mydriasis

Nobody I know likes these goofy software shifters. It's a feature that's confusing and that nobody asked for. The PRNDL was fine. Just give me a lever. Please.

Is the implication that the employees of the company are the cats and not the mice?

I have some opinions, here, based on the people I've met and worked with over time. All with a grain of salt, of course, because I'm just one guy with one career, and of course my views don't represent a vast and diverse industry :)

It sounds like you need a couple of people, because you have a couple of problems. The programmer who

1. Understands machine learning and data science, and can action-ably put code in place that utilizes all of the data you're collecting 2. Understands the value of testing and will fix broken windows as he goes ( your "things break constantly" problem ) 3. Can write high-quality code 4. Can move at startup speed while doing all of the above 5. Can spin up at your workplace in time to make an impact around your nearest deadlines of... two or three months from now

surely exists!

But they sound very expensive.

Why:

In my experience, data scientists and machine learning folk are very scientist. Especially at the master+ level, they can make a huge impact on their area of expertise for sure! The drawback -- _usually_, and I will say I'm painting broad strokes here based on a lot of the people I've met and worked with -- is that they're not used to building production software and keeping up with demands of testing and high code quality.

On the other hand, enterprise developers are very good at the high code quality and testing part, but generally don't have the scientific depth to jump in on machine learning / data science projects. Again, broad strokes.

If you want someone who can do both, they usually have a _ton_ of years of experience, because! It takes a ton of years to learn how to do these things well.

So that person probably exists, they're probably quite expensive, though.

If you do wind up with more than one person and you cannot hire them at the same time, you will sacrifice in one aspect for gain in the other. If you hire one person, you run the risk of dragging them through the dirt, because you're going to be stretching their talent thin. I've noticed that the type of person with the level of experience to do the jobs you want don't like to move fast and run themselves ragged.

All this to say --

it sounds like you have lots to do. Be careful!

Hey, isn't this that company where the CEO said

> Greptile offers no work-life-balance, typical workdays start at 9am and end at 11pm, often later, and we work Saturdays, sometimes also Sundays.

Please let me die.

Even worse -- giving a thorough estimate, having the other party decline and reply with a different, significantly shorter estimate, and then turning their new estimate into your new deadline. Woof!

Very cool article, incredibly interesting tech, but ...

> We spend a third of our lives asleep, and humanity dreams of using this time profitably

... please kill me.

I've worked a fair bit in both environments. Maybe I've somehow missed out on 'the mean', but that's my experience. I've met the eclectic goofballs in tech too, but they're far from the norm.

> Women barely exist.

This is the same in blue collar environments. They have more of the levity that I'm seeking regardless.

> And let's face it the kind of people who want to dedicate their life to staring at a screen make for a strange crowd.

Maybe this is it? I'm not fully convinced. I have worked with tech dorks that had a sense of humor, and that didn't bring contentious things to the working environment. Is it a lack of wit? I don't know. The more I think about it, the more confused I get, honestly.

> It's mostly people who think the world must be a certain sanitized way and if you tell them the reality is otherwise they must suppress you to preserve their world view which they see as being the ritcheous one.

With regards to camaraderie and banter, I don't even want to talk about world views. I genuinely don't think they matter too much in that context. Really what I'm sick of is just a lack of any attempt to make a connection whatsoever. I don't need to align with a person politically or socially to build a connection and have good workplace banter. There's just such a fundamental unwillingness to do so, in my experience. That's what bugs me.

And I know the difference. I've been in both blue collar and white collar environments. Blue collar people look to build the connection and bond together almost immediately, just about every time. There's a period of 'feeling each other out' when you start on a new job or with a new coworker so that they can suss out _how to connect with you_. That's right: it's such a first-class citizen to their working relationships that there's an entire art form to initiating it.

Contrasting with the white collar environment... it's almost non-existent, unless you work with people who, ironically, come from blue collar environments. I think it's really sad, and I think we could benefit from being a little looser. I don't think that means we need to drag any contentious topics in, nor do I think it means that we need to drag ourselves into un-professionalism. There's just something to be said for being able to be goofy and chat with coworkers that seems to be lost on the white collar environment.

Harmony is the strength and support of all institutions. Banter and camaraderie build that harmony.

It's even worse. The educated tech industry workers don't actually make any banter, so any time their prejudices slip through, it's just their actual opinions instead of banter. It's a very bizarre opposite to the supposedly 'uneducated' blue collar way of doing things, which brings levity as a first-class citizen, and communicates boundaries well.

You don't even need to be inappropriate to have workplace banter. Nobody ever said that a light environment has to be built on jokes that bust chops. In fact, busting chops kind of blows. There's plenty of room for clowning around outside of that, and plenty of ways to build camaraderie, too. You don't have to bring racism or sexism to the table to have a good time, and you don't have to have a good time at someone else's expense.

Man, I'm really sick of the robotic culture of tech. It's such a stuffy bummer. We should be making more skeleton jokes and showing each other macaroni art pictures.

"You are not immune to propaganda" -Garfield