I’m the same, I think better in silence. It’s the only way I can really hear my own thoughts and let them run without being interrupted by music or conversation. That’s also one of the reasons I prefer working from home to working in an office.
That's a good point. It's very likely that TPG demands constant growth meaning more profits each year. So Fandom has to put ads everywhere to meet the goals.
The content is created by volunteers. But fandom is a for-profit company. In its early days when it was known as Wikia, they maintained a fairly small team of people running the site. So they just had to make enough money for paychecks and bills.
Here's my take on what went wrong. Throughout the years they grew. Because the company grew, they hired more hr people - more money needed. So they hired marketing teams, data science and so on. The costs skyrocketed.
So now they're putting ads everywhere because they don't have that much more traffic than 10 years ago but the company is much larger.
I believe code holds meaning even without a compiler or interpreter. I can read code and discern its functionality. I can even recognize existing algorithms such as quicksort. I can achieve the same understanding with pseudocode, which lacks an existing compiler. Similarly, prompts possess meaning; I can comprehend the task delegated to a machine learning model by reading the prompt.
I agree that both code and data are akin in terms of meaning. Transitioning from Assembly language to Python liberates us from concerns about registers and low-level intricacies. Python directs our attention to the problems we aim to solve, in contrast to low-level languages where a significant effort is spent on specifying hardware operations. High-level languages emphasize outcomes, enabling us to focus on the result rather than meticulously instructing the hardware. AI propels us further along this trajectory.
In this sense, I view a prompt and code as rather similar.
I used to work for Google for few years and I did gain some weight - just like many of my coworkers did. The food was delicious and looked great so I was eating too much overall and did not pay attention to the healthy meat vs vegetables balance.
For the last five years we're cooking most of our meals at home, maybe go out or order food once or twice a month. The food we cook isn't as exotic, nicely looking or sophisticated as the food served at Google, but it is tasty, fresh, healthy and the groceries are pretty cheap. And despite being older, my blood results are better now than when I was leaving Google.
That's probably a case-by-case scenario but the last year has been a struggle for me. I much more prefer my usual 30m commute over working from our 45m2 apartment with my wife doing the same, my daughter attending online classes and few apartments in my building being renovated during work hours. Man, I miss my office and my desk.
Living in a big Eastern European city with on-street parking I don't think I'll have a place to charge an EV by 2030. On the bright side I don't think I'll be buying 2030 cars before 2045, so I'm good for now :)
At which point battery will be severely range degraded... IMO Li-ion is a mistake for Europe... LFP (LifePo4) would probably be better for longevity and adequate for range...
I understand it's probably needed for US due to longer distances, but for Europe LFP would be a better compromise IMO.
What makes you’ll still have street parking then..? Cities in Europe are waking up and pushing cars out for good. Hope it’s sooner than later, especially in old towns.
I do agree, focusing on communication is an important part of a job and for sure it makes your work visible across company.
The are other pros. Maybe someone else is facing similar issue - communication may lead to collaboration in this case. If you communicate (early!) about some issues, mgmt has time to account for extra risks or delays.
So yeah, communication will get you promoted earlier than focusing on your tasks and keeping everything to yourself. I just cannot agree with the 10% for work and 90% for the communication ratio, that seems like way too much overhead. I think I would rather swap those numbers. Because how are you going to do anything meaningful if you work less than an hour a day?
That depends on what you want to achieve with your time. Want to do something meaningful? Start your own business/startup, volunteer or become a cancer researcher (all debatable of course).
Want to survive and get promoted in a corporate world? My recipe will get you there. 1 part work for 9 parts politics. If that makes you feel bad you can water it down to 1/8.
I define "corporate" as any human org greater than 100 members, including non-profits, academia, military, even your damn scout troop.
Also: never communicate early. Communicate after you've solved the issue to look like a go-getter, avoid prolonged discussions and prevent people from taking credit. If you manage to take credit for someone else's hard work (say, if they're not a good communicator), all the better. That will help with maintaining a low work/politics ratio.
Love this thread from your end. I think you're speaking some really hard truths that folk don't want to hear. Because of the way big organizations work, it's true to politics is a huge part of what the vocation entails. I'd love to read a blog post about this at some point.
You wouldn't, to be honest, since I don't have a website, twitter or FB at the moment, and it's on the backburner. Besides, it's probably way too cynical and toxic to actually publish. Just look at the responses here.
Also, I'm planning for that book to have a slightly narrower focus, so I may have not done the project any justice.
I do have a lot of tech machiavellianism to write about though, from the small, but notable tech community in my country (Israel).
I don't know if this was intended to dissuade me or other readers, but you've only piqued my interest even further! If it is cynical and "toxic", is that only because it reflects the true nature of the thing it discusses?
Hard to separate "true nature" from the way I view things, so I can't really tell. Another person might view things differently and write a completely different story.
Do you think people would read this though? Maybe in blog form?
There are two opposite approaches here. I do like my job, we have team goals, we work together to achieve those, we have successes and failures along the way. And to me, an engineer, it brings enjoyment, challenges and confiscation. And I also suck at politics and try to avoid it as much as possible. So I love what I'm doing and I am getting paid for it. But that is not the case for all the people.
The approach you describe sounds like a piece of advise for someone who hates his job. So one would do as little as possible just not to get himself fired. Sounds like an awful position to be in.
Most people, even in tech, consider their job to be just that - a job. In the worst case, they hate it.
Also, you seem to be content with being an individual contributor engineer, which is perfectly fine, but if you want to get ahead, you're not going about it the right way.
I've been an engineer for 20 years now. I switched to other roles 2 times but did not enjoy it that much so I went back. Salaries in engineering are decent and I prefer a job that I like over a promotion and having some extra money.
It's great that you know this about yourself and have been lucky enough to be able to make these kind of tradeoffs. You are in a much better place than a lot of others.
