hectorlorenzo

Sorry to hear that, best of luck looking for a new job. I hope the following comment does not come off as offensive.

Do you think that this work that had to be done was business critical? My experience while working at FAANGs is that everyone was working a lot but a sizable number of projects were vanity/promotion/keep-em-distracted projects. People imagine overstaffed companies as full of idle engineers but I've seen instances of very busy overstaffed companies working on the wrong projects (migrating to Go because, using Protobuffs for a simple eCommerce API that does not need it, creating a component library for a small internal tool that will not grow much, building your own chat system, etc).

Wouldn't upper management be in charge of taking the decision of replacing upper management with AI? Or is this only applicable to small companies (or workers' cooperatives) that had access to these functions from their foundation?

Yes, this. I've recently been reading a lot about OSR and indie zine-like TTRPGs. Almost indiscriminate link-clicking seems to be the safest way to end up in the weird zones of any hobby. The beauty of it (in this specific case) is that the farther you go from mainstream, the more you encounter people who create stuff. Weird, wonderful stuff.

Tangentially related, I recently learned of Alec Garrard and his model of the Temple of Jerusalem (through "The Rings of Saturn" by W.G.Sebald). He spent roughly three decades building it: https://craftsmanshipmuseum.com/artisan/alec-garrard.

> Even when the model was already populated with over 4000 handmade clay figures, there was still work to be done. Alec admitted that it would take many thousands more before it would accurately represent the number of people who occupied the temple and surrounding area. Each clay figure is about 1/2” tall, dressed in correct period costume, and took about 3-1/2 hours to make. All told, there were 32 different versions of Jesus that could be found in various parts of the model.

Please do not spread rumours.

What do you do when both are happening at the same time?

As nice as this sounds, I do not think I follow. Can you elaborate?

This question might be a binary over-simplification. We currently do not have the tools to measure who is "the most competent people running a business". Markets are never pure so I do not think that the current situation (predominantly white men in boards) is the outcome of rational optimisation over the years. If anything, free market proponents should welcome these laws as a way to experiment with different variables to empirically determine what's the best way to run a business.

I also do not think that (most) proponents of a balanced representation favour diversity over competency. Speaking for myself, I do believe (from experience) that having diversity in a team results in more resilient, efficient, and "optimal" decision-making. Again, we do not have sufficient tools to prove that empirically, so we better A/B test the hell out of it :)

I agree.

I don't think I ever said that passing this law was correct or that governments were free from bias. I just questioned whether it was a good idea to let markets make decisions and expect them to be optimal, or whether optimising for competitive advantage is inherently good.

Get it, then I think disagreement runs deeper than I thought. As a sibling comment mentioned, I believe that markets are meant to serve humans, not the other way around.

Edit: typo

I understand now. However, I think it unfairly assumes that markets are run (or executed?) by rational actors that always make optimal decisions without getting bogged down by biases or passed down wisdom.

How would that happen? I'm curious because I've never seen markets as being specially good at enforcing policies that (some or most) parts of society see as morally good (as vague as these terms are). For example, markets never managed to prevent child labour (they still don't!), we had to pass laws to enforce them in Western countries.

What are your specific thoughts on how would this process unfold?

Edit: On a second read of the article and parent comment, I understand it now as an ironic take on a flawed justification for the law that tries to satisfy everyone ("We're doing this for the markets!").

Although I really like the idea of 18th century aristocratic Bros. Bumping gloved fists, downing full kegs of claret, and quoting Thomas Hobbes instead of Simon Sinek.

I just recently came across these two videos.

Using Rust For Game Development by Catherine West: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLntZcp27M

Counter-rant from Jonathan Blow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk

I'm unsure I've understood the premise: does it all boil down to "the morally incompetent considers problems as personal challenges, while the morally competent considers them as a societal responsibility" (which of course it includes him/herself)?

It reminds me of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Borges [1]. If I re-write Ulysses from scratch, line by line, is it still the same book? Is mine better than Joyce's?

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...

He is not afraid to break these social norms either.

Usually Net Neutrality is not about having or not political leanings, but making sure that everyone has equal access to internet regardless of them (as far as I understand it).

> Net Neutrality is the basic principle that prohibits internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites you want to use. [1]

1) https://www.freepress.net/issues/free-open-internet/net-neut...

“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”

- Woody Allen

Some really weird behaving fishes.

If in 2 years the building collapses, and they find out that one of the welders had no certificate, how would the public react? How would you react? (even if the collapse had nothing to do with the welding itself)

Well, I guess that workers demonstrating publicly against your own policies doesn't do wonders for public image.

Because no one in big corps would then fight for these kind of issues. Amazon changing parts of its business to be more sustainable is probably more impactful than dozens of NGOs at full speed.

"'100 million people rally to implement measures to prevent climate change'. Well, I guess that 7.43 billion people are ok with climate change..."

As far as I know, this is not true. The person I got the email from is still working at Amazon.

Karma-eager people, or karmeagers.

This is a great read, but I'm slightly uncomfortable with the thought of technological progress as a deterministic process and of ourselves as mere victims of it. I think (and I'm not alone in this, Judy Wajcman and other people doing social studies of technology have written extensively around the subject) that social norms and habits can shape technological development as much as it shapes them, so maybe that's a starting point?

I recommend reading "Social Acceleration: Ethical and Political Consequences of a Desynchronized High-Speed Society" as a starting point, and possibly then "Pressed for Time" by Judy Wajcman.

I think my code has improved quite a lot since I've been thinking empathically about current and future colleagues. If you keep in mind that this code will be read by other people, and if you really want them not to have a terrible time decyphering it, you start being more careful with naming, structure and syntax.

So yes, social empathy is important to craft great code.

Have you ever lived in a Mediterranean country?