Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 148 posts

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#71

Post by brvsft »

jen20 wrote: post #35
vthallam wrote: post #11

This is despicable, but titling "Tech CEO" for a digital marketing company is a stretch. FWIW, no one(very few?) actually in tech company would make fun of working mom's or applaud someone for selling their dog.

What makes you think there are fewer sociopaths in tech than marketing?

I tend to view marketing as an industry where it is easier to 'fake it til you make it' versus tech or software engineering. But I definitely can see some arguments otherwise. I just view being able to sustain oneself purely on "bullshitting" other people as a bit harder to do in tech only because, typically, tech businesses have to output an actual software product. But I realize there are a handful of counterexamples, I still view those as anecdotal data.

I'll admit, I don't think their is scientific proof one way or the other, I just view "marketing" as an easier industry for "bullshitters" to climb their way to the top.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#72

Post by humandeveloper »

koromak wrote: post #43

Seriously, are any of you "increasing output" with AI? I get like 10 good lines of code a day from Copilot. I don't even try ChatGPT anymore, as its only useful if you're writing boilerplate. Everything thats actually hard about my job requires the full context of the rest of the codebase, within repo and without, and architectural knowledge of the problems we're trying to solve. I read another post here yesterday th…

Same for me. I primarily work on mobile applications. ChatGPT is only good for generic tasks that can be explained without additional context which is by far the easiest part of my job.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#73

Post by jen20 »

jonas21 wrote: post #44
jen20 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think there are fewer sociopaths in tech than marketing?

Because marketers don't make a product. They're just locked in a zero-sum game for attention. Most tech companies at least start with the goal of improving the world in some way.

Most tech companies post 2000 are marketing companies in disguise, whose only goal is to enshitify products in service of recurring revenue and spy on users to harvest data.

They might have a public statement of “improving the world”, but this is usually a brazen attempt to hide their actual goals.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#74

Post by dkrich »

koromak wrote: post #43

Seriously, are any of you "increasing output" with AI? I get like 10 good lines of code a day from Copilot. I don't even try ChatGPT anymore, as its only useful if you're writing boilerplate. Everything thats actually hard about my job requires the full context of the rest of the codebase, within repo and without, and architectural knowledge of the problems we're trying to solve. I read another post here yesterday th…

No. To me the entire generative AI play is all part of a repetitive cycle. First people are apt to believe anything and get burned in a bubble. Then they are skeptical of everything and get left out of the next actual sea change. Then a new development comes along and they are trained to believe it will turn into a sea change also.

I'm saying this because so many people who don't seem to have a great track record of being of the forefront of sea changes are making all sorts of wild predictions about what this will bring. Many also seem to want to believe others will get caught up in a bubble and looking for opportunities to exploit that for personal gain.

I realize this is a bit of a rant but it's the lens I've come to view it through based on personal experience. Generative AI seems to be the first useable case for AI but the holy grail- full automation and predictive capabilities still seem quite a ways off because they are much harder problems to solve.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#75

Post by elicash »

koromak wrote: post #43

Seriously, are any of you "increasing output" with AI? I get like 10 good lines of code a day from Copilot. I don't even try ChatGPT anymore, as its only useful if you're writing boilerplate. Everything thats actually hard about my job requires the full context of the rest of the codebase, within repo and without, and architectural knowledge of the problems we're trying to solve. I read another post here yesterday th…

To your first question, I am. And higher quality, not just quantity.

As far as code, it's admittedly not the main part of my job and not my biggest strength, so yeah I need the help. I ask it to solve small problems, not write the entire thing.

For my writing, most recently I used it to incorporate social pressure into membership emails (peer influence and social proof).

On your last point, my first job in politics was creating the MySpace theme for a party committee; I used to create stuff in Flash; most of the toolsets I've used for my work no longer exist. The list of useless skills I possess is endless and my useless skills are way above 90%. You just have to learn new stuff and it's fine.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#76

Post by brvsft »

colonwqbang wrote: post #40
vthallam wrote: post #11

This is despicable, but titling "Tech CEO" for a digital marketing company is a stretch. FWIW, no one(very few?) actually in tech company would make fun of working mom's or applaud someone for selling their dog.

Google and facebook are digital marketing companies.

Not remotely the same as digital marketing companies that do their work creating ad campaigns for clients. Google and FB are ad platforms whose primary products are software.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#77

Post by BlargMcLarg »

xeromal wrote: post #66
tedivm wrote: post #3

This title doesn't do it justice- I hope his rant about how working moms aren't fair to the company gets him sued.

I know these are dangerous grounds to tread on, but I do struggle with working parents sometimes. I understand having children does take time, but I've experienced a parent that ends up being available around 4 hours a day while they are the linchpin in a certain part of the process that prevents a job from being completed. They're slow to respond to messages, emails, and calls and sometimes async responses are just…

>My complaint should probably be towards the company though and not the parent.

Yes, it should. Don't put responsibility on people you know won't fulfill it. The fact people even entertain the idea of not putting the blame on bosses for this is ridiculous.

Surely all the time spent making everyone homogenous and replaceable would infer otherwise.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#78

Post by AlexandrB »

cableshaft wrote: post #15
tedivm wrote: post #3

This title doesn't do it justice- I hope his rant about how working moms aren't fair to the company gets him sued.

No kidding. Joshua Fluke plays the whole thing with commentary[1], and it gets really bad. This guy goes on for like ten minutes and just keeps sharing bad take after bad take. If I were his assistant I would be giving him the 'wrap it the FUCK up' signal nonstop after like, three minutes. [1]: https://youtu.be/xEek505-6EM

I like how this video points out that this CEO serves on the boards of several other companies and organizations while claiming to be "all in" and fully committed to Clearlink.

So children and dogs are a distraction for the rank and file that's unfair to the company, but being on a bunch of boards and committees is fine and cool for executives. Pretty obvious what "good" and "bad" mean here - "good" is anything that makes the CEO more money, "bad" is anything that is the opposite. Classic "mask off" moment.

Re: Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office

#80

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

koromak wrote: post #43

Seriously, are any of you "increasing output" with AI? I get like 10 good lines of code a day from Copilot. I don't even try ChatGPT anymore, as its only useful if you're writing boilerplate. Everything thats actually hard about my job requires the full context of the rest of the codebase, within repo and without, and architectural knowledge of the problems we're trying to solve. I read another post here yesterday th…

I work in devops, and while chat gpt can write some starting terraform code or suggest aws architecture to some degree, the reality is my job is more about figuring out all the hairy details and how to smooth them out or add to them, in an existing world with a domain knowledge required.

Chatgpt isn't even remotely useful for the money making part of my work. If all I did was write boilerplate pipelines I'd be worth diddly squat.

Post reply on HN