They helped my ideas be “lying around” and picked from when the crisis happened.
In the source, the author says that when there is a crisis (an outage or similar) management will come to you and ask for help solving the problem and you should already have a solution ready to go. What I’ve found is that you should pre-seed your solutions with 1 pagers. Identify things that need to be improved, changes to solve tomorrow’s problems and just take the extra step of writing a 1 pager about it and circulate it. Then when the problem happens that your solution fixes, your fix is already there ready to be fully fleshed out.
Absolutely! I thought this was inherent in the Staff Engineer position in the first place, so was sort of surprised it needed to be stated in the article.
I have social anxiety and it is completely unrelated to likeableness.
I do not think people would not like me, I do not try to avoid people disliking me, that's not the point at all. Quite the opposite, I'm sure I'm an interesting person and I'm confident people would like me if I could take the step.
Problem is, there is something that physically prevents me from saying "Hi!" to a stranger. I literally cannot get myself to take a step towards them and I can't explain why that is, because I do not understand it myself.
Also quite interestingly (to me), this completely goes away under certain circumstances: (1) If I take around 2-3 units of alcohol and it is not a totally alien environment (it would not help if I was in a bar alone with complete strangers). (2) If more than about 70% of people in the room are people I know well. Then I do not feel anxious about approaching the remaining 30%.
I have the same exact experience as you. It's like some weird physical barrier, but I can't really articulate the feeling or explain it. The exposure therapy method here doesn't work because "just do it a bunch of times and you'll get more comfortable" isn't even possible for me, I can't "just do it."
For me though, it takes more than a few beers to be comfortable approaching someone. I'd have to be completely sloshed and even then it's a struggle.
The only time I didn't experience the seemingly physical barrier was in college when a friend convinced me to try MDMA and we went out. I became almost the exact opposite of who I am with the social anxiety. I was the most extraverted, outgoing person in our group quite literally chatting up anyone and everyone that I crossed paths with without any care or inhibition around it.
No other pharmaceutical has been able to cure it for me like that, and it's a bit depressing because I liked that version of myself and I'd like to be able to be that person again without an incredibly dangerous illegal substance.
What you say about "extroverted" is interesting, because I do not see myself as an introvert. Once I am familiar with the people around, I am social bee, very chatty, energised by speaking with others etc. I crave social relationships but I can't find or start them.
My wife is exact opposite. She is an introvert who does not have a problem with approaching people. Relationships drain her energy, she can't chat to even a close friend for more than a couple of hours, but approaching a complete stranger when necessary or she wants to? That's not a problem for her at all, she just does not usually want it, and she loves her alone times.
If you’re open about it, maybe you can take a look into Phenibut — it’s somewhere between alcohol and lightweight MDMA in terms of disinhibition effects. It can help tremendously in the context of aiding progressive exposure. Do you own research, though: it can get into slippery slope fairly quickly.
Make your own decisions of course, but make sure you are fully educated about the risks of MDMA. It is not generally considered to be a dangerous substance. It is illegal though, and moderation is always prudent.
I find it helpful to think of that physical barrier as your own emotions barring you from entering a state where the uncertainty as to whether you'll be safe grows too high to trust yourself to operate in real time.
The problem isn't really being liked or not being liked, the problem is the cognitive overload of trying to predict what will happen and respond to it in realtime, which is sure to set in when one's mental model of the potential interaction is very uncertain. Of course, if your brain quits in a conversation, the other person is not going to be very impressed with you, so this kind of failure carries social risk itself.
The way to fix this is to have as many interactions which are bearable as possible so as to build out the mind's mental model of itself and others in social situations. Gradually the danger just fades away. There's no substitute for firsthand experience; no amount of premeditating, ruminating, or brooding will fix this.
> The problem isn't really being liked or not being liked, the problem is the cognitive overload of trying to predict what will happen and respond to it in realtime, which is sure to set in when one's mental model of the potential interaction is very uncertain.
I think is a big piece. I have social anxiety and I have a tendency not to answer with what I'm thinking but what I think they want to hear because it's more predictable. This gets amplified tenfold in interviews. In an interview, I know that they're looking for a specific answer when they ask a question, but also that the answer differs from interviewer to interviewer. It's like there's this sub-process that is constantly running trying to figure out what to say, but in some situations it ends up locking up the system because it's using too many resources due to the constraints.
Mine is similar to this. In addition the anxiety comes from me thinking that most interactions are banal and more about “trading good vibes and energy” with the other person rather than a genuine deep conversation, and I fear that my facial expressions will reflect what I’m really feeling inside - “ugh can we transition off talking about my weekend or the weather?”. And also because I’m not that witty without alcohol, but it’s almost like most of western small talk is based off of exchanging humor and wit, then laughing very loudly at the punchline. So my anxiety is more to do with not performing well enough to have this stereotypical exchange done smoothly.
This is relatable, mine is somewhat similar. It feels like a very specific version of performance anxiety that unfortunately affects the most banal social interactions. It is obviously multiplied tenfold when I'm in a situation where there are actual stakes (an interview, a first date, etc), but it still applies if I am just talking to a friend of a friend at a party that I don't know very well. The stakes feel very high to me because it's our first time talking.
It's less that I need them to like me or fear being disliked and more that I am just way too conscious of the stakes and the social interaction that's happening, which causes my brain to sort of freeze up. It feels like when I used to play tennis in high school. I'd do great at practice, then freeze up and barely remember how to hit the ball in games because the stakes on each point felt so high.
If I'm around some good friends it completely goes away. If I have hung around the person enough (even without directly talking to them), it goes away. I've also had random days where I don't feel the performance anxiety and performed really well in those situations (and coincidentally some of those days I'd meet a new group of friends or a girlfriend). It's extremely frustrating. Xanax makes the performance anxiety go away completely but slows me down cognitively so I become much less witty and interesting to talk to.
Like most anxiety disorders, there is a reason for your response. Your brain is basically trained to jump from stimulus -> response without cognitively thinking through stimulus -> interpretation -> response.
This is why cognitive behavior therapy can help many people. With a trained professional, you uncover the reasons why you developed the response. Once you know the thinking pattern that drives the response, you can work on changing those thinking patterns.
You have the fear of being judged; the antidote is realizing that most people barely notice you, it just feels like they do because you’re self-conscious around new people.
It's amazing we don't have a good answer for this yet.
For me it happened on its own and I realized I was fine with who I was flaws and all. Yeah I get disappointed in myself or whatever but it was just getting comfortable in my own skin over the years that seemed to mostly fix stuff like this.
Also a lot of observing the anxiety and then after it subsided realizing I don't have enough time to worry about everyone else like I was assuming people worry about me.
Sorry for the rambling it's late. Anyway wish you best of luck out there :)
100% agree. I used to think there was some cognitive loop I could will my way out of. Then I did Keto and all the sudden it was gone.
Keto does a lot to the neurotransmitters in the brain and it clearly balances out things for me and I feel no social anxiety at all.
I’m sure cognitive tricks work for some people. They mostly had the opposite effect on me in the long term. I would encourage people to not buy into it too much
I assume it can be different for everyone. This post resonates with me, but my social anxiety mixes being sensitive to negative feedback and low self-esteem.
So, you want to avoid both being disliked, but also being liked - because this puts you in novel situations you fear lead to an even bigger failure down the road.
Perhaps it is normal, it has been a great challenge my whole life.
Every new school, new job, new environment has been a struggle until I made friends in natural ways (either I had to wait someone approached me, or it has been through activities like shared home work etc.)
But moving to a new country has been a disaster in terms of relationships. I'm already very anxious, but I now need to approach people in a foreign language and there's no school-like environment where relationships form naturally. Clubs and events do not help as they are at most an hour a week so nothing like the school.
I am sure there are many people like me, but I doubt it is the majority. I am just back from my kids birthday and as far as I could see, among 20, there were only one or two other adults who did not speak to anyone, majority somehow has less challenge.
Actually I have attributed it to the pervasiveness of advertising. I fucking hate all ads, and salesmen. And in an attempt to never be anywhere near this thing i hate so much, i do not interrupt strangers ever for any reason
I do not see anything in this study that accounts for the decline in economic activity. Is it AI replacing the jobs, or is it that companies are not optimistically hiring, which disproportionally impacts entry level jobs?
Agree, I think the high cost of full time hires for entry level software jobs (total comp + onboarding + mentoring) vs investing in AI and seeing if that gap can be filled is a far less risky choice at the current economic state.
6-12 months in, the AI bet doesnt pay off, then just stop spending money in it. cancel/dont renew contracts and move some teams around.
For full time entry hires, we typically dont see meaningful positive productivity (their cost is less than what they produce) for 6-8 months. Additionally, entry level takes time away from senior folks reducing their productivity. And if you need to cut payroll cost, its far more complicated, and worse for morale than just cutting AI spend.
So given the above, plus economy seemingly pre-recession (or have been according to some leading indicators) seems best to wait or hire very cautiously for next 6-8 months at least.
"I think the high cost of full time hires for entry level software jobs (total comp + onboarding + mentoring) vs investing in AI and seeing if that gap can be filled"
I think it's more to do with the outsourcing. Software is going the same way as manufacturing jobs. Automation hurts a little, but outsourcing kills.
The numbers say otherwise. The US is outsourcing about 300k jobs annually, with about 75% of those being tech. The trend has generally increased over the past decade.
Even then why hire a junior dev instead of a mid level developer that doesn’t need mentoring? You can probably hire one for the same price as a junior dev if you hire remotely even in the US.
Or H1B / outsourcing replacement. There are data points showing tech companies hiring thousands of foreign workers while layout off domestic employees. It should factor in to these analyses of displaced junior developers.
Exactly this. 2023Q1 was when the interest rate hike from the previous year really kicked in with full force. It was the first hiring market I ever saw in well over a decade where the employers were firmly in the drivers seat even for seniors.
I can imagine that there were a decent number of execs who tried chatgpt, made some outlandish predictions and based some hiring decisions upon those predictions though.
This paper looks kinda trashy - confusing correlation with causation and clickbaity.
> In 2017 Trump made businesses have to amortize these [R&D] expenses over 5 years instead of deducting them, starting in 2022 (it is common for an administration to write laws that will only have a negative effect after they're gone). This move wrecked the R&D tax credit. Many US businesses stopped claiming R&D tax credits entirely as a result. Others had surprise tax bills.
Then companies bought their own stock instead of investing in labor:
Trying to prevent stupidity by regulations and rules is proving to be problematic: Because we have very successfully prevented stupid from destroying themselves, and let them thrive on the successes of others built (e.g. anti-vaxers are relatively safe thanks to everyone else vaccinating their children, or you can thrive on benefits in the UK which is great when you genuinely tried your best but fail, but terrible when it is motivating you to stop trying).
This fundemantally conflicts with a lesson startup scene learned very early: Fail fast, fail often. Our societies do not fail fast when they make mistakes, thanks to the incredible safety and stability intelligent and sensible people created.
This is preventing people from learning from their idiocies, which in turn allows them to reach to critical mass and forcing their idiocy on the whole society in the form of bullshit or hurtful laws and orders.
We should change this and let idiots fail fast before they become a danger to everyone.
Automating software development is not unethical. The unethical bit is allowing resource flow default to those who own the means of production.
As a software developer, when I automate someone's job, say of a cashier, I do not start to get paid their salary - my salary stays the same.
This is different for capital investors and shareholders. They keep the cashier's salary (not directly but ultimately). This results in an increasing concentration of wealth, creates lots of suffering and destabilises the world. That is where it is unethical.
Yes, if it's resulting in a redistribution of wealth from the workers getting laid off (with no great prospects) to those providing the automation. OpenAI isn't providing any new job opportunities, it's just destroying existing ones.
I actually built something (a time tracking tool that helps developers log their time consistently on jira and harvest) that most developers in my company use in under a week.
I have backend development background so I was able to review the BE code and fix some bugs. But I did not bother learning Jira and Harvest API specs at all, AI (cursor+sonnet 4) figured it out all.
I would not be able to write the front-end of this. It is JS based and updates the UI based on real-time http requests (forgot the name of this technology, the new ajax that is) and I do not have time to learn it but again, I was able to tweak what AI generated and make it work.
Not only AI helped me do something in much shorter than it would take, it enabled me do something that otherwise would not be possible.
I think the gap between what the companies looking for and what the individuals has to offer is increasing.
When a company advertises a role, they are increasingly looking for someone who either has done the same exact job in the exact specific niche with proven success for a number of years, or an absolute super star who would excel at anything thrown at them.
Most people are neither, so matches are exceedingly rare.
Yes but for the purposes of these conversations, we do not need to say "good juniors" "good engineers" every time. After all, for every task, it is possible to find someone who is really bad at it, and we should not need to keep repeating we are not talking about _that_ person.
ah you're a mathematician I see. without loss of generality, let's assume the bottom half doesn't exist. therefore only the top half needs to be bested and the task is now impossible. qed.
I think there are two broad cases where ai coding is beneficial:
1. You are a good coder but working on a new (to you) or building a new project, or working with a technology you are not familiar with. This is where AI is hugely beneficial. It does not only accelerate you, it lets you do things you could not otherwise.
2. You have spent a lot of time on engineering your context and learning what AI is good at, and using it very strategically where you know it will save time and not bother otherwise.
If you are a really good coder, really familiar with the project, and mostly changing its bits and pieces rather than building new functionality, AI won’t accelerate you much. Especially if you did not invest the time to make it work well.
Most people are using LLMs because they fear that it will be the future and they will miss out if they do not learn it now although they are aware they are not more productive but can’t say that in a business environment.
