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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

In a nutshell I'm spending most or all of my time using the tools (keeping up with a queue) not working on them. To work on them I need either permission to fall behind in the queue (probably not an option) or someone else to cover for me. I'll probably pursue that latter option.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

It's not hell on earth but I think about "oh my god dude get another job!" at least once a week. My job is this "hybrid" of 50% software developer, which I want to do, and 50% of, let's just say, flippin' burgers. It's not flipping burgers literally but the metaphor applies pretty well because being a short-order burger chef does take some skill, but it's repetitive, and subject to requests/orders that come in intermittently, each of which is urgent. So, it's like the interruptions everybody complains about from noisy co-workers and Nina from Corporate Accounts Payable, except the thing interrupting you, is the other half of your own job, and it continues all day long. So really with all the interruptions I'm doing close to zero programming.

Why this arrangement? Because they figured hey, what better way for him to find all the pain points and automate them, than to have him use this crappy cobbled-together system himself! Well sure, I'm all about seeing it from the user's point of view. So yep, did that, figured out long ago everything that's wrong with it, but now what? I'm stuck. Forget burger flipping, let's say this time, that I'm an axe maker. A craftsman of fine chopping implements. And the job they gave me is to chop wood all day with somebody else's dull axe. Um that is a different thing, that is not what axe makers do! And it's not like, okay make us a new axe, here's everything you need; they need someone to chop the wood! Pretty much the stupidest situation to be in.

Then there's the team - it's totally silo'd, a bunch of little fiefdoms, run by naysayers, and my every minor request for an enabling technology or whatever-it-might-be, is met with an unanswered phone call or email. I'm still kind of new, so I have no clout whatsoever, that is a truth, but I can also see that it's not just me. You've read much about the conflicts between Dev and Ops that led to "DevOps." Well on this team the Database people and the Programming people (hello, those two are the same thing, or perhaps you are an asshole) don't even see eye to eye.

Also - and this shouldn't matter - but the developers are somewhere else. Instead of being surrounded by developers bouncing interesting ideas all around (not that these particular ones would), I'm here physically sitting with the other burger-flippers. Yes we're back to that metaphor. These are people who either can't, or never wanted to, be anything other than burger-flippers, and everything they talk about is in terms of burger flipping, and life is just a big burger to be flipped. Starting to sound elitist, but keep in mind I'm intentionally not telling you what they, what we, actually do. They are skilled workers. Just not the same skills. I probably should've held out for something else.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

In general, the CIA or any similar agency might "help" any government to either commit, or appear to commit, an act which is nominally "against" a popular movement, but which (through heavy-handedness, brutality or some other characteristic), ultimately provokes outrage, turns worldwide opinion against that government, and weakens its position or ability to get things done, or even, topples it. I'm suspicious this was done to Mubarak in Egypt and Yanukovych in Ukraine.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

I'm having a hard time figuring out which side is the CIA's people. Maybe both?

I'm half joking, but also definitely wanted to plant that idea for the American readers. Wherever there's chaos and instability, the CIA is often there. (Even in nations with which the US isn't openly in a trade war.)

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

Agreed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW6W9iOjTKM

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

I have absolutely no skin in this game.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

Certainly agree about Germany - there seems to be no more anti-Nazi place than Germany today.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

I found it compactly hilarious.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

its

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

I'm sure it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

Everyone drinks some flavor of Kool-Aid. Confirmation bias: it's the human condition. Do and think whatever whimsical thing you want to, then do the cognitive contortions later to justify it.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

"How does it accrue?" might be a better way of asking than "Can we start taking it right now?"

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

It's always like that though. Everybody wants to be 'in' while things are soaring, but wants to be 'out' by the time it turns downward. Some people get out too early, successfully missing the low but also missing the highest highs. Others wait too long and the low wipes out all their highs. The trick is being able to stay at the party until juuust before everybody else smells smoke and starts running for the exits.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

I'll bet part of why they're conflated is because every company that tries to hire 10X engineers, does it wrong and ends up hiring arrogant engineers.

Not to mention, to the much more numerous ranks of "1X" engineers, a 10X engineer, even a real one, is kind of a pain in the ass and hard to distinguish from an arrogant engineer.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

I don't think this is a generational or age thing strictly speaking. There are several confounding variables or you could say non-orthogonal axes.

There's a "human nature" axis that interacts with the money axis. People, no matter the age, tend to take credit for their successes a lot more than their failures. For example if you have a lot of money, you'll overstate the hard work that went into it, and understate all the good luck you had. Meanwhile if you have no money, you'll overstate all the bad luck (including blaming the system, and I'm not saying the system doesn't suck) and understate any faults or foibles of yours. To the extent that this becomes your paradigm, you'll also use it to judge other people. So the richer person (who thinks they got rich through hard work) sees a poor person and assumes they're poor because they didn't work hard. And the poor person (who thinks they're poor because of luck), will see someone rich and assume they got rich through luck. (Hopefully it's obvious this paragraph is less a "truth" than a trend or tendency.)

Moving on, there's a political axis that interacts with the money axis. People on the Republican side tend to espouse a belief in self-reliance while the Democratic side talks more about helping each other. (Notice that I say "espouse" and "talk about," cleverly avoiding having to talk about what their policies actually accomplish.)

There's a power axis that quite obviously interacts with the money axis - As people become rich they use money to get more power, and as they become powerful they use power to get richer.

Finally (and here's where the age correlation comes in), older people tend to be richer because they've had more time to make money. And older people right now I suspect tend to be richer than older people at other times in history, because they reaped the benefits of industrialization and the fossil-fuel boom.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

The part about defining identity is, I think, referring to the fallacy of seeing someone in a context, and then thinking that they "are" that. Like meeting someone who is angry and storing them in your memory bank as "that angry person," as if they were angry all the time (they may indeed be, but you don't know). Add to that, the errors inherent in the act of perception: Are they really angry or did you misperceive it that way?

In your example, the co-worker may be "your disagreeable co-worker" (definition), or they might simply be "your agreeable co-worker" who momentarily disagrees with you or your ideas.

If your opinion about someone is right enough, often enough, that it serves as a workable summary of that person, that (ideally) a lot of people agree on, who have no vested interest in agreeing, then you could start to be objectively convinced there was no difference between your opinion of that person, and the definition of that person. But no simple definition of a person is ever going to capture the whole story - people are too complex.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

In addition to points by sibling comments, there's also the possibility that Lyme Disease wasn't the intended result, i.e. this was a failed attempt to create something more useful, more lethal, etc.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

Absolutely - most bigger companies have silos and can make excellent use of things like this.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

Is it that hard to see? Bird, at a minimum, is going to have to replace the destroyed scooter, at least if they want to maintain the same capacity to serve that area/market.

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vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

In other words, everybody's a parasite on something. Lakota Sioux were buffalo parasites. Vegans are parasites of Daucus carota and Beta vulgaris among other species. Parasites of Homo sapiens are of course hated by that species. People are getting distracted by the whole theft thing. The guy's not awesome, and he's not terrible; he just did what he did, which was unusual. If you're picking up any "he's awesome" or "he's terrible" vibe, that's probably the result of an intentional editorial decision, to drive "engagement" via your admiration or outrage (or envy, which is both).