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I have been seeing different people reporting different results with different tasks. Watched a live stream that compared GPT-5, Gemini Pro 2.5, Claude 4 Sonnet, and GLM 4.5, and GPT-5 appeared to not follow instructions as well as the other three.

At the moment it feels like most people "reviewing" models depends on their believes and agenda, and there are no objective ways to evaluate and compare models (many benchmarks can be gamed).

The blurring boundaries between technical overview, news, opinions and marketing is truly concerning.

I did read that and it doesn't change what I said about your comment on HN, I was calling out the fact that you are making a very bold statement without having done careful analysis.

You know you have a significant audience, so don't act like you don't know what you're doing when you chose to say "TLDR: I think OpenAI may have taken the medal for best available open weight model back from the Chinese AI labs" then defend what I was calling out based on word choices like "conclusions" (I'm sure you have read conclusions in academic journals?), "I think", and "speculation".

> TLDR: I think OpenAI may have taken the medal for best available open weight model back from the Chinese AI labs.

That's just straight up not the case. Not sure how you can jump to that conclusion not least when you stated that you haven't tested tool calling in your post too.

Many people in the community are finding it substantially lobotomized to the point that there are "safe" memes everywhere now. Maybe you need to develop better tests that and pay more attention to benchmaxxing.

There are good things that came out of these release from OpenAI but we'd appreciate more objective analyses...

Why is this impossible? If the LLM has effectively seen all the code that could lead to that trace, all it has to do is to pick the bits out that has the highest chance to map to it right?

Is it a new marketing strategy to start by saying you're "incredibly cynical" about something that you're going to say the exact opposite about, perhaps to mask arguments with little rigor?

That's a fundamentally biased attitude though. It's not very different from saying: "oh, that guy's got tattoos, I'm not going to engage because he's probably a gangster."

Unless someone has proven to you that they are not trustworthy, you choosing not to listen is a... personal choice at best. So don't try to chalk it up like if it's not presented in a certain way that's to your taste it's not real science and/or it's fake news.

> and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows.

Well, a lot of economists, including one Nobel Prize winner (Paul Krugman) have commented on this being a bad idea for the economy...

On the off chance that those people who are supposed to know what they are talking about are all wrong and haven't thought about it being some genius diversion tactics -- it's generally still a pretty bad idea for a government to effectively ask everyone to "tough it out" and "just trust me bro".

It's really disappointing that people are actually trying to theorize this as some kind of genius plan. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the amount of irreparable damage they have already done to regular folks is unacceptable (uh... I'm sure some nutters out there think that DOGE is keeping track of all the damages they have done and will pay everyone once their genius plans have worked out).

That kind of logic really amazes me.

That's a great article and a lot of the comments seem to resonate with the article. But somehow this is disappearing from the front page faster than anything else, it's hard not to think that "this is bad for business, so it must go"...

Tangentially related, I feel that SWEs who claim that they are more productive with AI haven't actually demonstrated with real examples of how they are actually more productive.

Nobody I follow (including some prominent bloggers and YouTubers) claiming productivity increase is recording or detailing any workflow or showing real world, non-hobby (scalable, maintainable, readable, secure, etc.) workflows of how to do it. It's like everyone who "knows what they are doing" is hiding what the secret sauce for a competitive edge or that they are all just mediocre SWEs hyping AI up and lying because it makes them more money.

Even real SWEs in large companies I know can't really seem to tell me how their productivity is increasing, and when you dig deeper it always seem to be well-scoped and well-understood problems (which is great, but doesn't match the level of hype and productivity increase that everyone else is claiming) -- and they still have to be very careful with reviewing (for now).

It's almost like AI makes SWE brains go mush and forget about logic and data.

I don't want to comment on this without giving the source a fair go, but between knee-jerk reaction to whether or not it's time-wasting pedantry and reading directly off slides without providing any real value, I find it hard to even try to make myself give it a chance. I tried skipping to the questions first to see if there is anything more valuable but it hasn't changed my mind. Would love to know if I'm missing something from people who find this valuable.

By "a lot of people with ADHD" do you include people who are also self-diagnosed?

I ask because my experience is similar to yours (I also have ADHD). Anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt: I work in software engineering, know and have worked with a lot of self-diagnosed ADHDs who make it part of their identity, while some of them probably do have ADHD, the vast majority of them feel like perfectly normal people who would latch onto any opportunity to prove that they have ADHD. (e.g. people who have a single habit that could be stimming but otherwise don't exhibit and ADHD traits saying stuff like "sorry I can't help myself because of my ADHD brain").

In contrast those I know who have been properly diagnosed don't behave like they constantly need to tell people they have ADHD. They are usually deeply interested in the condition but you probably wouldn't know unless there is a proper setting for them to disclose it (invited to talk to an audience about their experience) or if you're someone they trust.

It feels like people who have the tendency to make ADHD part of their identity just want to been seen as special and important in some way (I don't mean this negatively) perhaps because that's how they see their genuinely neurodivergent peers. They tend to have many excuses for not getting a diagnosis because they won't risk the chance of finding out that they don't have ADHD as they have already made it part of their identity.

On the uglier side, there is also no shortage of people lying about having medical conditions for clout and money on the Internet.

It's truly frightening for people who don't understand that well to be given the opportunity to mange people.

As yobbo said it much better than me, "the part that is narcissistic is believing your empathy is uniquely taking a toll on you."

It's impossible to have a conversation with people who only make reasonable-sounding statements that are irrelevant to the actual conversation. I'm out.

> I don't see anything narcissistic about being a normal human being with natural empathy for the people they work with.

I agree but that's not what I said. What I said was it's "unhelpful, or even narcissistic", for a manager to think that being empathetic as a manager is more emotionally taxing than an IC.

> Managing people does require emotional stability and self control, though.

It does. That's just being professional though. Being a good coworker in general requires emotional stability and self control. I'm not sure if you're trying to argue that a manager has to have much greater ability to do those than an IC since you seem to avoid saying that directly.

> ICs tend to automatically defer to their managers. Sometimes, this leads the ICs to misinterpret tiny reactions from their managers in completely unintended ways. I find that negative, emotionally charged reactions from managers are especially likely to lead to unintended reactions from their ICs.

Uh, the reverse sounds just about as true? I'm honestly not sure what the argument there is.

> As an IC you try to not bring your personal life ups and does to the job. This is even more important as a manager.

It's unclear from what you said why it's more important as a manager -- that's just what every professional should do at a workplace. Can you please elaborate?

Anecdotal: I agree because everywhere I have worked were backend-senior heavy -- they think frontend is easy and not worth touching, and they are the ones who makes decisions on "the next shiny things" for backend things. In my last job, databse migrations happened twice in just two years and we spent a total of one year of engineering time on it -- every single table, not just some non-critical ones. When things broke or when upper management was asking why thigns were so slow, they just blamed the front-end learning engineers for not being experienced enough.

I'm not trying to make light of your experience, and I do appreciate that you care about people you have to look after deeply.

However, I also don't think what you described is professional with respect to being a manager. A manager's job is to balance the interest between stakeholders and their reports, make sure things happen as promised (and adjust scope when promise can't be met), and make sure everyone in their team grows (skill, remuneration, etc.).

> Cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc all weigh heavily on my mind when something happens to one of my direct reports.

These are not things that would affect you from being a good manager. That's just part of the job of being a manager. It's a different kind of problem, it's not necessarily heavier problems. It's unhelpful, or even narcissistic, to think that you're actually quietly taking on more burden for everyone without being appreciated.

You should absolutely have empathy as a manager, but if your empathy is weighing on you instead of enabling you to be a better manager, then you're probably not doing a very good job as a manager.

> Not asking for pity, but being a manager has a heavy emotional toll if you have even the slightest bit of empathy that I don't think most ICs appreciate fully.

I disagree. That's just an excuse of not doing what you should be doing as a manager: manage things. See above.

If you are an empathetic person, if you work in a team where people have/had "cancer/long-term illness, death in the family, miscarriages, etc.", then it's emotionally just as taxing whether you're an IC or a manager. In fact, if you can't manage your emotions and get what needs to be done done (damage control, repriortization, etc. to get things shipped), then you're not doing your job as a manager.

Edit: feel free to downvote if you don't agree but much appreciated if you also leave a response to say why you disagree. Otherwise, I hope you feel good "punishing" people just because you feel differently but don't actually have a concrete argument against.

> there is a LOT of activity at the manager level that you never see and therefore don't often think about when you are an IC.

That's what most bad managers I have worked tend to overestimate -- they think they are doing real work tanking the team from "bad" things when they are actually the one not communicating with the team and just cave to upper management every time when protecting your team really counts.

Most people I have worked with are aware that their average-to-good managers have to deal with things that they don't see, and when that understanding is mutual and respectful, then great work happens. When the manager always thinks that they are shielding bad things (when they are not) and the team isn't getting the communication they need, that's when bad things happen (and the manger ends up getting promoted and the rest of the team gets laid-off anyway).

> Case in point: trying to retain good people.

It's actually not that difficult: just be honest to people, treat them fairly, and be considerate.

If you spend more time arguing/reasoning why they don't deserve to be promoted/get a raise than thinking about/making planning for ways to get them promoted or fight for their salary, you're just a bad manager. Sorry (assuming they even have the awareness) is not good enough when you have screwed up someone's career progression by half a year, let alone more. It happens too often.

It baffles me that people think there is some sort of art or science in retaining good people. If good people want to try something completely and they can only do so by leaving, then let them. Otherwise, if good people want to leave it's always the company's fault (bad managers, insane colleagues who hurts culture, and many other bad things).

> Good people often times end up wanting to leave for a variety of reasons ranging from ludicrous to 100% legitimate. They often announce they are leaving to their direct manager and maybe one other person (E.g. head of another team they work with etc).

Good people usually want to leave because the company is not treating them well enough, it's as simple as that. If they leave for reasons that you can't comprehend that doesn't make them "ludicrous", you're just not good enough to understand what's really pushing them to leave.

Bad people, on the other hand, would leave for a variety of reasons, including ludicrous ones.

Assuming we are on the same page, good people are also often professional. So of course they will announce they are leaving to their direct manager, that's just the right, professional thing to do. Not sure what you point is there.

> Given that they are good and worth keeping, this triggers escalations, meetings with the employee and between managers, senior managers and HR. In the best case, this leads to a successful retention.

Successful retention in this case is very rare (unless they're they are not as good as you think they are). By the time good people want to leave, they have already made up their mind and it would take some pretty drastic changes or life-changing kind of money to keep them. It's rare that companies can make drastic changes like that when they have already screwed up for so long so that good people are pushed out. It's also rare that, by the time someone has made up their mind on leaving, that they genuinely want to stay even if the (new) price is right -- most management doesn't realize that the implication is that they have treated people unfairly for too long, and people are not just going to forget about it when you offer them more money now (what about all the time they have been underpaid?).

> However, the only people that know any of this happened are the employee and the manager tier. The other employees have zero idea any of this occurred unless someone shares/mentions it. I point this out b/c multiple times as an IC, I thought "no one will care if I leave b/c I never see managers actively trying to keep people".

That's just bad company policy and most likely management is silencing people for some downright stupid reasons. If good people are leaving, their leaving usually already says it all, and silence actually makes other good people even more suspicious of the management.

In most cases, other employees who have good working relationship with good people actually have a better idea than management. If you're talking about people who don't know/haven't worked with those good people then... they wouldn't have cared either way.

So yes, the only reason people don't know is because it's now common practice to get people leaving to agree to NDAs -- especially when they aren't just leaving on normal terms/compensation -- even when there is absolutely no reason for them to sign any NDAs. It's not because nobody wants to tell, it's because people have been scared into not talking/literally gagged.

In the end, if you're not a narcissist, why do you want anyone you're not close to care about you leaving anyway? As long as you get well-compensated where necessary, chances are the people who really care about you already know what's happening anyway.

> The point of this story is twofold: - managers do a lot of "unseen" work - it's worth researching this kind of thing if you are about to move from IC to manager.

"Unseen" is overrated in my opinion. In the context of moving from IC to manger, the word "unexpected" is more apt then "unseen".

Alternatively, if there is a lot of "unseen" work, then the manager is basically work that they aren't communicating to the reports AND their reports can't hold them accountable to those "unseen" work, which is clearly a sign of broken communication and cultural problem. You can argue about most managers don't actually see the work that good reports do equally well.

I like the article because it's very similar to the workflow that I developed while working on my first project after quitting my last job. One thing that I would add to "Be Explicit About Your Goal" is that it should be about both your goal and the user's goal. Otherwise it's very easy to hit blind spots that both you, another person, or AI will miss because of bias.

A small related rant is that many large companies with a dedicated team that works on design system don't seem to actually care much about UX. It feels demoralizing because sometimes it feels like many people are just using UX to push some other agenda.

I don't agree that you are downvoted without being offered an explanation, that's just a gross misuse of the privilege to downvote that seems to be more and more frequent on here. :shrug:

I also don't agree that donations are the only way to support Mozilla. As others have mentioned they have spent time and effort contributing to Firefox/Mozilla's projects, and many probably have advocated for the use of Firefox — all of that is value to Mozilla and the community.

I don't have any experience starting an organization, let alone one that has that kind of revenue, but as a user, whether you donate or not, if Mozilla is getting that kind of money and their track record and reputation just seems to go downhill, I'd be surprised that people who are invested in it are not upset.

> If you think people only get upset about things for their own self interest, then I wonder what you think about social justice.

That's a gross mischaracterization of what I said. If anything, I'd be really concerned if you think what you're doing is akin to "social justice", and being hostile to others is justified in the name of "social justice".

> You have a Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy in your logic.

That doesn't even make any sense.

> A novelist is successful if they reach an audience. Once they find it, if they stick with it they will be successful. If they’re lucky then they might switch up genres without alienating their existing readers. But not everyone gets away with that.

Sure, there are some people who do that and not everyone "gets away with" not sticking with what made them "successful" (what is "successful" in this context anyway and how do you measure it? Wealth? Fame? Cultural impact?).

What you said isn't wrong, but there are also plenty of counter examples to what you said. So I'm not sure what you're trying to say. That looks more like a Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

Nobody is forcing successful novelists with an audience to continue and stick with things. Nobody is focusing unsuccessful novelists to keep going either. You make it sound like they don't have a choice so somehow everyone has to recognize and exercise "social justice" by speaking out for them.

> A software developer has one audience and they don’t get to chose it. You and I write for our coworkers. If they don’t like it we have three choices. We can leave, we can change, or we can gaslight our coworkers that our code is just fine and they are the problem.

> It’s the latter I’ve seen too much of, and even if you’re not a victim of it you’re allowed to be incensed for those who are. In fact you’re obligated to do so.

I don't disagree with any of that and I have worked with a fair share of the gastlighting kind of software engineers that you pointed out -- much too often and much too long, and they are usually very senior engineers with authority that end up literally destroying teams.

However, none of that justifies the hostility in your initial comment and that's the only point I'm trying to make. I have worked with people who are capable of writing well-structured code for others that delightful to read and maintain. If you haven't then I hope you will some day.

Anyway, at this point I'm thinking that you should just "get to the fucking point with a little bit of artistic flair", and you are probably thinking the same in reverse. Let's just leave it there.

I see where you are coming from but that's unnecessarily hostile.

> There’s a difference between simplifying a concept and stating it plainly.

You are right, but they are not mutually exclusive.

The analogy you used with novel, short story, and poem/haiku also doesn't demonstrate your point: it's not like you can compress any novel into a short story, let alone a poem. If you're into games, try equating AAA-quality 3D games to novel, high-resolution 2D games to short stories, and pixel art games to haikus: it doesn't make sense and it's ridiculous.

I respect that you are passionate about the medium you choose, but what you claimed about novels and poems, as per your own words, "they are both wrong" at best. Don't generalize your personal experience to everyone else, there are kind, hardworking people out there writing novels and poems who love short stories just as much -- maybe what you need to do is to find those people instead of spewing your unwarranted anger over them.

Sometimes one word is enough to explain something, I had no problems understanding that, and the rest of the comments indicate that too, so it was probably not a "shallow expression" like you claim it to be.

I agree that "you're that experienced here and you didn't understand that" isn't necessarily kind. But that comment is clearly an expression of frustration from someone who is passionate about something, and responding in kind could lead to a more fruitful discussion. "Shallow", "cheapen", are very unkind words to use in this context, and the intent I see in your comment is to hurt someone instead of moving the discussion and community forward.

I find that question ironic.

There are companies whose product is high-quality mock interviews. I wouldn't be surprised by that number of interviews in just a year and it can easily be more than one candidate per day.

Edit: there are also recruitment agencies with ex-engineers that do coding interviews, too.

> I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. When you hate your job, no matter how much you try to put up with it, there comes a point where you’re mad as hell and you’re just not going to take it anymore. So, maybe this is the right moment to reflect: is it time to go?

I think only people who have stayed long enough would feel that way: and chances are by the time you feel this way it's because of external things that you can't change, and internal (values) that you are unwilling to adjust/sacrifice.

If you get to this point then you should probably just go and _maybe_ leave the reflection till later -- at that point it's too far beyond the point to reflecting on whether you should go or not.

> For example, if you’ve already become a so-called “senior” developer at Company A, and then you apply for the same job at Company B, you may find that their definition of “senior” is rather different, and that you don’t meet it. You’re a victim of title inflation: the currency of “senior” has become devalued.

Keep in mind that there are companies that do the opposite: they make you feel like you are not worth as much so that they can underpay you as much as possible, and only start throwing money at you when they are scared that you may leave and your leaving can have substantial impact on the company.

If you have never worked at places like that before I'm happy for you but know that there are lots of these places out there that manage to keep very bright people. These places typically have people with very high IQ in execs/management and they do everything to convince you that everything is about the mission (usually a genuinely worthwhile mission). They have long selection processes that weed out those who are _only_ technically capable -- they only hire those who are technically capable, will truly believe in the mission, kind, and subservient. They typically have long interviews (2 months + regardless of what level you are) and ask very probing questions (many would find uncomfortable even if they end up accepting the job) during topgrading so that they can identify whether or not they can hold you hostage.

The result is they will make you feel incompetent forever, and you will only realise how good you actually are when you finally have the courage to step outside -- by that time you will likely have been paid "unfairly" for years and have your career hampered.

> In particular, the HR department is not your friend. They’re not your enemy, necessarily, but they exist to protect the company from you, and not vice versa.

I find these kind of literal explanation of situations pretty pointless. When you are in a tough situation, and assuming that you are reasonable, then the party that isn't protecting your interest is literally your enemy. If the company wants to fire you and HR is doing that anyway (sometimes even doing everything they can to silence you even know they know it's unreasonable or even unlawful), then they're your enemies.

Only people who are reasonable and care for others will read statements like "they're not your friend but also not your enemy" as something meaningful, think about it and make their own lives hell. I wish people would stop giving this type of pseudo advice to people like they are presenting a balanced view when it really isn't.

"Hey, it's literally their job to screw you over to protect the company even when it's morally wrong, so don't blame them for just doing their job, OK?" Does that sound reasonable to you?

> In particular, you should give your boss a chance to change your mind—or, at least, you should let them feel that they’ve had that chance.

Making them feel like they have that chance is fine, giving them that chance is actually bad advice. If you have made up your mind to leave and made preparations, hopefully you have a job lined up if you're not retiring, then don't give them any chance and don't cave in to more money (if they can pay you substantially more that also shows that they have been underpaying you knowingly and your manager haven't been looking out for you anyway -- the relationship is already broken and you will just fell more miserable if you accept it). The whole point of this article is that you already hate it and want to go, so don't think twice and make it more difficult for yourself.

Hey, I'm really sorry that you feel this way. I happen to know a lot of people who were/are in similar situations as the one you described, many of whom I have worked with for at least a few years, some are very young and some are a bit older.

They all knew that they had to leave because they were feeling miserable but they didn't because they were scared of not being able to find a job elsewhere. What didn't help was that management threw just enough money at those who're perceived to be performing well and made it even harder for them to leave.

Eventually layoffs happened. Almost all of them ended up finding better work conditions and substantially higher salaries elsewhere except for the most senior ones who have been around for a long time. The problem with the very senior (staff +) engineers is mostly only a salary problem because (relatively) they have been too loyal and don't have the track record to convince people that they are worth as much as they claim they do. The problem is that the longer you stay, the more this is a problem -- so if you see somewhere that you can take a small pay cut to get the opportunity to grow and be happier and have more room to grow, you probably should start trying now.

I can't comment much about your situations but at least in my country engineers are relatively well-paid -- yet people still hesitate to leave because of family, or mortgage or... whatever reasons they can come up with. Those are usually just excuses in my opinion -- nobody is asking you to ditch everything today without a plan. There is certainly a chance that you can get a job elsewhere and end up not passing probation, but that's up for you to gauge.

At the end of the day there is really nothing stopping you from trying except for yourself and irrational thoughts. Staying at the same job for too long is a risk in itself, it doesn't stop them from giving you a month of notice now and you'll be gone next month -- it doesn't matter if you're hardworking or if you think you know some parts of the system better than anyone. No matter how hard you try, emotions do leak slowly over time even if you're very careful to not show them, so be careful about that too.

It may sound harsh but if it has been going on for a long time and you are not willing to take (calculated) risks and make small, temporary sacrifice for a potentially better future, you are basically just victimizing yourself.

Start by applying for jobs and interview. If you think this management will likely get rid of you because of AI then that's more reason to go somewhere else that may value you more. Nobody knows how well AI will get compared to any of us, but if you're worried now then do something about it: expand your skill set horizontally, actually look for other opportunities regularly, _connect_ with people so that you're not just a number on a payroll, etc.

I wish you all the best and find meaning and hope in what you do soon!

I agree with you that anyone who don't get the appreciation they deserve should leave and make it painful for management. But I think whether or not you should keep talking is highly situational. If you have a manager/boss who genuinely cares about you (hard to tell most of the time from personal experience), then the next paragraph of the article makes sense:

> Instead, you should make sure that if you’re unhappy about something, your boss knows it pretty much as soon as you do.

Keeping a paper trail of those discussions also help even if it's just for sanity check for your future self.

Chances are most people won't help you because most people are bystanders or cowards in those situations (anecdotal, maybe everyone I know and I are unlucky).

> I mean, everything you do on the computer is also in RAM - is that tracking too?

Uh... what do you mean? It's not like every programs has free access to the RAM and can just whatever that's in it, there are boundaries. Just because something exists in RAM doesn't mean it can be read, collected and analysed by someone else.

Also, data existing in "encrypted form" and being executed in a "trusted execution environment" mean nothing either. People whose goal is to collect the data can still decrypt it and read it, and a "trusted execution environment" basically means nothing if they whatever they get by analysing that data in that "trusted execution environment" is going to be disseminated to third parties who may or may not have the capability to use that data to identify you.

It's not nice to accuse people of freaking out over "maybe some bad acid". Even if it's "freaking out", in this case it's actually safer to "freak out" and avoid it than taking your ill-reasoned advice.

Reasonable people want people running the product they love to succeed, too. But when the equation involves obscene executive salaries, back tracking on _promises_, terrible decision that lost money, and overall just too much money to justify what's being done. The end result is what you see now: a lot of upset people and there is nothing _unfortunate_ for Mozilla.

I have a lot of trouble seeing what you are trying to defend here -- I really tried but couldn't. I find it pretty hypocritical to say that you disabled data collection while you trust them over your competitors to protect your data -- so you are saying that you trust them but you won't adjust your bottom line to help them succeed anyway?

I really mean well: sometimes you just shouldn't try to appear to be reasonable to a situation that isn't, it actually makes things worse for everyone. I used to do that and have learned some hard lessons.

I don't understanding how post ranking works. At the time of writing the ChatGPT announcement has the following stats:

- 833 points | 10 hours ago | 652 comments | 2nd

And this post the following:

- 432 points 5 hours ago | 155 comments | 6th

Also interesting is that the EA CoC post has the following stats:

- 828 points | 12 hours ago | 222 comments | 13th

Subjective opinion: the comments here are mostly positive, the comments over there is a bit of a mix. I _feel_ that it's not quite justified as with many recent posts.

The rule I have read a lot recently says if a post gets a lot of comments relative to opints then it can get flagged/deranked. Is it the number of parent comments/replies as well, does it depend on the author and commenter's points, the rate at which points and comments occur, etc.?

Thank you! It's constructive, helps the people who are making things while giving them the benefit of the doubt, keeps users safe, and educate those who have enough technical understanding on the topic.

Just personal experience, read with a grain of salt.

I don't consider myself an organised person (my calendar is chaotic, I don't clean out my inbox and use it as a pseudo to-do list with priorities, I don't have enough time and energy and constantly feel like I'm being a shit friend/family/mentor, etc.) but everyone I have worked with see me as a very organised person: I document every piece of my work in detail that others can understand, I have good estimates on tasks I'm assigned and very rarely miss deadline, I remember when important events are without needing a calendar and am always on time.

The thing is, GTD doesn't work for me. I have also worked with many mangers who tried to shove the framework du jour onto everyone and never had any success with it despite putting in a lot of effort into "meeting expectations".

The cynical me now thinks that people who tells everyone certain system work is because:

1. Someone published a popular book that managed to sell well from the business section.

2. It just happened to work for some people. Even 2 out of 10 people you meet talk about it is enough to make you think about it, now imagine 6 out of 10 managers you meet knows about that system.

3. Most managers I have met (whose jobs are to get others to get things done) don't really have time to understand you, that includes most of them who say they care about my career (they didn't, they cared about their own careers more than mine). If there is something existing they can manage you with they'll use it because when it doesn't work it's either your problem or the framework's problem, not theirs.

4. (Cynical opinion) It's mostly just a facade for people who have authority over you (especially the ones who are technically less capable but somehow moved up) to show their bosses they are doing _something_. Like the new lead designer who decided to change the company brand color or the new head of department who thinks that changing the department's name is going to invigorate everyone's passion to do better work.

One thing that I have learned from the people who are smart and productive is that they have actually spent time to continuously develop and refine a system that works for them over time. They also try new things and just move on if it doesn't.

You probably have met a lot of amazing people if you have mostly been working with others so far. Just think about what the people you truly admire professionally do -- I'd bet that they don't talk about GTD and even if they do it's just an introduction to something remotely similar to what they do and have refined over time.

I know it can be difficult at work sometimes when (whether you know at that moment or not) people are offloading their responsibilities and pressure onto you (it's particularly bad if you are a very responsible person). However, if you believe that you usually have a reasonable amount of time to get things done, just ask yourself if you have done your job well and and delivered things on time. If you have, then the problem probably isn't you or GTD or some other framework that doesn't work for you.