Hacker News: elktown

New comment by elktown in "The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't"

elktown — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:24:43 +0000

I'd expect GitLab to have contractors as well like most companies. Unclear if there's a significantly larger amount at Valve. It's a large gap to fill with contractors though to reach GitLab numbers.

GitLab is also a smaller company than I'd expect Valve to be - given its products & reach - if it was public and went through the same kind of inflation process.

New comment by elktown in "The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't"

elktown — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:31:02 +0000

This was in relation to employee count, not valuation.

New comment by elktown in "The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't"

elktown — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:28:59 +0000

I do think there's a certain level of vagueness and lack of rigor that permeate throughout (software) tech that enables self-serving to a greater extent than usual. I agree though that it's to be expected in most corps at a certain level where that vagueness also starts to appear.

New comment by elktown in "The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't"

elktown — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:01:22 +0000

Yup, it's certainly a mix. I think the stock market incentive is most obvious for the usual VC-style "this must look presentable to the stock market before IPO"-spiel. After that I'd expect management/corp politics incentives to play a larger part indeed.

But isn't tech a bit unique in how accepted this kind of self-serving corruption is at pretty much all levels? From the "This might require a few extra folks, but I want to pad my resume" IC level all the way up to "Let's make this look good for Wall Street" exec level.

New comment by elktown in "The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't"

elktown — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:33:44 +0000

I think the unfortunate reality is that lots of companies in our industry have suspiciously inflated employee counts in the first place. Even when removing AI and the pandemic over-hiring, I wouldn't have been surprised to see corrections sooner or later.

Employee count seems to correlate to stock market incentives - which is how GitLab is like 5x larger than Valve.

New comment by elktown in "I don't think AI will make your processes go faster"

elktown — Sun, 17 May 2026 13:50:39 +0000

People are far too charitable about an industry with chronic short-term thinking. We'll just lower the standards to whatever fits the success story.

New comment by elktown in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

elktown — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:58:05 +0000

I thinking that it’s quite a different experience going all Jackson Pollock with AI in your own studio on your own terms, compared to the sorry state of affairs of having 100s of Pollocks throwing paint around wildly within a corp to meet a paint quota.

New comment by elktown in "Bun Rust rewrite: "codebase fails basic miri checks, allows for UB in safe rust""

elktown — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:54:03 +0000

I think it’s just a corporate rug pull. Anthropic’s needs are the sole priority, all others be damned.

New comment by elktown in "GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values"

elktown — Tue, 12 May 2026 09:11:12 +0000

Aha, it's public. That explains the inflated employee count. Same story every time.

New comment by elktown in "Bun's experimental Rust rewrite hits 99.8% test compatibility on Linux x64 glibc"

elktown — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:22:58 +0000

People are seriously naive about corporate incentives. You think he'll go "Yeah, it being in Zig has put a wrench in our AI usage and that's not a good look now that we're with Anthropic"? No, he'll confirm everyone's biases instead - and it's working as well as expected on this crowd.

New comment by elktown in "Bun is being ported from Zig to Rust"

elktown — Tue, 05 May 2026 11:59:48 +0000

That the incentives have changed after being bought by Anthropic. So don't be surprised by a sudden change of heart.

New comment by elktown in "Bun is being ported from Zig to Rust"

elktown — Tue, 05 May 2026 09:33:14 +0000

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome" is usually the overarching law of software dev/design/arch.

New comment by elktown in "Our principles"

elktown — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:35:03 +0000

First thing I thought about. I have no reason to believe that it’s not accurate for most contemporary tech corps.

New comment by elktown in "I am building a cloud"

elktown — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:43:34 +0000

I'm afraid the bloat is too lucrative for everyone involved.

New comment by elktown in "I am building a cloud"

elktown — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:35:58 +0000

I'd argue on the contrary that it's the last decades' over-engineering bender that's coming home to roost. Now too many things have too many moving parts to keep stable.

New comment by elktown in "SpaceX files to go public"

elktown — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:59:47 +0000

You'll be thoroughly disappointed by your own comment history.

New comment by elktown in "SpaceX files to go public"

elktown — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:17:37 +0000

You're projecting. Byfåne.

New comment by elktown in "Goodbye to Sora"

elktown — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:51:21 +0000

I'm sure I'm not the first person you've seen hinting at OOP (and all that came with it) having been hyped up beyond its merits.

New comment by elktown in "Goodbye to Sora"

elktown — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:14:37 +0000

This field doesn’t do well on long-term thinking. Even if all this turns out to be a net loss, it will be reinterpreted as a win and just an opportunity for even more of the same solution. There are numerous examples of this, e.g. the OOP craze. Tech is a stock market of ideas and HN is a trading floor. The “line goes up” logic applies - not merit.

New comment by elktown in "The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button"

elktown — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:21:20 +0000

Nothing of that requires SPA, and the alternative is certainly not “nothing”. Not sure how you even get to that conclusion, strange rant. The meaning of alternative cost is not standing still.