rmk

An excellent movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy. It's a heartbreaking story.

The point of the original question isn't whether products as a whole are complex and hard, it's whether an individual engineer will get to do fairly large, complex systems.

If you step back and think about it, it makes sense. The majority of companies are one-trick ponies, maybe following up with a few additional products. Incremental development is the path of least risk once product-to-market fit in a large market with high growth is achieved. As public companies (and late-stage startups or private companies) are incentivized to reduce risk, the majority of the people will be doing incremental work. The growth of the pseudo-technical managerial class in the form of Product Managers, Project Managers, and umpteen levels of mid-level managers further encourages the relative lack of 'hardcore engineering'.

At least in the US, creating the problem by voting for or encouraging QE, handing out stimulus checks like there's no tomorrow, and then turning around and playing to the crowds by attacking CEO compensation is cheap grandstanding. A little bit of honesty about how these things contribute to the problem will no doubt make any politician unelectable.

You put in the from/to airports and you are presented with a bunch of pictures.

Do you know of similar websites from other airlines/aviation enthusiasts?

One thing that should be emphasized to children is the necessity to earn a decent livelihood with a job that leaves them enough time to pursue their other interests. It is important to do something remunerative, but also balance it with occupational outlook and individual interests. Of course, individual interests can and do change over time, so they should be taken with a pinch of salt, particularly as a 16-year old.

Interestingly, caring for one's parents used to be an unpaid activity, and still is in non-industrialized countries. But there has been a successful transition to paid (albeit poorly) work as far as older parents are concerned, in industrialized countries such as the US and the UK (I do not think this is a popular phenomenon in Japan and Korea AFAIK).

This describes the majority of working age people, particularly in older countries such as the US and the UK.

For these people, if they are working at the office with others, this time represents the optimal or most likely opportunity to have some social interaction outside of family.

But having interactions outside of work is also important, and this is where 'go outside' would be helpful.

This is a pretty fucked up way of working. People can't get anything useful done if there is a mob of people on a zoom call. It's just a talkfest or more likely an opportunity for 1-2 people to dominate the conversation while the other folks tune out.

Even pair programming is a ridiculous waste of time a lot of the time, but this 'mob programming' seems to multiply the waste while achieving nothing much more useful than pairing. At least with pairing, the two people involved are building a relationship.

Phrasing the whole discussion in terms of 'metrics' to justify the common-sense conclusion that junior people need more direct supervision is clearly sugarcoating it for junior recipients for whom the message is intended.

A line manager ought to be in the trenches, handling oncall, writing some code now and then, automating the bits of drudgery away, project managing, product managing, code reviewing and generally being an engineer. None of these things have to be done all the time and to the highest level of performance, but the idea that managers delegate all of these responsibilities leads to yes-men being promoted. If, as a manager, you do none of these activities, how on earth do you evaluate your people? You become the Vladimir Putin of your team, fed horseshit by people who have agendas or loudmouths while completely missing out on the concerns of people who do the actual work, with absolutely no idea of the actual performance and problems of the team.

But I agree with your statement about companies putting the risk burden on employees and not much on themselves.

This is no different from GS and other finance companies paying out a large chunk of the compensation in 'bonuses'. If they decide to cut the 'bonuses', employees no longer have market parity and it's effectively a pay cut for them.

Of course people should be cautious about picking companies that structure compensation this way, but the expectation that has built up over the years is that the stock is as good as actual cash. Perhaps that expectation will be reset as a result of these mass layoffs at these companies.

However, one important factor is owning a home. Housing in the Bay Area is really expensive, and substandard. Therefore, you are paying out the nose for a substandard product, and will likely never own a place, even with FAANG comp. Contrast this with most other places, where you could own a (much nicer, larger, recently built) place for the same or slightly larger expense. The high house prices also cost pretty much the same or more in property taxes, even compared to low COL areas that typically have higher property tax rates.

This one is difficult to price, because you are raising your living standard by raising your housing standard for almost the same or substantially lower housing expense (it's even better if you rent and save up even more to buy a lower-priced home in the LCOL area).