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Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

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Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#191

Post by hallway_monitor »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #142
willcipriano wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I have is how did incentives get so misaligned that this person feels that doubling the productivity of all their peers is unlikely to be worth the effort of presenting a tool.

It's remarkable how dysfunctional some organisations can be, especially larger enterprises. Then you have the problem that the reward for good work is almost always more work.

Exactly. So give them great work maybe a little bit faster than everyone else and they will just think you're working really hard!

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#192

Post by literallyWTF »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #170
literallyWTF wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what? What makes you think the leaders/rulers of our society will then somehow “pay us back”? You’ll just end up broke and without a job.

2/3 of all jobs are widely accepted to add no value to society[1] 2/3 of all consumption is accepted to add no incremental happiness[2] 2/3 of all CO2 emissions can be eliminated through careful lifestyle management and community design.[3] These quantities do not seem coincidental and they point to a better way of doing things. You're not wrong, there's no incentive currently to 'pay us back'. But collectively we ar…

Leave it to HN to argue that getting rid of jobs will reduce the carbon footprint of corporations.

I mean you’re not wrong, once we purge a large chunk of the population, since ya know, they’ll have no way to provide for themselves, we will have a much greener planet.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#193

Post by jdavis703 »

RankingMember wrote: post #119
jdavis703 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that the whole point of software engineering? You should always be engineering yourself out of your current job. If I’m dealing with the same issues I have today, a year from now, then I’d view that as a personal failure.

The whole point of engineering is to engineer yourself out of your current job? What? I think I must be misunderstanding you. Are people who engineer planes supposed to be engineering spacecraft or consider themselves failures or something? I'm confused.

Good point. I meant us fake software engineering, not you real engineers with “PE” at the end of your name. My original comment has been clarified.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#194

Post by SuoDuanDao »

literallyWTF wrote: post #192
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2/3 of all jobs are widely accepted to add no value to society[1] 2/3 of all consumption is accepted to add no incremental happiness[2] 2/3 of all CO2 emissions can be eliminated through careful lifestyle management and community design.[3] These quantities do not seem coincidental and they point to a better way of doing things. You're not wrong, there's no incentive currently to 'pay us back'. But collectively we ar…

Leave it to HN to argue that getting rid of jobs will reduce the carbon footprint of corporations. I mean you’re not wrong, once we purge a large chunk of the population, since ya know, they’ll have no way to provide for themselves, we will have a much greener planet.

Are you for paying people to do work that doesn't add value and consuming crap that doesn't make us happy? Because I said nothing about 'purging' or any solutions at all for that matter. I just pointed out that these three problems are in an important way just one problem.

I'd actually seriously like to know, do you want people to have to do work that doesn't add value?

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#195

Post by menmob »

shadowgovt wrote: post #174
Nextgrid wrote: post #146

Regarding the YT dislikes, the reason it's still available in the API isn't some sort of oversight by the developers - the rollout is most likely A/B tested and once the test completes they'll remove it from the API completely or hardcode it to a static value (for backwards-compatibility with older clients).

In general, Google doesn't make immediate API changes. That's hard on API users.

This is changing. YT has become more aware of archivists saving removed content in the past, and much more quickly lock things down nowadays. Pre-2017 unlisted videos were gone within days, and the community tab cut off within hours. Gone are the days of “removed” features sticking around in APIs for months. :(

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#196

Post by matheusmoreira »

RankingMember wrote: post #16
BatteryMountain wrote: post #9

Yeah I do this. Most of what I build, nobody knows about it nor is it release into the wild. Latest example: at my current workplace we have some crappy custom compilers for our platform.... I've rebuilt them in a way that I like (and using C# instead of Java), that enables me to use it in a small visual studio code plugin that enables me with real time error messages as I code against our platform, so basically cons…

Making it broadly available could also potentially just set a new floor for productivity in an industry that doesn't always reward such gains commensurate with their value, i.e. you'd get an attaboy and "alright well now you can do three times as much work for the same pay!"

Yeah. Why would anyone do things that reduce their own leverage? Assuming rewards proportional to the value of one's work is magical thinking. "If I save a company $100,000, they will give me a significant portion of it." No such deal exists! They're just as likely to give us raises and bonuses as they are to pocket the profits for themselves and assign us even more work.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#197

Post by mathgladiator »

A little over a decade ago, I stopped a project* that got submitted to reddit and hacker news which is how I learned about hacker news via the referrer header.

I was young and not exactly entrenched in the culture as I was in the midwest writing code from books without any desire of community, so I wasn't used to opinions.

The negative things expressed caused me a depression since I was proud of my work. Unfortunately, for the business, the right thing to do was to stop developing the language and use shit that the local labor market could handle.

This awareness of what the market could support was depressing as hell, and I eventually couldn't be an effective leader for that company as I was more interested in doing interesting things versus the right thing. I found it boring, and that's when I went into big tech to work on interesting things.

Now, I'm older, and I'm up to my shenanigans again with a new language: http://www.adama-lang.org/

One thing that I have learned is that you can't make everyone happy, but you can make a small group of people ecstatic. Next year, I intend to work on my language full-time (ish) and ship something that people can use with just a command-line.

* https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6ori0/kira_is_...

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226480

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#198

Post by yourapostasy »

bokchoi wrote: post #44
BatteryMountain wrote: post #9

Yeah I do this. Most of what I build, nobody knows about it nor is it release into the wild. Latest example: at my current workplace we have some crappy custom compilers for our platform.... I've rebuilt them in a way that I like (and using C# instead of Java), that enables me to use it in a small visual studio code plugin that enables me with real time error messages as I code against our platform, so basically cons…

Wait, why don't you want to help your colleagues? That seems pretty shitty.

A possible reason is stack ranking in annual reviews.

I definitely see that in many of the people I work with at my clients. The more efficient staff members typically only share pretty trivial life hack-esque tips. Their comprehensive framework of all of their efficiency tricks? Kept in their heads.

If they share it, they lose their edge against the peers they are ranked against. If they don't share it, they consistently are in the top 5-10% of employees with the most story points each sprint, and they get better raises.

This is an easy decision for the employees to make. You get what you incentivize for.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#199

Post by mring33621 »

peterangular wrote: post #188
GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some management issues OP might be referring to. - Who is going to provide support, bug fixes, documentation, manuals, etc? - What happens if you leave? Can our other devs maintain this? - Did I mention documentation? - Did you get this approved by the architecture committee? - Why didn't you follow our process improvement policy? - We are a Java shop, so can you rewrite it in Java; you know this, so why didn'…

Having worked in an enterprise this list is 100% accurate. For better or worse (I think it's the latter) enterprises are all about coloring inside of the lines. If you color outside of the lines you may experience functional success in parallel to professional/social failure. Large orgs/enterprises aren't about solving the problem - it's about the ceremony around solving the problem expecting the problem to solve its…

Agree 100%.

Also, there are some very quotable things in your comment.

"experience functional success in parallel to professional/social failure" is my favorite, though.

Thank you!

Source: I work at a huge bank.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#200

Post by JacobThreeThree »

Hekioi wrote: post #180
matheusmoreira wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're actually right. The goal is to automate all work to the point there is no need for an economy. In a post-scarcity society there is no need to economize. However, it's a mistake to believe the rich and powerful will allow such a society to exist since they'd be powerless in it. They will impose artificial scarcity on it in order to maintain the existence of capitalism and their fortunes. Just look at how copyri…

Apparently the working class is doing there part as well to keep the status quo when I see the reaction of others to my statement.

Lol, it's the fault of the working class that they're oppressed? Strange world view.
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