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Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

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Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#81

Post by giantg2 »

lkey wrote: post #74
giantg2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"an ideology that will not seek consensus with his values" This just seems normal and expected. Kids are raised by their parents. Parents try to impart their wisdom on their kids, often in the form of rules meant to protect them. These rules are necessarily over restrictive due to simplification during various ages. These rules are also out of date with the new generation. It's always a right of passage for children…

"becoming an adult" is a thing people do, this will include no longer agreeing with everything your parents taught you. This is mundane and what you have described. "my parents are/were abusive" is something a plurality of people (and especially those raised in evangelical churches) experience. Within that dynamic, the 'value' at issue here is 'Do I, your child, have a right to my own body and choices?'; Too often, t…

"have a right to my own body and choices?"

Not sure exactly what you mean by own body. However, under the law children generally do not have a right to their own choices and are expected to be controlled by their parents (really look at the stutes around this stuff and you might be surprised). After all, parents are held responsible for their child's actions under the law.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#82

Post by kentm »

repeekad wrote: post #23
conqrr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hits so hard. I used to admire Senior developers who would do this. Now, I find myself in a place where there is no one to do this, and I've taken up to playing this role. It is the hardest job, but I cannot do any thing else as my team is committed to just non-stop slop thanks to management directives. I realize all the time I spent admiring, and now I have become.

If the engineers were right the bill will come due on that tech debt eventually. Likely when that happens the company will just spend more than they needed to fixing the issues and no one will be around to say I told you so.

The bill does come due. I've seen it happen over and over. But management fails to connect current problems to past mistakes, especially when they happen over the course of years. Thats setting aside when they insist that the correct decision was made, but have no real evidence that this is the case, other than the fact that "things worked out" even though maybe it would have been better had a different decision was made.

People do get a pass on this -- you can't rigorously examine every decision and counter-factual or you'd never make forward progress. And I don't really have any great ideas on how to bridge this gap. It'd be nice if there were better ways to measure this but there aren't, so it really comes down to who is more convincing, which is often orthogonal to facts and correctness.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#83

Post by skinfaxi »

sporadicism wrote: post #63

I didn't find any of the arguments for optimism compelling, even if I wanted to agree with the talk's message. Free software is about the worst example, as it has inadvertently built the technology that has, more than any other, concentrated corporate power and debased the profession.

> Free software is about the worst example, as it has inadvertently built the technology that has, more than any other, concentrated corporate power and debased the profession.

Can you elaborate on this?

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#84

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

wofo wrote: post #56
leecommamichael wrote: post #28

> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this…

I liked the talk and was about to post a link to it in the $dayjob slack, but this threw me off as well. Still watched it to the end, and I still recommended it to a friend (along with the Youtube channel of the "Software should work" conf), but I'm saddened that the talk paints Christianity as something that is inflicted upon you and that you should strive to get rid of. It's clear that he had a bad experience, and…

What if we treat all religions as programming languages for humans? Then a degree program for programming humans at the Omniversity would likely put you through several different religions and then through syncretisms of them.

Most people don't want to learn, so they don't choose to live in the Omniversity.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#85

Post by zelphirkalt »

ianbutler wrote: post #32
spudlyo wrote: post #19

So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark. Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such…

I don't think this is really entirely true. Everyone who isn't a FAANG or Frontier Lab seem to be absolutely starving for good talent. It's far more often that I hear "we interviewed someone we thought looked good and they couldn't even write a for loop, where are all the good engineers". I think you have far more leverage than you think in most places still.

We really need to let go of the notion, that FAANG necessarily has especially skilled engineers. Their products indicate, that this is not the case. Look at what kind of shitshows Google search and YouTube are for example. Or how FB is only bots now. Do these things still rake in money? Yes. But that's rather due to history and entrenchment, than sheer quality of these platforms/tools. Something all of FAANG have failed at is content moderation. Their quality actually sucks.

Also I would like to add, that companies in general are quite clueless about how to hire good engineers and set up hiring processes, which reward talkers and liars, rather than good engineers. Someone not able to write a loop will be found out, but that doesn't mean they won't hire other types of mediocre engineers, instead of good ones, that they gave a pass. Don't forget, that often not even any engineer is involved in taking a look at someone's application or its contents. Often it is HR going off of checklists, which leads to them ending up with the people, who have fake CVs ticking all the boxes.

I wish companies were able to distinguish better, because then your point would stand, that talented engineers had far more leverage. Lately though, I have lost my faith in that.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#86

Post by lkey »

giantg2 wrote: post #81
lkey wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"becoming an adult" is a thing people do, this will include no longer agreeing with everything your parents taught you. This is mundane and what you have described. "my parents are/were abusive" is something a plurality of people (and especially those raised in evangelical churches) experience. Within that dynamic, the 'value' at issue here is 'Do I, your child, have a right to my own body and choices?'; Too often, t…

"have a right to my own body and choices?" Not sure exactly what you mean by own body. However, under the law children generally do not have a right to their own choices and are expected to be controlled by their parents (really look at the stutes around this stuff and you might be surprised). After all, parents are held responsible for their child's actions under the law.

I am not surprised. I'm aware that the US never adopted:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

You have stated an unfortunate fact while hiding your value judgement. Do you think the laws you reference are correct, or no?

Do you understand the difference between having a responsibility to prevent your child from law-breaking and having absolute control over their life in general?

If you have children, or plan to, do you want to control every action they take to protect yourself from hypothetical legal consequence? Do you think you have the right to do so? Do you think you should be able to control what they think and express as well?

These questions are not hypothetical, as an answer in the affirmative is precisely what creates the type of abuse I described above.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#87

Post by foobarian »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #75
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I have ever encountered anyone who could not write a for loop that got a job as a programmer. I encounter plenty that used a for loop when something else would have been advisable.

I think he was being a little hyperbolic, but the core concern (that programmers look competent right up until you have them write a FizzBuzz) is very real. (Source: I've helped hire lots of programmers.)

Sadly I have run into people like that. To this day I am convinced they paid someone to stand in for the interviews.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#88

Post by foobarian »

r2_pilot wrote: post #46
joshcsimmons wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This viewpoint is preposterous to me in the first place. I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!

From my perspective, I do not perceive the world as "falling apart" and I wonder how much of your perception of the state of things (as if there was a universally defined "perfection" to strive towards instead of humans creating these concepts) falling apart is derived from your faith, which has a vested interest in presenting itself as a real-feeling thing in order to promulgate its existence. As a meme, it appears…

I feel like religion is the original corporation. You even have weekly 1-on-1s with your manager!

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#89

Post by SwellJoe »

leecommamichael wrote: post #28

> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this…

He shouldn't talk about his own experience? Why not? Why is it in poor taste to talk about a difficulty he went through?

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#90

Post by SwellJoe »

RazorBucksICO wrote: post #55
leecommamichael wrote: post #28

> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this…

The man is running a slide deck in front of his colleagues that is full of crude graphics, memes, and, I guess some anime or something. It’s an unserious talk given by an unserious person for entertainment value. He dons the jester’s hat and signals his alignment with the monied San Francisco tribe to keep his easy job in an air-conditioned environment. If not, he might suffer the awful fate of having to earn his bre…

WTF are you talking about? He made Zig and is employed by the Zig Foundation, of which he is founder and president. He can't lose his job because he ruffles feathers.
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