iamdave

Why would you joke about something like that? (https://giphy.com/gifs/YVBC4HdSpB7z2)

I've actually been working towards making an exit from tech-actually part of that preparation is lowering my living expenses because it's going to come with a substantial drop in annual income to pursue the goals I'm pivoting towards.

Which, I'm actually fine with because I'm envisioning and plotting for a substantial QOL upgrade, or at least an upgrade to the mental stress doing what I've wanted to since the start.

I've heard it too. My response is usually equally quippy:

So, you hate money or having more negotiating power? Which is it?

Sometimes the people I've deployed that at are smart enough to get the point quickly and a much more enjoyable debate can spring forth. But then there are the real wackos. The true believers who if you asked them today, would probably look you square in the eye and ask you if you were joking after you told them Joe McCarthy was dead.

The asymmetry of relational power between employer and employee/job-seeker and job-creator has gotten so bad in the American work force it should probably be studied as a real economic indicator.

I'd honestly even settle with something like a program where users can choose to enroll in these programs in some sort of test phase. Maybe put some kind of marker in the name or even on the logo that clearly informs and denotes "this product might not last long, it might go into production, it may die after 3 years, you have been warned".

There's a word for this but for some reason it eludes me (and apparently eludes google as well). At least it'd soften the blow when they inevitably roll things up on one of these so designated services.

A better comparison would be walking to the checkout line with $brand_A sugar and watching the clerk put down $brand_B and start the motions of scanning the barcode forcing you to make the active move of stopping them to say "no, I know what brand I picked out, get out of my way and let me buy $brand_A"

Simply suggesting a what works best on the side of a box can't reasonably be compared to actively halting an operation deliberately initiated by the user.

On my personal site there's something similar to this, a link to a page that technically got moved and should have a proper redirect but instead I left it and replaced the contents with a gif of the Ferris Bueller after credit scene "Are you still here? Go home".

A few people have stumbled across it and sent in humorous tweets telling me they found it. Never fails to put a smile on my face in the middle of the day.

Ahh laws and sausages ;)

Yes it did. The complaint can be found below.

https://images.law.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/398...

I propose a thought experiment:

Supposing government takes Kahn up on this modest proposal and starts levying real regulatory eyeballs on Amazon and actually end up with something on the House floor. Asking the HN crowd: how do you think this would even affect AWS as a product and would it have any sort of ripple effects to the industries and working engineers that rely on it?

Also covered by The Atlantic.

Maybe I've misunderstood what the implication was supposed to be-in lived experience when told "just get new friends" that suggestion very often stopped short of offering anything further like "use the snooze function" (which I'm already doing quite a bit) or other recommendations to better 'curate' the feed.

It very rarely feels like a recommendation to improve the experience and a call to action, instead to sever personal connections.

Who else is tired of hearing that worthless piece of advice? I don't dislike these people. Most of them I even strongly agree with-morally and ethically for the most part. Some I even disagree with. But they also wouldn't be on my "friends list" if I didn't value them enough to see their life shares and posts (Oh man Johnny took some amazing pictures of his new house, his new job must really be going well, good for him.)

But holy cow how disposable do you view people to just up and remove them out of your life because of a disagreement (cue someone replying to this post with a morally furious statement about some nebulously defined out-group they personally despise and why disposing of friends is okay because $group is bad)? Never thought I'd see the day where I actually miss pictures of babies, cats and food.

And no, this isn't an appeal to my friends to be apolitical and just stop having beliefs. I'm just fatigued with being bombarded with other people's vociferation at something $group did.

Give me a "disable memes & politics" button and I'd probably be back that day

Co-signing this statement.

Measured, it's right around ~60dB.

It's awesome.

Ouch-I'm sorry to read that she feels so beleaguered. While I can certainly empathize with that conundrum, this feels to me not so much like a problem with tech (as this was presented in the context of a deep personal exploration of one's participation as a tech worker), but perhaps an opportunity to sit back and analyze one's participation with work as a concept itself.

It brings to mind this[1] letter written by Hunter S Thompson where he said:

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life

This isn't to hold the good Doctor up as some universal bearer of truth (he had his issues that probably cast a bit of a cloud over some of his pieces of advice), but this one rings loudly for me as someone who doesn't really look at his career field of software engineering as a personal definition, but simply a vehicle that enables me to do the sort of things I want. It's a parenthetical, a sidebar, it isn't the paragraph that describes who I am as `iamdave`. But as I look at my peers (older millennials-what's the new word now? xennial? I'm 35, what am I? Weren't we once Gen Y? I feel emotionally closer to Gen X. Surely the marketers will have a new term for it come next Tuesday and we'll all be using that. Hrm...I'm getting off topic here), I see so much frustration, anxiety and anger because their careers are defining them with little further introspection than that.

Said another way: I just happen to be a software engineer, it's by no means a passion, it's not where my heart is, it's not what I wake up every day thinking about-I just happen to be good enough at it to earn a living doing it and pay for school to learn about the types of things that do excite and thrill me on a meaningful personal level. I also don't inherently dread it, nor do I loathe going to work every day-either. Granted it took a long time to get to this state of mind but my personal happiness has skyrocketed once the realization took hold.

Now I say that not to accuse or suggest that my peers are wrong for this; what's good for the goose may not be good for the gander, nor am I saying my approach is universal or should be the standard for all others-but it does seem to be a mitigating factor from the type of...can't think of a better word here...existential exhaustion this young(er) writer seems to be experiencing.

Curious to hear what others think?

--- [1] https://tranquilmonkey.com/hunter-s-thompsons-extraordinary-...

This question was almost devastating to my otherwise composed and in-the-moment mindset because it was so shockingly frank and signaled a sense of authenticity coming directly from the owner I had never seen before interviewing for tech jobs. I gave them both. He in turn gave me something in the middle, but much closer to the 'want' than I expected. What was more unexpected was how quickly I gave him numbers-they weren't just random numbers, it was a range that I had decided for myself would be the moonshot salary and "thanks but I'll pass" salary floor.

It was definitely a first being asked such a critical question in such a tactical way-I appreciated it for what it was.

That job lasted for four years until acquisition. We all walked away happy with the accomplishments made, that owner and I are still great friends to this day.

Consider me a bit incredulous of that argument.

I guess, as a man of color I'm hesitant to create some sort of ranking system as to "who's getting whipped harder" as a metric when it comes to racial discrimination of all its permutations.

I sincerely hope this isn't an intimation that Asians are somehow immune from forms of racism or racially charged behavior?

Would you be able to clarify this a bit? Maybe I've misunderstood you.

Even though in many cases, I would otherwise be in complete agreement with the core argument being made. The vitriol and vociferation is vexing though (sorry about that).

For all the shade I throw in its direction, the 'snooze' and 'unfollow' features have been more than welcome additions to Facebook as far as I'm concerned.

Gotta be honest, I never thought I'd see the day where "First day of school" pics and statuses actually get engagement from me--they're so much more pleasant and calming than "($CONSERVATIVE_PERSON| $LIBERAL_PERSON | $GROUP | $PARTY ) DID A THING, I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT IT, AND YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR ABOUT IT".

I ask that question that specifically because the latter I have been told point blank is definitely asshole behavior. To which I say "it depends". Standing up for your principles and not capitulating to someone arbitrarily projecting their expectations onto you? That's not asshole behavior. That's standing up for yourself. Some seem to think otherwise.

Letting your principles take place of basic tact, dignity and respect for others? Different story. Some still even in this regard...think otherwise.

So how are we defining "asshole" tendencies here? Seems to me just as abitrary as "culture fit"

Tangent: is it recency bias or some other unstated bias I may be unaware of, that there appears to be an increase in completely reasonable, and in-no-way inflammatory comments being downvoted for no ascertainable reason going on in the last few weeks?

And so your first response to engage this is to immediately play political-word-association and tie this service up with the worst elements of the "PC" divide, because of how some other groups, not even involved in the discussion right now, deploy bad-faith debate tactics?

That doesn't seem at all any more helpful than whatever it is you're portending to have an issue with, at the core of a service like this.

You've also described the quote as a 'reductionist view of the issue'. What issue? The decentralized archiving of content that some in a specific group of a certain segment of online denizens have deemed objectionable? Isn't this just proving exactly the point of the quote you're taking issue with? Where is the rationalization?

How did you come to this conclusion? I'm curious what that logic ladder may look like.