Hacker News: kj4211cash

New comment by kj4211cash in "How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)"

kj4211cash — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:41:33 +0000

The two things you reference are very loosely related. I studied Transportation Engineering in the Civil department at UC Berkeley. I have always been very interested in public transportation. But I work as a Data Scientist in Silicon Valley rather than at one of the public transportation agencies. Because it pays roughly 10x as much. Every single one of the smartest people I went to school with is also now working in tech in Silicon Valley. A lot work on stuff like advertising optimization. Sigh.

New comment by kj4211cash in "How to earn a billion dollars"

kj4211cash — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 13:01:16 +0000

The politician wasn't making a statement about startups or growth rates. She was making a statement about what it means to "earn" money.

New comment by kj4211cash in "What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?"

kj4211cash — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:34:02 +0000

Yes! I'm "only" a parent of 3 and live nowhere near my coworkers and would be happiest never going to the office. I have been told to travel across the country to HQ every 2 months for vague reasons. I wish I could better articulate to my managers the costs of this policy to my family. Usually female managers understand.

New comment by kj4211cash in "Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now"

kj4211cash — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:26:35 +0000

Hmmm... On the one hand, yes, silt deposition would tend to expand the delta and that's what you saw over the last 5,000 years up until the 1930's. And yes, it was work done by the Corps of Engineers to fix the course of the Mississippi River that broke this system. That plus logging, oil and gas extraction, and tons of other "local land use" things then led to sinking ground levels. As the article mentions, the governor cancelled a(n expensive) effort that would have resulted in more silt deposition ... in the general area that most experts think would have helped.

On the other hand, the silt wasn't ever being deposited in large quantities in New Orleans itself, but more in other places. The delta is huge. New Orleans is famously below sea level and always has been. There's always been hurricanes. It's always been dangerous to live there and I'm not sure you can blame the dynamic nature of the river.

New comment by kj4211cash in "Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now"

kj4211cash — Mon, 25 May 2026 21:32:40 +0000

Yup. The article mentions this, briefly.

New comment by kj4211cash in "Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now"

kj4211cash — Mon, 25 May 2026 12:37:19 +0000

Oh hey, something I used to work on. The story here is coastal erosion / land subsidence much more than it is sea level rise, although that is a contributing factor. The land subsidence has been caused by Engineering works of the past, including the construction of levees and floodwalls around the city. When I worked on this a decade ago, we were already telling people outside of the city to move and spending a fortune to protect people inside the city. The most cost-effective option is often getting people to move, but good luck convincing everyone. Also this is such a shame because New Orleans is one of the most unique, charming places in the US.

New comment by kj4211cash in "The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA"

kj4211cash — Mon, 25 May 2026 05:02:33 +0000

The Southern Strategy destroyed the GOP as we knew it. It is now the party of dumb. Say that and you get accused of being elitist, but it's the truth. You can win elections as the party of dumb. But, man, it's tough being dumb in the USA today. There's so much misinformation and marketing of harmful products.

New comment by kj4211cash in "Childhood Computing"

kj4211cash — Sun, 24 May 2026 12:46:54 +0000

Love this! You've inspired me to write my own blog post about my early days with an Amiga (1000?). I wonder how many of us have similar experiences.

New comment by kj4211cash in "The Invention of Buses"

kj4211cash — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:40:15 +0000

It's interesting that taxis and shared vehicles came so many years before buses. Also interesting to think about through the lens of aviation. I wonder how soon after we had powered flight someone launched a commercial fixed route service. And how much economics has to do with all of this.

New comment by kj4211cash in "The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam"

kj4211cash — Tue, 19 May 2026 03:23:00 +0000

If you read the article, it's mainly about data centers. Which is understandable regardless of your feelings about the technology. There's a ton of money, energy, labor, water, etc. going into building and operating data centers. It's a big change and a big topic for a lot of local governments. Because there's so much money involved and local government is so dysfunctional, there's also at least the appearance of the public will being given short shrift.

Then you add in on top of that people hearing that everyone's job is in jeopardy, like right now, even if it's not really true. Plus rumors about how untrustworthy people like Sam Altman are. Not to mention that they are San Francisco elites. Lawsuits. Cozying up to Trump. Etc. It's not surprising most of the sentiment around AI is incredibly negative and getting more negative by the day.

New comment by kj4211cash in "AI is a technology not a product"

kj4211cash — Tue, 19 May 2026 00:23:40 +0000

Can you really think deeply in 20 min, while on zoom or in a meeting room?

I think this gets to the heart of my complaint. I thought this would increase the water level on our technical discussions. It hasn't. Like I say, could be the documents or people are poor. In any event, I'm one person that believed in this right up until my org implemented it.

New comment by kj4211cash in "AI is a technology not a product"

kj4211cash — Tue, 19 May 2026 00:20:57 +0000

Well they don't say they didn't read the thing. But 10-20 minutes often isn't enough time to truly digest the arguments. And even it were, I'm not sure it would matter. What I've seen is 10-20 minutes of awkward silent time followed by a level of discussion that isn't notably better than meetings before we adopted Amazon ways. Probably we are doing it wrong and/or have the wrong people in the room.

New comment by kj4211cash in "AI is a technology not a product"

kj4211cash — Mon, 18 May 2026 03:33:13 +0000

We have a bunch of Amazon transplants who newly arrived at my company and have started doing this. I thought I would love it, because I'm a good writer, a great reader, not great at PowerPoint or meeting gamesmanship, etc. Turns out I kind of hate it. The silent reading time is annoying, especially when you've already read the doc or when most people are on zoom, etc. The intellectual bloodbath doesn't happen at my company. The most senior people are given the floor and they usually spout nonsense because they haven't had time to read the doc, are miles away from the intellectual details, are too busy playing office politics, etc. And then there's just as much meeting gamesmanship as before. I was hoping decision would be more scientific but that just hasn't happened. Maybe we're doing it wrong. Maybe we've hired the Amazon rejects. I don't know. Hoping it improves.

New comment by kj4211cash in "I don't think AI will make your processes go faster"

kj4211cash — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:49:11 +0000

On the one hand, this is a clean post that explains exactly what a lot of us have been thinking and seeing on the job at large organizations doing tech work. Dear Author, I agree with you 110% and want everybody else to come to understand what you have written.

On the other hand, it feels like we've been over this tens of times recently, on HN specifically and IRL at work. Another blog post isn't going to convince leaders that this is how the world works when they are socially and financially incentivized to pretend like AI really will speed things up. So now I just wait for their AI projects to fail or go as slowly as previous projects and hope they learn something.

New comment by kj4211cash in "Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career"

kj4211cash — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:39:43 +0000

I agree with the 2 separate groups theory, but I don't buy that the group that produces "copy/paste junk" is the much larger group. I think in most mega-corps, there is a huge existing code base, there are huge organizational challenges, and there is huge hierarchy with most people not being the junior juniors. 90+% of the work is "not coding." Probably way, way more if we include the middle managers. At startups, there is a lot of "copy/paste junk" but also often a decent amount of push the boundary new stuff. I don't know. I've been in the industry for 8 years now and it's been really rare to see the actual coding being the bottleneck or even the thing that takes the majority of the time.

New comment by kj4211cash in "The bottleneck was never the code"

kj4211cash — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:58:10 +0000

I don't understand this reply. Yes, I solve problems all the time. And that usually requires thinking deeply about the problem. And that deep thought is difficult when I'm getting constantly pinged about other stuff.

New comment by kj4211cash in "The bottleneck was never the code"

kj4211cash — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:59:26 +0000

Hmm... everyone is different and I'm not sure I'm the best representative of the "flow state" crowd. For one, I'm a DS not an SWE. Also I tend to do more research-y projects, projects where the requirements are vague at the start of the process and a big part of my job is requirements gathering. Projects that aren't super time sensitive TBH. Jira rarely works well. So the projects that have worked best for me involve lots of brainstorming meetings at the start, then documentation (literally Word docs), then development work, then restart the cycle. The worst projects involve stakeholders who want to make science decisions in real time. If that makes sense? None of this may apply in your world.

New comment by kj4211cash in "The bottleneck was never the code"

kj4211cash — Wed, 06 May 2026 12:52:00 +0000

I feel attacked. I still dislike most team meetings, agile ceremonies, etc. Slack and emails give me anxiety. A 30 min meeting will disrupt me for 90 minutes. But, yea, the code was never the bottleneck. Except maybe when I worked at a startup. All of the above are true.

Personally I find it hilarious that the same people at my company who can't be bothered to write down detailed requirements and are constantly fighting any effort to do research or technical documentation or pay down tech debt are now trying vibe coding and struggling to produce anything useful. Oh you don't understand why you aren't getting the results you expected? Maybe you should try thinking deeper about what you expect before your rush your engineers or, now, your agents.

New comment by kj4211cash in "When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing"

kj4211cash — Tue, 05 May 2026 23:27:20 +0000

I agree with you in general. And have a good chuckle when the vibe coders get derailed by some roadblock that would've been obvious to a professional engineer. But it's a bit one-sided to say that we have bad or missing analysts and product. Even good product can't keep up with how fast AI allows you to go. At an established company, maybe you shouldn't go as fast as AI allows you to go, but try telling that to the "important people."

New comment by kj4211cash in "When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing"

kj4211cash — Tue, 05 May 2026 12:34:33 +0000

We have a "two timelines" approach going on and I'm curious if others are seeing the same. There are official "Engineering-supported" services. There development speed is not the bottleneck. Engineers demand clean requirements that take forever to show up. Testing and deployment scheduling also take forever post-development. Important people are so fed-up that they've started hiring people to vibe code and develop services without going through Engineering. Code is shipped much faster here but technical debt accumulates rapidly. The important people are beginning to hire Data Scientists who sit outside of the Tech org to manage the AI code. It's all very interesting.