like with most things, these things are both overrated and underrated.
are there performative jobs|tasks|employees|cultures? yes.
are most of the things that engineers think are performative and useless actually so? nope.
some examples:
* managers managing upward - feels useless - is actually the most impactful bang-for-buck for managers to give their teams space to operate without micromanaging
* sales and marketing. The best software in the world won't get known, bought, or used, without good sales/marketing. There is no meritocracy on quality. Almost no business succeeds through technical credibility alone.
* 1on1s. They may not add any value to you, but 1) you'd miss them when they're gone, 2) i don't know how else you expect managers to stay on top of employee concerns - just know "inately"? 3) they may matter A LOT for your teammates, and them being happy means your team will be happy
But first, in the phrase that you quoted, you do understand that in human society "trying to harm" someone is still a malicious act.
If I push a coworker at an office window, and it shatters and they fall to their death, there will certainly be some culpability to the building since the window "Should" have been able to hold the pressure.
But I will still be culpable to this.
Second, the threat of more harm is looming. Does the author know that this kind of prompt injection doesn't work anymore?
Either:
A) If they know, and like the principle of it, then every thread here debating their moral virtue is irrelevant. This is an empty protest that will be ignored by the AI model harnesses, and I simply don't see the value in it.
B) If they don't, because they're so hellbent on fighting AI that they're out of touch with the real capabilities of modern tools, then:
i) They are anti-intellectual and incurious and forming their beliefs on incomplete data, and therefore not credible. But more significantly:
ii) *They are a risk for escalation*. If the author realizes this kind of prompt injection can't work, who's to say they won't try to develop and inject more sophisticated attacks?
FAANG used to be the _dream_. Change the world. Work on groundbreaking tech. Solve harder problems than anywhere else. Get Paid incredibly well.
Then I guess a generation focused exclusively on that last part flooded the zone. I still believe that The Great Resignation of 2021 did more harm to our industry than COVID or any interest rate or VC changes.
It polluted the brains of most of the people in our industry from a missionary mindset to a mercenary, and it decimated big company's established cultural memory all to prop up a bunch of unicorns who will probably all slowly die over the next decade.
So now half of the people can't get a job, and the half that can are miserable. This was true BEFORE AI.
It's just a natural progression. When the company is a startup working on a new exciting tech it's chasing the dream and changing the world. When it's a behemoth employing 200k people, it's impossible for all of them to be chasing the dream. Probably like 90% of them would be doing extremely boring "keeping the lights on" tasks and ensuring this gargantuan machine does not go to pieces under it's own weight. It still can pay incredibly well, but it won't be exciting frontier work anymore. It just can't be, 200k people company can't move with the agility of 200 people company.
Its not like the CEOs unilaterally said "we want to suck now". It's the cumulative effect of many people optimizing for the promotion process within the company and then coaching their mentees to do the same.
They should be but its very hard. It's a culture and you can't exactly order a chain of command that grew into it and hold all the levers to just he different.
I'm not lionizing Sundar Pichai here, just saying the cumulative attitudes of 10k L7/L8 is really what sets the culture.
Every big tech company's embrace of AI is making all of their employees miserable.
Whereas if you're half-competent and at a startup, the AI is an incredible opportunity to try to leap ahead while the prices are subsidized (by the big tech behemoths fighting wth each other)
The reason is a complete inversion of Ownership and Agency.
For a decade of ZIRP, big tech convinced its employees that they're "changing the world", and what we did mattered. Sure the exhorbitant salaries and constantly rising stock value didn't hurt, but honestly other than the FIRE cultists, for most of us the difference between 200k/year and 800k/year didn't feel much day to day (other than the ability to buy a house or something, and feel safe with a retirement nest egg). No, most people were missionaries not mercanaries.
2021 was the first crack. The comps went crazy, half the industry turned over, and the ones who didn't felt a bitter sting where it became blatantly clear that all the new arrivals were just in it for the $$$, and the companies were willing to pay for the backfills but not to reward the loyalty of the missionaries.
Then came the yearly layoffs, chipping away further, and reminding every employee that they're at the mercy of a spreadsheet and the whims of people 3 levels above them in the org chart, in spite of the economic reality of their product, or their personal productivity.
And now we're here, and it's clear that all of the above is still relevant. The old-timers that hung around see that their personal output doesn't matter, their product's PnL doesn't matter. All that matters is 1) the company's AI strategy (and if they're not part of it, they're secondary), and 2) tokenmaxing.
How can anyone find joy in this environment unless they're purely in it for the comp?
I couldn't. I left my big tech job in December after 15 years, and have not been this happy at work since pre-COVID.
> the difference between 200k/year and 800k/year didn't feel much day to day (other than the ability to buy a house or something, and feel safe with a retirement nest egg)
I can’t believe I read this sentence, lol.
800k is the ability to buy a house and support a family on a single income. Do you see so many people lamenting the days when this was possible? So many memes about the lifestyle Homer Simpson could provide, and may modern families can’t? 800k makes it possible.
It’s a huge lifestyle upgrade, especially if your partner wants to do something artistic, academic, or otherwise less profitable.
While I mostly agree, $200k makes that possible too, if you play it right. For example, go remote, move to the countryside, let your spouse rear the kids or the dogs or whatever.
But yeah, "no difference between 200 and 800", while spelling out some MASSIVE differences is quite a statement.
How many do you think build that portfolio from $200k/yr? The point is an extra 600k, at least for several years, is life-changing when managed wisely. I could perhaps see the GP's point about "day to day" feeling, if you acclimate to the baseline of financial security that having that much money buys you. I'm only assuming though, having never had the opportunity to experience GP's claim about that kind of comp.
The idea that there is not much difference between 200K and 800K per year is absolute nonsense. I feel like its one of those things that are so stupid we are all dumber for having heard it. I don't know if its just one of those things where people on HN seem to virtue signal as if they are the most minimalists, live in 250 square foot tiny houses, live of radishes they grow in their microgrardens or whatever. This is like people that say, "eh, you don't need to make more than $95K."
>2021 was the first crack. The comps went crazy, half the industry turned over, and the ones who didn't felt a bitter sting where it became blatantly clear that all the new arrivals were just in it for the $$$, and the companies were willing to pay for the backfills but not to reward the loyalty of the missionaries.
Also SVB collapsed in late 2022, notice that AI hype started right after.
Sigh, if it actually collapsed, it would have been fine. Summers saved it depositors before it collapse. I still don't get how that was not a story on a par with 2008 ( or maybe it wasn't because the fallout was avoided ).
The Three Mile Island accident is also dramatically exaggerated in the public conscience with its severity and risk factor - solely because of the default fear of Nuclear.
Oil, Gas, Coal, and random chemical plants have had much more significant accidents even in the US, but never made a blip in the public's minds.
Aren't France and Canada the ones to learn from at this point with regards to safe nuclear operation?
> Bob's weekly updates to his supervisor were indistinguishable from Alice's. The questions were similar. The progress was similar. The trajectory, from the outside, was identical.
No they won't be. They might be worse. They might be better. But they'll be very different.
And, like you said...
> Alice and Bob had the same year. One paper each.
No they won't. Alice would've taken a year. Bob would've taken a few days.
You've already covered why that might actually be OK, so I'll talk about the author's other error:
> This sounds idealistic until you think about what astrophysics actually is. Nobody's life depends on the precise value of the Hubble constant. No policy changes if the age of the Universe turns out to be 13.77 billion years instead of 13.79. Unlike medicine, where a cure for Alzheimer's would be invaluable regardless of whether a human or an AI discovered it, astrophysics has no clinical output. The results, in a strict practical sense, don't matter. What matters is the process of getting them: the development and application of methods, the training of minds, the creation of people who know how to think about hard problems. If you hand that process to a machine, you haven't accelerated science. You've removed the only part of it that anyone actually needed.
Keep asking why. why does the development of the application and methods, the training of minds matter?
the goal isn't abstract. The goal is still ultimately for the benefit of humanity, just like the cure for Alzheimer's.
Humanity learned physics, so we made rockets and now we have satellites, and the entire planet is connected with communication and information.
Humanity must continue to invest in astrophysics so that we do not get wiped out by a single rogue asteroid barreling through the cosmos, like the dinosaurs did.
Now i'm not saying that there isn't other benefit to making generically intelligent humans that know how to think. But at the end of the day, the purpose of astrophysics is no less existential than the purpose for developing medicine.
I want to know the age of the universe so that we can understand what created it, and if we can reverse entropy, and if there is anything beyond the universe. That is a quest for humanity that will take hundreds if not millions of years.
Are we watching the same clip? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
This is from the pilot and I watched it based on high recommendations, and I couldn't keep going because the character you're describing as so convincing and charismatic is so dramatically unlikeable!?
In this scene, he is:
* disrespectful and entitled with a coworker
* privileged and self-important about his background with a client
* then makes an admittedly pretty rousing speech, but TBH the show doesn't really trust us to understand that "this is meant to be inspirational" because it keeps cutting to the other character reacting "inspired", which is significant because
* he doesn't make the sale
* then proceeds to verbally scream abuse at the other character.
and then i'm supposed to be excited about watching the two of these start a computer company together? ..........why?
i'm curious, how do you think other large companies operate with regards to reporting progress/status/results up the management chain?
At least at companies where the upper management is aware enough of the details to make good judgements, and the business is critical enough for some reason that low level management can't just be entrusted to yeet/yolo-things into production?
We need to get past the point of binary perspective. The question isn't whether any one of us is innocent or guilty. The question is of what.
The word "rape" makes people visualize the most extreme scenarios of strangers in the night attacking those weaker than them, and assaulting them with violence.
But there are still significant parts of the world, even the western world, where "marital rape" is considered an oxymoron.
So people tried to come up with a generic neutral term like "sexual assault" which could mean everything from someone's worst rape nightmare, to unwanted touching in a sexualized manner in a crowd.Because that's the reality - physical contact requires consent. And consent is........complicated.
If I say "Do you consent to sex with me?" and you say "yes", did you consent? Yes.
If I say "Do you consent to sex with me, so I don't murder you", and you say "yes", did you consent? No.
Everyone can plainly understand the above. But finding the line for consent shifts can be surprisingly difficult.
* "Do you consent to sex with me, so I can give you the antidote to the poison you accidentally ingested"
* "Do you consent ..., so I can pay for life-saving cancer treatments that you need so that you otherwise can't afford?"
* "Do you consent ..., so I can pay for your rent, and otherwise you will be evicted?"
* "Do you consent ..., so that I don't fire you from the job you have?"
* "Do you consent ..., so that I no longer support you financially in a way that is currently entirely based on good will, and you've come to depend on it, and are scared of losing, because you've moved across the planet to be in my orbit, and now it looks like if you disappoint me, I'll turn on you"
Gaiman's accusations are at the end of this spectrum. Should he be in jail? I don't think so. Should he lose his livelihood? That's entirely up to his fans. Is he "innocent"? Well, if the facts aren't in dispute, I don't think so.
> Gaiman's legal papers also included WhatsApp messages which he says back up his case, in which Ms Pavlovich thanked him for a "lovely lovely night" and told him their relationship was "consensual".
PLENTY of sexual assault victims "thank" their assaulter, and assure them things were consensual even when they're not. Because they still feel at risk. Or because *THEY DON'T WANT TO ADMIT TO THEMSELVES THAT THEY'RE A VICTIM*.
Nobody wants to feel like they were violated. Nobody wants to admit that they didn't consent. Nobody wants to have the burden of now being the one to decide what to do about this - on a social level, on a criminal level, etc.
Admitting you were assaulted is saying "OK, so do i want this to be something I have to admit about myself for the rest of my life? To waste countless time and money and stress and anxiety to pursue justice that probably won't happen? To risk my own safety and sanity?" No wonder so many people don't.
None of this may change anything that's in this Project. But the whole framing of it pisses me off. It leaves no room for nuance. This man is probably not a monster. That doesn't mean he's not an abuser.
I remember reading the original accusations and the presented fact that the victim was a penniless defenceless girl totally made me believe that indeed something bad had happened.
Seeing the pictures and videos presented on TFA demonstrates I think that about a year back, I was skillfully lied to in print, and fell for it, it's kind of a watershed.
are there performative jobs|tasks|employees|cultures? yes.
are most of the things that engineers think are performative and useless actually so? nope.
some examples:
* managers managing upward - feels useless - is actually the most impactful bang-for-buck for managers to give their teams space to operate without micromanaging
* sales and marketing. The best software in the world won't get known, bought, or used, without good sales/marketing. There is no meritocracy on quality. Almost no business succeeds through technical credibility alone.
* 1on1s. They may not add any value to you, but 1) you'd miss them when they're gone, 2) i don't know how else you expect managers to stay on top of employee concerns - just know "inately"? 3) they may matter A LOT for your teammates, and them being happy means your team will be happy
There are other things like that.
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