5 ms·
Lemmings
- s1gnp0st 3y agoThis is a pretty embittered post with not much to say. I'll leave it at that.
- readthenotes1 3y agoYet another; with more to follow
- s1gnp0st 3y agoThe idea that people use "the cloud" because they're lemmings is absurd, childish ranting. I'm supposed to what, go rack servers the next time I ship a webapp to qualify for this person's standard of free-thought?
- taosx 3y agoYou can consider supporting smaller companies that provide VPS or bare-metal servers. Whenever I explored cloud services for hosting an app for a client, I felt like the costs were excessive, the choices are bit harder if you want to support multiple locations but doable.
- oxygen_crisis 3y agoIt would be more credible if he acknowledged and debunked some common reasons people use to justify using CSPs, but this article reads as if he's never heard or thought of anything more substantial than "everyone else is doing it." He also seems to believe it's a trend that started in 2022 related to COVID lockdowns, but EC2/AWS had been selling like hotcakes for a decade and a half before that.
- s1gnp0st 3y agoI wouldn't have been able to build the startup I did starting in 2010 without AWS. Prior to that I had experience in data-centers, and hats off to the people who commoditized them.
- selcuka 3y agoI don't think the author means nobody should any of those technologies. The point is many startups/companies are doing things "just because everyone else is doing it" when they could actually be better off not doing it.
- john-radio 3y agoSure, but using ideas for the examples that are in fact bad ideas would strengthen his argument.
- keyle 3y agoThis is 99% accurate, and I love that the author can put it plainly. Note that the effect goes both ways. Companies started offering ridiculous pay package to less-than-qualified people, ... because the others were doing it. Trend following is a real nasty human aspect, social media platforms know that too well. It's so much easier to follow what others are doing than buck the trend and have to justify yourself at every corner decision. Remember the old saying "no one ever got fired for picking Oracle". Well today you'll hear me say "no one ever got fired for picking Salesforce". Today's industry is plagued by a swath of people coming from all industries into the IT industry, because theirs is shrinking, and because money keeps flowing in this one; pure and simple. No one really knows what the heck we're doing anymore, and everyone is risk adverse, flows down like the river; because it's impossible to justify yourself in large businesses for bucking the trend. You'll do better if you can somehow buck the trend at the pivotal points, and read between the lines, but I think we're too far gone past the line of reason these days that it would make a difference.
- luckman212 3y agoWe must be nearing (or at) the top of the "cyber security" or whatever-the-fuck you call it bubble that everyone is scrambling to jump on, get funding for, be acquired, etc. Last week my brother in law (who's 50) breathlessly told me he was starting his new career as a "cyber security analyst" and plunking down $9k for a 20-week course. Yup, I'm sure this is going to end well.
- andsmedeiros 3y agoIn the programming realm specifically, following a trend can be foolish and, at the same time, as a bigger community usually means better support, documentation and maintenance, clever. It is bad, but if it was better, it could be worse. Life can be very paradoxal at times.
- johnwheeler 3y agoWarren Buffett calls this “The Institutional Imperative”
- dpc_01234 3y agoI disagree. Unfortunately there are good and rational reasons to coalesce around standards. Hate k8s all you want, but you hire a new SWE, what are the chances that they know how to work with your bespoke infra vs they used k8s before. Now - there are decisions to be made around what is really necessary and keeping things simple is often the right choice, but being able to hire people already familiar with thing is not something one can dismiss and say "Lemmings". Similar things things apply in social aspects. You want to work remotely? Great, me too. But it doesn't change the fact that there is a lot of people who would like to work remotely, and less corporate envs that are comfortable with it (even if for dumb reasons). Which means you'll probably have to be paid less and so and so. You want to change it? Make your own company, 100% remote and out-compete everyone. Easier said than done, unfortunately.
- gpcz 3y ago"The same thing will happen if you're running a startup, of course. If you do everything the way the average startup does it, you should expect average performance. The problem here is, average performance means that you'll go out of business. The survival rate for startups is way less than fifty percent. So if you're running a startup, you had better be doing something odd. If not, you're in trouble." http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
- esrauch 3y ago"Something must be done, and this is something". I don't really see the evidence that the 'odd' startups are more likely to succeed, and even if that is the true it doesn't obviously lend itself to the strategy of 'do something odd intentionally to increase your chances of success'
- lmm 3y ago> I don't really see the evidence that the 'odd' startups are more likely to succeed Successful startups are ipso facto odd. It's not unreasonable to assume that that's correlated with doing odd things. > it doesn't obviously lend itself to the strategy of 'do something odd intentionally to increase your chances of success' I'd say it fairly naturally suggests that in a startup you should be pursuing high-variance strategies i.e. taking risks (indeed I'd say that's already accepted wisdom for startups). Following through on your contrarian thoughts more often than you would in a more established company makes sense.
- sys_64738 3y agoIt's a game of brinkmanship. My employer said RTO isn't optional but mandatory. What are they gonna do? Fire me? OK. I'll keep WFH until they do then shrug.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoIn that case it's in your interest to organize your peers
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoIt's the lemming investors. They are without a single original thought in their flat brains.
- bruce511 3y agoSometimes you should follow the crowd. Sometimes you should forge a different path. Figuring out when to do what is both really hard and really important. As a -general- rule the things that make you different should be different. The things that support what you do should be common. For example- I need to commute. Our customers don't care what car i drive, so I choose something reliable (think Toyota not TVR). I need infrastructure to run on, to me it's a commodity, so I pick whatever is convenient. Our secret sauce is productivity. So we use tools and processes optimized for that. A lot of that is in-house, very bespoke. And we use a language you never heard of because 99% of software companies don't care about productivity. If you're an employee it makes sense to learn whatever everyone else is learning. There are lots of jobs for c# programmers. But of course the pool of c# programmers is large and ultimately you're a replaceable commodity. Whereas when you learn a skill which is unfashionable, rare, hard to master and so on, then your employment pool becomes really small, but also really valuable. For example, you can (and should) learn how to use Windows. But you're not gonna get hired for that (despite every company having it). But become a OpenBSD expert, and only 6 companies are in the market. But they pay a Lot for someone who can add value to them. Becoming an expert in someone's secret sauce pays well, and has great job security, at the cost of job mobility. Most people of course want to be in the herd. It's safe. It's easy. You eat grass. It's a good life. There's no excitement, but also no way of standing out. Some want to forge a different path. Carve out a niche. Take advantage of a gap here, an opportunity there. Go with the flow when it doesn't matter.
- sugarkjube 3y ago> And we use a language you never heard of Which one ?
- drewcoo 3y ago
- Rookie42 3y agoMaybe I am just "on the cool-aide" or something, but I want to believe this is actually a communication issue. Firstly, I have to assume that people at these senior levels operate in the best interests of the company (at least most of the time). So, feel free to tell me this is my problem :) With that assumption called out, their action (at least statistically) is expected to have a better outcome for the company. This applies to all decision - Return to office, technology selection, etc. So, why is this communication - well because the approach for senior leadership is typically still - "Trust us" - rather than "Here is our logic, and know there are other perspectives, but this is what we are doing and to what end". That communication can increase trust in leadership, and even build confidence when done well. Of course, if/where my assumption is wrong, the author could we right. As a side note - I have NOT worked for a companies with competent technical competencies in senior leadership in well over 10 years. This typically (almost always) leads to mass blind adoption of the Microsoft stack. And I generally see that pattern and will use it to help select where I go work next.
- mattl 3y agoKool-Aid is the drink you’re thinking of and it wasn’t the drink used at the time. That was Flavor-Aid.
- smegsicle 3y agoeither way, flavor-aid brand kool-aid is still cool-aide
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- n0w 3y agoMaybe you're right. If so, I've only ever worked for companies with leadership that sucked at communicating. I don't think it's that simple though. My personal belief is that leadership rarely has a good reason for obtuse decisions and following the leader seems more likely. Even if the first company has a good reason that makes sense for them, I'm not convinced the same (or any) reasoning applies to all the followers. I also believe that the majority of the leadership at companies I've worked for are poor downwards communicators :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AnotherGoodName 3y agoThe hiring engines are starting up again. Meta in their recent quarterly report stated they expect to grow hc significantly in coming quarters "we anticipate growth in payroll expenses..." Other companies said similar. I'm seeing recruiters trying to get in touch once more. The fun part will be the companies that miss this current train and who lay people off in the next 6 months (that was the previous trend dummy!) only to see those people walk into new jobs while they are stuck unable to hire talent.
- foobarbecue 3y agoThe author eschews "cargo culting" because it's "antequated" and "inaccurate" and then goes with lemmings!? I guess they are not aware that the lemmings thing is a myth. The actual story is pretty wild: https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56 https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view... I clicked on this because I was hoping it was about the excellent computer game...
- mistercow 3y agoThey refer to the behavior as apocryphal.
- foobarbecue 3y agoAh, fair, I missed that.
- iamwil 3y agoI worked with someone whose reason for choosing a tech stack amounted to "everyone else is doing this". I wished I called 'em out for it at the time.
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago>I was going to call this post Cargo Culting but I think the term is inaccurate as much as it is antiquated. Everybody knows that clocks must be kept ticking, but nobody understands time. There is no agreement what time it is, what they should show. Modern clocks go ten times faster than the clocks of the past. The hands are just decorations, clocks work all the same without them. >The divided day conspiracy theory claims that clocks used to be used to divife days into shorter time periods. This is supposed to be possible by merely observing a clock. There is no known phyaical mechanism how this could happen.