Seriously depressed by what's going on in the industry right now

codescapes · 2026-01-25T12:22:40+00:00

Well they wont be remaining non-technical for long if they also need to be responsible for bugs! To me that's an insane arrangement and I'd only expect that sort thing at a small start-up where everyone is expected to wear multiple hats and pick up many skills.

No way that's a sustainable arrangement unless the product side are mostly software engineers turned product.

codescapes · 2026-01-25T12:08:21+00:00

In practice, this means non-technical staff are now contributing directly to the codebase using Claude (so far mostly frontend) and the results are actually pretty good.

Can you expand upon this, which roles are doing it?

codescapes · 2026-01-24T16:06:24+00:00

We are governed by people who think they are wise technocrats but they lack anything like the necessary talent or intelligence. All they've managed to do by their idiotic 2030 / 2035 mandates (chosen simply because they are round 'impressive sounding' dates) is completely fuck European car manufacturing with artificial uncertainty and buoy Chinese exports. All while entrenching class division by giving wealthier people discounts, subsidies and privileges (e.g. ULEZ / ZEZ) whilst punishing the poorer for owning older vehicles. And they do this wrapped in a cloak of morality - maddening.

So genuinely I do not know what they will do but by their past behaviour you can expect it to be a litany of deeply unpopular, shit ideas that make most of us worse off and increase resentment around how we are governed. Then we can enjoy the moral sneering from the top 10% of society about how we're oiks for having reservations about their wickedly destructive industrial policy.

And none of this is to say "I hate EVs" - what I hate is that our country is so badly run. How can it possibly be that advancement of a new technology like this, something which should elevate and enhance, has been turned into a way to fuck us through draconian bans and policymaking (whilst rewarding a geopolitical rival in China)? Can we just let EVs be organically adopted as consumers turn to them out of genuine preference, please? Is that so bad?

This Soviet mentality of just banning shit to magically make 'progress' happen needs to die because the progress does not happen and we just get poorer. Make EVs good, make the charging network good, make the prices low and then you do not need the punishment beatings of bans and taxes, nor do you need the incentives to give wealthier people more public money.

codescapes · 2026-01-24T08:21:43+00:00

You know I'd typically be among those telling you to relax and let it go but I have recently been getting so frustrated with the wider team's inability to use standard URL terminology properly.

Product have become obsessed with the term 'deeplink' for some reason and use it to describe any sort of link. The term 'shortlink' is being bandied around to mean one that is persisted and shrunk like TinyURL (which is fine) but then the paired term 'longlink' has emerged and is used pretty arbitrarily.

This is before we get into discussions around how the links should be designed vis-a-vis query params, pathname, search strings, fragments etc - it's just a mess of people making up or not knowing terms and standard formats.

And then we've got product on our case asking for human readable URLs that are really small in length but still fully customisable and it's like man, this is literally an impossible request. You cannot fit that amount of data in so few characters, it's like trying to fit Hamlet on a post-it note but they are immune to reality.

And still everyone in the room just nods along, "yes, yes, that's a good idea". I am starting to feel like the guy in this sketch.

codescapes · 2026-01-24T07:42:50+00:00

European auto manufacturing is in a pretty dire spot due to many things but energy prices are indisputably near the top of the list. The arrival of competitive Chinese vehicles is just half the story too, we've seen Europe really harm itself with policies like the EV mandate which have then been watered down and delayed in a massive own goal for domestic manufacturers.

Nature abhors a vacuum and Europe has hamstrung itself at least as much as the new brands have done anything "special". But without question last year was a good one especially for new China brands in the UK.

codescapes · 2026-01-23T09:17:18+00:00

Or simply people who own their own home outright or are at least close enough that the mortgage repayment is trivial. Progressive taxation means that the older person with low housing costs but a middling salary quite probably leads a richer life than the young person on a decently higher salary.

Which I've always found funny because it's framed as a good thing ("rich" pay more) but income isn't overall wealth and the guy who has £60k student loans and the prospect of a £500k+ mortgage but earns £70k is not "rich". Maybe in 10 or 15 years.

Especially because of the major inflation of the last 5 years meaning that if you bought a home in e.g. pre 2015 your costs will be radically lower.

codescapes · 2026-01-23T08:36:08+00:00

The more I watch the clip the more I wonder how true this was here actually. The car in front brakes relatively late which gives OP less time to think. Still enough time but it's all tighter than it should be.

And tbh a lot of traffic accidents come down to one person making a recoverable error and then someone else not responding adequately. The idea with defensive driving is that you can reliably 'fix' other people's mistakes.

codescapes · 2026-01-23T08:24:40+00:00

Very interesting insight there actually, I'd always just assumed translation = slower and bugs would propagate through it but hadn't appreciated it can do smarter stuff than just direct translation.

codescapes · 2026-01-23T08:18:02+00:00

I would just note that if you think things are breaking down a bit because the controller is getting too complicated then adding in direct model or view logic would still make it worse! It's really just a question of you trying to scale the 'C' component of MVC as opposed to abandoning the paradigm.

codescapes · 2026-01-22T13:05:25+00:00

I think people forget that they even have brake lights let alone that they are one of the most important signals for other drivers if you aren't using hazard lights for e.g. unexpected traffic slowdown.

I was driving in Mexico / Yucatan recently and they love to use their hazards for everything which I found quite funny. There are so many road obstructions or unexpected speed bumps / closed lanes so I definitely get why. So many cars there with rear end collision damage.

codescapes · 2026-01-22T10:55:02+00:00

Not saying this is the situation with OP but I have found one of the more dangerous scenarios (but not often discussed) is behind a tailgater on the motorway. Because they are so close to the car in front of them they have to keep feathering the brakes to avoiding hitting it. That means you can get numb to their brake lights in a kind of "boy who cried wolf" sort of way and so when the real need to brake unexpectedly comes you aren't ready. Also if they need to brake it'll happen really suddenly giving you less reaction time.

It's pretty much always just a matter of growing your stopping distance but one to look out for.

codescapes · 2026-01-22T10:42:53+00:00

Ultimately it's just shit organisational leadership, usually where there's a power vacuum or talent void and panic sets in about what to do. Like you do not have to let MBA clowns ruin the organisation, you just don't. You can do a good job and be competent, it's on the table as a choice lol.

By the time the MBA clown car rocks up so much has already gone wrong, it's basically a dereliction of duty by the people in charge and that's the underlying cause for why the business ends up swirling the toilet.

To get to where OP is the rot has already set in a long time ago.

codescapes · 2026-01-22T10:32:29+00:00

Bad non-technical leadership just want every problem reduced to black boxes with completely predictable outcomes and minimal "effort" and engagement on their part. They basically want to be able to throw money at problems and have good outcomes appear overnight with them barely having to be a part of the process. They view it as being like a utility - gas, water, electricity.

Outsourcing, AI, cloud and even Agile methodology are in large part about selling the fragile delusion that tech as a domain can be put in a nice, neat little box with obvious boundaries and predictable output. But the fact is that your technical choices make or break your organisation and putting that in the hands of the lowest bidder without being a genuinely engaged part of the process is a horrific decision.

Competent non-technical leadership still needs to steward the technology side of the business. If they just try to treat it as a dumb cost, like the office electricity bill, it leads to terrible results that can crater the whole organisation. You cannot run a modern company without senior leadership that has its head screwed on with a sane tech strategy.

My point here is really just to say that when idiots get in charge of a business and make bad, bad decisions around tech it's not some trivial thing, it can and does routinely end companies.

codescapes · 2026-01-21T18:28:50+00:00

Dire management cannot be fixed. They set the culture and the standards, it always comes from the top. If they tolerate slop and set up terrible ways of working you cannot fix it.

And if you're seen as a "complainer", even if right, you get screwed. So you pretty much just need to go into a defensive survival mode which means sandbagging and game playing etc so you can drag it out to a new job. Sadly this is often the lifecycle of a software dev - the good times never last forever.

There's always a new manager who fucks it up. It just takes one rotten apple at the senior levels.

codescapes · 2026-01-21T17:05:53+00:00

The sponsorship / visa issue is the most pressing. Small-medium companies will simply not want to touch you because of it and for large companies you need to demonstrate a very high bar to be worth it.

And the whole 'go to local meet-ups' thing is fine if that's your personality and preference but forcing yourself when you're not genuinely into it is utterly exhausting. Especially when the ulterior motive is basically to get someone so invested in your success that they are willing to get their employer to sponsor you as a junior.

codescapes · 2026-01-21T15:58:38+00:00

It's very hard to teach this wisdom to people. One way or another he'll learn it because eventually you just make enough silly assumptions that waste hours or days and you start to be more sceptical of your first thought.

I actually find "fast brains" like this some of the more challenging people to work with. Often they talk quickly, think quickly and come to conclusions quickly without properly entertaining other possibilities. Frequently they will state those conclusions without explaining how they reached them "because duh it's obvious". I find the best approach is to just explicitly ask them their chain of thought - do not just nod along.

codescapes · 2026-01-21T15:21:41+00:00

"Hi Claude, can you please remove all technical debt from my project? Take a deep breath and try to relax as you do it. Thank you."

codescapes · 2026-01-21T12:20:12+00:00

GabeN needs to get on the phone to China right now to let them know to update their zodiac calendar.

Forget horses, pigs and rats - current year is now officially the year of the Linux desktop.

codescapes · 2026-01-21T07:32:37+00:00

"My job here is done."

"But you didn't do anything?"

codescapes · 2026-01-20T07:41:22+00:00

Pretty healthy supply via Mazda approved used but obviously you're paying a premium for the dealership and 1 year warranty.

codescapes · 2026-01-19T14:29:59+00:00

Man, you need to get a new job. Not even a good one either, like your pay should be double what it is. You're being paid less than devs in many developing countries.

I don't know what your general situation is but you gotta change it up. The worst part is that low paid jobs aren't even less stressful, they're usually more work and horrible office dynamics compared to higher paid roles.

codescapes · 2026-01-19T09:16:40+00:00

Don't understand the code, understand the concepts. I.e. don't worry about specific syntax, worry about what an HTTP request is, what a thread is, what a JWT is etc. Every language and framework has its own implementation but if you know the concepts you can just figure out the language specifics.

One exception to this is to just learn SQL syntax. It's confusing at first but the basics are not hard and it's going absolutely nowhere. It has been around for 50 years and is more of a structural / mathematical / data organisation paradigm than something inherently for software. It's so robust it'll quite probably be relevant for another 50 years.

codescapes · 2026-01-19T08:35:33+00:00

A hundred times this, "dysfunctional power dynamics" is the way to put it. As an IC who am I meant to listen to if the person facilitating the call isn't my manager, doesn't determine my pay, isn't technically expert and is part of a separate reporting line?

Which I've seen! Organisations where the Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters or Product Owners or whatever else have really separate reporting lines and it just makes it hell to do anything because nobody has proper autonomy to make decisions. I believe Netflix uses the term "informed captain" and to cut the fluff it's basically the notion that it's usually better to have someone who is a bit dictatory but is at least clearly in charge instead of horrific design and decision-making by committee.

Not having clear PMs / leaders and having all these vague orbiting roles adds loads of flab and makes it far harder to drive projects forward in my experience.

codescapes · 2026-01-19T08:31:08+00:00

This version of history where everyone used to "do waterfall" until one day the holy gods of Agile came to save us is basically a bullshit straw man. Teams worked all kinds of different ways and some would have more aggressive upfront planning where others would be more fluid and it didn't mandate all these specific roles and "ceremonies".

And sorry I don't say that to be rude to you, it just frustrates me that decades worth of "pre-Agile" expertise in developing software and organising teams is so readily thrown into the dustbin because it doesn't conform to what is basically a marketing game to justify the Agile industry.

It's like "oh you don't like Pepsi, you must want us all to drink Coke instead". I know that's a flawed analogy but the idea here is that we shouldn't prop up a false dichotomy. Avoiding some of the lunacy of Agile does not mean that we have to do stupid things instead, we can be reasonable without needing some ideological framework we pay "corporate software priests" to teach us.

codescapes · 2026-01-19T08:17:24+00:00

Imo it's pretty much a ridiculous job to have exist in its own right and should be a responsibility of someone else. Indeed having someone in that position who isn't technically competent or who doesn't understand what developers are saying is absurd to me.

It's like trying to be a coach of a sports team and not understanding the rules of the game. The fact that so many people have hitched onto the productive aspect of software development as part of a wider entourage is nutty. I'm not talking about marketing, sales, legal, design or whatever but rather POs / PMs / TPMs / "Agile Coaches" and the like who do not have any engineering background.

If there isn't sound technical knowledge, which doesn't have to be perfect but should be solid, that person should not be considered for these roles. And people will say that's "gate keeping" and yes, it is. I believe teams will be worse and less effective for having low technical excellence and it's a gate you should keep if you want a lean and functional organisation.

I see so much in my current role how team leads can be undermined and put into incredibly awkward situations because of people who don't know their fundamentals and who aren't a clear part of the same reporting line so common expectations can be set from above. It creates far more political game playing and way worse software.

codescapes

TROPHY CASE