nickelbob

Paul, we know you're not stupid so please engage with the real argument, not a strawman.

The middle class is shrinking. Social mobility is decreasing. There's now a man who is worth a trillion dollars. Something is broken. Say something about that please.

We teach software engineering like it's a craft. And some of it is. But 95% of it is not. 95% of it is in service of making money.

Try to understand the quality of the software in your org as a function how likely it is to increase the amount of money the company makes.

Should engineers be pushing product forward?

Shouldn't this live under the VP of Product?

This is awesome, I was trying to build this as well. I'd love a windows version if that's on the roadmap.

I had an otherwise very competent VP of Engineering who was enamored by a former employee. One day during our 1-on-1 we got to the topic of what we know for sure vs. what we don't. He said that he tried to avoid thinking about that because this former employee of his had told him of his own adventures with this train of thought and that it "took him to a very dark place".

Apparently he had never heard of Descartes? It was a great lesson in the fact that hubris is very real and just because you're good at one thing doesn't make you worth listening to on any other topic.

Construction workers built the modern world, why shouldn't they run it?

How sure are you that you were on the losing end? What even is the "losing end" of a bailout?

Rising tides lift all boats. Do you know any people who worked on wall street? Then they were helped by a bailout. Do you know any people who worked with the people who worked on wall street? Then they were helped by a bailout. Etc....

Maybe there's a favorite restaurant of yours that stayed open throughout COVID because of PPP. Or there are people who you know who kept their jobs because of PPP.

Maybe there are favorite products of yours that have been created or will be created by people who were able to start companies after their student loans were forgiven.

My point is that these bailouts aren't only helping the people/companies that were directly impacted - we're all connected so it's rare that helping so many people doesn't indirectly affect you in some way.

Sad that you're getting downvoted. OP's post is essentially "People who made different choices than me should be punished."

Please do - not trying to be snarky, just legitimately interested.

If your self worth is related to how much money you make (not saying that's bad) then go for it!

Where's the contradiction? Are you saying that "not being able to trust your thoughts" implies that materialism is false?

> This article was written by someone with very poor philosophical training.

Strange to throw shade on the author when your position is that an idea that's been taken seriously by philosophers for 2000+ years is obviously contradictory. Maybe some humility is in order?

Perhaps one solution is to divorce your own self worth from the quality of the software you happen to write and to realize that you are an employee first and a software engineer second - make decisions that increase the amount of money the company makes and look for self worth in that itself or in hobbies/family/friends/something else.

> This is true... but it's also true of ≈everything else in the organization.

Except for sales?

Just curious - why is it so hard?