courtf

24 ms·

151.
by courtf 6y ago
Yeah this is something he writes about regularly, and it is certainly anachronistic. I also think it's important for rich nerds to justify their position to themselves somehow, and to have some imagined hardship to point to in their pa
152.
by courtf 6y ago
> it may be possible to be completely cynical and still be very funny I guess this depends on how hard you want to laugh, but would you say George Carlin or Dave Chappelle are not cynical? I don't think earnestness and cynicism
153.
by courtf 6y ago
Great comment! High risk, high reward behavior, almost by definition, doesn't often seem too appealing when looking at the averages. We aren't the only organism that loves to gamble though, and there's a reason for that.
154.
by courtf 6y ago
Wait, I thought the tech industry was literally North Korea, and as long as you sing the woke anthem every morning, you could never get fired?
155.
by courtf 6y ago
Google's got five more HR reps working on the case. They got them working in shifts!
156.
by courtf 6y ago
It doesn't matter if she is aggressive or demure, brilliant or stupid. It doesn't really matter if her work changes the world, or benefits mankind. All that matters for her employment status currently is whether Google sees value
157.
by courtf 6y ago
Indeed! And even that outcome would be considered merciful from most other perspectives. On one hand, I'm glad that people are sensitive enough to at least pretend to care about this, but on the other hand, they're completely delu
158.
by courtf 6y ago
Turns out, even Timnit Gebru, making ~500k a year researching AI ethics at Google, can still be fired. Turns out, Google would feed each and every one of their employees, feet first, into a giant wood-chipper if that was the most cost-effec
159.
by courtf 6y ago
I like designers who are also implementers.
160.
by courtf 6y ago
This is a tricky topic to write about accurately, even just thinking about myself, much less when trying to say anything with more universal appeal, but the author does very well here. One of my favorite parts of programming work is the opp
161.
by courtf 6y ago
I like mini-pcs (NUC) for dev work, they run linux without much drama, are nice and cheap, and crucially, are not intended to be carried everywhere and stay at the office. I enjoy being physically removed from my work machine. Covid has alt
162.
by courtf 6y ago
> I'd be a lot less at peace if I didn't see really good operators make it to the top using their own tolerable measure of this behavior Fair points here, and I do think the amount of disgust generated by this environment varie
163.
by courtf 6y ago
My frustrations with this behavior are less about not getting it, or not being able to participate, and more about finding the exercise distasteful, dishonest and ultimately destructive. The absolute worst aspect of this game is how clumsy
164.
by courtf 6y ago
"The cemeteries are full of indispensable men."
165.
by courtf 6y ago
I tried to do this sort of thing for many years, with mixed results. One constant is that no matter the outcome of my efforts, whether something I built made the company money or was a waste, there was seldom any kind of conclusion or major
166.
by courtf 6y ago
I expected some level of hand-wringing here in response to this article. Maybe it's something in the water in rural America, but none of this is unusual or extreme, and if this behavior is foreign to you, then you and I grew up in diff
167.
by courtf 6y ago
I'm not quite so sure we live in a society that protects free inquiry now, and are suddenly in danger of losing that status.
168.
by courtf 6y ago
I remember this one, there are lots of good articles on this blog. This one is a little aggressive, but this is a real phenomenon. In many companies, styles and expectations fluctuate too much for anyone to get comfortable for long. Lots of
169.
by courtf 6y ago
Social media is not the government, and has no obligation to maintain free speech. That said, social media has big problems. The biggest is that they have, quite intentionally, encouraged the spread of outrage and mob mentality all across t
170.
by courtf 6y ago
I write in Kotlin regularly, and occasionally in Swift, but I use Go for anything server-related, if I can help it. I find the stdlib to be an incredible simplifying force for these programs, not least because deployment is trivial. I guess
171.
by courtf 6y ago
What does it mean to be a "PhD level language?"
172.
by courtf 6y ago
Oh yes, this tool situation is the worst part of our jobs imo. Every time I see a new layer coming in, I instinctively duck. I hate how much time and brain space these things occupy. I can't even by lazy when working with them, there&#
173.
by courtf 6y ago
This is definitely an issue, and well put by the student you spoke to. Who wants to be surrounded by odoriferous, socially challenged young men, in any scenario? I occasionally consider myself as part of that group, and I'm irritated j
174.
by courtf 6y ago
Wow, sounds like really challenging work. I still think those skills will be valuable for a long time, especially since they are becoming more rare. I'm curious how you prepared for that job, did a specific degree help? I have only lea
175.
by courtf 6y ago
Good questions, and you are onto something here for sure. This wasn't too long ago, around 2014-2015. This was all for a weather radar app, and you are correct, there really weren't any SLA's, but we had to handle very high l
176.
by courtf 6y ago
This is all around Utica, but I imagine it lines up pretty closely with other rustbelt experiences from the region. It sounds a bit grim on second reading, and it can be, but we had a lot of fun. There is a lot of waste too, though. Edit: H
177.
by courtf 6y ago
I honestly couldn't tell you. What I can tell you, is that the unbelievable bloat in the complexity of our systems is going to bite us in the ass. I'll never forget when I joined a hip fintech company, and the director of eng told
178.
by courtf 6y ago
Yep. Thousands of schools are going to close down in the next decade unless they get a bailout. The elite schools will be just fine, this will all happen at 2nd and 3rd rate schools. No one is paying those prices for a severely reduced expe
179.
by courtf 6y ago
The elite schools have always been a caste system, we just convinced ourselves after WW2 that the entire country belonged in a global upper caste. The notion seems just as absurd today as it did in the 1800s. I attended public high school i
180.
by courtf 6y ago
Twitter, Facebook etc created this problem (exemplified by Trump) and continue to benefit from it. Social media has significantly amplified expressions outrage and taken an active role in spreading those messages, which in turn has given ri

More ›