doodaddy

I always suspected I had a doppelgänger but this proves it. Aside from the 6-12 breaks between each job I could have sworn this post was my own. I’m on the tail end of a sabbatical that is running far into overtime for the same reason - for the past year+ I’ve waited for the energy and desire to return as I expected it surely would.

But no. Nothing. Reading a job req still induces a wince. Reading the fluff from and about companies sends me recoiling. These things were never pleasant but they were tolerable. Now, the limbo bar has been set too low and it’s getting harder to compel my body to contort enough to slip under.

I’m pretty sure there is an eventual return somewhere ahead and the scariest thought is that I’ll get back and swirl back down to life as it was before. The past year+ becomes a puff of a memory. The good news (!) is that knowing you feel this way is critical knowledge. With that understanding we can rearrange our values and tackle the feeling constructively.

Sounds like a standard hiring workflow with some questions tailored for the role. Is this supposed to be revelatory?

I’m a fan of Stallman and his ideology toward computing as much as anyone but tend to think that the ship has sailed long ago. We are not living in a world where everyone who touches a computer has the knowledge or skill set to know a good idea from a bad one. Long-gone are the days when our passwords could be blank because the other guy using the system was also a kernel developer. And so unfortunately Stallman’s ideas are mostly a thing of computing utopia fiction.

It’s fine to let the experts worry about securing our systems. The Internet is safer for it. And it’s fine to not think so, too. But for those people, realize that the product may not be for you. That’s why we have a dozen flavors of Linux.

But maybe I’m just getting old.

As a few others have pointed out, animal welfare is one. As you point out, disease is annother. And another is the instabilities that can arise by introducing a new species to an ecosystem. Do we really have an understanding of where the mammoth fit into the food chain? How it fit into its environment? I’d expect the answer is a resounding “no” because we don’t even fully understand this dynamic for plants and animals that live today.

I am unconvinced that we know enough about life’s engineering to do something like this safely. I am doubly unconvinced that private industry will take the risks seriously. This sort of project is steeped in classic misguided pie in the sky human thinking - let’s live on the moon or terraform mars instead of fixing our mess on this planet! Let’s resurrect an extinct species instead of saving the ones we’re about to make extinct!

And then the idea that if the population gets out of control, well, we could just cull them. What, because we didn’t do a good enough job the first time?

This illustrates the issue that I see with STAR-style questioning - the method encourages detail-rich storytelling about situations that don’t happen very often, or are simply a mundane part of work life.

“Tell me about a time when you challenged a fairness or ethical issue.” How many times is something like this expected to come up in a person’s career? And how often will the “issue” - outside of management roles - be of such consequence that you’ll remember all the details? And how often will the true answer be nothing more than “someone asked me to do X. I expressed discomfort over it to my manager while we were getting lunch. X did/didn’t happen”. But that answer, I doubt, will make a very strong impression.

Basically there is misalignment between the method and the line of questioning.

Why? Because art and business aren’t the same. “Love the capital, not the capitalist” doesn’t work because unlike artists, capital influences elections. It influences policy and thereby impacts real people’s lives in a real way.

Also unlike artists, the head of a company oversees hundreds or thousands of people. Their whims and actions likewise have direct impact on people’s lives.

The rule will allow agency to strengthen enforcement, seek civil penalties against violators, and deter AI-generated fake reviews.

Link to 16 CFR Part 465: Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (Final Rule): https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-no...

As a term, “AI” has become synonymous with “new”. And “new” has become synonymous with “good”. We are in an age where age is a liability. If it’s not new it’s old, and old isn’t good. And it’s all sad because it’s simply not true. But marketing teams wide and far are pushing this narrative. And I think companies are encouraging their marketing teams to do it because it’s an easy way to dress up a half-baked product, hiding it behind a buzzword.

But I don’t think it’s a signal to consumers as much as a signal to investors and competitors. Since when does the consumer care about which technology was used to build a product? Has a consumer ever said “wow this product is so good it must have been built with Rust!” The bottom line is it shouldn’t matter and it doesn’t. People need features, not technology, even though many of them confuse the two.

Of the thousands or so resumes I've received on Indeed, I have advanced maybe a dozen into an initial screening stage. The vast majority was basically spam - applicants with backgrounds that didn't match the job at all or new grad applicants for a posting that clearly stated we were looking for experienced candidates. Then there was the terrible auto-formatting that Indeed would apply to candidates' resumes, sometimes being so jumbled as to be illegible. It made it seem as if there was no one behind the submission checking to make sure their information was being sent correctly.

Just moments ago I read that regulators are raising flags about banks' plans for unwinding their derivatives portfolios. Then I come here to read this. Likely happenstance. Maybe no connection. But a little jarring. Then again, they say there are no coincidences!

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-bank-regulators-...

While what you say about drawing conclusions is maybe true, it does not seem to have started with modern scientists. Rather, my takeaway from the article was that everyone is still playing by Descartes’ rules: that is to conflate intelligence, language, and consciousness. So instead of trying to redefine that basis, researchers are simply going with it (however flawed it may be) and saying, “well, if language and intelligence are the only sure ways to detect consciousness, then here are a whole bunch of animals that exhibit intelligence, language, or both.”

I've recently come to love going to the hyper-local, out of the way, or seemingly forgotten museums. Their collections are often unique and sometimes quirky. Most of all, though, I find that it's far easier to connect with the history of the place that I'm visiting because the museum is more intimate and the collections more accessible.

I’m in the same camp as another replier in that I’ve come to like - even adore - much of what I hated because it was required reading. If you feel like you’ve changed since high school then I encourage you to consider rereading some of what you hated because it just might take a new meaning for you.

On a broader point, it’s a shame there is such much focus on subjects like literature and history for children and young adults. As I get older I realize that it takes one’s own life experience in order to connect with these subjects. History without your own lived experience is just words on a page.

The title was intriguing. The setup, too. But then another 3,500 or so words that amounted to not much more than a rant and to conclude with “see, I was right!” Author isn’t wrong to be upset with the sorry state of leadership in the business world. But it should be a two-way street - you get what you give and the tone in this piece doesn’t sound like someone willing to give anything, not even four hours of their already-shortened workweek.

I was happy to see the distinction drawn between leadership and management. Leaders manage but not all managers lead. Sometimes that’s just fine - a good manager who stays in their lane will be effective. Sometimes they will even turn into decent leaders without knowing it. But the ones who are oblivious to the distinction will probably fail in both.