clavalle

Slightly lower than one of MIT's alumni doing the same.

It's telling that Jane Street stayed away from the whole mess despite the connection.

Counter proposal: I'll learn to relax

'Cannot' being the operative word.

'Did not' does not necessarily mean 'cannot'.

Writing simply helps me to think clearly. So journaling is just a way for me to crystalize my thoughts. And it works great for that. It also helps me see patterns I might not be aware of over time.

Mine tends to be stream of consciousness, just one level above brain-dumping on scratchpaper, until I hit on something I want to explore. Then it becomes more structured (and sometimes ends up very structured indeed in mindmaps or various project folders, etc).

It works great for me. I get ideas down in useful forms. I don't have to continually consciously think on ideas to keep them alive, reducing cognitive load. I have a tool for effective reflection. I feel like it's helped me lead a more intentional life. Simple as that.

Not only that, software is a unique sector in which a lot of the capital is in the talent.

These companies aren't laying off labor that have few choices. They're budding off knowlegible competetors.

If these folks can't find a well paying job it's a very real option to create a well-performing company.

Nothing is more expensive than cheap talent.

Besides, the market is still super tight and shows very few signs of loosening.

What we're seeing is that the old-guard companies have hit their autumn years. But companies being companies autumn could last for decades.

I think we had too much talent dedicated to some of these sectors anyway. There's a lot of interesting problems out there that could use more attention.

I have personally been approached by internal recruiters for a position just after the company very publicly laid off people with my title and are going after 'middle management'.

I declined.

I'm a software architect but I strongly believe that the organization of people is as important as the organization of software. So architects and principals, to be the most effective, should have management authority. Middle management, if done well, makes or breaks mid to large software companies. An organization that doesn't deeply respect that role isn't anywhere I want to be.

Are there any journalism democratization efforts we should be aware of?

An organization who has incentives aligned with providing journalism for the people?

"Don't get me started on having to fill out sections in a form that are just resume sections"

I haven't been laid off but I've been dipping my toe in the past few months because I'm a bit bored in my current role.

The process is much more fiddly than it needs to be. When I run into those 'fill this out again for our system' forms, often times it's after a long day and I will just save it to come back to it later...and I never do.

I wonder how much talent mobility there'd be if someone really solved the issues of repetative job search data entry and just proving to strangers that you can excel in a role without running through an obstacle course that may or may not represent the actual job.

If they weren't here, we wouldn't be able to talk about it.

I'd be interested to know if we're in an element rich vein of the wider universe or if all the good stuff is more or less evenly distributed?

Right. And the tech unemployment rate still went down despite layoffs up to November's doorstep. There's no data on November, yet. Will be interesting if November arrests that downward trend at all.

- First thing in the morning, standups followed by coaching sessions (basically pair programming or code review) for sticky problems

Then it varies.

- 1:1s

- project or program (in the sense of both code type programs and long term direction programs) planning or status meetings with various stakeholders, especially POs, PMs, and execs

- digging into particularly difficult or odd code or set up issue that's lead to it being escalated

- meetings with vendors and doing a write up of their product's potential and costs

- creating rough project or program outlines with rough budget estimates for execs

- creating design documents on projects or programs that have a bit of traction

- meeting with other architects to collaborate on wider designs or just share items of interest

- going on HN to tell strangers about my day-to-day life

- create fully functional POCs or reference implementations

- doing post-mortems

- examining code from a potential acquisition or quizzing their engineers

- getting on meetings with clients or potential clients to give them a warm fuzzy that a tech person with an impressive sounding title is listening to show we're taking something Very Sersiously and find them to be Very Important.

- regular Open Office Hours for anyone in the company to drop by and chat about anything (lots of good stuff comes from these -- highly recommend)

- fielding various requests and questions from Security and Ops other teams and whatnot.

- Having What-If meetings with sales or execs (danger! There be dragons here! But, with Sales especially, a really good way to figure out what customers are clamoring for)

- Preparing talks and technical outreach

- Exploring New Shiny Things (though I tend to do this more on off-hours just because there are fewer interruptions and urgencies).

In terms of microservices in particular, I tend to ask a lot of questions about data and work flow, how someone has defined a domain or domains, making sure they're not falling into the myriad anti-patterns, making sure what they're doing is going to be visible, tractable, and play nice with the rest of our services including following our common patterns and idioms (and when I run into idioms that they might not know about I document them and make them easy to find) and not create any unpleasant surprises down the road, and that they have given appropriate thought to evolution of the service and forward and backward compatibility during that process.

Martin Fowler is by far my most influential resource on microservice architectures and doing domain driven design well. But I would strongly suggest literally reading everything you can find on the subject. Mostly because it's many subjects in a trenchcoat. Seeing it all from a few different angles will better arm you for whatever comes your way.

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

and

How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business by Douglas W. Hubbard

Really changed the way I approach decision making.

With all of the options these days, I'd wonder about the characterization of 'intrensic'.

Just like when you step out of the ocean in wet trunks you reduce ocean levels.

The only shocking things about this layoff at Cisco, which happen about once a year, is that it didn't happen during their normal time in the summer and that the numbers are so modest.

Truly intelligent machines. Got it.

Purpose is made, not found.

The meaning of life is to create meaning.

Now let's get to the real question; How do you live with mindful intention? How do you create the meaning you want?

This is the hard part:

First, you have to know where you are starting from. You have to be honest with yourself. What do you value? Not 'what do you feel like you /should/ value?'. What do you /really/ value? This takes dispassionate introspection. Recall your physically manifested behavior over time. How would someone observing you describe how you spend your time? What conclusions would they come to about what you value based on your behavior? It's important not to have selective memory here. Your mind will rebel. You'll probably tell yourself nice stories about your motivations or circumstances that explain away behavior that isn't, at first blush, ideal. Just be honest. Assume that the person you have been was perfectly rational and has completely fulfilled what they truly value with their behavior. What are those values?

Now, the point of that introspection isn't to beat yourself up. Watch a ton of TV? Perhaps you value a well-told story or time to relax. Spend yourself into debt? Perhaps you value living in the moment and the experiences that spending brings. It's ok, and you probably should, put the best possible spin on the values that motivate the observed behaviors. This is your baseline. These are your current values that you actually hold. This is your current purpose and meaning. Don't like them? Change them. Like the values but not how they currently manifest in your behavior? Change the behaviors, but don't ignore the values and motivations that lead to those behaviors.

It doesn't get easier from here. While going through that exercise you may have had some negative emotions. Guilt. Denial. Shame. Confusion. Envy of an imagined self living a better life. You may have imagined 'better' ways you could have behaved. Now you have to decide, knowing what you now know about yourself and where you currently stand, which of those emotions are intrinsic and which are externally imposed. You want to keep as much of the intrinsic motivators and dump as much of the external motivators as possible. They are not always easy to tell apart. Decide what behaviors would satisfy your intrinsic motivators and work those behaviors into your life. Revisit this process often. External motivators may masquerade as intrinsic. You can tell them apart by whether these new behaviors are fulfilling over time or continue to be a painful struggle.

You'll learn to recognize Yourself over time and you won't need to look backward and pick yourself apart too much to figure out your Intent. Finding something motivating, formulating intent, and acting to realize that motivation will become just how you live. You'll be creating meaning and purpose from moment to moment.

Considering the severance, Meta might have just realeased the biggest pre-seed funded class ever.

Perhaps. And perhaps some will go and create their own companies and create more demand.

No matter how the deaths were counted in the moment, excess death counts after the fact saw an increase of 12.8% during Covid in Ontario. So, unless there was another mysterious cause of death taking out around 75,000 people a year there, the mortality rate estimates pre-vaccine were pretty spot on.

https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/sciencebrief/excess-mortalit...

It happens in the US, too.

Primarily due to badly managed privately held, for-profit care where supply and demand aren't joined up. (because it's a hospital and avoiding death is inelastic).

Can words and word structure capture all ideas?

(I'm using 'words' in a very broad sense as packets of information that can be communicated sequentially).

It's a broader and easier to answer question that covers this specific case.

Another interesting question is, are there disjoint sets of words and word structure (meaning that they cannot be 'transpiled' 1:1 into one another) that can describe and predict physical phenomena just as accurately as another? Particularly the set of words and word structure that we've come up with so far as a species?

Some recent experiments seem to suggest, yes, there are combinations of variables that can fully characterize certain physical phenomena that cannot be translated into our current understanding. This means there can be parallel and equally valid and precise models of reality.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-022-00281-6.epdf?shar...

AI will enhance middle management and make things easier, but people problems are complex in a way that AI is a loooooong way off from understanding.

Once they figure that out, it's time for us to kickback, relax, and enjoy the ensuing utopia and/or apocalypse.

AI is far more likely to replace upper management and executive levels, especially in large corporations, since those roles are a lot more 'by the numbers' and act on probabilities rather than specific, nuanced, and complex instances.

They have one lever, and it isn't innovation.

Not finishing my degree.

I started a business which was successful and dropped out a year before I finished my ChE degree. I had decided that I didn't want to go into oil (which was the most likely career path) and that I really enjoyed writing software and I was making more than I would as a ChE, so why bother? I've been writing software ever since.

However...not having graduated has bothered me more than I thought it would.

I have a letter from the Dean allowing me back as long as I go full time and finish as a ChE. It's been over 20 years so I'm not sure how much weight it carries now, but I doubt it's something I'll ever take the time to do. Looking back, it would have been better to tap down my enthusiasm temporarily and just finished up. Back then a year seemed like such a long time.

They're also smart enough to understand that this means this is a phase change into maintenance mode.

If the replacement takes 6 months to get up to speed the replacement is certainly not a very good developer

I think you're mistaking 'becoming a contributing member of the team' for 'contributes at the level of the developer that left'.

That's the trouble with playing a game with changable rules, isn't it?

Ignoring advantages because of the rules you wish were in place seems like a great way to consistently lose. Then how do the rules get changed?

You don't intend on ever becoming an aged meat bag?