mysticllama

there's dozens of us!

interesting, how often do you drink it?

so glad the company that pays for my treatments can be "a check on providers" for me… /s

Yes, exactly -- the fixation on "metrics-driven development" created perverse incentives (i.e. cobra effect). People would ship bugs and broken shit because it'd bump engagement, like you're referencing; nevermind the fact that the engagement win was because people were clearly flummoxed by a meaningfully worse user experience and it took them longer to do shit. I saw this happen many times, gaming metrics by doing backwards things would definitely get rewarded.

i worked at a FAANG co and managed to make it 3 years focusing on solving problems that widely bothered users. there were several instances where i had to -fight- to ship critical bug fixes because the fixes so-happened to regress an obscure metric someone was baby-sitting…

the first time this happened, i felt like my brain was going to explode -- so wait, you want me to leave the main app feed broken and people pissed off because the comment-notes-experience-home-ex team's weekly comment rate is slightly regressing?

writing this out, not sure how i lasted as long as i did.

I think his original statement is still correct -- Threads only requests device permissions for notifications, it isn't collecting "location, health data, or financial data" from your device.

The App Store disclosure you're referencing means these data can be aggregated and associated with your identity, but that's just the nature of using any social media app that serves ads these days.

from my experience, acquiring the self-awareness you need in order to articulate this problem is the biggest hurdle to solving it -- you're on your way!

early in my career, i shared this hangup and because i was so emotionally invested in the products that i worked on, i considered criticism of my work == criticism of me personally.

i think the next step is evaluating how effectively you are separating your work and personal life. when i have struggled with this issue the most, it has correlated with me being too emotionally invested in what i'm working on.

make sure that you have projects and interests outside of work that fulfill you so that you don't rely an outsize amount on your work for fulfillment. often this means having better guardrails about work-life-balance -- do you clearly define when you are and aren't available for work, for example?

the other thing is simply reminding yourself that your work isn't you, and it doesn't define your value. working with complex systems, we are going to screw up at times, it's an inevitability. if you aim to not make mistakes, ever, and bristle when they are pointed out or criticized, you're going to struggle over the longterm to get along with the people you collaborate with.

ironically, i have found that being more open and accepting of the "dumb" shit i do leads others to think more highly of me as an engineer. i think most of us can think of "that person" we've worked with who can't take criticism and recoils when questioned -- when you do, how did that you feel when you experienced that behavior firsthand? if i had to guess, it probably wasn't positive. we can do better!

agreed, the introduction of safe zones ruined what made the game special. while the old way was brutal and could be outright toxic to new players, the pure lawlessness and unpredictability of open PVP was unique -- you could even murder players in town if you managed to do it without witnesses! the thrills i had in that game i haven't had since

+1 for another CS student jump-started by UO :D

as i recall, they devised their own scripting language, and they relied solely on flatfiles to track world-state… then every day at a given time, each server would have an off-hours save where the flatfiles would be persisted. players caught on to this, and would take advantage by having "server wars" during these save windows, when changes wouldn't be persisted, and would all equip their best kit and battle at certain locations. all that said, it's not too surprising lots of creativity and ingenuity was required, given in 1997 the world had really seen nothing like it.

i remember getting it right after it came out -- i had just turned 11. when i tried to explain to people that it was a massive, detailed fantasy world where you could go on adventures with people in real-time, they'd look at me like i had two heads.

this got me into scripting and mods and was a big influence on why i became interested in software and hacking, and have had a career in it since.

best system design interview advice i got (and put to successful use in loops with goog and fb) was to not try to give the "right" answer -- it's like a professor grading papers on a topic they've taught countless times, you have more of an opportunity to fail than you do to succeed. instead, be decisive and give answers or approximations for any questions that arise, and bring your unique perspective to the problem -- in my case i have a background in mobile app development, so i spent a lot of time speaking to those use-cases.

if you try to cover every base and fret about everything being optimal, you're going to barely have time to get started.

i agree that this is delusional and i see it repeated a lot -- homelessness isn't just a byproduct of a lack of housing or a lack of affordable housing.

i remember having a conversation with a LICSW who did a tremendous amount of work with drug addicted and homeless populations; she explained that when she really needed to, she could "beg, borrow, or steal" a way to find better housing for someone, but that really wasn't the crux of solving the individual's problems, it's only one facet.

even if someone who has untreated mental illness or drug addiction suddenly has a great new place to live, they're not going to stay at that address long if their other needs aren't treated.

i'm not saying there shouldn't be more affordable housing ASAP, or that it wouldn't radically improve some lives, but i get the impression that a lot of folks think homelessness is mainly a housing problem when it's really not so simple, and i think that needs to change if the problems have any chance at getting improved.

i’ve done ios dev professionally since ios 5.

pros: there is no shortage of roles, my experience has been (especially now) that skilled ios devs are always in demand.

it’s fun to work on mobile software, imo —- you get to live in a cool space where good software and good UX are both essential. hopefully you like doing lots of UI debugging and thinking about performance.

you get to work a lot with product and design on almost any consumer mobile app you dev for. fun if you like collaboration

cons: for the same reasons a niche is a good thing, there’s an eventual ceiling. you could probably sell your mobile experience and jump into an android or maybe front end web dev, but it’s easy to get “stuck” which is bad if you like versatility

there are definitely some annoyances in dealing with the “walled garden” or whatever you want to call it.

app store can arbitrarily decide you can’t visually style your app a certain way anymore (had this happen)

provisioning devices is annoying though has gotten less bad

i could go on… i’ve done it a long time and made a career out of it and really enjoyed it! if you like the idea of making products that are in people’s hands day to day it’s the right way to go.