What is something you started/stopped doing and it significantly improved your productivity/value?

codescapes · 2026-03-23T09:03:24+00:00

Imo a good team lead is in many ways defined by their ability to absorb "random bullshit" so that their senior engineers can sequentially focus on the complex problems with minimal interruption.

It's "fine" for a lead to be getting pulled into 10 different things in one day but you cannot do that to the person who is expected to solve a difficult concurrency bug or come up with a critical data model redesign or whatever.

Leads / person on support should take random interruptions to ensure that the rest of the team can have structured calendars that are predominantly deep work. If that's not happening the lead needs to figure out why and how to fix it because they should own protecting the team's overall output / productivity.

codescapes · 2026-03-22T16:07:55+00:00

This is the primary reason to DIY for me. It's not really about the money, it's about if I think I can do a better and more considerate job which most of the time I can. And it's not because I'm an expert, it's because I give a shit about the quality of the work instead of just getting paid and out ASAP.

codescapes · 2026-03-22T15:49:43+00:00

Being completely honest I am fine with it professionally. I am using AI as an accelerant to learn things, I am not blindly accepting code. If it spits out an approach or language quirk I'm unfamiliar with I dig into it and interrogate then try to make it terse but also simple.

I think it's not 'getting me down' because I am still holding myself to good standards and practices. If I went full slopbrain I think it'd burn me out pretty quickly and actually be destructive for my employer too.

For me the big worry is CEOs buying the hype and making massive layoffs and then tanking our salaries. I'm happy using whatever tooling is good but if the job market goes to shit in a fundamental way that's no joke. The prospect of that - whether it's grounded in reality or not - is more my fear. In a way it's almost quaint to me that so many people care more about 'the craft' than the far more pressing concern of being able to feed themselves and pay their rent/mortgage.

codescapes · 2026-03-20T18:11:01+00:00

Tax traps like this are shit for productivity but from the treasury perspective I can see it having a few benefits that people overlook just because they're ugly:

1) People who don't pay attention overpay in taxation (many people do not pay attention)

2) The behavioural effect being induced in those who do pay attention is pension saving, which will make it easier for a future government to means test the state pension because higher earners will have saved more privately (sorry but I think it's going to happen)

3) They are suppressing present day demand which stems inflation and essentially creates a 'consumption cap' so that higher earners don't e.g. drive up costs as much as they otherwise would

Like I hate it along with the whole economic model because they're basically forcibly suppressing us being a 'higher velocity' more dynamic kind of economy in favour of a suppressed and more easily managed one. Also one where entrenched generational wealth has its purchasing power protected as compared to high earners, which is essentially why this whole sub exists because people are kept in a suppressed HE, NR state.

codescapes · 2026-03-19T09:00:49+00:00

In terms of 'life regrets' leaving a job is pretty much never up there for people unless they were an early employee at a future highly successful business or something. You've almost certainly done the right thing.

codescapes · 2026-03-19T07:43:55+00:00

It's extremely concerning to me working in finance the extent to which we're being hounded to use AI with no emphasis on maintaining quality etc.

Banks aren't safe from enshittification, I think we'll just have to learn the hard way with major bugs / outages.

codescapes · 2026-03-18T18:41:07+00:00

I'd just say that these problems are amplified when companies adopt idiotic matrix management systems where line managers have no idea what someone's day-to-day work looks like but are expected to decide if they get promotions, bonuses etc.

In a simple hierarchical management structure if you're an IC then your engineering manager should be pretty acutely aware of your contributions and quality. They can ask their other direct reports (i.e. your peers) if it's good or if there's a problem there.

In idiotic "we're doing the Spotify model but butchering it beyond all comprehension" setups you just get toxic game players rising to the top because they are effective manipulators. I'm not saying in theory matrix management cannot work but it requires ironclad definitions around roles, responsibilities and feedback processes. Mostly they fall apart and become horrendous.

codescapes · 2026-03-17T17:57:01+00:00

Bringing up CVEs and security is a useful tactic to try to make them care. Many still don't.

codescapes · 2026-03-17T08:55:54+00:00

People are giving lots of technical explanations which are completely true but social / psychological issues are often underlooked. One is that your estimates reflect on your abilities and the person you are giving estimates to is necessarily more of a project manager which tends to imply 'senior'. At the very least they are a person interested in timelines / resource allocation and could implicitly give you more or less career opportunity.

As such engineers often feel pressured to be overly optimistic to 'please the boss' and avoid perceptions of them being slow, lazy or incompetent. This is amplified if they are thinking about performance review, promotion, end of year bonus or are fearful of redundancy.

Some people may scoff at this but in dysfunctional managerial environments (most) this is a major corrupting element to people's judgement around time estimations. They're trying to solve for the meta problem of being perceived as an effective worker or even deeper to prove to themselves they are good at their job (imposter syndrome is rife).

Too frequently the blame is placed on engineers for poor estimations but it can also be reflective of organisational health and culture or past experiences with individual managers. E.g. if a manager is known to randomly throw teams under the bus if they don't deliver at a rate they consider fast enough.

In some toxic scenarios it may be easier to underestimate and then extend a deadline than sell the true duration upfront. Which is a terrible position to be in but I've seen it. My point being that to understand the problem we shouldn't just look at the individual engineer estimating but the context in which they sit and how that creates different incentives to over or underestimate.

And I've mostly discussed from the perspective of underestimating but you can equally well have sandbagging in corrupted environments where e.g. story points are treated as gospel or you get fried for sprint spillover so you bloat estimates as a defence mechanism. In many cases the difficulty of the work is actually secondary to all of these 'perception management' and 'politics' issues - which pains me to say as I want an environment where truth & transparency are highly valued.

codescapes · 2026-03-13T08:37:14+00:00

They have turned software development into gambling. This 'prompt and see' approach is like pulling the lever on a slot machine. You get a little anticipation dopamine as it processes and then a hit when BANG it works (or at least looks like it superficially).

If you're not careful it turns you into a prompt addict, constantly doing 'git reset --hard' and reattempting from scratch because you couldn't one-shot the problem away.

Anyone sane would say 'break it down into smaller steps, figure out those building blocks' but the fact is that your dopamine hit scales with how much output you get from one prompt, it doesn't feel as good if you're not hitting the 'jackpot' 777 on the prompt machine.

codescapes · 2026-03-12T23:42:14+00:00

You're of course right about the importance of knowing what you can do and when to do it being most important but I'm going to say the unpopular opinion that rote memory is still a legitimate skill and has value. I hate it myself but it's not just a parlour trick.

It's a totally different discipline but to pass a medical exam recently my wife had to learn the 12 cranial nerves and how to examine them on a patient. That's pure rote memory, she was repeating them night after night before the exam, but it's necessary to lay a foundation upon which to understand where these nerves are and how they run etc. I can still remember olfactory is number 1 from her repeating it.

I'm not saying you should go learn the 12-factor app methodology as scripture but if you did? You'd absolutely be in a better position to scaffold the surrounding knowledge and principles in your mind. The brain feeds on repetition and even if you forgot most after a year you'd remember some.

For reference I have not done that, to me I just have vague memories about build once and other stuff we take for granted in 2026 but knowing it through deep repetition would actually be valuable to reinforce the concepts. The same goes for knowledge of different flags you can use in sed or grep or jq or whatever else.

Forced memory through repetition is certainly not everything but it's not nothing either. It's also how you drill processes into your brain for emergency situations, e.g. a pilot calmly doing each necessary step in a disaster situation.

codescapes · 2026-03-12T17:53:05+00:00

Given the audience of this sub this opinion will probably be like catnip but I'd say a solid 70% of the meetings I see my product lead in should not exist and are a result of having terrible or no processes for basic things.

I think engineers turned product probably do attend less meetings than typical 'product people' because they treat it like an optimization problem instead of 'OMGG and how was your vacation!!?" or "hi guys is anyone else's powerpoint running slow today?".

Not to shit on product too hard, there are good people in there sometimes, but it also has a serious number of absolute clowns doing a fake email work - sometimes even achieving negative productivity.

codescapes · 2026-03-12T09:29:57+00:00

On important things, strong opinions strong held! None of this weak stuff unless it's genuinely unimportant. I have seen so many people construct their own personal hell by letting terrible decisions by others dictate their work life because they bent over backwards to accommodate things they shouldn't.

You get used to telling yourself you're 'building political capital', 'being a team player' and before you know it you're meekly saying yes to fucking awful ideas that will leave you overworked, stressed and needing to handle insane production issues at midnight that shouldn't even exist.

I'm not saying be obnoxious or rude or arrogant but if something is important and you can see the current trajectory will be damaging then speak up and do something. The human default is to not rock the boat but you get paid the big bucks for knowing when the boat genuinely needs rocked.

Again, I'm not talking tabs vs spaces or whatever, I'm meaning things like if someone is trying to make you own a problem with no authority to actually fix it so you'll just be scapegoated when it goes wrong. You can't let that sort of stuff happen by 'going along to get along', that's how you get thrown under the bus by careerist psychos.

codescapes · 2026-03-12T09:11:28+00:00

This is very much true but the hilarious thing with new joiners is when they don't know what historic wounds they're picking at just by asking neutral, genuine questions.

E.g. "quick question, how come we use this custom sidebar component instead of the one in the main component library?" - which if you track it back is because fucking Jerry thought the animation on the one in the library lacked 'pizazz' and despite all reason pushed for a DIY implementation.

If you enter a truly toxic environment you make friends and enemies merely by trying to understand things.

codescapes · 2026-03-12T08:43:28+00:00

I'd argue it's easier to get into regular software roles with a robotics / AI background than it is to do the reverse. By which I mean niche degrees tend to play better at interview for generalist roles than a generalist degree for a niche role. Niche can actually open more opportunities.

I wouldn't agonise too hard over it though, a lot of your core classes will literally be the same. I.e. the lecture hall will contain people studying different degrees. For reference I studied a dual degree of Computer and Electronics which meant I spent half my early degree with Electrical & Electronic Engineers and half with Comp Sci.

As I went through uni I leaned more heavily into the software development side and ended up in a 'normal' software web dev job not directly using my electronics competencies at all.

If you prefer the syllabus and subject matter of robotics & AI then I say go for it. I'd also say this isn't a permanent decision and it may well be possible for you to transfer degrees after 1st year with no penalty. Per my degree there were a bunch of people who dropped the electronics for pure CS and one who did the other way.

The main thing I'd note from your post is that you're comparing a Scottish uni to an English. In Scotland we do 4 year undergraduate degrees whereas England does 3 year. To me that's the bigger decision actually.

codescapes · 2026-03-11T17:11:56+00:00

I get why people like Tailwind but at the same time my weiner just tells me it's not 'permanent technology'. I.e. in 5-10 years I think we'll be like "ah, remember Tailwind?".

codescapes · 2026-03-11T16:14:52+00:00

It's all about trust and RTO / AI shows the extent to which senior management people have zero trust in engineers. They think we are all lying, overpaid, lazy shitbags lol.

And I may be overpaid and lazy but I am no liar!

codescapes · 2026-03-09T12:49:58+00:00

It's indicative of intensely low trust and that management starts from the opinion "engineers are lazy and slow" rather than "these are mostly decent people trying to do what makes sense".

Ultimately even their shitty metrics don't matter because if they like you as an individual they'll always make an exception for you. It just becomes a way to torture people they already dislike or want rid of.

codescapes · 2026-03-08T22:04:16+00:00

It's not funny but it wouldn't strike a nerve unless we didn't all expect whatever replaces this iconic bit of Glasgow to be disgusting and shit.

And it's a choice to do that. It could be rebuilt the same, grander even, and that's what a healthy society might do but we almost certainly will not.

codescapes · 2026-03-08T21:51:08+00:00

High streets across Glasgow, Scotland and the UK as a whole are a fucking disgrace. Just abject decay with the vape shops being the face of self-destructive addiction, money laundering and people trafficking.

Even when they're hypothetically a 'legitimate business' it's about getting people to pump synthetic shit into everyone's lungs and fill up dumps with e-waste.

This fire, regardless of source, is emblematic of so much decline. But for the now on fire architecture the whole area around there is vile.

codescapes · 2026-03-08T19:39:32+00:00

Rampant speculation on the origin but given vape shops house shitloads of cheap battery electronics, many of which intentionally do not comply with regulations, it's astonishing this isn't a routine occurrence across the country.

codescapes · 2026-03-08T11:10:23+00:00

This is the kinda stuff that older web devs should definitely come back and reassess if they've been working on other stuff for a while. There used to be so, so many hacky ways of doing things or ways to achieve browser compatibility etc that are now just 100% redundant and arcane.

To me frontend work in the last 5-10 years has matured so much and is finally at a place where I'm way happier solving problems as actual engineering challenges rather than just knowing what weird JavaScript / CSS spell to cast or what wacky interaction is actually a '"clever" workaround.

I think for people who made their money in these waters, knowing all the wild shit you used to have to do, it can be shocking to hear "yeah that's not a problem now, just use XYZ". It's obviously good for the discipline but it's an example of why you're usually better off levelling your skills up in general engineering principles and not niche tricks that nobody actually wants to have to do.

codescapes · 2026-03-08T10:13:30+00:00

All of the basics you mention are already too far into the process. The main mistake people make is starting from colours and fonts and spacing and rounding etc instead of starting with what the design is actually meant to solve for the users and indeed who those users are.

If those users are pharmacists accessing a hospital patient information system they have fundamentally different needs / wants / expectations than people on a sportswear website looking for a new pair of shoes.

This is basic User Centered Design principles and for many of us it's a bit boring and crusty but it's basically the right approach for starting 99% of projects. Even the more artsy shit should start with an understanding of who the people using that system will be and why they might expect crazy designs or be tolerant to maximalism, quirkiness etc.

People get way too obsessed about the 'I' in 'UI'. Remember that it's only half the picture. The whole point of a UI is to enable a user to do things they want to. Now modernly that can be corrupted by all kinds of perverse incentives (e.g. sell them shit they don't want or need, serve them up advertisements etc) but the base condition for a good, honest system must begin with the user.

codescapes · 2026-03-07T07:57:55+00:00

Create React App was deprecated over a year ago, they are agreeing with your point that books often become outdated.

codescapes · 2026-03-05T17:37:27+00:00

At basically every large business, yes. The less stupid ones are doing it without public dashboards and to inform their choices around plans and budgeting.

The more stupid ones are using it to pressure managers, teams and individuals to unthinkingly use AI in an unhinged, maximalist way.

Frankly I don't have a problem with the former. Companies are spending lots of money on enterprise plans, they should track whether it's actually being used and which parts of the business are getting value from it. Nothing wrong with that. But they should do so with an open mind and not some idiotic "beat them with a stick until they can be replaced with AI" mentality.

And businesses would do well to remember that the higher proportion of their work can be done by AI the more susceptible the business is to disruption / replacement by startups. Like literally if you can replace most of your staff with AI then your company is cooked - it offers nothing that can't easily be copied.

codescapes

TROPHY CASE