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My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

blog.dijit.sh

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Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that there may be more to a four-page essay than a short title can convey?

While theoretically true, it's so often not the case that I'm not surprised people just use the headline to infer what the article explains.

It may be wiser to stop reading, plug your ears with wax, and hide in your room until death takes you.

If you can't read for pleasure on the site you are reading for pleasure, something is wrong.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#22
Our remote manager bought us an expensive HP floor-mount server like a dishwasher. It was over spec'd and underpowered. And we didn't need a server, not for work.

My colleague loaded up his entire ripped CD collection and we got Bluetooth headphones and had it serve up tunes all day. Back when that was a thing. Only thing it ever did.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#23
post #8

My manager doesn't do almost anything. I wonder why they keep him around. He has like two reports and we're both fully self-directed. He can't understand technical issues, and whenever he proposes something, it's completely untenable due to his lack of understanding what's useful or possible.

I'm beginning to think that making more money by becoming a better developer is hard, and that managing, while difficult in a totally different way, is less hard. At least for the money.

I think people often convince themselves that becoming a manager is a path for those who couldn’t hack it. In reality it’s a completely different set of problems. If you’re a decent developer with phenomenal soft skills, there is a very good chance you’d be better in management or sales than writing code.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#24
post #8

My manager doesn't do almost anything. I wonder why they keep him around. He has like two reports and we're both fully self-directed. He can't understand technical issues, and whenever he proposes something, it's completely untenable due to his lack of understanding what's useful or possible.

My manager isn’t a programmer but uses ChatGPT to educate himself on a topic and attempts to read the code to see what’s happening before asking one of us if anything is still unclear.

You know, summarizing what code does in regular English via ChatGPT would be an interesting thing. Does it already do that?

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#25

Not sure if it’s just me but I get an invalid SSL cert warning and can’t load the page (DDG mobile browser)

I get the same on Firefox on Linux (Fedora 37). It looks like the server is responding with an ECDHE key exchange using a SHA1 signature algorithm which is disabled on modern versions of OpenSSL. I'm not sure why it works on Chrome, maybe their TLS client is a bit more lax. You can see openssl fail to verify the signature locally with `openssl s_client -connect blog.dijit.sh:443` due to the wrong signature type.

At least for me on Fedora, I believe Firefox uses the system policies and Fedora has set policies to block SHA1 signature algorithms https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/StrongCryptoSettings2....

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#26
The implied notion that the manager really had no idea what they actually wanted, or at the very least were unable to sensibly describe the requirements, is entirely believable, but from a systems development perspective nothing in this article makes any sense.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#27
post #8

My manager doesn't do almost anything. I wonder why they keep him around. He has like two reports and we're both fully self-directed. He can't understand technical issues, and whenever he proposes something, it's completely untenable due to his lack of understanding what's useful or possible.

I'm beginning to think that making more money by becoming a better developer is hard, and that managing, while difficult in a totally different way, is less hard. At least for the money.

Being a good manager is in my experience just as hard if not harder. But, it's much easier to be a bad manager and keep your job.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My manager isn’t a programmer but uses ChatGPT to educate himself on a topic and attempts to read the code to see what’s happening before asking one of us if anything is still unclear.

You know, summarizing what code does in regular English via ChatGPT would be an interesting thing. Does it already do that?

It definitely can do this, though obviously it can details wrong here and there. For example:

    Describe what this code does in clear english: 

    from datetime import datetime
    import pytz

    utcmoment_naive = datetime.utcnow()
    utcmoment = utcmoment_naive.replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc)

    # print "utcmoment_naive: {0}".format(utcmoment_naive) # python 2
    print("utcmoment_naive: {0}".format(utcmoment_naive))
    print("utcmoment:       {0}".format(utcmoment))

    localFormat = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"

    timezones = ['America/Los_Angeles', 'Europe/Madrid', 'America/Puerto_Rico']

    for tz in timezones:
        localDatetime = utcmoment.astimezone(pytz.timezone(tz))
        print(localDatetime.strftime(localFormat))


ChatGPT Response:

This Python code does the following:

  1. Imports two modules, datetime and pytz.
  2. Gets the current time in UTC using the datetime module and assigns it to a variable named 'utcmoment_naive'.
  3. Uses the pytz module to create a timezone-aware datetime object and assigns it to a variable named 'utcmoment'.
  4. Prints the values of the 'utcmoment_naive' and 'utcmoment' variables.
  5. Defines a date format to be used for printing local date and time.
  6. Defines a list of three timezones.
  7. Loops over the list of timezones and converts the UTC time to the local time in each timezone using the 'astimezone' method of the 'datetime' object and the 'pytz.timezone' method.
  8. Prints the local time in each timezone in the specified date format.
Overall, this code gets the current time in UTC, converts it to the local time in three different timezones, and prints the local time in each timezone in a specified format.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My manager isn’t a programmer but uses ChatGPT to educate himself on a topic and attempts to read the code to see what’s happening before asking one of us if anything is still unclear.

You know, summarizing what code does in regular English via ChatGPT would be an interesting thing. Does it already do that?

Correct

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#30
post #14
post #8

My manager doesn't do almost anything. I wonder why they keep him around. He has like two reports and we're both fully self-directed. He can't understand technical issues, and whenever he proposes something, it's completely untenable due to his lack of understanding what's useful or possible.

Atleast your manager doesn't do anything. I have seen managers who do stuff and ruin the work that people have done.

"But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous"
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