuclear war', "don't you like your electricity"? These are all human patches for human made problems. I don't think the correlation between progress and wellbeing is as clear cut as some would like to see it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/d...

Like another commenter here, I've been full stack since my first working day, and to this day, 1.5 decades in the industry. I've always touched on infrastructure, on the database, on the server side and on the client side. Vertical implementations of features.

I can't begin to imagine life as just a ... database guy, or a backend guy or just a frontend guy. Perhaps it needs to be aligned in everyone's eyes that we cannot be as good at databases as one that spends most of his time doing databases. But there are pros and cons to our kind of knowledge.

I can argue pro and con SQL vs. NOSQL, to the limits of my ability, or argue for this frontend framework or that, or consider various languages or architectures for the backend, or discuss about how we'll deploy the production version of whatever it is that we're building, or how we'll do development side CI/CD and so on and so forth. What am I? I'm open to the idea that I'm a fraud, but I like to consider myself a full stack.

This is easily fixable.

I develop using Dev Tools set to mobile and throttled connection. This way mobile-first responsiveness (limited screen-estate) and potential problems with bad connections are first class citizens.

Now, what usually happens is that I signal problems to the product owner and they wave them away. So I might update your third point that sometimes they do test it on their father's old 2010 family PC but it's not of concern to more relevant stakeholders.

What about a micrometeoroid?

Were the apps available on the App Store? Also yes.

With you on this one. As a European, I can't help but laugh at the comments in this thread. Words like 'obviously', 'clearly' when it comes to the dangers of TikTok and not a single piece of evidence. It's hilarious to see the psyopped scream psyops.

Have you been to China? I've been to China and had no problems using all the things you're mentioning with the help of a VPN. Was it as easy as in Europe? No. Did it feel like a ban? Also no.

I'd take this advice with a grain of salt. The best jobs I found in my life (n=1) were outside of my 'connections'. They were in other countries, continents and with some degrees of separation between the people involved and anyone I've ever built a connection with. Connections are important, but if you want to be seen, you need to put yourself out there, perhaps more important than making a connection with Ricky.

I'm in the same boat. And it's even more confusing to me when my 5 hours per week friend actually has daily stand-ups. When I talked to him about it, he says it's mostly just everyone in the team saying 'still working on X', even though they didn't even start or have been "working" on it for like 2 months. It boggles my mind.

> Who actually listens to the devs?

In my experience it depends on your political skills. I could always find someone in the company to help me come up with a plan of attack for a problem we were all facing. I always suggest to juniors to go to higher ups with an attitude of 'how can I help you solve the problems you currently have' instead of 'here are my problems'. YMMV.

> Are you playing wealth games or status games? Wealth is freedom, CTO role is still a job.

I would ideally like to not be accountable to anyone under, or over me. Just hack away at my hobby projects like Thanos did before he got his head cut.

> What is your end goal? Work backwards from that to how you spend your time (enterprise, startup, solo, etc). Maybe it's meaningful work. Maybe it's just a check, because you work to live, not live to work. May you find a path that enables the outcome desired.

Thanks for the advice! Perhaps I should spend a bit more time putting things into perspective. But I was just curious to get some answers on how much time people actually work. If I can get 50% of the money I'd get running a company, with 2hrs of work per week. I'd probably take that. I'm just not sure how common it is.

In my decade+ experience of work, on executive as well as producer levels, I've found that most people that produce this argument are not very productive when it comes to delivering actual business value.

The situations I am aware of are very far away from needing to spend 100% or 200% of their actual working hours in thought for the implementation and / or strategizing.

I haven't worked in deep tech, or cutting edge, so it might be attributed to this.

When I used to do 3, I found myself filling the time by actually being involved in the business. Talking to managers, stakeholders, trying to actually improve auxiliary concerns. Is this just not how it's done anymore?

911 system for my country. Was part of a small 'special unit' team and we implemented the entire system end to end. Administration, telephony system, even special asset monitoring. Best project I've worked on, and will probably have worked on in my life. Smartest people I've ever worked with.

> what matters is what the people in the field making the decisions knew at that moment

This is insane. What matters is the objective truth, whether or not dozens of preschoolers were killed due to an operational mistake.

The idea that a nation with resources wouldn't be able to hold a supply chain without <insert_whatever_western_touted_technology> is just laughable. I just don't understand how a mildly intelligent person could hold this view.

> even with centuries of trying, power is nowhere near as centralized as in totalitarian regimes

My grandma's house is older than the centuries the US has existed.

> Local and state governments have the greatest influence over the day to day of ordinary people and ordinary people are much more capable of influencing them

Is this actually true? Are ordinary people more capable of influence than lobbying groups?

I couldn't say honestly if I haven't been burnt out for the last 10 years. I sort of cope with it and drag it on with short bouts of motivation that keep me floating. The only time I see a sliver of hope is when I switch jobs and take some months in between them to focus on ... life. But the bills start piling up and the reserve starts dwindling so I join the rat race again.

Just saw the 1st episode, great start, thank you for the recommendation!

I was talking to a friend, he was asking how come I always mention the deep state[0] in the context of western countries, but never in the context of ... others. And it dawned on me that maybe it's because the deep state is the state in those other countries (explicit) whereas we mask it with a thin layer of democracy (implicit). I dunno, your comments just triggered this memory.

[0] (not in a hugely conspiratorial way, just the bureaucracy, bureaucrats, lobbying that don't change between transitions are are sort of running the place)

I think it was pretty clear what I mean. Good, great, slightly good, amazing. It’s the same thing.

Theoretically you gain denormalization benefits at scale so I’m reading it as arguing for normalization.

Huh. Just these days I’m building an MVP and was thinking that denormalized would probably be better. But I just can’t give normalization up.