Classic example: people say they'd rather pay $12 upfront and then no extra fees but they actually prefer $10 base price + $2 fees. If it didn't work then this pricing model wouldn't be so widespread.
The problem with CLI colors is that they operate on the wrong abstraction layer. Individual program shouldn't send "this text is red" but "this text signals failure" and then terminal interprets "failure" as "red". Until this change happens (never) colors in CLI will remain a hot mess.
It's easy to blame the welfare state but IMO the problem is the general culture of being extremely risk-averse beyond reason. Same reason why big US companies lose the ability to innovate. Europeans just hate doing things the new way even if it's better.
It suddenly starts making sense when you realize that most people are stupid. My strategy here is that I just adjust my schedule to have tasks take literally 10x time than they should and enjoy my free time while managers argue about shit.
People are not as much stupid as selfish. Nobody is going to threaten their own revenue stream just because their job is bullshit, in fact most double down and see themselves above others.
And another layer I've seen frequently - people somehow need to make their work meaningful to make it part of their core identity, even if its literally moving one pile of dirt to next pile and then reverse, or just adding friction to progress. Strong ego game.
I'm wondering if I get fired from my corporate middle-do-nothing job I could become a skilled blue collar worker. My point is, someone who both at the same time can put tiles and won't fuck up the pattern could be very valuable. I assume one year maximum to learn ins and outs.
I have lots of music in exotic formats and an installation of foobar2000 that plays all of them. I keep using foobar2000 even though I switched to Fedora KDE because I don't see any alternative that will allow me to play music without forcing me to convert everything. Also, I have an Android app to control foobar2000 from my phone.
Big downsides are that scaling is broken on Wine so the UI is tiny. Moreover, whenever I manually change tracks using the mouse, it lets out a massive fart before continuing normally. But I can live with that.
Hmmm, now that I think of it - I've never made any GUI app. Suppose I want to write my own music player, what's the best way to approach this?
American culture has this weird thing to avoid blame and direct feedback. It's never appropriate to say "yo, you did shit job, can you not fuck it up next time?". For example, I have a guy in my team who takes 10 minutes every standup - if everyone did this, standup would turn into an hour-long meeting - but telling him "bro what the fuck, get your shit together" is highly inappropriate so we all just sit and suffer. Soon I'll have my yearly review and I have no clue what to expect because my manager only gives me feedback when strictly and explicitly required so the entire cycle "I do something wrong" -> "I get reprimanded" -> "I get better" can take literal years. Unless I accidentally offend someone, then I get 1:1 within an hour. One time I was upset about the office not having enough monitors and posted this on slack and my manager told me not to do that because calling out someone's shit job makes them lose face and that's a very bad thing to do.
Whatever happens, avoid direct confrontation at all costs.
On one hand, I totally agree - soliciting and giving feedback is a weakness.
On the other hand, it sounds like this workplace has weak leadership - have you considered leaving for some place better? If the manager can’t do their job enough to give you decent feedback and stop a guy giving 10 min stand ups, LEAVE.
Reasons for not leaving? Ok, then don’t be a victim. Tell yourself you’re staying despite the management and focus on the positive.
I agree. If the company culture is not even helping or encouraging people to give pragmatic feedback, the war is already lost. Even the CEO and the board are in for a few years of stress.
The biggest reason for not leaving is that I understand that perfect things don't exist and everything is about tradeoffs. My current work is complete dogshit - borderline retarded coworkers, hilariously incompetent management. But on the other hand they pay me okay salary while having very little expectations, which means that if I spend entire day watching porn instead of working, nobody cares. That's a huge perk, because it makes the de facto salary per hour insanely huge. Moreover, I found a few people from other teams I enjoy talking to, which means it's a rare opportunity for me to build a social life. Once they start requiring me to actually put in the effort, I'll bounce.
I'll be direct with you, this sounds like an issue specific to your workplace. Get a better job with a manager who can find the middle ground between cursing in frustration and staying silent.
While I agree there’s a childish softness in our culture in many respects, you don’t need to go to extremes and adopt thuggish or boorish behavior (which is also a problem, one that is actually concomitant with softness, because soft people are unable to bear discomfort or things not going their way). Proportionality and charity should inform your actions. Loutish behavior makes a person look like an ill-mannered toddler.
“For the sake of time, is it okay if we move on to the next update? We can go into further details offline.”
Also if that doesn’t work, “Hey Bro I notice you like to give a lot of detail in standup. That’s great, but we want to keep it a short meeting so we try to focus on just the highlights and surfacing any key blockers. I don’t want to interrupt you, so if you like I can help you distill what you’ve worked on before the meeting starts.”
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