That seems pretty plausible to me, yeah, because it’s being attempted already and we seem to be sliding that direction. Privatizing those public services sounds like precisely the way to usher in a fresh new hell like this, completely agree.

I really wonder what that may look like too and how likely of an outcome it is. I mean we’ve seen versions of it with “banana republics”, but that wasn’t quite the modern era and wasn’t sophisticated tech companies. I also think most tech companies today would not want that responsibility, just the rewards, it’s a bit hard for me to imagine them actually attempting to provide a government. I think what we’ll see is increasingly hollowed out public institutions matched with ascending power and control of the corps, but leaving the govt in place (largely for a target people can point to when they’re mad) and stopping short of overtly seizing power. Best of both worlds for the corps.

For real. The big tech companies are today basically approximating and exceeding what have before been exclusively state-level capabilities. Not all of those capabilities, of course, but enough that the writing’s on the wall. Meta, Google, Amazon (and others) - they truly see themselves as above “petty” things like governments. Just obstacles to work around.

The question is what will we allow them to get away with, not how far will they try to take things. We should be clear on that.

an exercise in precision engineering with wood

With wood, an hilariously imprecise material (for anyone who doesn’t know). It refuses precision on principle first, and then just on occasion, at every opportunity later.

That delicious (infuriating) imprecision is probably why it can sound so frickin great, though, so…

Oh, tbh I was just commenting the sort of “pithy” way to say what commenter above me was saying. I wasn’t actually commenting on the situation, screw McDonalds and Taylor both lol

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the merely good” is one (imo important) way to state it.

TikTok is the worst example we’ve seen come up

…so far :)

And the crazy part is I know of teens who say “I wish I could use my phone less”, and these aren’t even particularly self-reflective kids. I have to assume many feel this way. Literal textbook addiction, crafted on purpose, and half of the parents are so far up shit’s creek with the addiction too that they don’t even think to get involved.

I think we’re on the same page :)

I’m mostly describing an idea where the contracts approach takes care of the necessary iteration to get a given tech policy sorted, and then legislation comes in to require it.

My country can’t even get some basic stuff done, though, so realistically I may as well be writing fan-fic, lol

I’m gonna make what I consider to be an important distinction here, but I also want to say I mostly agree with you and I’m bummed by the downvotes.

I think we can lump the middle manager into two broad “types”. And you seem to be exclusively describing one of the two types - the one that’s, frankly, smart and “aware” enough to realize that middle management is trash, rank and file is trash, and they know precisely why they are aiming to get above everyone. It ain’t cuz they want to help, of course, and they never intend to. Fuck those people every possible way, because not only do they understand that the purpose of middle management is to be the buffer between the owners and the laborers, they also have decided - with full awareness! - fuck the laborers, I want to be good with the owners.

But there’s another, sadder kind of middle manager, and I think maybe your hostility is unkind and unfair to this type. This middle manager still has the wool pulled over their eyes, they really think if they work hard and do well, they’ll be rewarded! And hey, isn’t the fact that they’ve been promoted (!) to leadership a clear indicator that they’re doing things right? Just gotta keep at it, the really important people keep telling me this is what they like to see, I’ll finally be able to get all these bills paid / improve my life! I’m on the way up, finally.

And then that person says “YEESH managing this store is really hard, I’ve gotta get better at this. My leadership doesn’t seem to think this should be a struggle…”

Etc., etc., for 10, 20 years as the wool gradually falls from their eyes. Not everyone is able to see things as clearly as you are. Most middle managers, I think, are basically suckers. Naive and exploited. The rest, tho, are basically monsters without enough power to be monsters. No argument there, and fuck those people.

Oof, well, point taken and sorry for your loss lol. I hear where you’re coming from. And I’m sure we’d get a worst of both worlds situation here in the US where we spent a ton of time and money developing whatever standards and definitions, and then we make it an optional guideline like you’re saying and it never goes anywhere.

Dunno. The fundamental problem is tech is always able to move faster and smarter than legislation.

That’s fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.

But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it’s in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.

Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don’t require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.

FWIW you’ve been level-headed throughout the thread and it does seem like a valid note to me. It’s not like, damning, as you’ve pointed out yourself, it doesn’t magically invalidate his work. But it does seem odd to me and I’m glad you pointed it out, and the response you’ve been getting seems weird and disproportionate.

That hasn’t been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don’t (can’t) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.

Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn’t my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.

Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.

Awesome, thank you! This largely matches my own experience, I’ve found it (Claude in my case) most useful in areas where I’m weakest. I haven’t tried this scaffolding-via-comments approach though, it sounds cool.

Any experience with Cursor or other IDEs or agents? Was co-pilot a choice or just kinda a natural default?

Would you mind sharing a bit more about the workflow you’re describing? I’m on a “ask people how they’re using AI to help them dev” kick.

Sounds like you’re using an agent integrated with your IDE, would you be willing to give specifics? And you’re talking about writing some comments that describe some code you haven’t yet written, letting the AI take a stab at writing the code based on your comments, and then working from there? Did I get that right?

Happy for literally any elaboration you feel like giving :)

Ugh, poor error reporting is such a frustrating time sink.

Completely agree! It’s SO much easier to lighten the mood and keep things upbeat and productive in an actual conversation vs. just text-based feedback. For example it makes it easy to throw in self-deprecating anecdotes of your own when discussing mistakes / needed changes, which can really help put juniors at ease. It’s just worlds better in >90% of scenarios.

Completely understand the frustration here. Mistakes happen, even competent people sincerely trying to do a good job can overlook things, etc. But if it’s a pattern of just copying and pasting code without really even trying to understand what it does, that’s a big problem that needs to be addressed. And frankly they should feel embarrassed if it happens more than once or twice.

OTOH, delivering criticism in a way that winds up productive for all involved is difficult at best, and the outcome depends on the junior as much as it does the senior. What good is being right if it ultimately just alienates you from your team? Tough situation for sure, and one of the many reasons it’s so important to hire carefully (which is itself a whole huge can of worms too!).

Can you simply ask them to walk through their submission line by line with you, explaining what it’s doing? If you’ve never asked that before it might come across as a strange request, but if you phrase it well it’s possible this causes them to notice their poor understanding without you ever seeming to point it out.

I was simply pleased by your comment, to see how much you care about helping folks and moving the community forward. Seems like quite a lot of effort to me, far more than I’d be able (willing?) to contribute, and I’m just forever grateful for folks you like you and wanted to say something about it :)

I appreciate the invite. I’m not at a point currently where I can put sincere effort toward much that’s non-essential, but if that changes, Rust is on my short list of targets for ways to spend some spare effort and time.