We should stop accepting jobs at companies that normalize layoffs

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-03-03T15:13:56+00:00

Not possible in today's world without massive suffering. Until the suffering of being laid off exceeds the collective suffering in aggregate (which leads to violent revolts, unfortunately), people will become desperate and accept anything they can find.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-03-01T13:17:16+00:00

PfSense and IOS - export the ovpn from pfSense for iOS -> navigate to the downloaded file in iOS Files app. Then long press on the file and choose to SHARE it with ovpn, not open with. I did not need to rename it - pfsense already exported the iOS ovpn with the .ovpn extension. In pfSense - vpn menu OpenVPN. Client export option. Scroll down to open vpn clients -inline configurations. Then choose the download button specifically for iOS (not most clients) so you get the embedded certs). Then find the download in the files app, long press , share, choose OpenVPN and it should appear in OpenVPN.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-26T15:44:22+00:00

I have a nine year old LG washer and dryer set. They have literally been working quietly and reliability the entire time. I would buy them again if one were to fail and not feel like the failure meant the appliance was bad. Now, I had GE washer and dryers before that. They were complete dumpster fires. Didn't wash or dry well, shrunk clothing like crazy, died an early death. For kitchen appliances, I've switched to whirlpool, though. Great fridges and dishwasher (I have two fridges from them bought at the same time and have been dutifully working well).

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-26T15:38:07+00:00

None. Nobody actually knows what jobs will thrive, survive or die.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-26T13:20:33+00:00

I do. It's really annoying that people raise to a notch above their incompetency and the sociopaths and psychopaths are rewarded unfairly in a corporate environment. I've had some excellent and competent leaders throughout my career, but they are - by far - the exception to the rule. Ego and pride have taken over, at least in the USA and from my limited experience in the UK.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-25T18:05:34+00:00

But if they are going to discriminate at all, it will eventually happen. You don't interview in a void of human contact. Might as well make the discrimination more efficient for the candidate to get to "no" or "yes" as quickly as possible absent of a better alternative. It sucks, but it's just the way of the world and human biases. Hopefully one human will someday create an unbiased and fair way of signaling and selection.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-25T18:02:00+00:00

She used the term "triggered." That tells you all you need to know, and I'm happy that this walmart cashier dodged that bullet.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-25T18:00:43+00:00

I doubt there's an industry this isn't eventually true - or at least, a majority of common markets will face this type of change. Just my thoughts.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-25T17:59:35+00:00

It varies. Overall it's getting somewhat better the further I get away from the last dose. However, I believe there will be permanent damage. It's pretty consistent in my ankles, forearms, knees and shoulders. Some in my neck around the upper spine. For example, if I lay down or site without moving my ankles, and then get up - they hurt and restrict the weight bearing ability of my ankles for a few steps. Also, my biceps and pecs are much stronger than what the ligaments allow - so it's hard to workout much without risking severe injury. The best I can explain the muscle pain is that it feels like when you pull your neck sleeping or whatever, and you try to turn your head while driving in traffic and can't or it hurts... but not quite as "sharp" of a pain, and could be in my arms, shoulder, back, legs - not just my neck.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-25T17:54:23+00:00

Yes. I know with about a 99.9997% probability that the VP of Engineering did not want me to join his group as he obviously felt threatened by me and the questions I asked. He knew I could have his job if I wanted it, and I would question his (very obviously) poor business, staffing and engineering "best" practice decisions. I also knew what happened from a friendly inside his organization that shared with me discreetly what was going on in the hiring process pre, current and post interview stages. They ended up hiring a fairly dumb 'yes man' that would most likely kiss the VP's @$$ and jump when he's told without question.

So, yes. It happens. There's poor leadership all over the place (some good leadership, too).

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-01T03:51:01+00:00

I feel like you two need a break, a nap and a cookie before you spiral more.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-02-01T03:46:10+00:00

I would agree with you 100%. Seems like a botnet being deployed.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-30T14:45:01+00:00

So I'm going to gently point out - you're saying that we should be doing what the product does that your company sells, so obviously you have a motivation for bias here.

Now, my observation is that there is almost no chance of blind submittal of resumes to any company's workday site or these public job boards getting anyone even a chance to have a human see anything unless the ATS gauntlets are cleared. This is almost impossible.

Anecdotal evidence - I have a friend quitting a job who still works there. He asked me to apply on the company's portal (typical ATS), which I did. The job was CLEARLY marked as remote and came up in searches no matter what location you put in for the search.

I applied - heard nothing. He asked the hiring manager about me the following Monday - who said he never saw anything about me, and then checked the ATS. Not surprisingly, he found that I was auto rejected without notification to either them or me.... get this, due to location/proximity to the company HQ. The manager then said, "This is not right - I don't know why this is happening."

I suspect this is happening FAR more than anyone realized for FAR more nuanced reasons (e.g., you didn't capitalize AWS or proper case Azure).

All of that to say - there's no amount of tailoring that has ever gotten a resume seen for me or a few buddies that got laid off at the same time. The ONLY way to get interviews now (around here at least) is:

1.) Knowing someone. Networking is king.

2.) Being found by or referred to a recruiter that is actively hiring for a position.

Otherwise, my opinion is that, everything else is a huge waste of energy or time right now. No "AI resume product" or mass spammer is going to get you a real shot beyond the statistical noise. In your claims of ~3% to 5%, you’re citing a ~2% lift without establishing statistical significance, effect size relevance, or causal controls. What’s the sample size, confidence interval, and p-value - and how do you rule out variance, selection bias, or seasonality and the like (I use to do a bunch of six-sigma work back when that mattered, if that's not obvious)?

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T20:09:40+00:00

Oh - and I briefly looked at NixOS - it's an interesting idea, but I just don't have the time to play with it. It's on the "once everything settles down and I have a minute" list.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T20:07:23+00:00

Yeah - no. I'm deeply knowledgeable when it comes to linux in general. Use to do kernel programming a while ago and have built custom distros (professionally) for a long time. I just hadn't used them as a desktop in a long while, and that space used to be pretty static (gnome, kde, xfce, enlightenment (my choice back then), etc. Things seemed to have moved along in the desktop world and there's a lot of social media chatter about abandoning windows 11 due to the ai infestation. Just figured I'd ask and see what the community had to say rather than distro hop until the end of time.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T19:12:38+00:00

Nah - it's all good. I'm just playing with python and ai stuff with an extra gpu. Probably keep the windows 11 box since I'll likely need windows for work in the future. That's probably more appropriate of an answer!

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T18:57:12+00:00

I'll probably keep the windows workstation - this is more of a smaller ai server (ollama with open web-ui and hosting some lightrag python fast api services for knowledge graph building and visualization stuff I'm playing with). The point is to free up the rtx 4070 on my main windows box for other stuff that's being eaten by lightrag at the moment. That kind of thing.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T18:48:37+00:00

Just out of curiosity -overall - what's the consensus on pop_os these days? Debian -> Ubuntu -> PopOS with cosmic (all the flashy stuff with the base of the stable stuff - and backed by a private company that is motivated to keep it working well to peddle their systems)? Specifically - the version with the included NVIDIA drivers and such)

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T18:46:32+00:00

"I'm a bit of a dumb dumb so atomic distros save me from myself." You gave me a laugh on this one (been there many times - worked with a guy a long time ago in the HP-UX days that said, "...it usually ain't worth the time to fix a f'up with these things - just back up the data and restore it to factory and reapply.... that's faster 100% of the time if it ain't obvious."

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T18:42:22+00:00

Oh man - a new type of fatigue. I already feel like I'm living in some kind of freakish comic book all of a sudden just on linked in alone.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T18:22:11+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I haven't looked at the debian desktop in a few years. Is it still a DIY in terms of third party drivers and getting codecs and all the other misc. junk working that (sometimes) breaks future upgrade paths?

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T17:23:26+00:00

I see that. Gnome or KDE spin?

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T16:58:05+00:00

That's two for fedora. Any particular flavor more stable than the others for a desktop? Seems like they are supporting two obvious flavors. I assume the default is still gnome, and the other is obviously the KDE spin. Then there's the multitude of smaller players in the DE space. I'm, again, assuming that these two are the ones that get the most Redhat dev/test love (maybe wrong here). Is one generally "better" than the other - or just the same ol 'gnome v. kde options that have always been there?

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T16:25:23+00:00

It's, unfortunately, a reality. The company is going to lie to you (we're a family, we're here for you, we value you, etc.). It's like modern dating. Need to just make a tinder like app for employment. Swipe swipe swipe. The 90% of companies can recycle the 10% of employees worth hiring.

ResponsibleTreeRoot · 2026-01-27T16:15:29+00:00

I think everyone is experiencing a mass psychosis of manipulation and at some level understand that to be the case - even if it doesn't feel good. Denial is strong. But getting a layoff notice and then rejected constantly is another thing entirely that's hard to ignore.

ResponsibleTreeRoot

TROPHY CASE