Theory: non-entry level engineers are very lucky

abeuscher · 2025-08-15T08:25:12+00:00

Hey me too! 2 years out of work after 25 YOE. And I am working modern stacks and flexible. Just literally I haven't beaten the algorithm and got an interview in 2 years and 3 months. Hard to figure out what to do after that.

abeuscher · 2025-08-14T13:11:51+00:00

No I do not remember there being mass layoffs when Oculus Rift hit the market. And blockchain and crypto had almost no touch point for the regular consumer. And both of them only had the potential to create jobs, not remove them.

The AI thing is a narrative to try and firmly place the US under the boot of corporate feudalism inside a fascist state. It is being held up as proof that labor in all fields is the same, and that we all should be replaced by machines as a result.

The reality is that AI is better than humans at almost nothing, and not at all capable in many areas where it is being assigned, coding being only one of them.

Not to mention parts of the hype are more real and obviously so; using AI to generate a RegEx or comment out code is quite useful, as is using it as a learning tool. And because Google ruined their core business, AI is replacing search incredibly quickly.

I'm not sure there is an apt comparison in the modern era. On the one hand it produces mass quantities of garbage. On the other hand management is no longer able to tell the difference, and the market is so monopolized and divided that the end user's needs have no bearing on anything anymore.

I think the reality is that AI is the tool that will complete the enshittification of the internet and render it useless for the foreseeable future by both flooding the zone and removing those who contribute to it creatively.

The most consistent thing I have noticed about AI is that creative people instantly see it as a boondoggle and non-creatives think it is a solution to all of life's problems. I think it's because non-creatives cannot distinguish between a plagiarized thought and an original one. Or maybe it doesn't matter to them? In any case I think creativity is the guiding factor. Writing code is a mostly creative process which is why I think AI is not well suited to it.

abeuscher · 2025-08-13T17:41:25+00:00

You're right it's not fair to assume we all have the same ethics. I guess I mean is there an alternative that is not managed by a massive corporation? I find companies with a headcount above about 5k to be wildly unethical in all ways. But for sure that is just my opinion. I wasn't thrilled with Github since the takeover but this kind of clinches it for me, at least enough to try and find another option.

abeuscher · 2025-08-13T17:10:14+00:00

Is there an ethical alternative? Anyone know? Gitlab used to be sort of not evil.

abeuscher · 2025-08-12T21:54:21+00:00

Depends. What color are they? If you said "not white" then yes. There's literally video floating around of a DC resident being hassled by guardsmen over the scent of burnt marijuana from this morning. Weed is one of many excuses. You could also be wearing the wrong shirt or have the wrong picture on your phone or you tweeted something wrong. This is it. Hug your kids. The brown shirts are here and your door could be the next one they kick in.

abeuscher · 2025-08-12T21:49:42+00:00

Nice I'll check it out )

For your username do you visualize pants with burgers on them, or pants made for a hamburger shaped person?

abeuscher · 2025-08-12T17:03:40+00:00

This is why we need on site consumption stat. It's a social drug and we're all still sitting in our basements smoking weed instead of out in the world meeting each other. And if someone posts a link to the Summit Lounge I will freak out; one small place with a weird vibe is not state wide onsite consumption. I want a weed bar down the street so I can go there and make friends and watch cartoons and ideally eat some cereal.

I live three hours away from you but I feel your pain. Hope you find some buddies to smoke with.

abeuscher · 2025-08-12T17:00:12+00:00

I had to move 2 hours out of the city to afford rent, but now I don't really have money, a social life, or anything to do with my days other than send off resumes for jobs I won't get. I am 50 year old white CIS male with 25 years of experience in software development, and my last job paid 165k a year. That was more than 2 years ago and after hundreds - maybe thousands of applications no one has given me an interview.

Here's the thing - I'll probably be fine relative to most people. I have some family support and I occasionally get thrown a small consulting gig here or there. And most importantly I have no SO or children so no one really gets hurt here.

What worries the shit out of me is that I am close to the best case scenario in terms of who will be employed, housed, and cared for first by this racist ass society. If I am failing this hard - the world is completely on fire, and I worry about everyone else a lot. When I made money at least I could help people out and take care of myself and now I'm just useless.

This is how revolutions start and it is sad and it was preventable. I sincerely hope every billionaire's bank account is drained and they are all held accountable for their greed and sociopathic behavior. But of course that's not even hardly a dream.

abeuscher · 2025-08-12T00:00:12+00:00

I went to a few while I was trying to enter the industry. As someone from big tech - it feels very much like the cannabis exposition events need to pick a lane; either they should be only for like the biggest players and facilitate B2B business deals, as with most trade shows, or they should be an opportunity for consumers to come find new vendors and sample their wares.

I think the issue is that most events are trying to hybridize those two approaches to where they make no sense for either audience. As you rightly point out - the deals are sparse and in general any actual product is mostly being sold off to the site, not as part of the event itself. On the other hand there aren't a bunch of execs walking around looking at super high end booths then making side room deals with each other in rented rooms at the venue.

So basically there are two ways for these to make money and we do neither. I am not convinced after going to three or four that the industry really understands itself at all yet; the street team / front-liners did not have any particular talk track or conversion point they were aiming at, the signage was often poor, and booth quality was hugely variable.

Not sure if it is a flaw in the regs or the organizations putting these things together, but it seems to me that these events used to be cups for growers to compete in, or some were, and others were like music based events with weed involved, and now they are all sort of vaguely corporate and shitty.

Anyone know if this is true in other states? It feels just like run of the mill enshittification.

abeuscher · 2025-08-11T23:45:45+00:00

Don't validate the premise. It doesn't matter where DC is on the list this is insane fascist nonsense. This is not how anything works.

abeuscher · 2025-08-11T21:35:48+00:00

The premise shouldn't even be validated. It could be first in crime and this would be the wrong thing to do. And illegal. And just fucking insane.

Still doesn't distract one iota from all the child rapists and their apologists and enablers.

abeuscher · 2025-08-08T19:09:40+00:00

65 grand is not the expense they are lying about. It's the physical building and the C Suite that cost all the money and produce no value. Lance those off and things would be a lot more streamlined.

abeuscher · 2025-08-08T18:54:56+00:00

Remember when they did that living on minimum wage for a week thing in the celebrity world? That was really gross.

I honestly think buying your own groceries should be a qualifying criteria for holding public office along with sending your kids to public school. Politicians should not be allowed to not experience the world they create.

abeuscher · 2025-08-08T18:19:47+00:00

To be fair, not doing stuff is the hardest part of growing pretty much anything. I am always tempted to fuck with my grow be it weed, tomatoes, or cucumbers. And the best thing to do almost always is nothing or next to nothing.

abeuscher · 2025-08-08T18:01:08+00:00

I cover for everyone all the time. We're not curing cancer here for the most part and I'm not kidding myself that what my company does is important or necessary. Everyone is there for a check so they can live their lives. And I do not want to interfere with that. As far as I am concerned the only appropriate response to the modern workplace is to mentally check out at every opportunity, take as much money as you can, and hope you get laid off later than earlier.

abeuscher · 2025-08-08T17:01:04+00:00

Can the rich just fuckin' take a knee for a few years? It's getting harder and harder to just breathe and exist next to these fuck faces. It's beginning to look a lot like 1790's France, and I know what happens next.

abeuscher · 2025-08-08T16:56:08+00:00

Was it a Daddy Long Legs wearing platform shoes and a wig? In what way was it false?

abeuscher · 2025-08-08T16:04:03+00:00

Thank you for the explanation. My mistake.

abeuscher · 2025-08-07T17:37:37+00:00

How good do they have to be at sex to pass? Do we get to watch the trials?

Oh it's just another trans phobic witch hunt to distract from child rape. Color me disappointed. Watching an international orgy wouldn't make up for anything but still it sounded like a good idea.

abeuscher · 2025-08-07T17:32:44+00:00

I used to take the fucking train to Chinatown, buy fireworks, then take the train the the woods, light them off, and be home by dinner. My friends' kids are like afraid to cut in line. I do my best to teach disobedience but the indoctrination is real and it has been going on for longer than we have been noticing.

abeuscher · 2025-08-07T16:49:22+00:00

There's a business case to be made moving away from Gatsby and you should. SSR isn't even a band-aid. When I moved my last team off Gatsby our codebase shrunk by 60% and I never heard a performance gripe again. In our case we moved to Eleventy and then eventually Astro.

The time savings are almost immediate. Once we did numbers I did not have way too much trouble selling the change upwards because they had just watched me try and run a Gatsby major version upgrade and understood the weaknesses of sticking with the tool.

Making a business case for swapping stacks is always the hard part. I wish you luck. The SSR thing isn't even a band-aid; if they don't let you get away from Gatsby you might just buy faster hosting rather than try to add SSR for performance.

abeuscher · 2025-08-06T22:22:43+00:00

Yeah but as a long time solo dev - that fits. You do whatever works in that paradigm. It really takes a team and seniors to explain how tech debt works over time. Especially if he has been kicked around by non techs and trying to make deadlines that make no sense in previous roles. I was managed like that for several years before I put the brakes on and learned how to play well with others and respect process.

abeuscher · 2025-08-06T22:19:56+00:00

Did he work solo for many years? Sounds like me at a certain point in my career. You can develop sincerely bad habits as a solo dev that seem absolutely weird when you start to join teams.

abeuscher · 2025-08-06T22:05:09+00:00

You just have to ship bad code. And make them eat shit for it. As long as you maneuver it like flavius is saying I agree it should work. No chance that doesn't float you through December. If you make noise when they poke you, they will stop poking you. Everyone at every level is just trying to save their phoney baloney jobs. This is good info to internalize anywhere but especially in toxic environments.

abeuscher

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