When AI is doing that, it loses all value as a proof of work (just as it does for a school report).

My AI writes for your AI to read is low value. But there is probably still some value in "My AI takes these notes and makes them into a concise readable doc".

My mind instantly answered that with "bright", which is what you get when you combine the sun and moon radicals to make 明(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%98%8E)

Anyway, that question is not without reasonable answers. "Full Moon" might make sense too. No obvious deterministic answer, though, naturally.

I'm not entirely sure why AI knowledge must be close to a year old, and clearly this is a problem developers are aware of.

Is there are a technical reason they can't be, for instance, a month behind rather than close to a year?

"We will pay for it, but it's a loan so not really" is a fallacy. If we decide that education is an all around good thing so we want to subsidize it, great, but let's just do that directly.

64 basis points isn't nothing, but I think that qualifies at close - and I didn't go digging, those were just the first two that came to mind.

We (I'm a middle manager myself) Aren't stupid, so we will.

More headcount and influence means more (at least potential) business impact, and often promotions. If the organization encourages us to fight with other managers to get more of that, that's what we'll do instead of running our organizations better.

It's really easy to see hours as the only real problem. But they really aren't. Another article I read talked about how people who are constantly ruminating about work but work about 40 hours are at a higher risk for health impacts than those working many more.

I know this personally; I'm currently on a leave of absence because I burned out. And no amount of 'boundaries' around work kept it out of my thoughts all the time.

It really was about the other factors in the six factor model. Values drifting. Loss of control. Worsening relationship with my lead and no real peers to work with.

It would have been very different, even with more work, if I felt like I was part of a team trying to solve problems, rather than trying to put out the latest needless fire my boss created.

Especially when the alternative is social media.

That isn't to say that the OP was protected regardless. But the mindset that lets you do this is a mindset that comes from a background of abundance. Where you can always get another job if you want one, where you always have friends or parents who will bail you out or give you what you need.

A background where things just always seem to work out.

Do specific things or tasks take energy from you? It might be that meetings sap your energy. Or, if you're extroverted, meetings might give you energy.

Sometimes it's bigger things - like a job that's just not interesting any more. Can you shake it up with different tasks and challenges?

Or maybe it's burnout, which can manifest as constant fatigue. Maybe you need a break. Maybe that break is a small one during a hectic day, or maybe you need a break from your current life situation to recharge.

Physical health absolutely matters, but don't forget the mental aspects. If you just aren't finding your current situation stimulating, that might be a signal about the situation, not just your body.

Did I choose management? Yes. Do I have a choice to stop? Also, yes. Do I make enough money either way to have a nice apartment and no real material concerns? That too.

But I'm definitely stressed and lonely. I'm really not sure if this is what's best for my mental health. From the article him and I aren't the only ones with that feeling. My boss, too, has talked about feeling exhausted; when we have events for leads, it feels like we're even more burned out than the rank-and-file.

Lonely is easy to explain. The more you move up, the fewer peers you have. The fewer people you have to look up to and emulate. The more "on your own" you are, expected to operate independently and direct more folks. There's less of a playbook. More acting by intuition. More people looking up at, depending on, and often resenting you. Your relationships with communities of coworkers changes. When they're upset, rather than joining in on the griping and feeling camaraderie you feel either vaguely responsible or unaware of what's really been going on. Whatever it is not just a thing to bitch and moan about - you're responsible.

The stress comes from the same place - feeling a sense of responsibility for all the people in your org, for the company, all of it. It's a much bigger scope than your IC responsibility. It's hard to let go of, to accept that you might not pick the right 2 or 3 of 100 things to focus on, and when you do, there are real consequences for real people. With that kind of scope you're making a lot more mistakes just because there's so much more surface area. Those mistakes matter, too! Hire the wrong person, ignore a team that needs your attention? These are big painful mistakes. People might quit, their careers might languish, an asshole might make people miserable, customers might have a bad day(/month/quarter/etc), etc.

You have to accept a lot of failure in this very difficult job with a huge scope and no real rules or guidance, but that's hard when you're a competitive, success-oriented person.

"But you can quit!" is a valid argument. One the article addresses - it says it takes years to set up for a CEO. For me, it's shorter, but I still feel like it's something that you can't just hire an eager replacement for - for a bunch of reasons. Pick the wrong person, and again, lots of consequences to people you care about.

Somebody in leadership did quit without notice recently - and I saw all their reports bump up to their lead, who was already way stretched thin. Those people won't have real support for a long time. Their new lead is really stretching himself very thin. I hope the person who quit is able to find peace in it (genuinely, I don't think they wouldn't have done it if they felt there were alternatives). But I know I wouldn't be able to.

Sometimes I wonder if there would be an equivalent to a Dwarf Fortress tantrum spiral. Somebody quits, their team flows up, that person then snaps, etc, until half the company is reporting to a handful of people. (and imagine how responsible the CEO would feel if that happens?)

Also - COVID has made all of this worse.

I think the origin of "Staff, Senior Staff, Principal" came from an attempt to create an IC track. You've been around a while, and you can execute stuff well on your own, where does your career go from there besides manager?

The fact that the assumption was manager is why we have a lot of these problems, tbh. I hate managers who hate managing but that's a separate discussion.

Also funnily enough I was just having a discussion how my company's career ladder explicitly says (in bold!) that promotion is not a reward. If it's not, what is it? What is the reward for hard work and growth, if it isn't that?

Ultimately what I see underlying this article and many like it is an assumption that, at least at an "enlightened" company, politics don't matter. If a company prioritizes low-impact high visibility, that's a stupid company... Yet I've never seen a company free of politics. There will never be a company where your personal assessment of impact of your work matters more than your boss's or their boss's.

We also can't pretend like the amount of work at any given level matches the number of engineers at that level (or who want to be at that level). It just never will. So there will be jockeying for position.

You shouldn't be playing politics all day (a trap I sometimes fall in) but you can't ignore it either. Politics often means justifying your work up the chain, being aware of priorities of those above you etc - it's not just kissing up. Ignore it at your peril.

However, there are many people who I can't talk to without them insisting I donate more, I call all my representatives, etc., etc. etc.

It makes sense when I think about it. We all want to feel like we can actually do something when we feel so powerless. I have tried hard at work, they pick politics. We need something to do.

But I don't need to be reminded how terrible the latest event is; I want to get away from the news cycle, not lose myself in doomscrolling.

Since COVID started I've slowly been losing myself into workaholism. It feels like there is nothing else to care about besides work; I am single and while I had an active social life that's naturally very limited during COVID. Often on Saturday and Sunday I'm just waiting for it to be Monday, and at least once I worked through Saturday afternoon since I had nothing else to do.

All the extra work feels completely unappreciated. I got wrapped into a roller coaster of a conflict with my lead - within one week he said I wasn't performing at entry level, then was begging me not to leave the team. That just keeps escalating (it's dragging through HR now, but nobody is, according to them, going on a PIP). The experience is, I think, driven by COVID - my lead's mental health is degrading, and I'm suffering as a result.

I'm working hard, with no clear expectations, and no clear understanding of what the point of that work is. I was promised a new position when I joined this team, and I don't know if that will ever come (it's been close to 2 months since my lead and I can have a normal conversation). I am paid very well (yay, the stock is up) but there's no way to spend that money (clothes nobody sees? Trips to closed down cities?).

Meanwhile all my other outlets for energy are cut off. Most of my friends are either sliding into depression or screaming at me to somehow care even more about the political disaster of the day. There's no dating, there's no bars, there's no clubs. All the events I look forward to every year are canceled. All my spots are permanently closing down one at a time.

So there's only work, and the story there isn't very different from my friends; mental health is declining among everybody I know. Sick days are up, people are asking me how my conversations with HR about depression went last year since they're going to have one soon. Engaged as I am there are times I just want to walk out the door. Well, if there was a door. In practice that would just be switching back to my personal computer from my work one.

Frankly, I'm not sure how anybody is not heading to burnout. Either you are overwhelmed with other things (like childcare) and feel like work is killing you, or work is all you have but it feels hollow since there's no other life context to give it meaning.

I tried to take a vacation, it didn't work. I spent 4 days obsessing over what to say in the next wild conversation with my boss (which didn't disappoint, he was sobbing at the end). Sitting in a room somewhere else while everything is closed or operating on a very weird and limited basis around you doesn't feel like vacation.

Though that was the stupidest way to come to that conclusion, it is true that I was doing less IC work than other members of my team. I had surfaced this several times in 1:1s and thought that was what he expected. For instance, some weeks I had literally 20 hours of meetings, with significant overhead attached to those; it is hard to make much progress coding in that environment.

I initially didn't care about titles, but they do constrain what work you can do. The reality is that if your title is one of an individual contributor, even if you lead culture change at the company level, they will always look for the code. If they don't find it, you will be in trouble.

One thing I have learned over the last year of my life is that being "Shadow lead" - the one actually pulling the strings and making things happen, with no formal title/recognition - is the worst spot to be in. The work you are doing doesn't match what you should be doing on paper, so you are very vulnerable if somebody decides to take a closer look.

It's "glue work" but on a larger scale. It's important, but will go unrecognized. It's emotionally exhausting to build a team and get a head pat and told someone else will lead that now, thanks, and by the way how much code did you write recently?

Though I do wonder what you mean by "official" but without the title. It might be the case that "everybody knows" what you do, but if your lead is replaced or just changes their attitude, suddenly your IC work is under the microscope, and could be found lacking.

Even if you make it a separate track, it's hard to define what the promotion looks like for more senior engineers, especially at successful companies. When you have $2M of cash in the bank thanks to stock, does a 10% pay bump from senior to staff matter? Does the title bump matter? How can you reward a long-standing successful senior engineer in a way that seems meaningful?

This isn't a question I have an answer to, but "make them a manager" is definitely the wrong one. The majority of my managers have told me how jealous they are that I get to code all day. More than one has told me straight up they do not want to manage. I've watched several teams implode under managers like that.

I think it's completely valid to not want to manage. Hopefully your lead doesn't pressure you to take such a role in the future. But have you thought about what success would look like in your career otherwise?

It is also valid to not be particularly ambitious, to enjoy the craft of software engineering until you retire, and spend the mental energy you would spend on getting promoted on hobbies, family, advocacy, or whatever else brings value to your life... though it can be hard for those of us who are more ambitious to realize that.

I recently transferred to a team with an explicit intent for me to be an EM on that team. A few months down the road they said I wasn't meeting expectations because of my "time management" which had too many meetings and lacked focus time for IC work - which definitely was not my 50%+ focus. I'm "winning" the resulting political war (my last 1:1 left my lead in tears), but only in the limited sense that I'm not getting fired; it's been a bit of a disaster for everyone.

The unclear expectations of what gets someone an EM role and what is expected of that role is the root of my problem, some of the author's, and a lot of the industry's as a whole.

Leaders are picked from those that are truly focused on tech and truly excel at it... and then told not to do that. How can somebody be "intuitively, emotionally invested in the outcome" of tech work and then suddenly be expected to stop doing it?

I should have been that rare counter-example in that I got picked for this role because of my very visible leadership in other areas. However, when it came time to give me the position formally they fell back on code output and found it somewhat lacking (specifically, the number of commits I made while onboarding was less than those of my established teammates).

There's a school of thought that switching back and forth between IC and EM tracks lets you build a lot of knowledge and be both better manager and IC (the author evidently did). While I do think experience with each helps you do the other, there is a cost to that focus shifting. This isn't like the cost of only being able to code in 45 minute blocks. It's the cost of shifting the things you care most about entirely.

Most managers fail to ever make that shift. Even if they manage to hold themselves back from coding (not all do), their heads remain in the code. One sign is when, in response to impossible expectations from above, they try to come up with technical solutions (e.g., if only we redesigned this module we could meet these impossible deadlines). If your mind is focused on tech, it's the tool you use to solve every problem. Another example is when team members have no idea how to move their careers forward and don't know expectations. A tech focused lead won't be thinking about how a new project is actually the perfect challenge for a more junior employee; their head will be figuring out the best way to solve the task technically.

An EM is not a tech lead. It's not just a different skillset, but a mindset change.

I think if you could smooth the trend there would be a trend towards worse hurricanes, but there's huge variations from storm to storm and season to season. There is a slight trend towards more storms, and a trend towards more building on the coast or in vulnerable areas that increases damage. There's also a trend towards more news coverage of extreme weather.

There are so many random factors though. Katrina was terrible because it hit New Orleans rather directly, which is an incredibly vulnerable (and high population) city, and the levees broke in conditions they should have been able to withstand. If that same storm hit Brownsville, TX, or Panama City, FL, people would have paid way less attention. If it hit Veracruz, MX, nobody in the US would remember it.

Category-at-landfall is not a good indicator either. Winds get all the hype, but water does most of the damage - as it did in Katrina. While storm surge as driven by those winds is a factor, it really matters which ways the winds are blowing and how the waters pile up based on local geography. Rain is a huge factor too, so situations where a storm drifts inland and then parks are much worse than a storm that promptly races off. (Such conditions caused bad flooding in Houston recently).

So exact landfall conditions matter, how fast a storm moves, etc. Storms may be a little stronger than they used to be but that says very little. People remember when we get unlucky and a major city gets hit in a very unlucky way, and that's always going to be mostly a random occurrence.

Houston exists as a city because a hurricane destroyed Galveston. It still gets severe flooding from tropical storms, and has in recent memory. Like New Orleans, it's in a bad place (clearing out a swamp to build a city will always have this problem; the water wants to go where it did before). It will almost surely happen again.

It's easy to play fearmonger, and imagine "worst case scenarios", but many of them have played out - Katrina, Sandy, Houston, etc. Even if the odds of those scenarios have increased from 1/100 to 1/50, there's no telling when the next one will happen; we could go 50 years without another one, or Miami could hit by a cat 5 in a month.

It's still a stupid idea to invest in cities built in wetlands in areas vulnerable to hurricanes, but people keep doing it. Sea level rise makes this even stupider (more so than the storms getting stronger), but again, people keep doing it. A lot of people justify it because it hasn't happened in X years where they happen to live, but it is a numbers game, and sooner or later their number will come up.