This only happens when the tools have become so neglected that every single one is broken. You should still take the time to pay down that debt, and in the process learn the lesson to pay the debt in smaller chunks in the future.
You are going to pay it anyway, its not an "if" its a "when"
Why would they decide on "who", if nobody shows enough effort to signal on "what"?
Whining doesn't count while the result is achieved, because "it works" and "don't fix it if it ain't broken".
It's a popular theme in corporate culture to avoid initiative, because you may be then made responsible. You can become responsible first on your own terms instead.
I downloaded the AshesStandalone_V1_51.zip file, but it looks like it only contains the windows executable. For our linux friends, unzip it, install gzdoom, and then run this command inside the "Resources" folder to play it on linux:
In this case its about showing good judgement. Good judgement is putting the unity of the group above your own petty rivalries, when all the group is asking you to do is hold hands for a photo.
If he holds hands for the photo, it is not going to materially change whether OpenAI outperforms Anthropic or vice versa, but what it shows is a certain level of maturity - Im mature enough to understand the situation here is the projection of ultimate unity, of a greater mission that humanity is all here together, even though our system puts us in competition with each other, and for a moment, I will show that (just like everyone else standing here) I can rise above it, and hold hands for a photo.
It's not a big ask in a physical sense, but its an appeal to the wisdom that ultimately we are all on the same team together on this little floating rock, and maybe, just maybe, for a tiny second, it would be good to acknowledge that.
I know people like this, theres a form of procrastination where they are busy hyperoptimising their todo lists and workflows but getting only a tiny amount of actual work done. It's a form of the disconnected intellect - they can tell you the problem, they can even tell you the solution, but they can't turn that knowledge into action. Convincing themselves that utterly trivial inconveniences are so productivity and or psychologically harmful they can they can then rationalize all this "meta-work" while simultaneously claiming to be virtuous, when in reality it's usually insecurity in their abilities or cowardice to face the unknown, preventing them doing real work
I almost agree with you, but with regard to this specific blog I'm not sure I can.
From my perspective, all this energy spent on AI prompting is actually just planning meetings and whiteboarding in disguise, but since all that has the bad reputation of luring devs into power struggles and yak shaving this is the new way.
It's likely where most of their improved productivity is coming from. The people doing the meta-work just need be mature about it to avoid procrastinating.
If it requires me to leave the house, that increase in friction will mean I will vote maybe on 1/100th what I would otherwise vote on. I suspect pretty much everyone is the same
This is true of methods that don't require you to leave the house as well. Internet forums of all types are dominated by frequent users (by definition). People who are doing other things (working, raising families, living with disabilities that make participation difficult) are under-represented. Most of us just want someone with culturally normal values and competency to take care business. Many democratic systems do not select for people with culturally normal values and competency, unfortunately.
"Culturally normal values" is such a crazily loaded phrase. I personally don't have a strong desire to see people with culturally normal values be in charge, since, as far as I can tell, the "normal" person is neither very smart nor very thoughtful.
I believe moral opposition to child labor is a widely held view, and that most politicians, if pressed, would be in favor of writing laws to eliminate it. There are many reasons that pressure isn't applied, but it being a culturally abnormal view isn't one of them.
In my experience, neighborhood and municipal governance often works unreasonably well with life-long public servants who, even if not be the most brilliant of us, diligently work every day like the rest of us.
Technology must assist local, bottom-up governance, rather than being supplanted.
Im no expert but my gut feeling is that theres more than 1 reason people have kids.
In "richer" western countries one of the strongest factors in that decision is "will my child have a good life" - that seems pretty sane to me, I wouldn't say that was the craziest and crackpotiest.
But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance"
> But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance"
Also, in poorer countries, having kids becomes a necessity for survival. Places without safety nets, elder care, etc. You have kids to both take care of you as you age, and also as labor to help with survival.
That pressure/need doesn't exist in most of the west, so that incentive is gone.
And now it's become an anti-signal. If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried somewhere in this sea of uselessness is the result I searched for. The managers at Google have become self interested promotion hunters, and the programmers weak sycophants. It wasn't like this in the early days when I was there, the best ideas won, but then the B player managers were hired and the rot started.
It isn't the managers it is the business. All those geniuses hired and over years and years no one came up with another business model but ads. I pay for ad-free YouTube and would happily pay for ad free search. As would many. Many people would like a google scale micropayments system that isn't ads. The failure to do this led directly to social media becoming customer devouring experiences rather than making good products people want.
Paradoxically, the people who pay for adfree experiences would be the most valuable targets for ads, so I suspect any pay for no ads arrangement will be temporary at best.
> All those geniuses hired and over years and years no one came up with another business model but ads
This isn't true, there were many other ideas. It's just that only KPI was how much money they can make, thus ads won. Companies don't have an axis of ethics or morality.
I think we are talking past each other. I'm saying there are proposed models which are not ads, but they don't maximize earnings. A silicon valley company will always choose earnings over anything else.
Never thought I would go to DuckDuckGo for searching, ever. I'd do Kagi but I don't like their use of Yandex so I'll keep an eye on whether they figure their stuff out politically. I'd pay for search but not if it's paying Russia, I've been very unhappy with what Russia does with money in recent decades.
That tracks with the 'we use everybody and curate optimal results' model they've got going on, but I wouldn't be changing the search habits of decades if I didn't mean to actively reject what Google search has turned into. So, not a good way to justify a paying-them model.
> The managers at Google have become self interested promotion hunters, and the programmers weak sycophants. It wasn't like this in the early days when I was there, the best ideas won, but then the B player managers were hired and the rot started.
I bet they run some metrics, and while hyper-intelligent persons like you are annoyed, there is a chance that avg joes representing 95% of revenue are fine with that.
When it comes to anything tech related, the HN crowd are trend setters.
And.... the world is crying out for a google alternative. If it ever appears, the tech savvy people will be the first to move, followed by everyone else.
> If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried somewhere in this sea of uselessness is the result I searched for.
The other day I had a DMV appointment scheduled on my Google Calendar with the office address saved in the location field. I opened the event and clicked on the address to navigate there.
I didn't realize initially but the first few Google Maps results were ads! When clicking on an exact address link!! I almost ended up at some apartment complex 2 miles away. Absolutely bewildering.
A day or two is nothing. Building these relationships takes time.
When I finished raising my pre-seed round I had a big list of investors that I had talked to, some a warm, some said no, some said yes. I always asked them if I could put them on my cool updated list, and then shared fun things with them (short emails - 4 sentences and a screenshot, hey look what we did!)
By the time it came to raise seed we were 2.5x oversubscribed in 2 weeks - because I had spent the previous year relationship building with all of them.
Remember VCs are reviewing a bunch of companies all at once, you are not the only thing they have to think about today.
Follow up in a few days, and send a short (20 seconds max) video attached in case they don’t have time to organise to see the demo.
VCs are busy so “do the work” for them, don’t ask a question - ask a question, anticipate the answer and then send the answer too.
These are long term relationships you are building so treat them as such.
Yes, and it’s now up to us as managers to engineer that ebb and flow as part of the process. Don’t assign too much work all the time. Make sure that the employees feel excited and rewarded for their hard work (don’t just dump another pile on their desk). Make sure their work is diverse enough so they are not stuck doing the same slog all the time.
Make sure the employee sees the big picture of the company - this is how your work is contributing to our mission (the janitor at nasa isn’t sweeping the floor, he’s helping put a man on the moon). When boring work must be done tell them you know it’s boring but all of us have to shovel gravel sometimes, it’s just part of life, but there’s a bit of fun on the other side of it. Be interested in the employees - what are their personal goals over the next 12 months? Learn their dogs name, learn their hobbies, be interested in them as a human and then TRY HELP THEM get to their personal goals. If they want to get fit then block out an hour gym time and send them off to it. Encourage them to bring you new ideas, support them to try out the new ideas - if it doesn’t work out then “hey no problem” but if it does work out tell everyone in the company very publicly and make a lot of noise about it. Don’t criticise them in public, take them aside and help them be better. And lastly, is someone isn’t working out, or is causing cultural problems - get rid of them, it’s harming more than you think. Don’t micromanage - assign the work, support them and then get the hell out of the way.
Good managers will do all of this simultaneously.
Bad managers just try to cram as much work in as possible. Because they are so poor at evaluating the quality of what their employees are doing, the only thing they understand is maximise throughput at the expense of all else. If your manager is like this, leave asap
