566 karma · joined June 22, 2015
In my opinion it works just as well, without any of the negativity or cynicism of the original Gervais article.
One exec in particular:
- Made power grabs for other execs' areas, forcing those execs out to other organisations.
- Continually shifted goal posts for key technical staff. In the words of one of these people, this was the primary cause of their mental breakdown.
- Filled positions with his own cohort of sycophants and yes-men from previous organisations.
- Defunded major projects, turning them from promising potential businesses into graveyards.
After just a couple of years, the organisation was a shell of its former self.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to move books out of their semantically 'best' organisation if that order results in an aesthetically unappealing shelf.
As a specific example, I've mixed up a shelf's organisation because it had resulted in a row of pure beige. I didn't want that in my living room!
"But what about AWS' NAT Instance AMI?"
The official AWS supported NAT Instance AMI hasn't been updates since 2018, is still running Amazon Linux 1 which is now EOL, and has no ARM support, meaning it can't be deployed on EC2's most cost effective instance types. fck-nat.
The (to use your word) 'crackpots' were proposing alternative solutions like Ivermectin and Chloroquine. The people who were shouting 'believe science' were trying to silence the debate.
I offer no opinion on either of those two alternatives, I merely point out that 'believe' isn't the verb that goes with 'science'.
That is to say, I interpret this:
"I hope this works out so we can see each other!"
As this:
"I hope this works out because I would like to see you and by living under the same roof for a short time we will be able to see each other!"
I have to say, though, that this might be dependent on my relationship with the person. If I like them, I'm more likely to have the generous interpretation of this phrase.
It is in use across a huge number of Australian government websites - the Australian Cyber Security Centre, Services Australia, Department of Health, Department of Veterans' Affairs to name just a few.
The agency that owned it had a huge amount of funding cut from its budget, and now it's being supported by an (admirable!) open source effort: https://designsystemau.org/
It's wonderful that there is this level of community support, but so disappointing that the government couldn't recognise the importance and usefulness of continued funding.
They state that they value (as an example) individuals and interactions over processes and tools. But they make it clear that while there's value in the things on the right, they value the things on the left more.
In the way the author describes, I always found this framing to be super helpful for decision-making.
It's also something that frustrated me about the (otherwise fantastic) Amazon Leadership Principles. When should I dive deep and when should I have bias for action? I realise now that I should have bias for action when it's a reversible decision and dive deep when it's a one way door. But it's not clear from the principles themselves in the way it's clear in the Agile Manifesto.
I would have hoped that any competent board member would want to view metrics around retention and morale, and that large shifts would be something they'd dig into.
If Covid rules were being broken - too many people in an office, people standing too close together - an alert would be sent to the office manager.
In one case, this was escalated to the country director, who chewed out the sales people who had broken the rules.
Missing out on YouTube content discovery isn't a huge loss.
Be very mindful and careful about which drugs you take.
Do your research (e.g. on Erowid) and know that while some drugs can have amazing, long-term benefits, others can be an easy way to downward spiral out of society. I'd include LSD and MDMA in the former category; opioids, amphetamines, and cocaine in the latter.
There's also a category of 'casual' drugs which require discipline if you want to enjoy the benefits and avoid the pitfalls. I'd include alcohol and marijuana in this category, but I realise this is a very personal thing. Just be aware that there can be serious risks to these which aren't fully captured by their normalised place in society.
Secondly, while I admire the drive never to want to retire because you'd be bored, I think it's a huge power-up to be able to have what Nassim Taleb calls f-you money (enough money to be able to tell your boss, "F-you, I'm leaving" if they make one too many unreasonable requests. For me, having something approximating that (initially just six months' worth of expenses in cash) has allowed me to make better decisions, take some risks which resulted in good payoffs, and just generally have more fun. I'd highly recommend aiming for this rather than just accepting that you'll be working forever.
So with that said I'm wondering if you can go into more detail on your financial situation. If you work in tech in my country, I'd suggest it's possible for most people in tech to earn 100k+ if they're not utterly incompetent. (I realise I might be in a bubble here, but where I am and what I'm seeing this is reasonable.) If you're on that salary, a savings rate of 50+% is completely achievable. To have a savings rate of 5-10% while working in tech suggests to me that something's off. Are you able to share a bit more info on that? Is it the repayments on your debt?
I always felt like I wasn't built for pure tech positions - I'm not the kind of person who can code for eight hours at a time, and that's what many of my previous employers seemed to want from me. I love presenting, I enjoy helping people, and I like a fast pace and a broad variety of work. Sales engineering has been a great fit.
The tricky tradeoffs for me have mainly been around interacting with the sales org.
Some of the sales folks can be... you know how sales folks can be. They can have big personalities. And their incentives can be different to mine - where I am right now they're measured purely on attainment, and I'm measured on broader customer success. So it's been really important for me to understand how they work, how they're incentivised, how I can best help them while still ensuring my customers get the best outcome.
The other tricky thing for me is being part of a group whose sole purpose is to sell. I never thought I'd be doing that - ringing the bell, ABC, coffee's for closers, etc. So it's really important for me to be selling a good product that will actually help customers, and to be able to be honest about its benefits and potential downsides. The minute someone tells me to sell something I don't believe in is the minute I get out of sales.
But I'm the whole it's been a great move. I've learned (and am still learning) a lot.
The examples included in the article are just egregious: forcing someone to come to work who has just lost their parent in a car accident, threatening a worker with firing for sitting on the job.
I'd like to think there's a move towards management respecting and appreciating their staff more, but I fear that's only happening in tech (and even then it's still very dependent on the management team).
Bad guys spawn across an inter-dimensional portal and start wreaking havoc. Protagonist has to kill them all, crossing the portal in the process to go destroy the alien leader.
There were some cool extra details - the G Man, the marines entering as a third force, the diversions to do things like launch a missile into space - but all of those things were additional to that same, basic story.
This author has it spot on: our standards for story telling in video games are really low.