It was either worth it or it wasn’t. They wouldn’t have agreed otherwise. This is trying to save face while having 85% margins. Apple is just defending its margin as well. They’re all playing the same game.
I think doing your best work increases your surface area to get lucky for sure. That and a willingness to take a risk landed me in big tech to make good money. Delayed gratification and not being focused on material things allowed for financial independence.
Not fixing tractors myself, but there's something really satisfying about working with your hands and being outside with a desk job. Once I hit my forties my back and eyesight started deteriorating and I could tell I felt much better on the weekends from being more physically active.
I'll be hanging up my hat (mid 40s) in a few months after 20+ years working as an engineer. The culmination of having our second child, corporate politics, and the hustle of it all (false urgency/deadlines) led me to take a hard look at what we wanted and our finances. We were fortunate to live below our means and save during our careers and move to a lower COL state prior to COVID. Obviously a lot of the reasons related to family and corporate is normal and expected as a career progresses but I can't help feel like the AI factor has a lot of folks unsatisfied with their jobs. Coding agents have killed the craftsmanship side of the equation; sure you can still write it by hand but you'll drag on the team and fall behind ect. Anyway, it's been a good run and I hope that future engineers still find a viable path to a good lifestyle. I don't want to be the only one that was lucky.
Unfortunately, the odds of your start-up succeeding are very slim. Not to say that it's impossible but I wouldn't bank on it. I worked at as a founding engineering with two sr directors that left a prior employer. it was fun for a couple years but then I moved to the bay for big tech. it's been close to 14 years now and I'll retire by the end of the year. all this to say, if I was you I would maximize my income and saving at this young phase of your career. big tech is still an excellent place to build your network. at some point as you climb the ladder the corp culture may leave you dissatisfied and a start-up may be more attractive but hopefully at that point you'll be financially independent
>This was a good part of life. The office gave us access to this. It served as the ambient social substrate where tolerance, community, and begrudging, low-grade, constant connection took place.
I'll chalk it up to personal preference, but this is exactly the type of interaction I'm happy to miss while working remote.
"It's fair to say that 80 percent of the world's problems involve old men hanging on who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won't let go,"
Things like siphoning your data and using it to train while nerfing the model for everyone else is just the beginning of shady, rug-pulling, enshitification behavior we should expect. The dev community more than ever now needs to focus on being self-reliant and supporting open source models. They're counting on our skills atrophying over time to where you need their models to get work done. Ask yourself, do you actually need a frontier model to do this work? I think in many cases the answer is no. Don't support hostile behavior like this. Also, you can bet they're going to front government surveillance if not by choice, by regulation and political pressure.
I gotta say, as I read these comments HN's bubble is showing with astounding clarity. The top comment is about presenter authenticity? Idle Mac used for cloud models? No features are useful?
I can't help but think for most folks out there these features make using Apple products considerably more powerful and easy. They may be "boomer" features and you won't be able to roll them into your MCP server, but IMO it doesn't take a huge perspective leap to understand how they're game changers.
Not entirely but looking forward to having the time to make one. Die with Zero helped a bit with perspective. At my NW and spend it will likely be much larger when I go.