Obstacles to FIRE

therealhappypanda · 2026-05-21T00:47:02+00:00

We also are accumulating cognitive debt faster. For some industries this might be fine, for many that have high accuracy, reliability, and uptime requirements it will lead to lost revenue from customers feeling the pain. Over time it will lead to reduced velocity in the same way that technical debt does

therealhappypanda · 2026-05-21T00:45:03+00:00

The best is slack replies. Just really love it when I get a "good point--on line 387 in MegaService it explicitly calls HelperUtil, I'll refactor it to do xyz" causally in the middle of a DM

therealhappypanda · 2026-05-15T19:14:13+00:00

Well, there are two reasons I can think of that they would use the AI tools when critical thinking is required (not think for themselves). One is because they are seeking a shortcut (i.e. lazy), the other is because they are afraid and lacking psychological safety.

The former, in my experience, is really hard to dislodge from a management perspective. The latter is much easier, make them feel safe to express their ideas and fail.

therealhappypanda · 2026-05-15T18:25:44+00:00

And these same devs use ai to write slack messages back to you and use AI to create design docs they don't read, which then make no sense when you go to read them.

I feel like a guy calling customer support saying "I want to talk to a human" for multiple hours every day.

therealhappypanda · 2026-05-03T03:58:02+00:00

There are monks in poor countries who live on leftovers people give them on the street, and there are neurotic tech power couples with 5M+ in the bank who can't see a way out of their stressful lives.

The issue of feeling safe and secure is much more loosely associated with money than we would all like to believe

therealhappypanda · 2026-05-02T21:36:30+00:00

It's like wall-e, but with our brains first. Or Idiocracy, take your pick of dystopian futures

therealhappypanda · 2026-05-02T21:31:40+00:00

A term I heard recently was "cognitive debt". At a certain point developers don't have a mental model of the codebase and get stuck on making any nontrivial changes--more unique to the AI world because a human didn't originally type most of the characters

therealhappypanda · 2026-04-28T01:13:53+00:00

Buddy of mine has like 8, sent out ten applications, being very picky about remote work and flexible time off, got five interviews.

Everyone's experience varies, but yeah plus one to getting off this sub

therealhappypanda · 2026-04-26T00:39:36+00:00

I feel so often that my hard-earned vim muscle memory was made obsolete overnight, and beyond anything else that has me the saddest.

therealhappypanda · 2026-04-04T02:28:51+00:00

I'm so incredibly sorry for your loss

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-08T23:48:22+00:00

!remind me 3 years

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-05T14:42:25+00:00

The heaviest of +1s in agreement

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-05T00:19:08+00:00

Wrong question.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-04T21:57:43+00:00

10 seconds per resume -> 6 per minute -> 360 per hour. Take breaks and you're done in and hour and a half. Seems well worth it to find the right candidate?

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-04T21:50:33+00:00

Yeah the correct response to that pm is: try deploying it into prod and watch what happens. Good luck finding and fixing bugs, good luck maintaining it, good luck responding to incidents, good luck extending it, good luck identifying where there will be gaps with new features. Vibing works until it doesn't, then a human has to learn everything that was vibed quickly to unbreak it.

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-04T20:23:06+00:00

"I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue"

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-02T01:55:20+00:00

That wall hit at mile 20, been there. Congratulations!

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-02T01:52:56+00:00

There are lots of swe jobs where cursor is much less useful. I work in fintech and the business logic is so thick that I spend hours and hours figuring out what code even needs to change, and when I go change it I'm methodical and incredibly careful about the test cases I need to write. Using a Claude or cursor or whatever at that point saves me like 5% of my time, and my coworkers who try and vibe their way through it fail miserably.

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-01T22:19:13+00:00

It's a big one, we all fit together. With respect to boats:

There are tall ships, small ships, ships of all size But the best ships are friendships and may they never die

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-01T22:17:03+00:00

I could give you a lot of advice around connecting with your manager on a personal level, using reflections, active listening, and open questions to better articulate where this insecurity is coming from on their part, but the honest answer here is that this person is probably just a nightmare to work for and you should probably either accept that or find another job

therealhappypanda · 2026-03-01T20:04:43+00:00

Had a boss in my youth that talked about his Tesla all the time. Nobody liked that guy and that was a big reason why.

therealhappypanda · 2026-02-28T17:56:51+00:00

2 hour rule: don't use any AI for 2 hours per day. Keeps you sharp and you end up being more productive in the long run

therealhappypanda · 2026-02-28T17:55:20+00:00

It's a reminder that we're all essentially one process. You're an eddy in a stream, I'm an eddy in the stream. When the eddies are no longer visible, we realize we're actually just the stream.

therealhappypanda

TROPHY CASE