I like this post as it landed at a really good time for me. But, I had a remaining question based on one of the lines:
>So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
So uh... anyone have any tips on _identifying_ the kinds of folks the author is describing here? I guess I'm left to presume it would mean those people _would_ explicitly ask, but if not how would you determine what kind of person you are dealing with? Sure, I can brainstorm and reason through, but looking for feedback from folks who have been successful in doing this professionally.
Yea. Just my observation, they are losing some pretty big markets in that region. It's pretty clear from going in the Kroger stores anywhere near an HEB that HEB is really hurting them. They are all empty (dystopian as the OP of thos thread put it) any time I go in. And HEB shows no signs of slowing down...
Yep. And they don't charge much of a premium to deliver this. I can buy things at HEB and not worry about them being expired/etc, even for grocery pickup. Kroger, afaict, _chooses_ the expiring/broken stuff if you do grocery pickup. Kroger is closer to me so I've given it several chances, but every time they seem to get me in a new way to get me with opened, expired, or damaged stuff, and I won't be bothered to establish a quality control process just to buy some groceries. Meanwhile I've done grocery pickup from HEB for a couple years now and have maybe 3-4 things I've had to request a refund. The whole foods near me is heading down the Kroger route too.
It's literally just doing the core service better than average and allowing it to yield results. "hmmm lets try not scamming people so we can save pennies on some expired bell peppers in a loss leader area to begin with... Perhaps they'll also pick up some prescriptions while they are here! Heck, I bet if we make some effort to keep our employees relatively happy, customers might also have a better experience in our stores!"
IMO/rant, few businesses/people seem to grasp this and all think there is some magic "business hack" they can do while avoiding doing the core business thing well. And I don't think it's that they don't know it, it's the divorce between the reality they themselves likely desire to live in and experience, and the reality they build/provide day to day in their work. But, that plagues everything these days tbh. Nobody just wants to do the fundamentals well, everyone is looking for "this one simple hack" that alleviates having to just do the work. The calculator might save you some money, but it'll never, by itself, extract the gold from the mine.
I've gone back and forth several times in my head because I truly love Fedora and am happiest on that OS, but these ongoing supply chain compromises just make me lose sleep. I wish there was a Fedora LTS that had the same community size, build system, etc because I really like all that, as well as the transparency of it all.
I know there are concerns no matter what OS, and would appreciate insights/discussion as well, but I sleep a little better just running a boring old Ubuntu LTS instance for a balance of dwell time between releases and hitting my system, as well as enough visibility/usage so something gets caught. And I know, this was the installer, not a system package.
Tangent to this topic, if you are deficient or sensitive to B vitamin supplementation, it may be worthwhile to get tested for MTHFR/COMT genetic variants.
So, a lot of the article makes several points that aren't necessarily new, but
> The problem tends to show up when a CEO is handed an agentic tool like Claude Code, and has it create something, which will work just fine, and thinks “oh, wait, why do we need so many people, when I can just sit here and make things work?”
> This is a bad CEO.
As described, this seems to me more like a lack of reasoning/critical thinking ability, and it's not unique to CEOs. Tracks more with a combo of "Gell-Mann Amnesia" and automation bias IMO.
> This all reminds me of cargo cult thinking: The CEO knows that somewhere in the org, employees are pecking away at computers and work gets done. So they figure that themselves pecking away with Claude Code and seeing work get done is the same thing. It’s not. All those other steps those people are handling — the ones the CEO never sees — still need to happen.
"Cargo culting" as described here by the author may be happening. But, I think it's CEOs seeing other CEOs doing layoffs and claiming it's because of AI efficiency gains. They see the other CEO's stock go up/get hyped/etc, so they decide to do it. I think it's the same thing that happens inside companies IE people see how others behave and it works, so they do the same. Effectiveness aside because that's not at all what I'm arguing, AI is just the current flavor; it is a very safe thing to "cargo cult" at the moment.
Wow, amazing answer! I have a lot of reading and then thinking to do, but if you are documenting your research anywhere, I'd greatly appreciate somewhere to follow it.
I feel like individually, if you sat down with literally any reasonable person on the planet they would arrive at and/or agree with the tenor here.
I'd be curious to hear from people well versed in group psychology/dynamics and/or just a lot of leadership/people experience: what leads people to this type of thinking once they get in a group setting? It just... seems endemic at this point.
Obviously nobody here is going to know what I do or don't know, but I'm just increasingly curious what I am not understanding about this type of thing. It seems so obvious, yet that makes me ever more suspect that I'm oversimplifying it, or just totally ignorant about the problem in general.
It is funny how I do believe this is true, but also can't help but notice how much effort they spend defeating this exact user base. Reminds me of ad companies... I'm sure they also don't care about targeting some fraction of a percentage of their base, but look how much effort they spend defeating ad blockers lol.
> So a truly great engineer also needs to be arrogant/assertive/loud as that is the only way to fight other arrogant people. The "quiet confident" engineers opinion will be overruled by loud incomptent engineers.
What is the underlying cause here? Or is this just a product of group psychology...(?) I feel like it's typically weak and/or incompetent management but hesitating to jump right to that because it's largely out of most people's control beyond a job change.
I would donate money for this comment to be on billboards. It's exactly how I feel.
Heck, gemeni is obviously so successful and gets used so frequently that android had to hijack the power button (at least on pixels) so when you hold the power button, it activates gemini instead of turns the phone off. Clearly, that is because everyone intends to activate AI instead of turn the damn phone off when they hold the power button. `usage_metric++;` /s
Yet I know most people are also [probably] irritated by stuff like this. But _we_ do it anyway...
>So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
So uh... anyone have any tips on _identifying_ the kinds of folks the author is describing here? I guess I'm left to presume it would mean those people _would_ explicitly ask, but if not how would you determine what kind of person you are dealing with? Sure, I can brainstorm and reason through, but looking for feedback from folks who have been successful in doing this professionally.