Also interesting is the possibility that a 10x boost for person A might still be slower than person B not using AI.
789 karma · joined November 5, 2020
You'd be amazed just how much you can learn about someone's actual skills and experience (or lack thereof) through long-form discussion. I think we don't truly talk enough in our currently broken interview process.
Does this sentence feel incomplete to anyone else? Is it supposed to say "the most trusted software company" or is it supposed to be an emphasis (i.e. the trusted software company)?
Vercel has become a merchant of complexity, as DHH likes to say.
Same here, and I think it's because I feel like a craftsman. I thoroughly enjoy the process of thinking deeply about what I will build, breaking down the work into related chunks, and of course writing the code itself. It's like magic when it all comes together. Sometimes I can't even believe I get to do it!
I've spent over a decade learning an elegant language that allows me to instruct a computer—and the computer does exactly what I tell it. It's a miracle! I don't want to abandon this language. I don't want to describe things to the computer in English, then stare at a spinner for three minutes while the computer tries to churn out code.
I never knew there was an entire subclass of people in my field who don't want to write code.
I want to write code.
> All I know is that this is how I feel
It's written as if the person's feelings are an external force, descending upon them beyond their control. The feelings that emerge in their life are the feelings they have no choice but to feel.
I think it's the exact opposite: Nothing, not a single person or circumstance, no matter how they act (or don't act) upon me, can make me feel a certain way.
I choose how I feel. It's not always easy, but it's always true. I think the OP knows this subconsciously, as evidenced by the doubt in their very next sentence:
> I'm pretty sure there's no alternative
There are myriad alternatives, waiting to be chosen.
I don't think I've worked anywhere in the last decade where I was not part of the on-call rotation. It's been obligatory, maybe because I've worked at small-to-medium sized companies. I'm on call this week, in fact.
On-call weeks are my least favorite though. It's always nice when my rotation includes a holiday because our users are only active during normal business hours, so we never have issues when everyone's out of the office.
That said, I've also grown exceedingly tired of everyone saying, "I see an em dash, therefore that comment must have come from AI!"
I happen to like em dashes. They're easy to type on macOS, and they're useful in helping me express what I'm thinking—even if I might be using them incorrectly.
Why is there no outreach to other minorities in tech, like the Amish, for example? They are certainly more underrepresented than women in the python community.
Or how about male ballet dancers? Why isn't the python community allocating some of its resources to helping them feel seen and included?
I'm giving ridiculous examples because the whole premise is ridiculous. And my general question remains: Why devote the resources of a tech community toward one social issue/group or another? There are plenty of other outlets more suitable for doing our civic duty.
Why crusade using the resources of a technical community though? Surely it alienates the people who don't happen to align with the causes important to you.
There are myriad ways to perform your civic duty in your city. You could knock doors and encourage people to vote, for example. Why do it through a technical community?
To me it seems that some in the Rust community in particular, perhaps because they're just the most vocal, are tightly coupled to progressive, social activism.
I guess in general I just find myself wishing that political and social issues could be entirely left out of technical communities.
I recently spent 30 months trying to qualify for a promotion, earnestly striving to demonstrate that I could operate at the staff engineer level. I accepted literally every single opportunity, offered by my manager and director of engineering, to take on extra work and show that I'm staff caliber. They were both eventually persuaded that I was ready, so they authored an 18-page "promotion packet" touting my many accomplishments—the marketing component you describe. This document was then presented to an anonymous promotion committee who, after two weeks of consideration, rejected my promotion.
I am now channeling every ounce of my energy toward becoming my own boss. They have unwittingly started an unquenchable fire in me, and I eagerly await the day I can tender my resignation and tell them just how much they didn't deserve me.
It's right there, next to the empathy they have for their paying customers.
If you're planning to adopt, broadcast it via your social network as much as possible. If you can avoid going through an adoption agency, you'll only have to pay for the legal work ($7,000 - $10,000).