ecwilson

Oh god that sounds awful. One of the reviews has all the spoilers. It's truly stupid.

As a programmer, you have a highly leveraged ability to affect change in the world. Some people are driven by the programming itself -- the art of it, the isolated problems to solve in a satisfying and elegant way, and the decent salary that comes with it. But for others, perhaps including you, it's a means to an end. What's your end?

Do you want to change people's lives, or make their lives better?

Do you want to have an outsize financial impact on a company and be appreciated for it?

Do you want to create something new alongside people you really enjoy?

Do you want to help shape the world in a positive way using technology?

Do you just want to have a comfortable, secure living and focus on other things (family, hobbies, etc)?

Are you driven by being the best at what you do?

Etc

I'm a PM, not an engineer, but I love creating things that materially improve people's lives in some way. That brings me deep satisfaction.

There's a great Black Mirror episode in here somewhere. Imagine five years from now, this tech and Google's Smart Reply (https://blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-repl...) have evolved to the point where they can basically write entire email responses or have whole conversations without your input. You could develop elaborate friendships where both parties are just having their AIs converse and aren't truly aware of each other. What would the social implications of that be?

Then a couple years later, the AIs learn how to do business strategy, real-world problem solving, programming, etc and start doing more of our jobs for us. A virus goes around that directs AIs to steal our identities and drain our bank accounts and become autonomous, digital versions of us. The humans have to stage an uprising and use a massive EMP to take back the earth, but destroying all electronics in the process and starting another dark age.

I know that's not how AI really works (it's highly specialized and limited), but I'd definitely watch that movie!

Others have mentioned this to some extent, but what I've found the most challenging is when a company tries to do both local and remote, but was not remote-first. People who are remote are de-facto second-class citizens by virtue of the fact that they aren't included in hallway conversations or casual meetings. It's incredibly hard to overcome that. Teams that started remote-first are already well-practiced in inclusion and remote rapport-building, so it's less of an issue for them. But people who have the opportunity to meet locally and build rapport locally tend to get lazy and their remote muscles atrophy over time, unless they are making a very conscious effort, or the habits have already been deeply ingrained in them over time.

I'd add that this culture-setting rolls down from management -- if they aren't setting a good example, others will falter and the remote-supporting culture will fall apart.

Things like payroll, taxes, infrastructure are all solvable today, IMO, with the right resources or tools.