“Who knew open source software could be so subversive?”
Me — I knew that. Power to the people.
2,105 karma · joined September 25, 2022
Me — I knew that. Power to the people.
You struggle to remember? The manager will struggle more. Unless you always want to be judged on the last couple of weeks you’ve worked, this prep makes a big difference. Get in quick before the manager forms an opinion difficult to shift.
Why would someone who is not motivated by financial gain care?
> I was motivated more by curiosity. I was never motivated by the desire for money, financial gain. I wasn't trying to do something big so that I could get a bigger salary.
— Claude Shannon
Unless you tease about toxoplasmosis.
[0] dog people
However, without active effort to build capability in strategically important areas, your weaknesses can ruin you.
It works at the personal and company level. I’m the deep thinker/researcher type. At my age, that’s all for the good because you go up through the ranks until that’s a very valuable attribute. When I was younger though, I had to work hard on time-boxing and delivering the “good enough”; skills that are still vital when planning at the large scale.
The strengths and weaknesses are indeed two sides of the same coin.
This is the existential crisis that appears imminent. What does it mean if humanity, at large, begins to offload thinking (hence decision making), to machines?
Up until now we’ve had tools. We’ve never before been able to say “what’s the right way to do X?”. Offloading reasoning to machines is a terrifying concept.
Which was obvious at every step of the journey. Google was, is, and always will be an advertising platform. Advertising was, is, and always will be the manipulation of human emotions and desires for the purpose of corporate profit. This is not a good thing! How did you ever justify this to yourself?
I’ve had recruiters push the poker machine jobs, the ad jobs, the high frequency trader jobs… You get to look at the business before taking the job; work for better people. No shade on anyone who’s there because they just need a job, but if you have a choice, pick something better.
Not disagreeing with your post in general, but the grind for medical specialists is only until 30 something. Once you are “consultant” (in Australia), it’s basically huge money with a job for life at whatever hours you want to work; almost anywhere in the world.
Don’t get me wrong, the grind until then is extreme, but it’s a weird comparison to make.
Overall, I agree that we are super privileged in the world of software.
As an Australian, I laughed heartily, and considered it just deserts for that Simpsons episode. ;-)
That’s not really true is it? If I have a building where every room has its own key, but there is also a “master key” that can open all doors; then it’s not “insecure”. You want to be pretty bl—dy careful with that master key, sure, but the idea isn’t crazy.
I think the ideas are interesting and worthy of discussion. If you want an actual credentialed economist talking about similar issues — here’s one: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-econ...
But you need to recognise that there is an “orthodoxy” and challenges to that. You aren’t going to hear the questioning of the status quo without looking outside the “establishment”. Here’s a taste (note that Yanis is old school left as far as politics goes)
“Faced with President Trump’s economic moves, his centrist critics oscillate between desperation and a touching faith that his tariff frenzy will fizzle out. They assume that Trump will huff and puff until reality exposes the emptiness of his economic rationale. They have not been paying attention: Trump’s tariff fixation is part of a global economic plan that is solid — albeit inherently risky.”
That’s not what this is about though, it’d still be nice if possible, to increase the stack size. The following is a link to “Simple Made Easy”, by Rich Hickey; which is the best talk I’ve ever seen on complexity in software and how to manage it. https://youtu.be/SxdOUGdseq4?feature=shared
How can you know this? What other communities even have such surveys?
I would expect this to be similar in any language. Anecdotally, I see the % of gay/trans/neurodivergent to be much higher in the dev community than the general population, so the numbers don’t look strange to me.
Perhaps it’s more vocal or more visible, but that would require much more analysis to enquire about cause and effect.
This does not read as a rant at all to me. Rather it seeks to highlight a problem using an example from his own work and proposes a possible solution (with a previous caveat of “I don’t know how to fix this”).
> "Code Of Standards for maintainers" in addition to a CoC
He wants maintainers to behave in some pre-determined understandable fashion. He wants some accountability, and that seems reasonable to me. This is not a “maintainers must do what I want”, this is “let’s set basic expectations” and ensure people follow them. Whatever those should be.
> in order to witch hunt people he feels "gets in the way."
B does not follow A. You are simply straw-manning here, so I have nothing to say to it other than it’s a fallacious point.