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My Colleague Julius

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Re: My Colleague Julius

#121

Post by skulk »

ChilledTonic wrote: post #102
epicureanideal wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Management does not care how or why the software does or doesn’t work - they just want 12 rules for life style platitudes and charisma. Which clearly shows that something is wrong in the industry, or how management roles are filled, or how wealth and influence and opportunities are distributed generally.

> something is wrong in the industry, or how management roles are filled, or how wealth and influence and opportunities are distributed generally. And will you be able to fix these issues within your own lifetime? Will you be able to turnover the behemoth of bureaucracy and golf playing managers that has become the technology industry? If not I highly suggest adopting the Julius mentality.

"Do you think you will be able to halt this race to the bottom? No? Then start running, I hear it's great down there!"

Re: My Colleague Julius

#122

Post by _t9ow »

awanderingmind wrote: post #113
_t9ow wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would be sceptical of attributing his business success to technical acumen If you don't mind elaborating, what would you attribute his success to?

As I said, I'd rather not start a flame war ;)

I understand your reservations. Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to bait you -- I was genuinely curious. But I absolutely get why you'd rather not have this conversation. :-)

Re: My Colleague Julius

#123

Post by tacitusarc »

intelVISA wrote: post #39
YmiYugy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a management error, not a Pete problem. If Pete was told to get a demo done as soon as possible, that's what he did. And in many cases that's not a bad thing for management to tell people. Finding product market fit, usually trumps tech debt. The thing is, that management should know, how time intensive and difficult it can be to turn a cobbled together demo into a production system.

Pete's just a rational actor in this scenario, the real issue is management with no insight into the reality of what they're 'managing'.

It sounds like folks don’t understand that part of engineering is solid technical communication up the chain. Sometimes you’ll get a manager who just wants you to push the thing through and plugs their ears, and that sucks. But in my experience, what managers (and execs, for that matter) want is someone who can do the work AND explain the trade offs in terms of business value.

If you are an engineer with a reputation of getting things done, they will listen to you. They may not always follow your recommendations, but often they have context you do not have.

Admittedly, some managers are just ladder climbing batards who will make bad calls regardless.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#124

Post by spopejoy »

p4bl0 wrote: post #11

I saw the end coming miles away, but enjoyed reading this essay anyway as it's well written. I guess I saw it coming in good part because I can really relate to the story, from the point of view of a CS associate professor. LLMs are a real pain for students on so many levels. These tools can destroy their confidence by being seemingly better than them at first, which also makes these students want to use these tools…

I saw the AI angle right away too but I thought it was maybe SF and Juilius was a cyborg

Re: My Colleague Julius

#125

Post by intelVISA »

motorest wrote: post #106
intelVISA wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pete's just a rational actor in this scenario, the real issue is management with no insight into the reality of what they're 'managing'.

> Pete's just a rational actor in this scenario, the real issue is management with no insight into the reality of what they're 'managing'. That's the norm, isn't it? The bulk of product managers aren't even technically oriented, let alone software engineering experts with a deep understanding of their own codebases. Once I worked with a PM that quite openly stated he had to google what was a frontend and a backend de…

You don't, PM is mostly secretarial. If the actual line manager doesn't understand domain basics they're managing in name only: a deaf conductor.

Sure it happens often because tech is a very profitable, grifter magnet, but we really shouldn't normalize it nor expect to solve what is ultimately an organizational problem.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#126

Post by torginus »

bruce511 wrote: post #40
electric_mayhem wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of getting too meta, I feel like lots of folks will get the gist of Julius and check out from the article… …missing the twist. So as a TLDR, I’ll say that Julius is a peer of the author who is polished but uncomprehending, often spouting convincing-sounding nonsense. And here in 2024 we not only have folks like that to contend with, but also have polished AI output being forced at us from every direction.…

What most people will miss is that "presentation is important ". As coders we spend a lot of time And pride on the code. We evaluate our work based on its correctness, elegance, effeciency and so on. But the way everyone else values it is on how it interacts with the world. We get frustrated when someone with clearly inferior skills perfects the presentation layer. The solution is not to teach Julius to code. The sol…

I have tried this, I've solved problems that were deemed impossible and too expensive to solve. And not only did I manage to solve it technically, my solution was convenient and polished enough to be widely adopted across the company. However when I expected this to be recognized, the following things happened:

- Nothing. Other than my colleagues and immediate boss giving me props, nobody even knew something changed.

- When I tried to promote the stuff I did, I realized that most management a two or more levels up had zero clue what we did, and what our actual problems were. I needed to be like those made-for-TV guys where I needed to present a problem and a solution.

- I realized that most managers' mental model of the team is the check engine light model. If the light is on, the guy who makes it go away is a hero, no matter what he does. If it's not, then it's useless, and possibly fraudulent waste.

- I was often accused of being a pushy self-promoter, sleazily taking credit and overrepresenting what I did.

- Once I kind of got good at promoting things, I realized that doing the work is optional. This is probably the starting point for most Juliuses.

- Once I started getting recoginition, I started getting it from the weirdest places. I once got a shout-out from the company higher ups. When I talked to them informally during the christmas party, they admitted they had no idea what I did, or why it was important.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#127

Post by [deleted] »

torginus wrote: post #126
bruce511 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most people will miss is that "presentation is important ". As coders we spend a lot of time And pride on the code. We evaluate our work based on its correctness, elegance, effeciency and so on. But the way everyone else values it is on how it interacts with the world. We get frustrated when someone with clearly inferior skills perfects the presentation layer. The solution is not to teach Julius to code. The sol…

I have tried this, I've solved problems that were deemed impossible and too expensive to solve. And not only did I manage to solve it technically, my solution was convenient and polished enough to be widely adopted across the company. However when I expected this to be recognized, the following things happened: - Nothing. Other than my colleagues and immediate boss giving me props, nobody even knew something changed.…

[deleted]

Re: My Colleague Julius

#128

Post by Bluestein »

torginus wrote: post #126
bruce511 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most people will miss is that "presentation is important ". As coders we spend a lot of time And pride on the code. We evaluate our work based on its correctness, elegance, effeciency and so on. But the way everyone else values it is on how it interacts with the world. We get frustrated when someone with clearly inferior skills perfects the presentation layer. The solution is not to teach Julius to code. The sol…

I have tried this, I've solved problems that were deemed impossible and too expensive to solve. And not only did I manage to solve it technically, my solution was convenient and polished enough to be widely adopted across the company. However when I expected this to be recognized, the following things happened: - Nothing. Other than my colleagues and immediate boss giving me props, nobody even knew something changed.…

The check engine light model of management. Well put.-

Re: My Colleague Julius

#129

Post by xerox13ster »

xenocratus wrote: post #115
Dansvidania wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you agree that the problem in such a situation is not the Julius/Julii, but the managers who hired and misunderstood his/their contributions?

Wouldn't you agree that the problem is not the managers who hired and misunderstood their contributions, but the society who forged them and incentivised them to behave and think like that? You can basically choose a "scape-goat" at any of these levels, or just choose to accept them all as equal parts of a strange contraption.

So then, if we can choose to scapegoat at any of these levels, do we choose to recurse to the base case and say that surely we agree that living in a society based on capitalism incentivizes it and money is at fault, or do we escape recursive loop before getting there by returning early and focusing on something else that’s inconsequential?

Re: My Colleague Julius

#130

Post by imtringued »

Dansvidania wrote: post #120
xenocratus wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you agree that the problem is not the managers who hired and misunderstood their contributions, but the society who forged them and incentivised them to behave and think like that? You can basically choose a "scape-goat" at any of these levels, or just choose to accept them all as equal parts of a strange contraption.

I would not agree. Managers are the fitness function in the system. Workers tend to optimise based on it.

Actor-Critic my beloved!
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