31–40 of 309 posts
Was an interesting discussion, but lost me with the sort of pointless Musk bashing near the end. I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's it was similarly cool to bash anything related to Microsoft. I spent a good bit of time writing a lengthy comment on slashdot about "Why to code". It was fairly poignant and well-received, except at the end of it I took a low effort pot-shot at Microsoft - because it was c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With modern team structures it’s difficult to have ownership all the way to prod. My team consists of: one product manager, one staff engineer, one or more lead engineers, one or more senior engineers, one engineering manager. The PM wants his share of the cake, so any big feature needs to go through his approval (“does this feature delivers value?”, “how many users will use the feature?”, etc.) The staff engineer ne…
I feel this so much. I feel like most of my job is playing politics to make sure people are happy and let them feel like they're adding value. Rather than shipping things to users to improve the product. It's honestly so depressing. Strongly considering going back to work at a small startup, to avoid having to work with these layers of middlemen that really add little to no value.
every day I wonder how come I do so few now that I'm paid compared to when I was jobless and hacking prototypes for $0
finding the recipe for creating goal driven, high speed, high quality, frictionless teams is a difficult quest
Was an interesting discussion, but lost me with the sort of pointless Musk bashing near the end. I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's it was similarly cool to bash anything related to Microsoft. I spent a good bit of time writing a lengthy comment on slashdot about "Why to code". It was fairly poignant and well-received, except at the end of it I took a low effort pot-shot at Microsoft - because it was c…
Where was the Musk bashing? I didn't see that in the slides.
Really resonated with this, reminded me of the journey I went on over the course of my dev career. By the end, my advice for every manager was roughly: * Don't add process just for the sake of it. Only add it if seriously needed. * Require ownership all the way to prod and beyond, no matter the role. (Turns out people tend to really like that.) * Stop making reactive decisions. If something bad happened on a total, e…
I've worked at a few startups and have seen high-trust environments lead to a lot of productivity, comfort and success— and the opposite for low-trust startups. In general, I think startups tend to lean towards high-trust, especially when they're small and early, but I was part of a 15-person one that was quite the opposite, and it was terrible.
The hiring process wasn't great. Long take-home task, and that was the only technical interview. A lot of talking, but not much noteworthy signal on the rest. Very long wait times. Now I know this is a red flag for low-trust companies. If they're not building trust at the hiring-stage, it means even after joining the organization it'll take time to acutally "be part of the team".
Once at the company, I had no permission to poke around— everything was hidden by default. There was no space for discussion, I was expected to learn, not to comment. There was plenty of micro-management; after all, if they don't trust you, they need to keep an eye on you at all times. You're probably doing something wrong.
The chasms were deep too; the company was building a web team to spin a contractor's project into a full web product, and I was supposed to lead it. We were disjointed from the rest of the company though, and would only hear about requirements through the founders. The team had interest on being more involved with the main product, but management just wasn't interested in making it happen, and just had us loiter around for a few months until they gathered requirements, and then implement some rather disjoint features.
The project failed. I'm working somewhere else now.
tldr; low-trust environments kill projects
Really resonated with this, reminded me of the journey I went on over the course of my dev career. By the end, my advice for every manager was roughly: * Don't add process just for the sake of it. Only add it if seriously needed. * Require ownership all the way to prod and beyond, no matter the role. (Turns out people tend to really like that.) * Stop making reactive decisions. If something bad happened on a total, e…
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The stab at Musk seems out of place. You might not like him, or his politics, but he took over and reformed a slow and bloated place, and despite all the doomsayers Twitter is still working and IMO better than before. And he has a solid track record of delivering: finance app, electric cars, rockets. Sure he over-promises and under-delivers, sometimes borderline lies, etc. but there is a huge amount of wisdom behind…
The success of any organization depends upon each member behaving selflessly to meet the needs of the group. Selfishness in any organization is a parasitic drain on energy and productivity. Embracing compassion for all those who drift into our orbit is the only way to improve oneself in all dimensions. Compassion is the common factor in virtue, and the cure for selfishness. It is also the measure of every person, so…
> Such is our baseline mammalian heritage, which we must each overcome with deliberate spiritual self-evolution. Personally I don't see it through such an individualist lens— I think this is a collective issue that can't possibly rely on an individual's "spiritual awakening". As such, I think the bigger issue is that (in some cultures more and some less) people are actively encouraged to compete and feed their ego. A…
If a person wants more power so they can enjoy such "fruits" (more money, control over other people, more pleasures, ...), then they will support people who exemplify those negative characteristics. Believe me when I say that despots don't gain power without significant support from other low-virue folks. That is really the story of human history.
But, no, it is each person's personal responsibility to seek and attain some measure of spiritual growth, with humility, honesty, perseverance, and study. Just like a CEO with bad personality traits will cause negative downstream effects, any individual with those traits will poison the teams they work on or whose work they affect.
As to competition among humans, that is just our common delusion, whereby we are fearfully convinced that we are merely mammals competing for scarce resources, instead of human beings who are capable of cooperation, generosity, compassion, and selfless service for the benefit of the whole, including future generations.
What we are witnessing across the Earth's societies is nothing less than the apotheosis of the masses' majorities exercising their free will to choose ignorance over wisdom in how we treat each other and what we will allow our organizations (such as corps and govts) to produce. A human life committed to selfish competition against other groups is a life wasted on mammalian idiocy, and always results in degradation of the whole.
Why are we not all humanitarians? Because most people reject our highest possible ideals, attitudes, and behaviors. Their reasons are numerous, but none hold any weight, for none will bring them peace and happiness, because only by making other people happy can we be happy. And we can only make other people happy by giving of our selves selflessly and compassionately.
Was an interesting discussion, but lost me with the sort of pointless Musk bashing near the end. I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's it was similarly cool to bash anything related to Microsoft. I spent a good bit of time writing a lengthy comment on slashdot about "Why to code". It was fairly poignant and well-received, except at the end of it I took a low effort pot-shot at Microsoft - because it was c…