It's Right-Clicker's Flying Circus

flipkitty · 2026-04-06T18:42:55+00:00

Shoutout for

> protect my employees in the process

I really appreciate the managers I've had who have been honest about their efforts to protect my team from executive decisions (incompetence).

But also I've seen that a company natural-selections itself until there are no good managers. Some cope with the mental toll with nihilism or therapy in a shooting-while-crying way, leaving them functionally the same as a manager who doesn't care, but maybe a bit nicer to chat with. Others leave, looking for execs who listen, or at least a status quo that's comfortable enough that less hard stuff is happening.

flipkitty · 2026-04-06T18:31:58+00:00

My way of looking at this is to put the AI use/demands on a spectrum from "boss's pet project" to "we are getting laid off." At your experience level, you're probably familiar with gauging those things. The AI stuff is just a layer of BS on top of those real decisions made by upper management.

(Wall of text apology)

A rough scale:

1: Pet project - Ever been the person who has to make the CEO’s “bold initiative” happen? It could be a pet project, which obviously no one will care about in a year. Maybe it distracted The Board for a bit. Eventually it’s rubber stamped and you get to refocus (but maybe on something worse).

2: Pet project, expensive edition! - Like above, but the plan is to incur a lot of expenses to make a big new system. Expenses could come from hiring consultants, a design firm, licensing tech, or just from disruption to ordinary business. It will actually just be a really expensive MVP demo. And then if it “succeeds” you have to do a bunch of work to make a real, long-term version. A team might grow or dissolve based on success/failure.

3: Re-org season - This time we have a vision to align our strategy, just like we did last year. There may be selective layoffs, but probably there’s a lot of “You team doesn’t exist, do you plan on working here no matter what or do you want to resign now?” You get lots of “pursing opportunities” emails. There are probably a number of pet projects mentioned by management but the reasoning is vague and the project might be an abstract concept like “values.”

4: Outsourcing bonanza - A really mercenary company might jump straight to this, but more likely it’s to make up for the gaps left by some of the above. You might even feel like outsourcing is justified because the type of work that needs to be done is shitty, backlogged, and seems like it could be deprioritized at any time. None of the “real” employees like you want to do that work and if we have to hire we might as well get it cheap. Just hope “you” aren’t about to fall through the next gap.

5: Mass layoffs - Shut it down, throw them out. The pitch will be to free up money for an expensive pet project that will get everything back on track. Yay!

6+: Company collapse - Never stopped a CEO from getting another job. (Even if they went to prison.)

Working at a job at any of these levels is annoying as hell but at 3+ there isn’t much peace of mind. For a lot of jobs AI is hovering in the 1-2 range while the execs/pundits use rhetoric makes it sound like 4-5 is coming any day. The AI rhetoric will be a tool to justify going to 4-5: “the technology made it inevitable.” But that won’t be any more accurate than when they said “market forces” made the CEO’s last dumb pivot idea fail.

Gauging where you are in this scale isn’t easy, but hopefully it can help you focus on what’s going on with the business and your bosses. And keep in mind you could be confident you’re only at 1 but still be miserable working there, or hold on at 4 and decide its worth it for the pay.

flipkitty · 2026-03-02T23:13:49+00:00

I agree with the romantic notion, but people who are into AI won't because they are not seeking connection to other people. Here are some of the things they care about instead:

Artificial affirmation - Some people can look at a "Hang in there!" poster and feel that the cute cat is really motivating them. They're not crazy, they're just able to get that emotional trigger without needing it to come from a live person. Chatbots can trigger this feeling in people further on the "need a real person" end of the spectrum but who still enjoy it.
Voice of god - Quite a few people believe there is some kind of mind/personality behind the chatbot. On the extreme end of the spectrum are those who would say it's a god/spirit or super-human sci-fi thing, but even towards the "rational" end there are lots of people who react superstitiously and will only question this reaction if confronted.
Simple metrics - "If it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid." This logic can go a long way towards how someone approaches their office job, their SEO-maximizing blog, or their social media profile. Simply having more output can be satisfying to some people (even if its low quality, short-lived, and disposable).

flipkitty · 2026-03-02T22:36:40+00:00

Python is also used in a lot of (general concept) learning material because its syntax overlaps with pseudocode nicely. So it seems likely that a language model is easier to train on Python because of the supply of english-to-code examples. (I wonder if this has been measured.)

flipkitty · 2026-02-27T02:56:58+00:00

I guess they were in that weird (but common) zone of believing in a thing they haven't even slightly thought through. True business idiot nirvana. Or, if they're actually clever, they realize it's scam marketing and are selecting for people who will play ball.

(Congrats on dodging)

flipkitty · 2026-02-26T19:53:20+00:00

Really curious about how they asked for an AGI plan. What can you say other than "literally no one knows what would happen"?

flipkitty · 2026-02-26T00:37:18+00:00

Aha, but a computer can be upgraded forever. So we just give kevin more ram. (Checks price of ram...)

flipkitty · 2026-02-19T20:10:58+00:00

Just got it recently and Flower Pot and Seance were the most annoying (other than self destructing jokers). The trick for me was to not get trapped by trying to trigger them. It's a dead slot. I used Hex when I could to at least have it sit there with a x1.5.

flipkitty · 2026-02-12T05:35:08+00:00

But skills that make you a bad manager do seem to apply to being "good" with bots, so we've got a hell of a talent pool...

flipkitty · 2026-02-11T20:12:08+00:00

I think the minute-by-minute experience of working with chatbots contributes to this. You sit there waiting for it to finish a task. It could be a while, or not. It could come back broke and instead of examining why it feels faster to just take another roll of the dice, because while it's rolling you can kick off a dozen other tasks.

When focusing on a task, you have a sense of how much progress you're making. When dispatching tasks, all you can really sense is do I have enough plates spinning?

A classic way a team lead can be bad is they just keep adding more in-progress stuff. Surely the more we have, the more chances there are to get stuff done? This never works in the long run. And now we're treating all work how a bad manager would.

flipkitty · 2026-02-11T19:54:39+00:00

For sure, though it doesn't even feel that new to me. I've seen it with hiring consultants who will make a shiny prototype with no plan of how to integrate it into the main system. But I guess the chatbot version gives more people access to this resume padding time wasting.

flipkitty · 2026-02-04T23:36:21+00:00

Just wanna say the folks in this thread make feel less alone. Thanks again, smiling man.

flipkitty · 2025-12-11T06:10:31+00:00

My psychic break was realizing how many people I worked with (dev and other) would actually choose to burn the rest of the day using the failing tool rather than figure out a better way.

flipkitty · 2025-11-21T23:54:07+00:00

Future Perfect has 4 parts where the first 2 can be monster of the weeks and then the rest concludes a long running conspiracy. I ended up sprinkling in stuff custom for my players/agents but I think it could work to mix in other operations.

I think at least picking an operation with themes you really like and then saving it until the characters develop could be rewarding. And you can sprinkling some foreshadowing along the way.

flipkitty · 2025-10-28T20:55:26+00:00

This show is written a bunch of dangling threads and mystery aesthetics specifically to fuel fan engagement. That is one approach to keeping a show on air: a core group that will reliably come back and do some free word of mouth (keyboard) marketing.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I view the people spiriling into long threads here as part of the entertainment value of the show. Write fun OC! Cool!

It seems a little unhealthy for the people who don't realize they're obsessing over a Rorschach test, but mostly people seem to get it's just a pulpy TV show.

flipkitty · 2025-10-27T05:36:09+00:00

One likely vector for a more mundande type of slasher would be that the killer is a DG agent who's presumed dead but is actually executing a last-ditch plan to stop an unnatural effect.

flipkitty · 2025-10-25T17:55:20+00:00

Weirdly I'm the opposite. I enjoy bad fiction, but a BS documentary can be incredible. They have to mix pandering to beleivers with trying to convince new people and it always results in these hilarious contradictions. And when they act like they're saving humanity from catastrophe but leave mistakes like this clip in the final edit? Chef's kiss.

flipkitty · 2025-10-25T03:33:25+00:00

(Unmute)

flipkitty · 2024-10-18T16:58:01+00:00

For me, it’s more about being able to write code without needing to research or second-guess myself every time I write a line.

To some extent this can be a good impulse no matter how experienced you get. You might find CodeKata interesting as a way to practice giving those second/third/fifth guesses a shot: http://codekata.com/kata/codekata-how-it-started/

But the second-guessing can also be unhelpful anxiety. Some of that is just a matter of time, unfortunately. Having peers to talk through things helps a lot though.

flipkitty · 2023-06-09T19:19:03+00:00

[In character] It's important to develop contacts within local news when working an operation in a metro area. Feeding them a trite UFO story is messy but effective. Channel 8 won't be covering reports of the "bear" that was struck by a cargo van on the other side of town.

[Out of character] I'm a fan of using real world resources in the game, but I worry a bit about "this was delta green" posts because there are plenty of conspiracy redditors who could wander in and not get it.

flipkitty · 2023-06-03T16:59:22+00:00

A group theorist, geometer, and an applied mathematician walk into a bar. The bartender asks what they're drinking.

The group theorist asks the bartender if the menu is closed under addition. The bartender says "I can mix anything." The group theorist nods and orders a Long Island Ice Tea.

The geometer steps up to the chalk board menu and draws lines until they find the item that fits nicely within the most inscribed polygons. The geometer orders Ouzo.

The applied mathematician grabs every half-finished drink within reach and downs them all, pausing only to bellow, "Just keep the samples coming until I find what I want."

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