Framed this way, I feel like any team that has had layoffs needs to be very deliberate about not performing heroics to keep things running. **Let things fail** if they require going above and beyond. Otherwise the floor will be raised and it will no longer be “above and beyond”, just the expecta
Shared this privately, but it's worth repeating it publicly:
As a platform showing advertisements, you MUST have controls in place to allow people to opt out of certain categories of ads, e.g., those featuring violence, casinos/gambling, weight loss/AI body tuning, or alcohol/drug consumption.
Not having that makes your platform unsafe and promotes an unhealthy society.
asking for a friend— can anyone hook me up with someone who knows about #techunions (#unionizing at a #tech company)? she and some of her colleagues just got screwed out of a raise based on sales and workflow metrics they had no control over and they’re ready to revolt
It's hard to see why "clean" Git commits are useful if you've never done a good `git blame` or `git bisect`.
It's also hard to see how useful `git blame` and `git bisect` can be if your Git commits are a mess.
Not sure where I'm going with this.
#git
github tip: you can use "redirect.github.com" when referencing an issue/PR from another repo inside an issue/PR in your repo
this will avoid your issue getting backlinked into the other repo's issue, reducing noise.
example:
"github.com/nodejs/node/6969"
becomes:
"redirect.github.com/nodejs/node/6969"
The plenary speakers for #StateOfOpenCon are up on the website - and, the whole schedule is packed with fantastic expertise. Exciting to be a liaison for all of these speakers! Some community tickets are available. https://stateofopencon.com
Even if you ignore everything else, all the theft and fraud and exploitation, all the waste, all the manipulation, all of it. Generative AI is still unreliable. I don't understand why people are so eager to use an unreliable tool. Like, yeah, I love those wobbly hammers! It makes no sense.
LinkedIn loves to tell me that my post has received a bunch of impressions, but I haven't gotten a single conversion from it, so I guess that tells me everything I need to know about that platform.
I don't put projects on the back burner. I put them under the floorboards, where the ever-louder beating of their hearts drives me slowly to madness.
#ADHD #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #neurodiverse #neurodivergence #ADHDmemes
not sure who to attribute this to - there is NO reason any of us should have to "thrive in a fast paced environment" or "work well under pressure." most of our daily work is not an emergency and our culture of fake urgency and immediacy just to make more profit for people in the c-suite is burning people out.
stop sending people into fight or flight and expecting them to bend over backward because you dont know how plan or manage resources properly
The thing about #tech #layoffs that people who haven’t been through it often don’t understand is that morale never recovers. The employees who remain will never have the same relationship with that company, bosses or peers.
Watching people you respect pack their stuff and crying on the phone with their spouses is something that never goes away. When I survived a layoff in my 20s I became a “do exactly what the ticket says” person. I stopped suggesting ideas, providing feedback, believing anything a manager told me.
If you are a company considering layoffs, especially a profitable company, you should approach it as “this department will have 100% turnover”. The second I got another job offer I left that company and six months later nobody who had been there at the time of layoffs remained.
I’ve seen that pattern play out multiple times.
Oof, just heard about a massive dick move scenario for corporations that somehow hadn't occurred to me before:
1) Mandatory Return to Office
2) Employee moves to be near office
3) Employee is laid off
Like, seriously, fuck these companies into the sun
It *really* grosses me out when I see/hear YouTubers and Podcasters promoting BetterHelp. They should have gone out of business when this happened.
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/2023169-betterhelp-inc-matter
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/ftc-ban-betterhelp-revealing-consumers-data-including-sensitive-mental-health-information-facebook
Talking to people about your big rewrite/re-architecture project feels a bit like talking to people about your imaginary friend — people are really polite about it but keeping giving you that “are you serious?” look
Please, don't force me to log in.
One aspect of software enshittification that really grinds my gears is that more and more apps require you to create accounts and login.
https://hamatti.org/posts/please-dont-force-me-to-log-in/
If you've ever wondered why some Wi-Fi is free (like in hotels), it's because typically data about your browsing is sold to countless ad companies that will happily buy it.
Had to use the hotel WiFi recently on a trip, and after clicking "agree" to their terms of service, the Little Snitch firewall on my Mac went bonkers. I must have denied 20-30 outbound requests to advertising networks. It still worked, though, so I'm guessing I didn't manage to block all of it.
Attached: 1 image
From Atlassian’s remote work study: Team gatherings increase sense of belonging for 4-5 months, but sporadic office attendance does not
https://atlassianblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/lessonslearned.pdf
Random thought I had earlier that I'd like to run by some #FLOSS software people or FLOSS lawyers:
Could we start a "union" of FLOSS software developers that would support us legally and help us bargain for better terms when negotiating license exceptions, support contracts, etc.?
🧵
What? Forcing people to return to office was never about productivity and was always about power?
https://fortune.com/2024/01/13/managers-scapegoating-workers-return-to-office/
Ouch. A large OpenStreetMap group has been using a proprietary chat platform as a community space for ~10 yrs. Now they gotta pay a $80k/yr (or $10k??) for usage. 🤯😱😢
Slack (now Salesforce) now wants to charge @OpenStreetMapUS for all ~6k users on their server. 😢😢 Ouch.
This sort of bait & switch is why open, community owned platforms (like this!) are vital!
read more on the slack (while you still can??!): https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C029HV951/p1705438543546349
#OpenStreetMap #OSM #FreeSoftware #Cassandra
In the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, caused by overuse of energy, our Tech Bro magicians continue to invent technologies that not alone are not energy conserving, they are massively, massively energy consumptive. From bitcoin to AI, tech becomes greedier and greedier for energy.
Recently I've seen a few people comment on the air quality readings inside large art galleries; the results were far better than on trains, in planes and airports, in movie theatres and so on, due to the need for conservation of the artwork. It's just so strange thinking about how we apparently care more about protecting art than we do about protecting our own lives.
The secret to software engineering is to focus all of your energy as a team (and a company) on learning how to share information between each other better. Build that understanding. Build that ability to uplift and teach each other.
For fuck's sake, stop worrying about over engineering and worry about under understanding the problem.
The over engineering goes away the second you start putting humans first and start prioritizing understanding over an artificial roadmap built without context
Pro-tip: before setting your three security questions to 36 random alphanumerics, be aware that you might have to recite them to a customer service rep instead of just copy/pasting them into the website.
Part of why tech workers at huge orgs like this need a union:
Being compelled to relocate to a forced birthing state is violent as hell
So much more to collective power than just getting paid
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/14/24037904/apple-san-diego-siri-ai-team-relocating
the autistic urge to use parentheses in every sentence (because you're afraid people will misunderstand it (or interpret additional meaning into it (which has happened before (many times (with terrible consequences (and i'm not even talking about the trauma this caused))))))
the adhd urge to use parentheses in every sentence (you thought of something else that doesn't fit into the previous sentence structure you'd thought up)
Amazon not only didn’t make the list, they didn’t make the list of tech companies that didn’t make the list. As an employer they’re fast fading into cultural irrelevance.
Great job with the post-employment non-compete by the way.
https://qz.com/big-tech-falls-glassdoor-company-rankings-1851153542
𝓖𝓵𝓸𝓼𝓼𝓪𝓻𝔂
Blockchain: a slow database
Crypto: an expensive slow database
NFT: an expensive slow database to store URLs
AI: a way to write slow and inefficient algorithms
LLM: a database that stores text in a slow and inefficient way
Chat GPT: an expensive imprecise query language for slow and inefficient text databases that often returns wrong results
Jamie Tanna
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