I remember joining the industry and switching our company over to full Continuous Integration and Deployment. Instead of uploading DLL’s directly to prod via FTP, we could verify each build, deploy to each environment, run some service tests to see if pages were loading, all the way up to prod - with rollback. I showed my manager, and he shrugged. He didn’t see the benefit of this happening when, in his eyes, all he needed to do was drag and drop, and load the page to make sure all is fine.

Unsurprisingly, I found out that this is how he builds websites to this day…

I can somewhat understand this. I have IBS, and most people with a bowel issue will tell you that IBS is basically your doctor saying ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Instead of getting help from your doctor, you go online and you hear about people finding relief through taking weird supplements, or eating only rice, or taking pre and probiotics of varying types. None of it has any proof, but it’s better to try something than to struggle - and sometimes you’re lucky or you find some short-lived relief.

The difference is that there often isn’t evidence for these things working, whereas there is plenty of evidence out there that says that chiropractors are doing legitimately dangerous practices to your body. The difference is that someone is trying to make a profit from this lack of knowledge.

I’ve told this story before, but newborn chiropractors are a thing, and many new parents will take their BABIES to get their neck and back snapped around. It’s frankly fucking disgusting.

The same goes for pregnancy, where you essentially gain a deficiency because you’re building another person inside you.

I’ve known people at IC level sell outside of windows and barely get a mention. Some people have odd vesting schedules for things like RSU’s, so sometimes it’s unavoidable.

At higher levels, it’s locked down considerably. My old director said that he had to have a meeting to go through a sale of his stock, so that it could be approved to be out of a window of potential releases in the company outside of his own division. I imagine that at VP+ level you need accountants just to handle what is a few clicks for an average corp worker.

Most serious SW development is now on Linux laptops/desktops,

I’d love a source for this. To my knowledge, most people that build to Linux hosts still use OSX.

My understanding is that while you’re 100% being terminated (and are ineligible for rehire) what you sign indicates that you’re actually volunteering to resign.

For more info on it, look up Amazon’s Focus and Pivot programs.

For many, it’s the severance offered that makes them sign. If you’re about to lose your job, a few months pay, and free relocation back home if your visa is due to be cancelled is likely enough to make you sign something.

I’m not condoning it, at all. I think the practice is fucking disgusting, and have seen it wreck lives, but it’s a reality in many tech companies, including Google under Sundar.

I think that Amazon and Meta (where this is a known practice) do both. I’ve not signed anything in tech that stops me talking about internal company practices or any work that might have resulted in “voluntary” dismissal, but others in these companies that do the Jack Walsh thing and fire their employees do…

Some companies have you sign things after leaving.

Obviously, when you start laying people off, or do stupid shit like stack ranking, some people are going to walk out and just blab about all the dumb shit your employer does/did - and they’re heroes for doing so.

I work in AI.

We’ve known this about LLM’s for many years. One of the reasons they weren’t widely used was due to hallucinations, where they’ll be coerced into saying something confidently incorrect. OpenAI created a great set of tools that showed true utility for LLM’s, and people were able to largely accept that even if it’s wrong, it’s good for basic tasks like writing a doc outline or filling in boilerplate in scripts.

Sadly, grifters have decided that LLM’s were the future, and they’ve put them into applications where they have no more benefit than other, compositional models. While they’re great at orchestration, they’re just not suited to search, answering broad questions with limited knowledge, or voice-based search - all areas they’ll be launched in. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of a LLM being used for critical subjects that require knowledge of health or the law, because those companies that decided that AI will build software for them, or run HR departments are going to be totally fucked when a big mistake happens.

It’s an arms race that no one wants, and one that arguably hasn’t created anything worthwhile yet, outside of a wildly expensive tool that will save you some time. What’s even sadder is that I bet you could go to any of these big tech companies and ask IC’s if this is a good use of their time and they’ll say no. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost, and many worthwhile projects were scrapped so some billionaire cunts could enter an AI pissing contest.

Given that this was the prime time for Bonzi Buddy, I’m inclined to say I agree with you. People chose these things years ago, because it added more to the experience outside of “here is your word processor, here is notepad, here are the three games you have to play”.

Sadly, Lemmy is too small to have many active niche communities of its own, so as already said your best bet is just viewing all.

Alongside this, viewing specific instances can give you a slightly more curated experience than just all of Lemmy.

Apple is in a weird spot. They’re probably sitting on a metric shit-ton of cash, and happily bucked the trend of laying off their employees (for a while). They were in a position to grow and expand as a tech company, while everyone else was restricting themselves.

Sadly, they haven’t looked to solidify their position for years, and outside of the Apple Watch, there have been very few true innovations from Apple for a long time. Apple actually have an extensive applied ML science team (source: have worked with them), but like many of their divisions, they just don’t have the faith to pull the trigger and truly invest in them.

Apple right now just…kinda exist. They make shareholders a lot of money, and they churn out incremental updates that keep fans happy, but is that a tactic for long-term success, or a sign of a business that’s out of direction?

It’s funny how Stack Overflow was created because forums were shit for programming discussion, and because Q&A was dominated, sold, and locked down by Experts-Exchange.

Now, pretty much the second the final founder bailed (and jumped on the AI train) SO starts enshittifying its product…

I’ve always found horses to be weird animals. They have personality, but have no expression outside of losing their shit. Their posture also looks uncomfortable as fuck, always being stood up, and being on small hooves despite being huge.

I’ve always said that they’re prisoners in their own bodies.

Those offices are usually locked down anyway, on floors where the unwashed masses aren’t granted access. Hell, if you want to even be on a call with someone like the CTO you’ll have to reach out to three different entities, book a specific room, and reach out to that person’s team of assistants to ensure everything is aligned.

If they got access to the CTO office they definitely broke in, or evaded security in some way. That alone at any company will get you fired, and probably arrested.

Source: Once attended a meeting with a SVP at a big tech company. I genuinely think it would be easier to meet the president.

Spend 10 mins on Blind, and you’ll see that once anonymous, people tend to be far more right-wing than you’d like to think.

That’s pretty standard in tech. Most companies have this automated from either the layoffs convo or the email being sent.

Back in 2012 I was laid off in a very short meeting with my boss and HR. This was at 10am when everyone was in meetings, so I left a quiet office and entered the stairwell to leave. My badge got me on, but I was unable to leave. I spent 20 mins awkwardly waiting for someone to either pass by or notice so that I could be escorted out of the building.

I’m at Amazon now, and some of the stories of people losing access are horrible. Some layoffs coincided with RTO, with some people moving across the country (NYC to Seattle) only to be told once their life was packed up and being shipped away that, actually, there wouldn’t be a job to move to. There were also stories of IT failures for people, and people basically breaking down in tears at losing their job, when it was only email downtime.

I love my cast iron pan, but I really cannot get the perfect sheen that everyone else seems to get. The bottom of mine is non-stick now, and I season regularly, but the sides always seem to chip away eventually. Once the chipping starts, I have no idea how to stop other than to strip it entirely and start again.