I think his experience is quite common in big tech, and even swapping teams doesn’t seem to help in my own experience. It’s the rare teams that have any agency, or even clear ownership over the code. It seems by design but as a craftsman it is very frustrating.

I haven’t read anyone put it in words quite as well as Sean’s posts. This really is the nihilistic side of big tech that is rarely written about.

So I think it’s a unique insight - hence why I’m kind of baffled at the reaction. I think if you can relate to what he’s saying (it hits really close to home for me), it’s easy to sympathise with.

I mostly started on my local BBS on Long Island playing tradewars in my teens, around 14 (where I memorably won as top player for a few months and got tons of credits).

I actually have no memory of how I discovered BBSs, I think I found some directory at the library then found my local one.

I expanded from there to some bigger ones (requiring a special telephone plan so it didn’t cost a fortune!). I played some rpg (maybe lotrd?) with like a hundred players and it was an absolute blast.

Other highlights:

I found a credit card generator and used it try getting free credits which got denied. The owner called my parents house and they had no clue what they were talking about.

Another time I was trying some exploits to get ops access and the admin caught me (BBS servers would echo the remote session). Admin interrupted my session and we started chatting. He recognised I was a naive script kiddie and we chatted about love of BBSs and computers. Pretty cool.

It was a magical time for sure.

Big tech was a bit of an experiment for me in my 40s, I always worked at small/med size companies before. I think it was worth it (for the learnings and comp). I get a lot more choices in the future when I'm financially secure.

As a staff swe in big tech your blog posts resonate strongly and reflect my own experience. But I can see if I didn’t have that experience I’d be unable to relate or even understand.

Maybe it is nihilism - but I think that’s also a natural result of working for big corps.

Obviously they don’t care. Adoption is exploding. Boris brags about making 30 commits a day to the codebase.

Only will be an issue down the line when the codebase has such high entropy it takes months to add new features (maybe already there).

This nonsense, and yet they allow GBNews to keep spewing propaganda and violate almost all broadcast standards that Ofcom is supposed to enforce.

Pretty much sums up all modern discourse in banning social media and doing age checks. When I was growing up it was satanic symbols in the music I listened to.

I guess - wtf is wrong with adults? Why do they feel compelled to control the younger generation?

I’ve done what OP describes but I’m heavily introverted and likely HSP too. I’m pretty good at it but it’s incredibly exhausting. My father is exactly the same way.

As I get older, the more I consider self care and prioritising my own needs over others to be happy. To that end, I much prefer to keep to myself and so I do.

However it doesn’t stop me from engaging in impromptu conversations. I just don’t go out of my way to talk to literally everyone.

For me the best position is to move my non split keyboard fairly deep into the desk and keep my arms relatively straight. In my 40s and no issue with this after decades.

(disclaimer: I work at Meta)

Anthropic has actually cracked Agentic AI that is generally useful. No other company has done that.

I’m on tirzepatide but not for obesity. It completely cures my life long IBS. These are miracle drugs imo and should be as cheap and widely available as possible.