jeffbush

(project author here) That is pretty close to the approach this project has taken, although my motivation was not so much avoiding IP as exploring the line between hardware acceleration and software.

This reminds me of the old Yogi Berra quip "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

I read the book "Why Nations Fail." I found it to be poorly organized and repetitive. But the biggest problem I had with it was that it suffered from the fallacy of the single cause. The authors tried to attack every other theory about the prosperity of nations in favor of their one thesis. Their arguments against other theories seemed weak and poorly supported. While I think there is truth to their hypothesis that economic prosperity is related to inclusiveness of a society, and they presented some sound arguments for it, trying to say it is the only cause is a bridge too far in my opinion.

Yeah, the title (and contents) of the story are total clickbait, but they did helpfully attach the full contents of the FOIA dump. As you point out, there is ambiguity (which is why I used a lot of qualifiers :), but seeing the internal communications around the issue is interesting.

"Appearing to genuinely care" is different than being empathetic. The former implies the person doesn't really care, the latter is by definition concern for another person.

My comment on HR people caring was a more general statement on my interactions with HR in a variety of situations. As a manager, I often see both sides of HR/employee interactions.

This seems negligent on the part of HR (as well as genuinely awful).

In California, all managers are required by law to take three hours of sexual harassment training every other year. One thing that stood out to me is that there is no need to make a formal harassment claim: when anyone mentions they have experienced harassment to a manager, even in a private conversation, the manager is required to report it and investigate. If the employee says they want to keep the conversation in confidence, the manager is supposed to say they can't do that. If a manager doesn't follow up, they can be personally liable.

Several companies I've been at also have a mandatory "managers and the law" training class. I didn't talk to anyone for several days after taking it. :)

IANAL, but my understanding is that one job of HR is to protect the company. One reason they investigate is to produce evidence that could be used in the event of a lawsuit to prove they took the allegation seriously. Trying to argue with the employee that it didn't happen would put them in a really bad position if they were sued, because it could be used to demonstrate a hostile work environment.

I've seen complaints happen a few times in my career (not involving me directly), and, in those cases, HR took it gravely seriously. They talked to everyone involved and documented the crap out of it. Most of the people I've met in HR seem to genuinely care. I disagree with advice that HR should not be trusted, but my advice for someone who is in a situation where they are uncomfortable is to document everything. Keep emails of all interactions with your manager and HR and send follow up email to summarize conversations you had in person.

One thing that I think is important, and I've struggled with, is making 'fault' be a synonym for 'control'. There's this broken thought pattern where any perceived failure is either:

1. My fault (I failed)

2. Out of my control (I'm powerless/helpless).

Both are pretty shitty ways to feel. I think many people who advise/coach/mentor forget this when they give this sort of advice. I remember listening to one well-meaning coach talk through the "victim vs. owning mentality" and I walked out of the session thinking about everything that was wrong at work and how it was because I was incompetent.

Feeling inadequate is common and natural in a highly competitive environment. It's not our fault, we're human beings.

Bear in mind, everyone who works at the company contributes to this culture. When you say "it's by design," you're implying there's some elite group of people at the company who are doing this out of malice. Even the execs who we might cast most of the blame for this on (who are also human beings) are probably feeling inadequate too.

But at the same time, we have the ability to recognize these thoughts and challenge them. So there is hope to rise above it, even though we will probably always struggle with it to some degree.

"And you still manage to prove that your system is 100x more reliable than human driver."

That's the rub: how do you prove that? If your software stack is 30 million lines of code that was written by god knows who, I would argue it's nigh impossible without releasing it and seeing what happens, which seems morally irresponsible and legally negligent. If you follow strict rules in coding conventions and algorithms, it's easier to statically verify code is probably correct.

I think for many people nowadays, privacy is a quaint, antiquated notion, like Victorian modesty. Things like social media and YouTube have encouraged people to make their lives public, so having the government gather data seems fairly minor.

I find this all very disturbing, but, having grown up without the Internet, perhaps I'm just a relic from a bygone area. Still, I can't shake the uneasy feeling that this all will lead to a very bad place...

The middle managers are given directions by the CEO. The CEO needs to meet profit targets, or she'll be fired by the board. The board is beholden to the shareholders. There's always someone to pass blame to.

When you go to work, you don't give up your moral agency.