mhss

From all possible concerns, "giving access to anthropic/openai" to your "secret sauce" is the least important one for 99% of the companies out there.

No, is not way better to simply write the code yourself. Most of the code is written faster and better with Claude Code or equivalent. Very niche code is better written by hand. Even then, you're probably better off nudging something like Claude Code in the direction you need it to go. There's nothing interesting about writing it yourself unless you're still learning to code (in which case is a learning exercise for you, not only about the outcome).

I ... literally did both of these things last week ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not at all. Most people can be super happy with less than the average tech salary (at a point where they don't feel they need more if it comes at the expense of work life balance, time with family, job satisfaction, etc).

A junior or "mid" who doesn't take guidance repeatedly should likely be managed out.

It's perfectly fine remain "mid" (not junior IMHO) but is not ok to ignore guidance and advice from more experienced team members.

It's funny cuz is true. Except it'd probably be one long design doc with 10 rounds of review, 15 CLs (PRs) and months of rollouts later ... fails A/B due to declining user engagement.

Yes. Once is available more widely to common car owners (either from Waymo or others) that would interest me. Current Tesla supervised style semi autonomous driving I would find either boring or stressful (depending on the scenario). I would rather drive myself.

Note Waymo announced a partnership with Toyota, pretty hand wavy, but at least it seems there’s hope the technology may come to regular car owners at some point.

Quite frankly sounds super boring. I prefer driving than supervising. Only true unsupervised autonomous driving would be interesting for me (e.g Waymo).

What if your means are not sufficient to avoid hunger?

Not all advice is applicable to everyone. It's up to you to decide if you can and want to follow it. The advice was for young programmers and it is solid advice, but again, not applicable to everyone. It is applicable to a majority (probably even large majority). If you are young and earning a sw engineer salary it is very rare to not be able to cover your basic needs and have something left. Most people spends what is left in luxuries, lifestyle creep, etc; which is what the advice is trying to warn people about.

Do you mind sharing what big tech company? I've worked at both small companies and big tech. Managers do not have full control, but they can influence very significantly comp and evaluations. If your manager isn't doing it then it is a performance problem.

My understanding is that the definition of cult requires a common object of devotion. What's that object of devotion for "society"? it's too large and diverse of a group to categorize it as such IMHO. I agree however that sometimes people will categorize anything strongly deviating from the norm as cult-ish.

Engineering managers should not exist? I agree in an ideal world they shouldn’t. Ideally all teams should self-organize in harmony and dance barefoot singing kumbaya forming a perfect holacracy. Alas, we don’t live in an ideal world, and some people like me decided is a problem worth working on even if we don’t enjoy it as much as writing code.

It's the lack of content availability that pushed them over the edge. Sports are a special case, notoriously hard that is super stupid and pushing people to piracy. I tried paying many times to watch a game my kid wanted and either the dumb apps or websites would not work on my TV. Make it easy to pay for the content and most people will take the easy route rather than search online for ad-ridded or dubious websites (unless they can't really afford it and then is not a real loss for the company anyway).

People that cannot afford Netflix will go to great lengths to get the content they want. They're also not mutually exclusive. Piracy growing doesn't mean Netflix isn't. People pay for Netflix AND download pirated movies all the time.

My comment was explicitly replying to an argument about how streaming services would "suffer" because of how piracy is much easier today. There's no signs of that. Just because Netflix mentions that risk in their SEC filings. The article admits as much, it's their responsibility and of course if there were no other alternatives it'd be better for Netflix, but is hardly something that has changed significantly to make a dent in their business. As I said, subscriptions and revenue keeps growing, there's no evidence of them "suffering" because of the alternative (viable to many) that piracy provides.

Yeah, still, it's easier, but not as easy nor convenient or widely available (e.g there's no Popcorn app in that TV you just bought. Defaults matter a lot.

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc).

I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user. Netflix revenue keeps growing (and subscribers), despite the "crackdown" on password sharing that many predicted would cause massive cancellations.

Reminded me of tables.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ4CuJm_lws

Debating is another form of waiting. You're not waiting to be told, but you're waiting to reach consensus. As long as the decision makers have bias for action you won't get caught up in either debating endlessly or waiting to be told what to do. Finding out how long to "wait" in either incarnation is only learned through experience IMHO, using general principles such as "one way" vs "two way" doors, etc.

Yes. I think is key to re-assess assumptions about what a job or role profile "should be" and make the requirements and expectations flexible to make room for those differences.

Thank you for writing this. I have young family members with ADHD and I really hope they can find the help they need as you did.

He loved research and got a PhD, but couldn't do the tasks that were expected of a professor and ended up not getting tenure. After that he struggled to hold a job for most of my childhood.

This sounds horrific for both the individuals and their families. Talented individuals with so much to offer not finding their place.

He would have thrived in the more Wild West academia of Isaac Newton and John Locke.

Yes, I agree. I just don't know how to create a system where the strengths of such individuals are leveraged. If an organization of 100 people is trying to build a bridge and the tasks required are challenging for the 1-5 ADHD individuals in the group, the persons will struggle and the organization will struggle. Both individuals and organizations need to get better at routing those individuals to the right places to leverage their strengths. This is true of anyone but 10x more important for ADHD or other disabilities.

The things he struggled to do were the accidental complexities of the job of professor, not the truly important aspects of that role.

I have mixed feelings about this because sometimes I have heard people dismiss aspects of work they're not good at as not important. E.g I have had sw engineers claim they solved the problem in their head and writing it down and communicating it to others is not important. At large organizations is just as important unfortunately.

As someone with family members with ADHD and as a manager who has had employees with ADHD, the challenge is differentiate and find those cases where it can be "advantageous". Is not easy at all. Also, there are different types and levels of ADHD. It's not a super power to forget things you wanted to remember and being late all the time, there's no benefit on that for anyone. Sometimes the extra creativity or hyper-focus on things that are not a goal for an organization is not an advantage. It's very complicated. I wish I had a solution.

The tool might be good but there’s also strong selection bias due to its price.

The news is Google layoffs and is interesting to many how the culture of such a large and influential tech company has changed. The person laid off is also a known OSS author (Subversion). If you don’t find it interesting you can just move on you know? Many others find these posts interesting and that’s enough according to HN guidelines.

We don't have any context to assess that. Depending on the complexity of the product and target customer sales cycle it can be perfectly normal to not close a deal in your first 4 months (one of which is December).

As a manager, I've been told at some companies they don't need me there after providing all documentation (emails, 1:1 notes, missed expectations, etc). I think is an attempt to avoid getting into live arguments between the employee and the manager. They think is "easier" for the company (if clearly less human and personal) to have someone else deliver the message and try to move on, not get into answering too many questions, etc.

It’s not true you can always choose who to work for. Is not a perfect job market. Some people often take whatever they can get to not starve.

What’s preventing the manager from asking? More generally I think this is handled by standups (really any daily report of “here’s what I’m doing”) or some type of ticketing system.

Nothing, however the level of detail is different. Daily stand ups are good to spot blockers and "take it offline" when there's a problem. If reports do not raise problems and the manager doesn't smell one, they won't go deep into understanding what you're doing. If you have many reports is hard to go deep into everything every day, particularly if you have a fullstack team or a variety of projects not closely related.

Ticketing system would be ideal if everyone was an stellar communicator, and devs, including myself (and I've been told I am a good communicator by managers when I was an IC) often won't update tickets every day with all the nuance required to understand your work deeply. Managers at large companies also are juggling many things that is impractical to do a full sync with everyone every day (hence the need for weekly or fortnightly 1:1s).

Information contained in a ticketing system also will often be filtered for "public" (anyone in the company) consumption, and there will be information (this other team is being unresponsive on chat and docs and I had to book meetings with them, etc) not reflected there. It may also often contain the 'outcome' of an investigation or status, not how you got there (more verbose communicators may include both, but that's rarely the case) which is also important to assess your work.

You can have deep knowledge of a given technology, but still not have an understanding of the details of what your reports are doing at some point in time in a given project. The brag document should include enough detail for the manager to understand (e.g PR, design links that the manager can review to assess what you did). It's in your best interest to keep your manager appraised regularly on 1:1s so it's easier for them to catch up and the disconnect doesn't go for a very long time.

A more comprehensive answer about how managers are assessed at Google (via Google's project Oxygen):

- Is a good coach

- Empowers the team and does not micromanage

- Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being

- Is productive and results-oriented

- Is a good communicator—listens and shares information

- Helps with career development

- Has a clear vision and strategy for the team

- Has key technical skills that help him or her advise the team

Your manager should at least be striving to excel at those. Different managers will have different strengths, but the most important thing IMHO is that they care about their team and want to do better.