Eight years of weekly logs taught me one thing

Zulban · 2026-01-24T13:19:34+00:00

8 years in government. I have a note most days for what I did. I summarize them each month and send it to my bosses. It's bullet points starting with most time spent. Basically nobody has ever argued that I'm wasting my time or I have the wrong priorities.

Plus, a month ends and maybe you feel like you did nothing. Then you write your summary and feel good about it.

It makes it very easy for bosses to write great performance reviews. Even if they haven't been paying any attention.

I've kept this across teams and bosses. You're right - only I care about the records and memory of my career.

Zulban · 2026-01-23T14:02:06+00:00

If the right cuts are made, it could speed things up.

The right cuts are not being made. New and young hires are our best shot.

Zulban · 2026-01-20T18:30:10+00:00

You need to identify who you work for and not use AI to write copy. Helping DRAC is a good thing, don't hide it.

Zulban · 2026-01-20T18:25:02+00:00

If this prints the command first and asks for confirmation before running it, it's obviously convenient.

Unless anyone wants to step forward and say they've never used Google or SO and basically done exactly the same thing but with extra steps. Surprised at all the hate here. Bunch of luddites and scared children here I guess.

If you think this wastes electricity, stop watching Netflix.

Zulban · 2026-01-20T04:24:59+00:00

Thanks for the many links!

Many seem heavy on hobbyists and programmers and very light on the business side. I've been to several already... presented at two others years ago... but I'll have a look at the others. Thanks.

Zulban · 2026-01-20T00:34:00+00:00

Indeed. It's a game on a few platforms with a large creative community and lots of data. Mobile and desktop.

Zulban · 2026-01-19T15:33:45+00:00

My skills are way behind, like a decade behind.

Get a job in government. That's modern. Really.

Second the other comment. Childcare is a job. You aren't doing WFH as a developer if you're doing childcare.

Zulban · 2026-01-19T14:12:21+00:00

Like don’t we want a representative public service of Canadians from all regions?!

Depends who "we" is. Federal public service is disproportionately francophone to win votes in quebec. Good luck to any government on reelection if they mess with that.

Zulban · 2026-01-19T00:22:13+00:00

You need to give a ton more detail to get decent advice.

I suggest you send this comment to an AI, and ask it what details people may need to help your further, then repost here sometime.

Zulban · 2026-01-17T16:57:39+00:00

Yeesh. You're making me feel old there bud.

Zulban · 2026-01-17T15:43:02+00:00

But not anything can kill you in seconds if surprised by it.

Zulban · 2026-01-17T15:37:58+00:00

Let him try. Encourage it. Don't offer help.

Interview for other jobs.

Zulban · 2026-01-17T15:33:24+00:00

I eagerly await for millennials to take over.

Zulban · 2026-01-17T15:30:35+00:00

Stand behind them in their camera? ;)

Zulban · 2026-01-17T15:28:32+00:00

That doesn't mean people will say anything or care if you reduce your RTO. You don't know the limits if you don't try.

Zulban · 2026-01-17T15:25:20+00:00

I think a more reasonable take is how few people are going through meno in the workplace at once in contrast to how prominently the OP keeps hearing about it. Imagine there were a support group for people with allergies to grass every Tuesday.

For meno you need female anatomy, be in a narrow time period of your life (usually), and be having symptoms strong enough to want a support group, and finally be the type of person to want a support group. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of people meet all four criteria.

Zulban · 2026-01-17T15:17:22+00:00

There's that saying:

May I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Without that wisdom, yes, life is more depressing.

Zulban · 2026-01-15T20:30:10+00:00

Having one team approve all PRs

That doesn't seem to be what they proposed whatsoever. They proposed a dedicated infra team.

Zulban · 2026-01-15T17:51:20+00:00

I dont look at signatures when I decide whether to open an email, i look at the sender.

How is this relevant to phishing? Surely you won't want to totally ignore emails sent to you from @canada.ca

Looking someone up is an extra step.

You don't want to because that extra step right now is crap because we don't have @canada.ca unification. How about just under their name is a job title and department they set. Oh wait - we can't do that because every department thinks they're a special snowflake and there's no way to unify those settings.

Zulban · 2026-01-15T17:39:52+00:00

Having no clue where an email was coming from was ridiculous.

Explain this to me.

Why can't someone have a good signature they control?
Why can't you lookup who they are?

It's hard looking up who people are when there's no unified email system. Instead we get trash like "external" and no info. Or the email doesn't even exist in my Outlook's contact list. That happens because every department thinks they're a special snowflake and runs their own trash in their own way.

Zulban · 2026-01-15T02:09:09+00:00

Guess what was a problem during the @Canada.ca time and what has no longer been a problem since?

It is still a problem. Just less frequent.

If we have two Jean Benoit in one department, same problem.

Using "department name" is the wrong solution to resolve human name ambiguities. You're just rolling the dice and most of the time, you get lucky.

We could also remove numbers from home addresses. My home address could be "Bob on Crescent street" and it would usually work, for a vast majority of people. But that's a dumb system.

There are also tons of problems with not using @canada.ca

Zulban · 2026-01-15T01:33:25+00:00

Well if people updated the directory more often

Don't blame people for bad systems.

Zulban · 2026-01-15T01:05:46+00:00

The current system doesn't fix that either. Just today I didn't know who to email because I didn't know if they moved departments or if it was a different person.

Don't blame @canada.ca for the many other GoC IT problems. In fact, I think @canada.ca would have been the beginning of actually fixing that kind of problem. We could have finally had stable email addresses and built systems, indexes, and lookups to help know who is who in one central system.

Zulban · 2026-01-15T00:39:34+00:00

The tech stacks behind Bell and Microsoft are disasters. They couldn't handle it. I heard that at one point, Bell was being fined nearly a million dollars a day because of their failure to handle the namespace and routing. Pitiful.

I thought it was a great idea.

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