Hacker News: suzzer99

New comment by suzzer99 in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"

suzzer99 — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:21:05 +0000

I worked for a company that did opt-in spam email. Their main offices were in Silicon Valley, but they had a startup thing in LA that I worked at. Ostensibly we were building a self-service email campaign app to be bundled with Weblogic Commerce Server (which itself was basically DOA).

It became pretty obvious to me from the get-go that nothing was being built, and the startup was just siphoning money off the parent company. I'm not sure if there was any fraud going on beyond a bunch of people collecting a paycheck.

I think the boss was skimming off of the captive H1Bs, and there was a guy in NYC who never did anything as far as I could tell. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of kickback going on there.

My first day, I went out for sushi with the top devs, who proceeded to tell one horror story after another about the boss. Awesome way to start a job. I lasted 3 months.

New comment by suzzer99 in "How many of the 170k English words do you know?"

suzzer99 — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:43:02 +0000

How jejune of you.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff"

suzzer99 — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:46:10 +0000

I'm shocked it's that low.

New comment by suzzer99 in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

suzzer99 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 07:27:15 +0000

There's a sweet spot between AI slop and 144 characters. I can tell within a few sentences whether there's a human on the other end getting to the point, or an AI dancing around the point and finding 3 different ways to say the same thing.

New comment by suzzer99 in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

suzzer99 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 07:13:01 +0000

I can't imagine working for a place that has a big bucket of PRs that either get reviewed or languish for some amount of time based on who feels like reviewing them. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, just that everywhere I've ever worked, there are expected features with priorities and timelines and some project manager or product person breathing down your neck to get them out the door.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)"

suzzer99 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:29:33 +0000

Ice yachts get well over 100 mph. I'm not sure how much they were used in pre-industrial times.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)"

suzzer99 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:25:32 +0000

> You just drug its food and wait till it passes out.

Human zoo keepers are actually smarter than that. For months, they train the tiger to go into the carrier to get food. Then on transport day, they shut the door behind it. Unclear if this works for future transport situations.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study"

suzzer99 — Sun, 31 May 2026 17:35:59 +0000

Peter Attia is a crap human being for being buddies with Epstein after most of his crimes were already known.

But I still trust his analysis more than anyone else at dissecting this kind of stuff and separating the wheat from the chaff. I'll be curious to see if he covers this.

New comment by suzzer99 in "AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers"

suzzer99 — Sat, 30 May 2026 16:12:13 +0000

The CCC and WPA produced a lot of valuable stuff that still stands today.

New comment by suzzer99 in "AI job grief: A psychological crisis hitting tech workers"

suzzer99 — Sat, 30 May 2026 15:59:34 +0000

I think most humans have some intrinsic desire to feel useful to their tribe, to feel like they earn their keep. I know people on the equivalent of UBI, and they're all miserable. I don't think we're wired to do nothing all day, and I don't think everyone has it in them to be self-motivated artists or craftspeople.

This is all just my personal experience, obviously. I don't have any data to back it up. But I know that even though my job bugs me sometimes, I'm a lot happier when I'm busy than not, and I work remotely. I like the feeling of accomplishment. But do I like it enough to build things for free? Probably not. I'd probably just sit around and spiral, like I've seen friends do on extended unemployment.

Anyway, this all is a moot point imo because as long as one person still has to work, the billionaire class will turn the "lazy freeloaders" on UBI into scapegoats. See: current politics.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

suzzer99 — Sat, 30 May 2026 04:26:24 +0000

The false disability claims are completely out of control.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Tulip mania: when a single flower was worth more than a house (2025)"

suzzer99 — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:06:25 +0000

But nothing like showing off a Monet to visitors.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions"

suzzer99 — Thu, 28 May 2026 22:15:08 +0000

This has been largely true for the history of tech. The most-hyped technology usually wins out over the best technology.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Where does next-token prediction leave us?"

suzzer99 — Wed, 27 May 2026 05:54:57 +0000

The billionaires building doomsday bunkers get it.

New comment by suzzer99 in "Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It"

suzzer99 — Mon, 25 May 2026 18:02:16 +0000

I still get spam emails on the one-off email address I used to sign up for Bearshare.

New comment by suzzer99 in "No Juniors Today, No Seniors in 2031"

suzzer99 — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:39:42 +0000

I come here for the comments first, then decide if it's worth reading the article.

New comment by suzzer99 in "No Juniors Today, No Seniors in 2031"

suzzer99 — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:37:30 +0000

I feel like this is very possible eventually, but under 5 years seems unrealistic to me. The compute power is already running into limits. And a few more major problems need to be solved before agents can have that kind of autonomy to create software from scratch and run entire businesses.

New comment by suzzer99 in "No Juniors Today, No Seniors in 2031"

suzzer99 — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:34:03 +0000

I'm 57 and have no desire to retire. I know plenty of other programmers in their 50s who aren't itching to retire.

Programming, at least for me, isn't like some factory job where you can't wait to get out at your 30 years or whatever. I've always enjoyed what I do and found it rewarding.

New comment by suzzer99 in "No Juniors Today, No Seniors in 2031"

suzzer99 — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:30:33 +0000

Seriously. I've been programming almost 30 years and I feel like I could easily have another 10 in me. I'm sure many reading this will assume my skills are deteriorating at an atrocious rate. But I'm still the lead developer on a team that leans on me heavily to figure out the hard stuff. So I can't be too far gone.

New comment by suzzer99 in "No Juniors Today, No Seniors in 2031"

suzzer99 — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:27:58 +0000

At every place I've ever worked that hired juniors, the juniors always have to leave by about 2 years, because the company will never (roughly) double their salary to what they can get on the open market.

That first year, the juniors are probably a net drain in productivity - for their work and the time other devs spend teaching them. Then the 2nd year, they're underpaid for as long as you can hold on to them. But the good ones will be out the door pretty quick.

The system always seemed kind of broken to me. But a shop without any junior devs is also kind of sad. If you hire the right person, it's rewarding to the other devs to teach them and watch them grow.