Wurdan

If you want to bring Apple and app store guidelines into this, then why aren't you calling them out for allowing this app on the market in the first place? Without that failure (which they're also making 30% on, let's not forget) we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

She could probably pad her paycheques quite a bit with a book deal touting insider gossip, too.

I think you’re somewhat overestimating the chances of getting Apple to take action with a single person’s report.

I dunno if it meets your definition of legal, but "The EU Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online" seems to largely hinge around putting in effort to combat such things. The companies don't have to show that the measures are foolproof, they just show that they're making an effort.

Isn't it also true that that area around Leipzig has been a thorn in the side of DB since the fall of the wall? I think I remember reading somewhere that the infrastructure in that area isn't ideal for high volume and speed of trains (due to stretches that only have a single track and a lack of guarded/signaled level crossings IIRC)

A CTO shouldn’t be “hoping”, a CTO should have been influencing those decisions (including pricing) all along. If he only realized the price was wrong when the product hit the shelves (while he was in bed recovering), then he has no place in lecturing others on their lack of strategic perspective.

Well you just met another. And I can count on one hand the number of peers who I've worked with who just want power.

The article makes it clear that this was the passion project of Eri Miyahara, Secretary General of the local council and a woman herself. Though I'm sure you had noble intentions with this comment, it ignores the professional judgement that led her to create this game and turns her efforts into "merely assisting men to become heroes."

It would probably also throw out a lot of false positives which would take time to check. Especially in works of fiction, writers could take liberties with non-standard spelling.

I look forward to the day when "good code" becomes as obvious as the best practices in some other engineering disciplines.

I like the Practical Engineering YT channel and one thing I always find interesting is learning about all the research and guidance that exists for things I never thought of. Like there are 400 page documents on how to implement drainage in dams based on decades of experience and post-mortem investigations when things went wrong.

But it feels like every time I'm involved in a software project, we're starting almost from scratch and just incrementing towards an unknown future which is "good enough". Even if you have a team of experienced developers then the Best Practices at the start of the project are not what they were 2 years prior. The tools that they used on their past projects have evolved (or been deprecated). Or maybe they're being asked to do a bunch of data engineering where they previously did full stack Web development, because org structures are fluid and many IT leaders feel that good engineers can solve any problem with code (ignoring the idea of specialisation).

This is not to disagree with your point, but more to say that a lot of the infrastructure and professional norms around classical engineering disciplines just aren't there (yet) for developers.

And I can’t see a reason why it should be equal. Even if you strip the relationship down to its most basic principle, there is asymmetry. One party provides work with the expectation of pay, the other party providess pay with the expectation of work.

But the asymmetries don’t end there. Terminating employment is a far greater threat to the employee than the employer. This creates a power imbalance which could easily be exploited by malicious or incompetent employers. That power imbalance is fundamental to this relationship and is reason enough (in the opinion of many countries) to bolster worker rights.

I would be impressed by one of my reports saying “We’ve worked together to get me ready for the next step in my career, and I think more face time with our execs will help me take that step. Can you help me find opportunities to get it?” This is assuming we’re on the same page about how ready they are to take that step. But if we’re not on the same page, then I’ve already failed in performance reviews and feedback.

Crazily oversimplified view of people. Just one thing you’ve missed: in addition to the axis of good/bad there’s an axis of experienced/inexperienced. Managers can be both good and inexperienced, in which case feedback is absolutely necessary to improve their lives and yours.

Planned obsolescence isn't only a thing with fast moving technology either. Engineers design bridges with a finite lifespan in mind as well, and it's not because they think there'll be a much better bridge in X years. It's just that the relationship between the expected lifespan of a thing and its cost to develop is exponential.

I think both things are true. If you're on the struggle bus then you should prioritise self-sufficiency in the hiring process (as the post suggests) and be honest about what people are walking into (as you kind of suggest). But I think no amount of honesty will help if you hire someone who needs some amount of hand-holding when your team doesn't have the bandwidth to provide it.

Seems obvious - don't hire people when you can't give them what they need to succeed in-role. But I think the blog author wasn't trying to say much more than that with the sentence you quoted.

Rationalise - maybe. Romanticise - definitely not. If people want to leave I wouldn't blame them at all, and will happily write them a reference. But there's no point in me optimising for that decision, I need to optimise for the scenario where they want to stay.

I can say that I'm staying because I hunted for this job last year through the "winter of tech" and that nearly broke me as much as this toxic workplace does. So I have reasons not to jump ship, and I can't imagine I'm the only one. So for anyone reporting to me who would also rather not leave, I should do what I can to reduce the shittiness for them as much as possible.

I'm also an engineering manager, currently working in a department that feels on fire, and I think there is good wisdom in the article. The part about not fostering a "us vs them" mentality was good food for thought, as I do find it tempting to build short term camaraderie. When faced with big picture issues that can't be changed (believe me, they can't) it's easy to reach for a "We all know that these exec decisions don't make sense, but we can still do right for each other among this BS" type of conversation. But it's worth thinking about what that will do for the long term motivation of that team member at the company.

I'm a 30-40 year old with absolutely no interest in making music, but I want every single thing which crosses my news feed from Teenage Engineering. So yeah, that checks out.

Out of curiosity, do you think those things are intrinsically hard, or is there a mutual escalation at play in some of these? Like I can imagine inspections are as hard as they are because you need to be prepared if weather becomes difficult to manage (for example). And then I imagine comms is hard/demanding because you can't assume that planning and inspections were done correctly. Etc.

I do wonder if reducing human error in some parts of this challenge stack would make it possible to lighten some of the other imposed burdens.

Not all progress is good progress. Adding lead to paint was progress at the time. Same with using asbestos for insulation. We’ve since decided that the costs outweigh the benefits there.

Regulators should and do weigh both the harm and good of restricting the usage of new technology. The fact that they don’t always get it right isn’t a reason to stop regulation altogether.

My only concern is that some people sit with silent resentment about it. But that’s why I try encourage honesty and openness in 1-1s.

Oh, it’s fun that both words make sense with the meaning of the phrase. But I’ll toe the line of its usage better in future.

As a manager in a company with an in-office policy which I don’t like - I will tow the policy line if I’m asked in an official capacity, otherwise it’s my ass. But if my DRs shirk the policy then the only reason I’ll take action is if HR catches on (they do occasionally look at data from the building access logs), or if it causes waves in the team.

It’s also possible (I’d say - likely) that your boss knew, and had no desire to do anything about it.

Opportunistic applications are totally normal, and yes I’m a hiring engineering manager. If those aren’t caught in the recruitment process, then it’s the process that’s flawed.

Including that language might improve performance on certain tasks, even if “reasoning” isn’t something LLMs are capable of. Heck, they’ve even been shown to sometimes perform better when you tell them to “Take a deep breath”: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/telli...

As the old saying goes, “If it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid”

I'd say you can add the time Altman threatened to pull OpenAI out of the EU if its regulation wasn't to his liking https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-may-leave-eu-if-re...

A line in a Kurzgesagt video ( https://youtu.be/LEENEFaVUzU ) a while back caught my attention. “Every generation assumes they’re important enough to witness the apocalypse.” I don’t think that’s the only factor in people wishing for collapse, but I think it’s one of them.

Not in my experience - juggling priorities is usually difficult enough when you're just trying to manage the C-suite's favourite ideas, or feature requests from the highest revenue customer, etc. Factoring in synergistic engineering efforts is out of reach for a lot of PMs that I've worked with.

It also helps to be able to understand the tech enough to know if a certain approach is going to impact other initiatives which are further down the roadmap. One of my favourite questions I've been asked by a PM is "Will any of this work become easier to do if we change the order of these work items?"

Agree with the other comments saying that no experience is ever a waste. Even if you never work another day as a software engineer, that skill set and way of tackling problems will remain useful in anything you do.

One thing I'd say about finding a side project is: think about what motivates you about the work. The most fun I've had on a side-project recently was just coding a google spreadsheet macro for something that my friends and I have to do semi-regularly. Knowing who the audience for the thing was and how they would benefit from it greatly helped my motivation.

But maybe you get more motivated by solving truly difficult challenges. In that case I'm sure there are some OSS projects out there eager for contributors. It's really down to what gets you fired up.