Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.
Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. If youāre wondering why this went up late, I was doing other shit)
(EDIT: Changed ā29th Februaryā to ā1st Marchā - its not a leap year)
if you should ever happen to be short on resumesā¦
(it feels like a zero AI job board might be a good thing to have, but weād need a way to vet submissions and handle anonymous submissions and inquiries so people donāt dox themselves)
I would love if there were a way to filter out pro-AI companies. Nothing would make me happier than to have an interviewer tell me āwe donāt allow slop here.ā Instead, I have to gauge how truthful I can be. Usually, the best I can get away with is āI havenāt personally found it very useful, because I spend more time diagnosing its errors than I would have writing the code from scratch.ā (But the truth is I havenāt ever used this sloppy shit. Letting a stochastic parrot speak for me is bonker balls.)
Yeah, I havenāt been feeling great about having to nod vigorously and feign enthusiasm for slop on every damn cover letter and interview Iāve had recently. The best Iāve managed is saying I only use it in professional capacity and try to emphasize the personal learning angle as a defense.
Itās brutal out there and Iām losing hope. I wish I had another industry I could pivot to await the passing of the bubble that gives me the flexibility to be a musician like remote work programming does.
Iād like that for non-tech companies too. Learning how big my last job was into it was really not a good feeling (and tbh made me feel much better about leaving).
unfortunately AI tools do exist in the company and there are some expectations of use on some teams but it varies depending where in the product you work. anything OS, kernel, bootloaders, filesystem, etc is a strict no AI policy. All the front end teams seem to use something sparingly, couldnt tell you what it is or why.
without revealing too much personal info, companies like mine arenāt too hard to find but they tend to be somewhat old school. Lots of C programming, some assembly, and digging into the guts of stuff. Anyone doing firmware, infrastructure (like all the big storage guys), or even some of the trading world is highly sensitive to genAI tools because of the risk. Especially if you ship a box rather than some fully cloud connected always updating app. The companies may even say they do something with or about AI then you talk to the loader or kernel team and they will say āabsolutely notā. I cannot tell you over the years across a few jobs how often I hear management lamenting how we can never fill recs because we need actual C people or someone not afraid of a terminal debugger. And two of these shops are hugely popular in the tech world. Hope these hints help