borvo

Before the act of union of 1801 the Irish parliament, although pretty ineffectual, did block food exports during times of crisis. Even in the year of slaughter 1740 when a short term famine was caused by climate change food exports were stopped by a combination of local officials and angry citizens. The difference in the 1840s was the presence of a large number of troops who protected food exports at gunpoint. It is nonsense to suggest that an independent Irish State would have continued to export food in these conditions: it wouldn't have lasted a week.

Never heard of a death march? A bit dehumanizing eh?

Doesn't matter. People would be more willing to take it on trust if it weren't for 1) motivated denialists 2) ex-"tobacco not harmful" mercenaries 3) useful idiots who are willing to consider [edit] the possibility they have a valid "point of view": they don't.

Oh no. First they f*cked up nest and now fitbit?

He wrote "so I delegated the decision. I ran from the fear". He delegated the decision, not just the task of finding options for the space.

> So if the manager asks that for a late project, they are probably incompetent.

Not necessarily. I've seen/heard engineers who take great glee in pointing this out, but they don't understand the real dynamic. The managers have probably read the mythical man month too.

If as a manager you report a problem to your boss, you're likely to get "help", even if you already have a plan. Sometimes the least costly "help" is to accept additional "resources" and fence them off someplace they don't do damage so that the rest of your team can execute its real plan. Turning down help can damage your credibility/relationships which is what you depend on to be "allowed to be successful". It's emotions, not logic.

Or, if you really really want to, you can tell your boss they're an idiot and need to learn about Brook's law.

Agreed, that's the key line that summarizes the whole article: once proud design/tech company turns into operations/finance driven behemoth.

I didn't mean to provoke anyway by saying "crappy" ;-)

What I notice is that the nest does a really great job managing the temperature in my house and keeping it comfortable. It just works and it became a default expectation. We had to go back to the old thermostat after an issue with our furnace, after which I started getting a ton of complaints from everybody about too cold/too hot. It's a great example of a technology that works really well.

The Nest thermostat is really great, a huge leap over crappy manual thermostats and the expensive "high tech" ones that others in the traditional industry have tried to create (bryant, looking at you).

BUT when I purchased this, this is exactly what I was afraid of. I think this is a huge problem for the software industry in general: most companies don't last. As a customer you can't place your trust in them as they'll be gone in 5 years.

Don't bother explaining why it's wrong. Suggest something better.

tldr; a rambling article about narcissism (ironically)

He misses the point by a mile, as do his twitter correspondents. If we're to indulge him let's ask if the staff of the "nytimes" consider themselves "American" or if they're stuck in a time warp clinging to a 1609 "British" identity that even the British no longer recognize.

"this realization that people are operating at the best when they choose how they want to work"

But what if how they want to work is "Dark Scrum"... or some kind of Agile religion, or waterfall.

Most Western societies are able to operate healthcare systems that don't have this problem - and this "solution" is often advocated as a panacea for the coordination issues they face due to centralization.

Where exactly is the "strong free-market" here?

So .. a bizdev guy who has never found any business problems and a PE guy who has never discovered any PE problems? Either you're overthinking it or just doomed: you don't have a team.

The priest's friends and whoever paid the bribes would be found not guilty. Pretty lucrative job, being a priest and administering god's justice. The 1/3 didn't pay, or the priest didn't like them.

Here we go again, getting confused between SFO/Startup Bro culture and the majority of the productive software industry.

The problem here is the police, not the neighbors. Why were they arrested? Did they really break the law? If not, then how were these police trained? If they did break the law, then who is making these nonsense laws?

China's achievements are incredibly impressive, and will likely slow down as it gets closer to parity with Western standards of living. As for outperforming - rate of growth/catching up: sure - but not (yet) in most other regards.

Some engineers don't want to use ruby, in some cases seeing it as "not a real programming language" (whatever that means)

The performance FUD is probably just deflection.

As DHH himself says, engineers are in short supply - so their preferences tend to get listened to.

Not going to work in low density regions like all of the USA aside from the coasts. Flying is less polluting per mile than driving btw. Also, why don't the rest of us get together and punish your choices?

So they didn't ask you to point out the problems in a more considerate way?

Instead, they just asked you to stop pointing out the problems?

Were these problems nitpicks, personal preference (as some here are apparently assuming) or were they objectively technical issues?

Ok, here's what I got from this - Roman can't spell and doesn't understand how to code in C. Fail?

Hardware needs that complete ecosystem that Grove is talking about. Software doesn't need that quite so much, at least in terms of the comparable capital intensive activities.

You're saying that Germany doesn't control the ECB I think. So I guess it's just coincidence that ECB policy has been consistently and primarily in favor of German economic interest, and has been an unmitigated disaster for everybody else. The trade imbalance is in part a symptom of this.

The mere existence of this "buffer" increases the likelihood of a layoff ... oh "aerospace", might be a while.

WW II didn't cause that, it was the effects of the war including the subsequent dismantling of the British Empire and its trade barriers. In other words, a precursor to globalization.

Yes it is: Germany controls the ECB.

They're talking about consumption not standard of living. It's possible to imagine a future where everybody will get that superior standard of living but with far less consumption required to support it - innovation and creativity (and fewer wasteful wars) will deliver that future.