bmj

The problem is partially the infrastructure. My rust belt city, or Eau Claire WI, could put in perfect bike and pedestrian infrastructure tomorrow, and it would be barely used for a generation, or more. Many bike advocates advance the wrong approach. Sure, with the right gear, anybody could commute in the middle of a Wisconsin winter. A better approach would be convinced the residents of Eau Claire (or any town, USA) to start by riding their bikes when the weather is good. Then gradually shift expectations to riding when it is raining. Then riding when it is cold. Lather, rinse, repeat. I think it would be a huge improvement if 2/3 of the residents of my city walked, took the bus, or rode their bikes to work five months out of the year. Over time, some percentage of those folks would realize that they could ride (or walk) when the weather isn't great.

* Program increment planning is absolutely painful. Three full days of meetings, and rarely do the stakeholders come with fully refined features. And, typically, what plan emerges is changed within two weeks because of emergencies or an executive seeing a shiny bauble we absolutely need to have.

* Two week sprints seem too short, at least for a group working in a highly regulated industry that requires a ton of manual testing and paperwork. I will also admit that we likely have trouble writing appropriately sized stories, but part of that circles back to the need for massive validation efforts.

* We suffer from lots of turnover in product management (and perhaps too many product managers). If a PM leaves, their features tend to die on the vine, even if some executive has decided they are important. That leaves us with a massive backlog.

Edited to add: Also check out Lindsey's teacher, Mary Timony (fronted Helium before becoming a solo act).

That said, as a lead engineer/subject matter expert for my employer, at least half of my days are spent doing many non-coding things.

Huh, really? Most of the people I know who tie-in with the figure-8 use the standard overhand safety knot (or they pull the tail back through the bottom loop of the eight). Most of us have been climbing for decades. I guess old habits die hard?

ETA: The last person I saw tie-in with a single bowline was Christian Griffith (of Verve fame) using it to tie-back in after cleaning the anchors of a warm-up in the Ruckman Cave at Rifle Mountain Park. He also didn't secure the rope whe he untied to thread the anchors, choosing instead to just step on it. Not exactly a great example of anchor safety...

I have come to believe that many (most?) engineers and user experience designers actually hate people. I was recently in the western U.S., attempting to get information from a ski/bike resort about mountain biking there for the day. This was no two-bit, small town resort. The website was absolutely terrible. Links to basic information led to 404 pages. And today, my wife and I were looking for information about our local museum's free teen membership program. On the info page, there was a large button with text "Apply Online." Clicking that button led to a form that could only be printed. There was no way to actually "apply online."

I've been working in the industry for almost 25 years. One of the most important things I've learned is that no matter "intuitive" the user interface seems to me, an engineer who likely has the various workflows burned into memory, you either need to have someone with NO experience look at the UI or, at the very least, have the ability to look at the user experience through the eyes of a non-tech-savvy user. Or, even just an engineer who just wants to download a trail map, or apply so his kid can get into the museum for free.

This is an important point in the United States. Many kids have absolutely NO order in their lives outside of school (due to absent parents, economic hardships, etc, etc). Many schools don't fully understand this, and do a pretty poor job of serving the kids, but I've seen public schools that fully understand what their kids need, and do their best to meet those needs. We can argue forever as to whether public schools should be responsible for the sort of things they are forced (by reality) to implement, but without the schools, these kids would be totally lost.

Personally, as a fan of Tolkein's works, I thought LoTR was fine. I didn't necessarily agree with all of Jackon's decisions, but, in the end, I enjoyed watching the movies (and still do). The Hobbit films are a different beast, for sure.

Fiction: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner

Non-fiction: In Good Company - Stanley Hauerwas

Into the Silent Land - Martin Laird

This is a different workflow than the average use of an IDE, particularly for, say, Java or C# development. Personally, if I am working on a web app with a fairly large codebase, I use VS Code, but if I am editing a few scripts or other files, I absolutely use Neovim from the terminal.

This is certainly true, but it is also not the only source of the problems outlined in the essay (and by others in this discussion). It's this:

Stanford’s new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat’s vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands. It is a world largely without unencumbered joy; without the kind of cultural specificity that makes college, or the rest of life, particularly interesting.

And this isn't just university life. Read Matthew Crawford's The World Beyond Your Head and Why We Drive to get a sense of the ways that safety-ism is the new American way. As humans, we develop cognitively and emotionally when we are placed in risky situations (whether emotionally or physically). Perhaps it's college kids doing dumb things, or perhaps it's kids building bike jumps in the local park or homemade zip lines in the local park.

I think you are correct -- that we should feel good about a friend's vacation, or ideal job. However, in real life, we are exposed to those things in a much more limited way: you meet a friend for coffee and they show you photos of their trip, or a good friend calls to share their joy at the new job. Yes, absolutely, emotionally healthy humans should feel good about that. However, social media skews the equation, heavily. First, EVERYONE on your feed is posting how great their lives are, and, second, how many of those great lives are carefully curated for public consumption? When you are doing life with other people, yes, you share the joys and moments for celebration, but you likely also share the hard times that don't make it to social media. It really helps to know other people experience the same sorts of disappointment and pain that you do.

[0] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reading-ourselve... (might be paywalled)

It's also a great way to pick a few cats to bring home. My local shelter will just let you into the room, and you can hang out and decide which ones (and how many) you'll bring home.

I can appreciate this feeling, because I've been living it for awhile. If I can borrow the original author's metaphor, as my career bucket sprung a leak, my other buckets were filled, and I've been just fine with that. As others have pointed out in this discussion, this is really all about perspective. If the career bucket is really important, then you will tend to that (but, again, here's where the metaphor falls apart, at least for the author -- he noticed his other buckets also leaking, but he focused on the career bucket [which, of course, is fine if it works for him]).

Yes, the constantly changing landscape of my work can be a mental strain at times, but, for me, it's the devil I know. I've invested 15+ years with my employer, and I know the domain well. I don't want my other buckets to lose water in an effort to fill my career bucket, at least right now.

tl;dr;

To each their own.

Yep, I went through the same thing.