HN user
Whether or not your manager is capable of helping you shape your career is an open question, for sure. But 20 people, over an 18-year career, and not a single one of them bring it up in a 1:1? And, oh okay, all those managers have worked at the same company? Seems like maybe a culture problem. I've had plenty of managers in sub-FAANG enterprises bring it up unprompted.
From a game-theory perspective, if players rush the field with AI-generated content because it's where all the advantages are this year, then there's going to be room on the margins for trust-signaling players to advance themselves with more obviously handspun stuff. Basically, a firm handshake and an office right down the street. Lunches and golf.
The real question to ask in this gold rush might be what kind of shovels we can sell to this corner of hand shakers and lunchers. A human-verifiable reputation market? Like Yelp but for "these are real people and I was able to talk to an actual human." Or diners and golf carts, if you're not into abstractions.
Who will take the coal from the mine? Who will take the salt from the earth? Who'll take a leaf and grow it to a tree? Don't look now, it ain't you or me
This reminds me of the American Science & Surplus catalogs we used to get in the mail. Hand-drawn pictures of each product along with cheeky copy for almost all the little motors and breakers and push buttons and on and on. Sad that they stopped their mail order business.
Starts so strong with "governance structures, accountability, how their data is used, jobs being lost, etc," refutes that what we mean is some sci-fi scenario when we ask about ethics, and then ends with a sci-fi scenario: "...how do we know it will do what we want it to, and not try to subvert us and… take over the world? How do we know it will stay on humanity’s side?"
Wait, go back to the jobs! What was that about accountability?
Sectoral unions are a key to this kind of strength in labor. But the political landscape in the US, both in the form of laws already on the books and the "us vs them" mindset that polarizes workers along political lines, would make getting those kinds of unions together tough.
Not every day you click a link on HN and see Minutemen in the header image on the article. Chalking that up as a win and a sign to go do something splendidly useless with the rest of my day.
“You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.” - The Dude
I built automated tests and frameworks. You can get pretty far in a career in test automation while still learning and getting better because people perceive the code as important but the whole company doesn't (usually) fall apart if you mess something up in your code.
More important, in my experience, is to find someone tough but super knowledgeable to review your code. Try to anticipate what kind of notes you'll get if open you a PR with your code as it is, and then fix that stuff before you open the PR. Write a checklist of stuff that keeps getting picked on by better coders than yourself, print out the list, and tape it to your office wall.
Great, now I can feel inferior comparing my work to other people's failures in addition to their successes.
This person worked mornings, evenings, and weekends for a year for (optimistically) a $2400 USD annual raise and calls it passive income.
It's overlay ads, for folks who don't want to click through.
I think you’re finding arguments in what I’m saying that I’m not actually putting in there. That’s fine! I respect your point of view.
Advocating for laws that promote reasonable childhood independence benefits families where all the adults have to work more hours to get by, leaving their kids in safe but unsupervised situations more often.
I think it's smart to frame this as an anti-poverty issue. People often imagine "suburban" families falling victim to overreaching child neglect laws and enforcement. In fact poor children are separated from their families for reasons of child welfare far more often than non-poor kids. (Of course, this ends up affecting black families disproportionately.) Families are being broken up in the US for the crime of being poor.
Editing to add a link to a study detailing "Drivers of Inequalities among Families Involved with Child Welfare Services: A General Overview" for folks who find the Bar Association's article to be limited in scope.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/chi...
She, like many of the independent workers we spoke with, was also lucky enough to maintain health care coverage through her spouse.
Gotta think that if coverage wasn't set up the way it is in the US, this trend of freelancing would be through the roof this year.
Take improv classes. You’ll learn how to listen and how to carry on conversations about other people’s deals. You might even find more confidence about your own sense of humor. You’ll also make new friends, and those friends have friends and siblings and coworkers who you’ll meet and charm and be charmed by.
dibs
I use Weather Strip, which has a unique and slick interface for the upcoming week’s forecast. I’ve never seen another weather app quite like it.
LastPass, which can’t be spelled without a-l-a-s.
Half day!
HN comments tend to have an anti-leetcode tone, but that’s rooted in resentment at the reliance on those types of problems in the hiring process. The problems themselves are benign - fun, even! The contention is that your livelihood often depends on your skill in solving them.
Dam!
Good on Tyler for pressing on the advantages of Web 3.0 for artists. I didn't really find MA's answers satisfactory.
Counterpoint: Proud Boys disrupt drag-queen reading event, prompting hate-crime probe https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/13/proud-boy-d...
Given the lower odds of something terrible happening after you contract Covid if you’ve gotten your shots, isn’t it completely rational for people who’ve been boosted to take more risks? Did we expect boosted people to limit risk forever?
Tesla and SpaceX workers, if they had a union: "Nah."
“I hope he gets where he’s going.”
Said when a maniac flies by me on the highway.
(the whispered “hell” after that sentence is understood.)
Making people smile. I'm a funny, creative guy. I feel like I'm called to help other people enjoy their lives in whatever way I can. I did improv and sketch comedy for a long time and made a lot of people laugh. I work in the games industry and even when my work feels tedious or far removed from the end product, I can close my laptop at the end of every working day content that I did my part to bring a little joy to someone else's world. When I got married I put it in my vows that I'd make my partner laugh out loud at least once a day. As long as I stick to my word, it helps our relationship a lot.
Saying "it's a crying shame that it's necessary" and saying "it's not at all necessary" are two different things. In this moment, you have to at least brush up on coding concepts you don't use at your current day-job (and might not end up using at this prospective new day-job) to be able to talk through some pretty arcane problems. Right now, it's necessary.