LordFast

> A lot of my advice here is to just relax, but I hate relaxing.

Hit the nail on the head with that one.

Does Catalina have more security issues? Or are we just talking about them more than before?

Good point, and I used to actually hold a stronger belief in things like that because to me they represent a larger-picture type of work that seemed more interesting.

BUT, ever since I exited out of that game to start my own business, my beliefs have been shifting. Now I can see exactly how successful businesses come together and make enough money to fill payroll, and there's no getting around the fact that real, valuable work needs to get done. And that only once the real work has been done, do you then get to have the nice byproducts of success which is to do public speaking, culture building, and etc all those extra-curricular things. But the existence of these extra-curriculars are predicated on having a successful business in the first place. And no matter how cynical anyone gets, you won't have a successful business based on /JUST/ bullshit empire building alone- you gotta do real work and provide real value.

I can also see more clearly now that if society doesn't have the right balance between doers and talkers, we're eventually gonna have nothing valuable to show for anymore, and the fallout from that won't be pretty.

When /everyone/ DESIRES to be talkers, instead of just a small minority, it's a worrisome trend.

How does it help the left and hurt the right? Serious question.

Social media is an addictive substance and should be controlled. End of story.

The world we're going to needs no nuance and critical thinking.

I'm not even sure that's a joke anymore.

Managed mixed teams before. Best of luck to FB management on getting things right.

I would prefer either one without mixing. One shoe in one shoe out is a great way to make it extra hard to manage.

You just hit the nail on the head for why recessions and economic setbacks are a healthy part of a functioning society. It helps clear out some of the old for some of the new, and helps equalize some opportunities for some people.

"If everyone just live like I do the world will be perfect! What's your problem!?"

None, but I believe they hold political power both in terms of dealership associations and also in terms of bargaining rights from manufacturers.

It's an outdated system that should have been dead a decade ago, but not yet.

Is it too jaded to say that it most likely has always been, for all time? And that we are simply more aware of it these days?

The quality of Apple's Apple's and software has been on a gentle downward trend since about 2015.

I still prefer them for now, but eventually the cost/benefit ratio just won't make sense anymore. If I'm paying for crappy quality, I'd rather just buy cheap.

I believe something like 80% of their workforce are Sales + G&A.

> I actually think this is a good argument for licensure like civil engineers etc have to have

This logic is sound, but I don't personally agree that bureaucracy is gonna solve any of our problems.

The rest of your comment, I believe if you spend time reading my OP carefully and spend some time noodling over it then you'd find that all of it had been covered already.

I agree with you, but from what I've seen there's been a steady and increasing stream of pressure from the capital side of things.

Wisdom shall lead again at some point, but I don't clearly see when. Threads like this one though are a promising sign.

> What we suck at is admitting which jobs are which types and assigning the labor accordingly (as well as setting targets).

Huh, never thought about it that way. That's a very useful perspective. I will start incorporating it going forward.

Another perspective to consider as well: while you are spending the time investing into and training people who needs the training and investment, your competitors are throwing money luring away the ones you have already trained, and leaving you in the dust in terms of velocity.

Turtles all the way down. Once a game shifts into zero-sum, it's not gonna stop getting played until it collapses.

Normally, I would say to avoid entering into any zero-sum games. But the world has made a sharp turn towards zero-sum over the past 5 years, so that advice has rapidly become impractical in today's climate.

I've personally seen no correlation between people who can solve problems and program when watched by another person versus people who can solve problems and program when left alone with a real problem, and ample of time to noodle on and resolve it on their own.

The same is true for writers: most are likely not to be interested and/or able to do their best work when watched over the shoulder by another person.

The /real/ question is this: should software be like a factory job? If so, let's clearly acknowledge it and define it, so that people can set their expectations and self-select accordingly.

"Hey if you join me in this scheme to make more profit by squeezing other people out of what they have today, I'll give you a cut of that profit. What do you say? I promise you'll keep getting a cut until it makes sense to squeeze you out as well."

Less obvious, and more eloquent, of course.

Better choices, better opportunities, and real innovative solutions to solve real problems. Those are the rising tides that will raise our boats instead of sinking them.

I concede though that it's easier when we're talking about 10 people and a startup, rather than 330 million human beings across 3.8 million square miles.

I want to see more leaders focus on the real crux of the problem, taking into account human nature while we're at it. I'm not holding my breath.

The problem has never been about what system works, that's always been clear.

The problem has been, and will continue to be about all the people that are currently employed by the dysfunctional system. Managing that situation is the meat of the challenge.

Kudos to you for your actions. Much respect.

My experience as both a 50+ hiring manager and as a candidate tells me that we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations.

Yes, it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people are actually working on.

Yes, interviews suck, but that's because we all want to get paid the big bucks so we can afford the prohibitively expensive COL and actually do better economically than our middle-class parents. My background and resume legitimately qualifies me as a 9 on the high end, but really I'm probably just a 4.

Cascading causal relationships thus expand both upwards into the capital markets and downwards into your grocery stores.

If we can all take a chill pill employers+employees and stop 49er'ing around so hard, then I think most everyone can be happily employed.

I don't see us getting there on our own though, since that next door neighbor ain't gonna stop and I'm sure as hell not getting left behind /s.

I hope we can find a bit more maturity in our industry, but I'm not holding my breath.

Care isn't a high priority in today's environment, both political and economic. It's about whether the equation all checks out.

Ironically, as someone who's always been the type of personality to make sure that the equation checks out, I've come to see that it doesn't make the world a better place.

C'est la vie.

Yeesh. Sorry you had to experience anything remotely close to that.

The industry is shifting AFAICT. Callousness seems to be in and empathy seems to be out. Unfortunately though I think the same thing happened to pretty much every industry that came before software as well.

Hope you found something good so that you don't have to waste time with shitty people anymore.

I think it's always been this way though in essence. I think it's actually better nowadays because more people are at least talking about the problem.

"How willing are you to jump through all the hoops that I had to jump through, plus a couple more, in order to get this job?"

Hmmmm. I believe you. I haven't had enough remote experience yet to know for sure, but it sounds reasonable to me.

Heh, yeah. People problems tend to get solved in weird ways more often than not.

Done it. Worked really well (got great people, which got more great people, virtuous cycle etc). Struggled to convince a couple of other companies to adopt the mindset. Hoping to do it again some day.

Yeah, life's hard. But isn't that why it's worth it to fight for a better life? I get it though, "better" is relative.

Don't take it personally. As someone who's hired a lot of people, the unfortunate times when I "ghosted" people were mostly due to internal company problems, not candidate problems.

Anecdotally, these were always situations when I wanted to pass someone but received weird resistance from other stakeholders and it ended up being a situation of stalemate. So, you could have faced similar things.

Ahh, refreshing to see that someone still remembers how to do company-building.