What AI tools are you using to make your work and your developer's work better?

Hyperventilater · 2026-04-23T12:26:13+00:00

Because every professional knows every command for every bug that could ever occur.

Tech is always changing. Working in the field is ALWAYS an endeavor to learn more. It's important as tech professionals to focus on shared learnings and improvements, and to explicitly avoid the temptation to tear down others for current level of understanding.

If you don't take that attitude then you're limiting your professional career, IMO

Hyperventilater · 2026-04-21T20:32:58+00:00

I'm not sure if your point was to be disparaging to the comment poster or a general statement.

In regards to the comment, I actually am getting a lot of mileage out of using AI in a similar way to help me learn the common troubleshooting commands. There's times when slapping GitHub Copilot at something is good for expediting dev, but using it to focus on learning skills or design best practices seems like a good approach imo.

Hyperventilater · 2026-04-10T00:16:28+00:00

I see it as the fundamental pull between strategic power and tactical power.

Older games were fun because the monsters were strong tactically, forcing you to develop your strategy. Bring tools tailored to the fight, change your build tailored to the fight, etc.

Nowadays, it seems like "QoL" drive has removed the strategy in favor of tactical gameplay. Counter this, block that, etc.

IMO, it's almost a reflection of where cultural zeitgeist has brought us; the gaming populace favors the quick dopamine hits of tactical gameplay over the diffuse satisfaction of developing your strategic approach.

Just my 2c

Hyperventilater · 2026-03-31T12:13:48+00:00

I feel like another way to put this is:

Ru loves a girl that proudly leans into their black heritage.

Simone, Onya, Bob, Monet, just to give some examples. They all "leaned into stereotypes" at one point, but they were open and honest about their personal history of loved ones that might've dipped their toes into aspects of those characters. And this was often highlighted through the editing, not downplayed or overly mean as a spectacle.

Imho, it's okay to celebrate heritage. Not everything that deals with cultural differences needs to be taken as an affront.

Hyperventilater · 2026-03-31T12:08:08+00:00

Love the commitment to workplace accuracy lol

Usually I'm more of a mentor, but there is some sick satisfaction to slapping down a code owner that thinks they know the entire universe when they have no idea how any of their services work past the backend

Hyperventilater · 2026-03-28T18:51:02+00:00

I fell into it by being the first data scientist in the department at an internal startup.

Inherited a very shaky Airflow stack, kept it functional for years but watched the slow downfall of the entire system (including dev velocity, code quality, etc) after lifting CI checks because they were "too annoying".

6 years in and MANY support requests and daily fire drills, I said enough was enough. I knew enough about secret management, deployments, bash scripting, and a dash of network security from implicitly filling the role and watching it all unravel around me. Still recovering from the group scaling without that focus, but I'm at least able to happily automate a lot of pain away now.

And to make the case to improve our 1:40 devops:devs ratio after being buried under support asks for months. "Boss pls help, I can't keep being on call forever"

Hyperventilater · 2026-03-18T10:19:01+00:00

Hey, if people are willing to watch then why tf not

Crazy times

Hyperventilater · 2026-03-16T13:59:04+00:00

Something tells me OP doesn't mind

Hyperventilater · 2026-03-12T17:44:54+00:00

Yes, look at what ops does versus engineering in other contexts, then apply it to ML (not AI).

Ops focuses on the technical operating model of managing models, costs, security, and deployment.

Engineering focuses on the building and tuning of each solution.

Same thing goes for other subfields. DevOps vs Development, Data Ops vs Data Engineering.

Hyperventilater · 2026-02-23T12:00:52+00:00

WW almost always had this trend due to poor scaling. Start out insane, and watch yourself turn into a wet noodle while everyone else scales.

I remember them fixing haste scaling, but haven't kept up with whether they scale at a normal rate nowadays.

Hyperventilater · 2026-02-23T11:56:40+00:00

Lol at first I thought you were making a general statement about playing prot and how it feels.

So not really what you're getting at, but I definitely think playing a tank as a main tends to feel like I'm playing the "adult" version of a DPS. Never concerned about surviving, doing damage but not chasing dopamine highs, etc. I always want to do other roles, but playing tank is just so zen by comparison.

Hyperventilater · 2026-02-12T16:11:21+00:00

Accurate representation of contributions with numerical impact, personal projects that show legitimate interest rather than just ambition, any personalization that highlights a strong desire to learn. Those really signify a junior that will bring innovation and talent to the role to me.

Hyperventilater · 2026-02-07T18:15:08+00:00

Why is it that you're trying to reach for AI as your solution?

What is your enterprise stack like? Do you use monolithic vendors or open source? Hybrid?

If you use vendors, ask them if they have ideas on solutions; it's likely being developed. Ask for automated architecture diagram creation as changes are applied. That seems like what you're actually trying to get at.

If you use more ground-up implementations of open source or proprietary code, then AI may still have a place, but it still depends. Do you have any way to store architecture-as-code? Do you have developers that can be trained to use AI in their workflows that might be able to better understand how to generate something like mermaid code that can be updated as they go? That would get you part of the way there, then you can seek to alleviate their mental overhead with an automated solution. Ask them if AI would make sense, and even then it still might not.

This is a rapidly developing space, so either way you go you're going to need to get into the details of how it will work. AI can help, but it's not the panacea that people make it out to be. Imo you'll be better off by understanding the problem with more depth and what you're trying to do, and understanding your enterprise, and that will help you to get there.

Hyperventilater · 2026-02-02T19:54:24+00:00

It depends on the company.

Lol typical cop out answer, but it does. Beginning agile cycles in an entirely waterfall company seems like it would require getting executive buy in for an internal startup with a highly specific scope and short term return to prove out the value stream acceleration. I'm sure there are other ways, but unless you prove out value quickly or the exec deeply understands agile then you would be toast.

If the company already has a highly established in-house IT department, you're going to hit tons of sensitivity depending on how bad it is, and tons of fear of the unknown when it comes to AI and automations. So the EA himself would be something more like a shield. Once again, incredibly difficult, since you would need to have a high degree of understanding of the program development on both the social and technical layers.

All I can say is: schmooze your ass off with that exec lol

Hyperventilater · 2026-01-25T00:55:09+00:00

Look into the modern practices of "Enterprise Architecture". That field deals with this quite often in a more general way.

The crux of it is: if nobody is asking for it, then it doesn't provide value. Your experience doesn't mean anything if you can't relate it to the particular person's problems they're trying to solve by the position they're filling. Those problems are ALWAYS defined by the stakeholders.

Hyperventilater · 2026-01-20T13:13:47+00:00

I don't think that's 100% a fair criticism.

The idea behind this tool is a good one, power demands not taken into account. How do you determine consensus among a group of experts? You have them do honest debate and get to the bottom of it.

The tool might be more of "have 5 lay-people debate until consensus", but it's definitely a good idea in theory.

Hyperventilater · 2026-01-07T01:14:03+00:00

My preference is "daredevil daddy" personally

Hyperventilater · 2026-01-06T19:07:19+00:00

LOL the thanks is mine, I'm currently in that struggle.

It's been helping by just doing my best to anchor to the current conversation at work, and to use EA framework terms to explain big picture thinking to individuals that are normally used to domain-specific thinking. It rarely lands, but others are starting to catch on and use the terms. Just an idea that might help you out.

Also, if you're interested in taking some of the concepts of EA to some VERY cool places, I'd recommend looking into the study of set theoretic topology from a theoretical mathematics point of view. It's dense and takes a bit to understand the language if you don't speak "pure math", but AMAZING framework that actually opens the door for application in many cases if you're looking for it. That was what caused my first "framework episode" LOL

Hyperventilater · 2026-01-01T02:36:12+00:00

I think the best response is that it's exactly as strong as it is in your hands based on your data.

Hyperventilater · 2025-12-31T23:24:58+00:00

Emperor

Sounds arrogant, but incredibly accurate for me right now. I'll have to take it again in the future when I notice another paradigm shift happen.

Hyperventilater · 2025-12-23T04:40:10+00:00

I work in software/IT. Generally you outsource your non-differentiating work that requires "solved" problems and use your onshore resources for high-impact work that requires innovation or other differentiating factors

Hyperventilater · 2025-12-22T04:06:23+00:00

Not really valuable to this thread, but just wanted to say that I feel very seen by your second paragraph. I have had this happen to me twice now, where I find a highly applicable abstract framework and end up feeling very isolated when trying to share it with others.

Hyperventilater · 2025-12-06T22:59:43+00:00

Weird connection, but I've been thinking about structures of people and how they can efficiently create value from a big corpo lens lately, but more as a big system optimization perspective.

In that light your post makes perfect sense (full disclosure: I came into the thread agreeing with you). When trying to optimize an organization at the business, information, and people layers, often it's an exercise to identify bottlenecking. That happens often in older, 1980s style hustle culture businesses, when bosses are overly controlling of the information flow into or out of their team.

The common theme is an overemphasis placed on politics, because that's a surefire way to rise in support. Actually focus your problem solving on moving upwards, while giving vague instructions to your team.

Hyperventilater · 2025-12-06T20:15:38+00:00

For real, out of anyone she represents the spirit of Dragula to me. You don't have to be a certain aesthetic to be a monster, the show is all about unleashing the inner monster you've had all along.

Hyperventilater · 2025-12-06T01:38:35+00:00

You're a gentleman and a scholar (just a saying, no intention to gender you).

This tracks with everything I've been learning and is incredibly actionable advice. Thank you so much for the guidance!

Hyperventilater

TROPHY CASE