throwarayes

How do you feel when you learn someone has been using AI heavily to help them write? Setting aside English as a second language.

My knee-jerk is to find it disappointing. But maybe I’m missing some nuance. And I don’t have the same negative reaction to AI coding.

But if you’re going to ask me to read a blog article, I don’t quite enjoy it when it’s not in your own words. I want to be in conversation with you, not you intermediated through an LLM.

While I don’t particularly care about a bit of LLM spellchecking or copy editing. I’d rather have human language warts and all than perfect AI-speak.

That’s the rant. But what am I missing?

Just a note of warning from personal experience.

Companies don’t really need non-competes anymore. Some companies take an extremely broad interpretation of IP confidentiality, where they consider doing any work in the industry during your lifetime an inevitable confidentiality violation. They argue it would be impossible for you to work elsewhere in this industry during your entire career without violating confidentiality with the technical and business instincts you bring to that domain. It doesn’t require conscious violation on your part (they argue).

So beware and read your employment agreement carefully.

More here https://www.promarket.org/2024/02/08/confidentiality-agreeme...

And this is the insane legal doctrine behind this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inevitable_disclosure

Is anyone working in AI or adjacent feeling burnout?

Some things I’ve experience or heard about from colleagues lately at big companies

* The Tech Bro CEO pressure to AI everything

* completely discarding roadmaps or actual user features to build a dubious AI thing

* death march projects

* a complete disregard for team health - despite lip service. Even in orgs that once demonstrated care for these things in the past

* Disinterest in existing organizational context. Ignore lessons learned how to ship products

* Some Tech Bro Czar of AI appointed that ignore all team norms and completely derails roadmaps for their pet idea

* Lack of interest in retention. If people with organizational context leave, it’s almost seen as a good thing

* Proliferation of AI yes- men that agree with brilliant founder of head of AI

It’s as if suddenly leaders have permission to ignore everything we know about organizational psychology and building longer term cultures to ship an AI toy.

As someone that generally likes their day to day work, and dislikes arbitrarily Mandatory Corporate Fundays, I really just wish companies would stop this hack days nonsense. It just means I'm going to be more behind on tasks I'm already behind on.

To do a hackdays successfully, I find good projects have already had a lot of personal upfront investment before the hackdays project. The hackdays project then assembles a team of potential labor that might (or often not) accelerate the idea to a demo. And then, even if there's a snazzy demo, you have to engage in a tremendous push after the hackdays to turn them into successful projects.

I can just as easily spend my time doing this in normal planning channels. And instead of hackdays, maybe we should encourage prototyping and demos to be part of the normal planning process, not some out of band activity likely to screw up schedules and deliver nothing.

Please, companies, stop these mandatory corporate fundays. And just fix your normal planning processes.

Like I get it, Reddit has historically been more open. But I just find the drama boring. Most people don't use 3rd party apps. Most people browse Reddit through an official UI. Instagram, Snap, a bazillion other private social networks don't have 3rd party apps. And with OpenAI, etc, you can't just give away the community's content to train LLMs. I didn't sign up for that when I posted on Reddit.

I'm going to continue to use Reddit.

I can imagine the most impacted folks are Mods, thus Mods are in a position to make a big splash with their complaints. But do 99% of users really care? Or even know what Apollo is?

The histrionics have gotten a bit out of control...

I wonder if I'm the only one that feels this way. I suspect its a broadly felt phenomenon, based on the research on layoffs[1], of hurt trust, and demotivation among employees at large tech companies. Though nobody would publicly admit it (hence my throwaway account!). It's not exactly something you announce on slack when layoffs are afoot!

Before and early pandemic, I could at least suspend disbelief that I worked for a special place at my big tech company, who had a mission, or at least my group had a mission that someone cared about.

Now, I don't see any difference between a tech company, Exxon mobil, Coca Cola, or any other mega corp. It's all just capitalism. Yes, yes, I should have known all along.

It's hard to find motivation in such heartless times. When companies like Shopify layoff, even when performance is good[2]. Trust has been utterly destroyed. Even if probability is still pretty low I'll be impacted, I will know people impacted, it's simply hard to care about this company and what I'm building.

1 - https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about-layoffs

2 - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/04/shopify-cuts-20percent-of-its-workforce-shares-surge-on-earnings-beat.html

How do you deal with that person at work that:

1. Takes feedback as a personal attack. Gives feedback as a personal attack. Up to and including getting colleagues fired who have had disagreements with them.

2. Process is for thee, not for me. They complain when others don't follow the rules. But they act completely independently of process and complains it holds them back.

3. They never take responsibility / never contrite or apologize. This. means when they cross the line, it's just the new unspoken standard of behavior. Not something they take time to repair and apologize for.

4. They see software development as a zero-sum game. If you are succeeding, it means its taking away success from me.

And no, I'm not talking about someone who's incompetent. Or someone who's a bit gruff.

Now the obvious answer is 'leave' BUT its been my observation that most jobs have had at least one person that fits this profile. And you may not know when you interview.

How have you dealt this person in the past?

People generally give managers A LOT of benefit of the doubt. It’s natural in normal, in-person work to assume as an employee we are the problem. Then you go out to lunch with your colleagues, and you get the ‘lay of the land’ of the organization and who to avoid, the quirks of different managers, etc. And if a manager does something abusive, it’s in a public place (an office) and makes it easier to see and call out.

But in a remote workplace, many of your 1-1 interactions are on a zoom call. Further, you’re not in a strong group setting where abusive behaviors are obvious or easily documented. Work feels more transactional, and the work required to create a safe culture is much higher.

Is it me, or is remote work a breeding ground for horrible bosses?

And if that’s the case, what does that imply for the cultures of remote work companies?

I’m a big proponent of remote work, and don’t want to go back to the office. But I just had an experience where I had an abusive boss and only recently, after a year or so, has it become obvious I’m being gaslighted, I'm only now comparing notes on the experience with others who are validating my horrible experience.

I'm in a situation where my boss really doesn't get me or understand what I specifically bring to the table. She simply needs something different. I've tried to fit myself into what she needs like a square peg in a round hole. I have a very different vision for my role, and a specific understanding of how my strengths contribute to our team.

After a year of trying, coaching, assuming I’m the problem, talking to my skip level, hard convos with my boss, and much more etc I'm finally realizing trying to force myself into something that's simply not going to fit. With all humility I admit it may be me that failed. But life is short, it’s time to move on.

Cool story bro, why are you telling me?

Well I just want to say, the industry has an obsession with "growth" in performance reviews. But the reality is that growth only works when you build on someone's strengths. Trying to ask someone to grow by changing who they fundamentally are, leads to withdrawal, stagnation, and anti-growth. I'm actually getting worse at my job, not better, because I'm being forced to be something I'm not. It's depressing, draining, and frustrating. I can't be who I fundamentally am in my role.

It's important to know when your strengths are fundamentally misaligned with your job, boss, etc and leave ASAP. Don't try to force yourself to fit into it for the sake of "growth". You'll only drain yourself and there are better places for you. You may end up going through a traumatic experience that actually causes you to LOSE skills and abilities.

That is all, thanks.

I occasionally get people contacting me for advice in my field. Random startups and whatnot. Usually I ignore them.

I had a thought - it would be great to send them a calendly link to my schedule with a credit card form attached. Pay $X for 30 mins or an hour of my time.

Does such a thing exist?

Maybe you’re hesitant to switch jobs - you don’t want to join a tech dumpster fire! What could we do to make tech quality transparency more available before employees join?

Imagine a place you could lookup verifiable stats that indicate the company does a good job maintaining its projects and demonstrates good software craftsmanship. What stats might make sense? Stuff like tests per lines of code, how fast can a “hello world” change be made and tested? Frequency of deploys. Number of reverted PRs? How out of date dependencies are? I’m sure there’s existing stats in the software eng community.

There’s the “Joel Test” which is a bit outdated, and has a much to do with a devs quality of life.

What verified stats would you want to know before joining a company?

Having a tough time on your team? Bad relationship with your lead? Working on a death March project? Burnt out?

A reminder you hold so many cards Your org needs you. There are so many software eng opportunities right now, and even with a bear market, you have enough options for employment that your company should be working hard to retain you.

Take care of yourself: you work for YouInc, not your company. You and your satisfaction/sanity are the product. Your employer is just a customer. Don’t get gaslit into believing in the cult around a specific company, no matter how grand.

You can do it. You can interview and get good at selling yourself. Don’t sell yourself short. I believe in you :)

Focus on building YouInc - your personal brand and “product”. Constantly market and grow independent of your employer and you can go far!