cateblanchett

Really enjoyed this article, I like your writing style.

Re: your pro-specialist argument -

"Specialists cost more because you either need to pay more to hire them, or you need to pay for the time it takes for somebody to become a specialist. But the productivity improvements should more than outweigh the cost."

Here lies the problem. I'm not sure the productivity improvements do outweigh the cost according to the metrics businesses track and care about. the benefit to customer experience or the structural integrity of the software outweighs the cost, but that's not something business leaders are incentivized to care about in a meaningful way.

the market for artisan software is just too small

i don't think employers are going to see this guy's personal blog post and try to change company policy based on it lol. calling it a 'disservice' is hyperbolic. however, i agree that the title is a generalization

it's funny because sometimes i daydream about just 'Leaving Society' and living on a farm, as i imagine many do who have no idea what that kind of life entails. my father grew up on a farm too and he very intentionally fled to the comfort of the suburbs.

i do think there is a weird diaspora that comes from being 'technically in contact' with large swaths of people (say, your 150 person company) but physically in contact with very few, vs. being in obvious isolation (aka on a farm with just your family + known hired hand around.)

RIP to TV networks and other media entities having free online computer games. Clone-a-doodle-doo and code of the samarai were my games.

ESPN also used to have great flash games. they had one where you'd skate on the roofs of houses and one where you had a BMX game that I think had a racing version and a freestyle version.

i really want all remote companies to consider offsites a necessity

Ideal, ideal, ideal, Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom,

the article is more nuanced than that. it's not saying liberalism is bad - it's saying it needs a refresh. specifically, a more progressive refresh.

I hate bloat and feature-soup as much as the next person. But market forces will always push companies to keep adding more and more to otherwise simple products.

Anything by Douglas Rushkoff. I particularly enjoyed Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.

Another good one is Irrational Man by William Barrett. The only truly comprehensive look at existentialism I've read.

love john berryman, shout out john berryman

well to want to be 'liked' is to put yourself at the mercy of someone else's opinion of you. and to seem 'interesting' without saying much is to elicit intrigue - or mystery, so you want to seem mysterious.

i just dont entirely agree that cleverness should be classed as 'bad'. cleverness is entertaining. it's ok for things to just be fun.

i think there's an unconscious impulse to try to seem either servile or mysterious in conversations where you want to be liked or seem interesting. so it makes sense that people assume reticence to speak is a better tactic than talking a lot.

the most unintentionally meta essay ever written

Tremendous | Full-time | Fully-remote |Senior Software Engineer | Job description here: https://www.tremendous.com/careers?gh_jid=4244578004

Tremendous is an org of 50+, fully-remote, bootstrapped. We're an incentives payment platform. We help businesses pay people. Great comp.

jacqueline du pre: daniel barenboim - elgar cello concerto. it's a half hour long and it'll get you in the zone.

it's based on the documentary 'the salesman', but you don't even need to see both. they did a perfect job of parodying.

US treasury department regulations prohibit US companies from working with people and companies in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine. Unfortunately, IP geolocation is accurate only to the country level, so US companies have no choice but to block the entire country to comply with regs.

so the worst of both worlds

doesn't Amazon have a similar structure, tho? i don't know what it's actually like to work there (anyone who does feel free to chime in) but i've interviewed and from what I can tell they put a heavy emphasis on documentation. it's tough to find a bigger and more siloed company than Amazon, and it seems to work for them.

i personally can't retain any information in meetings, and i've honestly watched meeting recordings back to take notes on important info that i totally glazed over at the time. this wastes a total ~121 minutes on average, based on their estimate of time it takes to refocus after meetings.