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> If they became overnight millionaires, lots of them would stop putting up with the daily drudgery.

In many specialties doctors could easily retire after 5-10 years of practice and live an extremely comfortable life, but they don't.

coffeemugon San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

No, this is what not building things does to a city.

coffeemugon How to Interview Engineers

It's like the Rick and Morty heist episode.

coffeemugon How to Interview Engineers

Of course I'm reading this!

coffeemugon Justice Department sues Yale for illegal practices in admissions

As someone who isn't Asian, thank God someone calls these institutions out for this racist BS. I don't care whether they discriminate against group A in favor of group B or the other way around. ALL discrimination is abhorrent, and I genuinely can't believe we allowed preferential admissions based on ethnicity to go on that long.

coffeemugon Against Xkcd 1357

Demanding people read things against their will is a hell of a stretch of the original argument :)

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

Would have to test it and see how it works, but this (or something like it) is my favorite solution so far.

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

You're right. When I talk about complex systems I generally mean "this behavior emerged because of pressure to optimize for property X", but it's awkward to keep repeating that so I anthropomorphize them for simplicity. Should clarify that at some point.

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

It isn't a conspiracy, it's an emergent system.

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

That would imply that the balance of power never shifts, which clearly isn't true over the long term.

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

That's a problem with the companies not with Linus.

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

You don't abolish the chain of command. You abolish management as a separate organization with its own incentives. For example, Linus is a leader but he is not a manager. In engineering this is what you want.

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

Linus is as aspy of a nerd as it gets, and he did fine. You don’t need the thing you think you need.

coffeemugon Parallel Tracks

Author here. I'm not entirely sure, I'll try to work it out. One thing I am sure of is that we need to get rid of the professional engineering management class. It's a parasitic institution.

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

If you read my twitter (@spakhm) I'm about as anti-marxist, anti-woke, anti-oppressors vs oppressed as can be. (I do think Marx's writing is very interesting, but in a glass-of-wine-ponder-once-in-your-life kind of way, not in a lets-try-implementing-this-again kind of way). I grew up in a communist society, I definitely want marxism as a political force to be eradicated off the face of this earth.

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

Not burnt at all, quite the opposite!

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

Sales is completely different because individual contributions are far easier to measure than e.g. engineering or product management.

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

I am not proposing anything. I am just observing what happens empirically. Doing these things tends to get people soft influence but no formal authority. It's simply what is.

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

Author here. I am extremely not a Marxist.

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

Author here. I haven’t read moral mazes, but a few people mentioned it. I’ll pick it up.

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

Author here— I’m still not sure if this post is satire. You can read it both ways, and I think it works.

coffeemugon How to Get Promoted

> Work on important projects for the company, build rapport and relationships in the company, build a reputation for getting things done on time with high quality and low drama.

This will not get you promoted beyond the middle rungs.

coffeemugon Boom Supersonic hopes to test-fly its supersonic plane in 2021

I thought naming the company after its most famous externality was a brilliant idea. If you can't fix it, feature it.

coffeemugon Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

What are examples of cities with functioning societies? My backup plan was NYC, but thanks to de Blasio that's now out.

coffeemugon Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

How could Uber possibly be exploiting them when it offers a better opportunity than literally everyone else?

coffeemugon Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

It's the other way around. The government is infiltrated by socialists who pass unjust laws that interfere with perfectly reasonable contracts between consenting adults. Nobody in their right mind believes gig workers are employees-- the economics doesn't work, it doesn't fit prima facie, and no one wants it. Uber needs to win this thing to keep the government from writing laws that have no ethical basis whatsoever.

coffeemugon US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

Viber

coffeemugon Show HN: Find HN threads about the page you're browsing

This is awesome. I really love this idea, and love the implementation. Works great and I think will be really useful or at least interesting (can't tell yet).

One piece of feedback-- I'd love a mode where the extension notifies me there are HN threads that pass a certain threshold (e.g. number of upvotes, number of comments, etc.) for every page I visit. This is less privacy preserving, but I'd be willing to make that trade-off in exchange for useful information being surfaced to me opportunistically.

Thanks for making it!!

coffeemugon Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

> should not feel comfortable socially expressing that position anymore

The fact that this meta-view (that one shouldn't feel comfortable expressing a certain position) is becoming mainstream is deeply concerning. It is a terrifying attempt at extracting compliance from political opponents.