Not using TUIs (unfortunately). Work in a large business on services for real estate transactions. Heavy GUI applications. I’ve actually been investigating adding heavily keyboard-driven interfaces to our GUI apps with my teams because the multi-screen clicking around all our users have to do now is so incredibly slow and inefficient.
Some of my most productive use of software (in both personal and professional settings) have been with TUIs.
Even with all the hype around AI right now (and we’re working with that, too), we can’t not have more traditional UIs to keep a human in the loop when it matters the most and as a fallback for when AI misses the mark - but that doesn’t have to mean it’s all click heavy.
Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of TikTok and have many critical opinions of Ayn Rand’s philosophies, but…
This gives me vibes of a weird company takeover, a la the kinds of things that happened in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: government-driven benefits to large corporations and investors with friends in the right places, government involvement, forced licensure of a core aspect of the product (Rearden Metal?).
I’d like to learn more about: what are some other similar instances of such a thing?
It’s easy for me to get worked about about the things being done and allowed by this administration, but I have to wonder: will allowing these mega companies create more opportunities for scrappy upstarts to disrupt these giant, slow moving, clunky monoliths?
Look at Juniper specifically. In 2021, their revenue roughly broke down as 40% service provider, 35% enterprise campuses, 25% cloud. In 2025, that had shifted to 45% enterprise campuses, 30% service provider, and 25% cloud. That shift is mostly reflected by how much money they pumped into Mist, and how successful that was.
Scrappy little upstarts have a _really_ hard time selling networking equipment to service providers and enterprises, who require tons of arcane features that take a long time to build and validate. They also operate very much on reputation, and rely on training pipelines outside of their own organizations (i.e., certifications). On the SP side (and the more modern enterprise side) there's also the significant issue of integration with other IT systems. At that scale, people aren't just command line jockeys that log into a router to provision something - Comcast can't operate like that, they need well defined API integrations with their provisioning system.
It is interesting and noteworthy that HPE's interest in Juniper is mostly due to the success of Mist, which _was_ a scrappy little upstart that got purchased by Juniper in 2019 (???). Mist (as a product line) only got successful once it was backed by Juniper, a known player. They had a much, much harder time selling to big accounts before that.
However, it's not a random scrappy little upstart, it got started by very senior people from Cisco that couldn't get their vision executed at Cisco. Specifically, Bob Friday (who co-founded Airespace in 2001, which was purchased by Cisco and directly led to Cisco wireless controllers), and Sujay Hajela, who was an SVP responsible for enterprise and wireless at Cisco, having led the Meraki purchase. More than a decade later, Meraki - another upstart, I guess - still isn't aimed at much other than SMB.
That Mist made it as an newcomer is the exception to the rule and entirely due to those very specific people and their very specific contacts. I wouldn't be surprised if at all if Mist had initially been fully intended to be a spin-out from Cisco with the express purpose of folding them back in a decade later if they were successful enough, and it just so happened that they got snagged up by Juniper first.
A nit here: leaving Cisco to do a product Cisco should do itself is literally part of the cultural DNA of Cisco; it's practically what you're supposed to do. In years of working with/around Cisco, I saw people literally do startups for things that were just planned features for existing Cisco products.
Completely agree, I expressed that poorly - that Mist didn't just get rolled back into Cisco seems like an aberration given Cisco's spin-out culture, and I'd be curious to find out some day what happened for them to get scooped up by Juniper instead.
"Normal" startups in this space that aren't just spin-outs designed to come back to the mothership if they're successful are incredibly rare.
Appreciate the insights; this segment of the industry is my forte so this was educational.
I realize it’s impossible to predict what comes next, but I’m curious about analogs to this merger and what one could reasonably expect to happen over the next many years.
My philosophy is showing in that I don’t see these deals as good for competition or the market in general, so I’m (perhaps hopelessly) looking for the silver lining here.
That wasn’t the take I was going for, but can see how it came off that way.
I’m opposed to these mega corps and looking (hoping) for some silver lining here that gives me some hope. Sibling comments have educated on that front.
Maybe, but what’s to stop “scrappy upstart” from becoming the next HPE?
We need companies owned by the people that built the company. Not by the C-level executives that are appointed by a board of billionaire lackeys, bankers, trust fund kiddies who are hellbent on flipping a profit at all costs.
Also of course more regulation, and higher corporate tax. Get rid of the stock manipulation tactic known as stock buybacks that only encourage short term growth/pump in price of stock.
Yeah! Or the team there prioritizes taking care of folks and maintaining boundaries between work and life by having that 3 hours of downtime during normal business hours.
Would love to hear other stories of businesses doing similar activities during sane weekday hours.
“Do it during the day without an outage.” is my approach.
It requires specific technology choices and planning ahead, but it is especially simple in the web era because they all go through load balancers which are redundant themselves.
The opposite example was Blizzard taking down WoW for half a day every week, which is an absurdly long time.
Even if they had a single server per game world instance, they could have orchestrated updates using automation to take each instance down for a few minutes instead of all of them at once for many hours.
My memory was that people generally regarded Blizzard taking down WoW for half a day each week as a mercy, as that was the only time some players had to shower, sleep and eat :-P
Had the same issue, iPhone 15 in Chrome. Scrolling quickly didn't help. What did help: rotating into landscape and scrolling in the margins. Scrolling on the very right side of the screen also worked in portrait.
Once I scrolled down a bit, I was able to scroll normally afterwards.
On the content: I enjoyed your article! B&H being closed for Sabbath saved me from almost blowing $10k on camera gear a few years ago... everything in my cart, but couldn't check out. I wouldn't say I churned, but I also didn't come back to purchase because I had pre-buyers remorse.
As others in the comments have noted, though - I still come back and shop at B&H for other things, even though I've run into their closures. I actually like the humanity of it. For all the always-on-ness of the internet and websites... there's something innately "human" about something being closed, like B&H's site, that isn't upsetting to me.
I'm an American. I've generally benefited from the system here (which speaks to my privilege, of which I'm aware). I don't want to wade into political battles, but I'm genuinely concerned for my future and the future of my children from an economic standpoint, based on where things seem to be going.
I am considering options on the spectrum with ends like:
* Staying here, because this is where I was born and raised and I've felt like the country has generally taken care of me - and hey, it can't stay bad forever, right?
* Leaving to another country, because I am feeling less and less like the country's leadership care about building a society or economy that tries to take care of its people and creates incentives to innovate.
This isn't because of just the last few months; I view the last few months as big symptoms of something more systemic that's been building up. I am also not looking to jump ship quickly because things "temporarily got hard."
On the flip side, I'm also feeling incredibly jaded these days: how could it be much better anywhere else?
Are there places out in the world where my wife and I could take our experience (mine being a strong career in tech, my wife's being a strong nursing career) and put it to use elsewhere where I could hope for a good standard of living, more stability in government leadership, and incentives similar to the economic system I grew up in, where our children could thrive and build a life?
I'm not pulling any triggers quickly or easily... I'm just trying to gather some data and different perspectives, even those that might challenge my own. Maybe an answer is "stop reading news."
If it continues on the current trajectory, literally all the OECD countries will offer a better life than the US. In every meaningful measure they already do
I've traveled a bit to some of the other OECD countries and haven't felt any disparities in comfort and such while traveling, but traveling and building a life and career are two very different things.
If you want to relocate to another country focus on the "pull factors" of that place, rather than the "push factors."
I moved to Sweden because my wife and I felt that was the best place to start a family. I'm on parental leave and cherish every moment I get to spend with my kid.
We would have made the move no matter what was happening in the US. Well, unless there was a major cultural shift and a generous grant of child care benefits equivalent to SWE.
Thank you for this. Very fair point, and something I've preached to folks when changing jobs in the past: don't leave your job for another company because your current job is awful... make sure you're joining a new company you actually feel good about, otherwise you'll end up in another potentially bad situation. Thank you for the reminder.
How has Sweden treated you and your family, and how do you feel about the general economic outlook for yourself and your children?
Are expats accepted there? What kind of challenges could I expect if Sweden were a consideration?
Heard. The thought of moving to another country is, honestly, scary, like starting over, figuring out how to live and build from from 0 again.
It's not just my partner, but also my kids I'm concerned about. The idea of moving my whole family to another country feels overwhelming, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it means my children can have a chance at a good life, versus what I'm starting to fear they'll experience here.
Not saying it is easy, but when I was a teenager I moved across the world because my father needed the job. It sucked in the moment, but looking back it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I don't live in a terribly "insane" state, but moving back to a state like California (where I was born and raised) doesn't alleviate my biggest concerns around the economy and the country's leadership and what it's doing to things like healthcare, education, and economic opportunity, and certainly not my concerns about my children being able to ever get onto a solid economic ladder.
California is so prohibitively expensive that they'll be forever renters, unable to save, unless they get an extremely high-paying job that allows that serious privilege and opportunity. That's not guaranteed, at all.
The state I'm in now is comparatively far less inexpensive than my home state, but it's getting more and more expensive and, even here, I worry about my kids being able to truly get on their feet and being able to make a life of their own. It's scary to see what the generations currently coming up are facing, no matter the location in the country - and to see the economy being hit hard with a sledgehammer right now makes it even scarier.
Yeah, go gentrify the locals in some lower-cost-of-living country. You sure 'deserve' it because for some reason you have a 'right' to just immigrate there and buy their housing and sh*t from under their feet.
What motivates such a rude answer? The parent is genuinely exposing a personal question. Nothing in his post suggests that he would go gentrify a low COL place.
> Nothing in his post suggests that he would go gentrify a low COL place
Nobody who moves out of the richer countries goes to a richer country. This includes the ultra-rich: Even they move to a place where their money will go much further, even if that is a district in London that they can comfortably afford. So it always ends up in gentrification.
I appreciate your frustration, dumbledoren. Your comment speaks to perspectives I could expect to face in another country - thank you.
I can only say my personal intent isn't that. I live a simple life. My family has a small, old home. We garden, grow our own food, and are respectful to our environment.
I prioritize supporting small, local businesses.
I wouldn't want to parachute into another country acting as though I Know Better™ and bringing my "American sensibilities" to another country.
If I were to leave the US, I see myself entering another country, hat in hand, knowing fully I'm not better or special, and it's my job to adapt and to respect the culture and country.
> I can only say my personal intent isn't that. I live a simple life.
And yet you will end up doing that when you move to such a country. Regardless of your intentions.
> it's my job to adapt and to respect the culture and country
Unfortunately respect and cultural adaptation do not alleviate the effects of gentrification via housing costs and cost of living.
It would be less of a problem only if you went to a country and location that has a similar cost of living as where you live now, but then again, that's not really on the table, is it...
> It would be less of a problem only if you went to a country and location that has a similar cost of living as where you live now, but then again, that's not really on the table, is it...
This seems to be an assumption you made, but the poster did not imply or state.
As someone in a similar mindset to the poster, I'm not looking for lower CoL places, I'm looking for comparable QoL places which ultimately points to Europe or Oceania. We'd be paid dramatically less, which we're okay with, but the QoL would be comparable (perhaps even better when counting social services).
If I pulled the trigger, it would be to a similar CoL location, but that still gets to their point: if many people do the same, prices go up. Housing availability goes down. And all the knock-on effects that could result in "gentrification."
How do I balance that (and all sorts of other things) with my desire to keep my family safe and give my children a chance at a solid future, though? I'm not sure, which is why I feel so much consternation and a need to gather more information to inform how I'll decide to act in the future.
> If I pulled the trigger, it would be to a similar CoL location, but that still gets to their point: if many people do the same, prices go up. Housing availability goes down. And all the knock-on effects that could result in "gentrification."
Precisely. You don't need to put gentrification in quotes. It invariably happens. And it gentrifies both the locals and the recent immigrants.
> How do I balance that (and all sorts of other things) with my desire to keep my family safe and give my children a chance at a solid future, though?
From the dynamics that seem to go around such white-collar immigration for these reasons, there doesn't seem to be a way to prevent gentrification and CoL rise. The only exception may be going to places that sorely lack people, like the American North Midwest - places that not only risk depopulation, but also places that can carry immense amounts of people and are open to development.
The majority of the world is not like that. The majority of European population centers are squeezed between river valleys between mountains or short strips of land between the mountains/hills and the sea. And they are already built to hell. The depopulated mountain regions of such places could use some people, but they can in no way handle the amount of emigration that the richer countries seem to be generating. That is one reason why Europe gets higher CoL and gentrification so fast from such immigration.
South America fares a little better because it has at least some more space, but it suffers from the same in the end: The desirable locations are limited and the immigrants go to those locations, causing skyrocketing costs.
Looking at Asia and Africa, it may be a little better because in certain locations there are vast spaces and major cities that could handle immense amounts of people and could use development, but those don't seem to be popular destinations for such white-collar immigrants.
So it again comes back to the US: The 'flyover country' between the coasts in the US is an immense space that is open to a level of development that no other place on the planet can provide. Most of that space seems to be occupied by either unused public land, or by the cattle industry. There was recent research that detailed how the cattle industry sits on top of a gigantic amount of land almost for free despite propping itself up with government subsidies and how it could solve the housing woes of the US and provide unparalleled development. But until citizens, investors and planners start putting pressure on politicians to offset the influence of the cattle industry lobby, that land will keep propping up the cattle industry instead of being used for urban development.
> This seems to be an assumption you made, but the poster did not imply or state
He doesn't need to. The dynamics of such emigration are always like that.
> I'm not looking for lower CoL places, I'm looking for comparable QoL places
That still causes gentrification. You will go to increase the housing demand in the place you go to and that will cause all of you to gentrify, including you. That even happens to those who go to lower CoL places - in just a few years, prices skyrocket and the richer emigrants themselves are stupefied - today CoL in major European cities that became popular locations for such emigration are catching up to the places where these people escaped from.
I was a big proponent of such international white-collar mobility before. The statistics and real-life experiences changed that.
I get where you're coming from, I really do, but I also think that perspective effectively means that you should never migrate -- ever. To anywhere, at all. I take the stance that gentrification is inevitable, unfortunately, but it can be guided and managed (and I say this as someone who's been gentrified out of an area I'd really love to live in for the rest of my life). Just like you can't control the weather, you also can't control migration patterns but you can manage them.
