Hacker News: ssimpson

New comment by ssimpson in "Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection"

ssimpson — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:42:50 +0000

> They ran out of novel things to say which is expected of anyone because there’s only so many non trivial things one could say. But then unlike normal people they didn’t stop talking because being rich they are bored and they want to be in the limelight all the time. So they end up talking nonsense.

Why do they always feel like they need to pull stuff out of their butts to make themselves sound like they know what is going on? In some ways I think it's related to the stock market "just meet the next quarterly goal" kind of thinking. Who cares if you don't come up with something pithy to say for a few years. Have big impacts over time instead of tons of little ups and downs all the time.

New comment by ssimpson in "General Motors is assisting with the restoration of a rare EV1"

ssimpson — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:24:02 +0000

My mom got to test one of these for like 3 months. While only a 2 seater, it was a super cool car. For the time it was very modern. And it was very quiet, it had a gentle horn you could honk so that people knew you were there. She let me drive a few times and it was also very quick.

New comment by ssimpson in "BYD Sells 4.6M Vehicles in 2025, Meets Revised Sales Goal"

ssimpson — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:56:37 +0000

Isn't part of it the dealer network as well? They've existed so long on service money, they were actively pushing people away from the Lightning because the service needs were so low and they wouldn't be making money off them.

New comment by ssimpson in "Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros"

ssimpson — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:30:19 +0000

I've had the same issue and go so far as to remove the streaming stuff from my Pihole to make sure it wasn't a DNS filtering issue. Paramount+ app still is sketchy as hell sometimes. Usually won't work on my AppleTV, but works on phones and stuff.

New comment by ssimpson in "MinIO is now in maintenance-mode"

ssimpson — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 17:28:27 +0000

I thought the openstack swift API was pretty clean, but i'm biased.

New comment by ssimpson in "Frying Eggs and Air Quality Tests"

ssimpson — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 13:23:56 +0000

Not sure about yours, but many extractor (vent) fans will just suck the air over a very loose filter and throw it back into the room. Many in the US are part of the over stove microwave and rarely vent at more than 250cfm (~7 m3/min) where specific vent fans that go outside can move upwards of 700-800cfm (20m3/min).

New comment by ssimpson in "Gridfinity: The modular, open-source grid storage system"

ssimpson — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 12:41:46 +0000

I used the underwear+multiboard for my under desk organization and it’s excellent.

New comment by ssimpson in "Careless People"

ssimpson — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:00:40 +0000

Many times its easier to look back over a period of time and see the differences than when you are gradually exposed to those things over time. Thats kind of how I'm understanding her recollection about it all. I do tend to take things with a grain of salt, not all Americans are as ridiculous as some of the people she makes us out to sound like. She does paint broadly with the "international community is all good and Americans are all morons" brush, again grain of salt.

About the money thing, I think she was probably compensated better at some point, probably when she was more involved with sandberg and zuck. But also sounds like she was working constantly so she may not have had time to worry about it or worry about spending it. I'm only ~20 chapters in, when they move to MP.

Overall I like the author/narrator, we all tell our stories from our perspective and I just keep that in mind.

New comment by ssimpson in "Googler... ex-Googler"

ssimpson — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:52:59 +0000

I feel like its unfair to say every single direct manager doesn't care about their folks. I care about each and every person on my team, I care if they are engaged and if they can do their job. I care if they get sick and give them the time to make sure they feel better. I care about their career and try to help them along. Maybe I'm the minority, but I think that lots of managers of ICs should and do feel this way. As you go up the ladder, i can see that going down as the scope increases, but thats why you have managers, to keep attention to those details. Now i've had directors and stuff that do not care about their managers. I've also had managers that aren't great and don't care.

You are 100% correct though, we are all cogs in the machine. In the end, the people at the top don't care about anything below them if it isn't making them an the shareholders more money. If they do, they are a unicorn and i hope everyone gets to work with someone like that.

When I was laid off from RAX, it was a super emotional time. I had a job where I got to hang out with my friends and good people doing good stuff, and we also did some work (the work we were doing was so enjoyable most of the time, it didn't feel like work). I've never been able to capture that since and it has contributed greatly to my desire to get out of leadership roles.

New comment by ssimpson in "Let's Ban Billboards"

ssimpson — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 01:30:27 +0000

the mountain to sound green way, billboard free, is amazing, green, and beautiful. more places should do this.

New comment by ssimpson in "Restructuring Announcement"

ssimpson — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 15:16:28 +0000

Executive behaves like a child, labor suffers the consequences.

New comment by ssimpson in "Firing programmers for AI is a mistake"

ssimpson — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 16:57:46 +0000

I tend to agree with you. The general pattern behind "x tool came along that made work easier" isn't to fire a bunch of folks, its to make the people that are there work whatever increment of ease of work more. ie, if the tool cuts work in half, you'd be expected to do 2x more work. Automation and tools almost never "makes our lives easier", it just removes some of the lower value added work. It would be nice to live better and work less, but our overlords won't let that happen. Same output with less work by the individual isn't as good as same or more output with the same or less people.

New comment by ssimpson in "In Defense of Y'All"

ssimpson — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:12:41 +0000

Y'all is Texas' gift to inclusivity. When I joined a dev team that wasn't just guys, I worked hard to get away from saying "you guys", not because someone said I needed to, but because I felt that I needed to. Y'all worked because I came from Texas and its inclusive of everyone on the team. It has been my personal policy to use that in leu of "you guys" in all situations since then.

New comment by ssimpson in "Making a trading Gameboy: A pocket exchange and algo trading platform"

ssimpson — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 21:08:22 +0000

This is a really cool project. When I was at Unity, we had a team build a Westworld themed isometric Gameboy game that would let you monitor and admin k8s!

New comment by ssimpson in "Unfortunate things about performance reviews (2021)"

ssimpson — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:21:48 +0000

Unfortunately the malevolence comes when your manager was trying to do something out of scope and pushing the team in a direction to win some points, and failed miserably. And then, not wanting to take the fall, throws you under the bus even though you might have signaled your reluctance and risks associated with deviating away from the path the organization needed. There is no way to get out of that other than leave or get canned.

New comment by ssimpson in "Unfortunate things about performance reviews (2021)"

ssimpson — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:08:26 +0000

I think the thing that is trying to be solved is promotions, raises, etc. But there is this concept in larger, older companies that this needs to be done once a year. But there is no reason this couldn't be done quarterly or even regularly. If you manage a team and someone on that team is not doing well, it should be an ongoing conversation, not something that should pop up as a surprise one day. When I interviewing for a manager role at Netflix, they often talked about how "it shouldn't be a surprise when you are giving someone the news they are being let go". Unfortunately difficult conversations are difficult and people avoid having them. But the fair thing to do is give people a chance by giving them the feedback they need to improve, and then holding them accountable when they don't. None of this needs to be done in the guise of a "performance review"

Or someone just doesn't like you and they are just making stuff up to throw you under the bus and get rid of you, like my last job!

New comment by ssimpson in "Unfortunate things about performance reviews (2021)"

ssimpson — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:03:46 +0000

This is exactly correct. Toxic management (i won't call them leaders). I left because of my last manager, but I miss the company.

If they did care, some good engagement studies/surveys would show where the problems exist from the perspective of the managed. Many ICs are aware their manager is doing good for them, as good as they can and the problem exists up the chain. Some managers are just terrible. But without some kind of upward feedback process, there is no real way to make this work for the managed. Management can always spin the story they want to make up for the issues and with no data, there is not much that is going to be done. Ultimately it is the senior management that is responsible for the toxic environment created by not having a 2 way feedback process.

New comment by ssimpson in "It's the land, stupid: How the homebuilder cartel drives high housing prices"

ssimpson — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 20:30:05 +0000

In the US, per state employment regulations can hamper this as well.

New comment by ssimpson in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2024)"

ssimpson — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 17:59:55 +0000

  Location: Texas, USA
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Go, Python, Javascript/Typescript, React, PostgreSQL, Linux, AWS, GCP, Management and Leadership, 
  Resume/CV: https://sasimpson.github.io/resume.html
  Email: sasimpson [at] gmail [dot] com

Looking for either an engineering leadership or developer role.

New comment by ssimpson in "Growth is a mind cancer"

ssimpson — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 18:41:44 +0000

I had a colleague who had recently become a manager ask me "so wait, people always have to be growing and advancing? What if they just got promoted and they want to do that for a while. Or they are happy with what they are doing right now?" I replied that I understood that and I feel like that is a problem everywhere. Everything has to be growing all the time and it's probably not for the better.