I worked in Cory Deans lab when he did a brief professorship at City College. He is the most sharply intelligent person I have ever worked with, a savage experimentalist always devising new ways to experiment in nanofabrication and his theoretical curiosity is boundless. Additionally, he’s a really nice Canadian when he goes to the pub!
If you ever wonder why these products using graphene aren’t commercially viable, it is insanely difficult to work with and prepare. Imagine trying to make a sandwich that’s 5x5 microns in area and about 2-3nm thick. Graphene is essentially atomic tissue paper subject to all sorts of contamination and small scale effects.
For me this outlines the caveats and pitfalls of software development and management.
There is real truth to some of the authors points showing real paths that emerge naturally.
If you're going to gaslight him by inferring anyone who is critical is an asshole, maybe you should ask yourself why you're taking the article so personally...
Am I saying that anyone who is critical is an asshole? Where? Seriously?
I find that the article hides a deep aggressivity towards overall mediocrity behind a thin veil of office-space-like humour. And I think that aggressivity is contagious and so not a good thing to spread.
You didn't say it outright, but it was exactly what I inferred from your comment as well. You said "toxic negativity" which comes across as a moral judgement, and anything that follows comes across as the result of that judgement.
I don't think it's reqlly fair to read a person's frustration piece and assert they probably have a character flaw. I don't even see your issue with the article, really. I don't think it's targeting anyone specifically and it seems to be about doing things in excess. Maybe just the idea of people who are consistently negative contributors rubs you the wrong way.
Maybe avoiding to use pejorative wording would make a more convincing argument to promote a view still accepting meaningful advises through criticism, while judging unethical any form of essentialism view which reduces some people to despicable traits, rather than presenting a situation where some people are entangled in abject behaviors.
>I find that the article hides a deep aggressivity towards overall mediocrity behind a thin veil of office-space-like humour. And I think that aggressivity is contagious and so not a good thing to spread
The post came off to me as frustrated not aggressive. I think you are overreaching here, and this can create very toxic environments as well. Disagreements, frustrations, and stress are just part of being a human. They're part of getting work done. Being toxically negative or positive is not a good thing both in the workplace and out of it, and this post was not aggressive, just being frustrated. Frustration can be good! It signals things that we need to talk about, so we can focus more on them. Hiding them only makes the problem worse.
I agree with most of the author’s points, but the post is overly negative in my opinion. It’s blaming other people for the problems instead of digging into why these problems come up in the first place. Why do managers waste time with busywork? They need insight into the process. If you look to criticize without understanding you’ll always find plenty of material to blog about, but you’ll just create new problems and never fix anything.
The author probably thinks these issues are caused by bad people instead of bad processes, which is why he doesn’t suggest realistic fixes.
> The author probably thinks these issues are caused by bad people instead of bad processes
Author here.
This is an excellent way to phrase a subtle point that I couldn't figure out how to fit in the piece.
I think that -10x engineering is not someone you are, but something you do. And even more commonly, it's something that organizations do for periods of time.
I think this is something that would've been great to include as an intro, and would've completely removed the negative atmosphere that some people (including myself) got from the article.
The title makes a lot of sense because of the meme “10x engineer”. That is also wrong - being 10x more productive is also something you do, not something you are — but I see the point in following that template.
Very overused in online discussion. It requires intent which there is virtually never evidence of. Without that it might as well just be a difference in opinion. Its prevalence speaks to how intolerant people have become.
Usually is easier to deal with -10x devs than assholes because they are likely devious is not easy to handle. A crapy dev can be dealt with when you present their git commit to the manager/lead
Wow, this story sounds familiar to my own. Moved to NYC 15 years ago and worked in Service (Server, Bartender, Manager) after about 8 years in, I applied to college at CUNY. Went to engineering school part time for 4 years while still working at a bar (6pm-5am 3 nights a week) until I finally just took out loans to finish the last two years.
Graduated with a degree in computer Engineering at 33. During and after school I worked in web doing frontend, then full stack engineering. Now I'm senior at a cloud HPC company designing and implementing things beyond my imagination.
I can 100% testify the soft skills learned from the service industry give me a competitive advantage in tech.
> Just like creating your own front-end framework is a rite of passage for web developers, creating your own version of Scrum is a rite of passage for engineering managers.
Excuse me, what? I've worked in web development for years and I personally know 0 people who have written a front end framework like React, View.js, etc.
Love what I see from Kagi search so far. Tried out Orion, but unfortunately the Bitwarden Password manager extension is pretty much unusable for both the chrome and firefox extensions. It locks the vault after every page load and the biometrics requests in MacOS take considerable longer than with chrome/firefox.
It won't be my daily driver, but I will check back when extension support is more mature.
Articles like this feed on the idea that someone could just swoop in and magically steal your car, but magine how difficult it would be to not get caught when stealing an electric car. There are several uniquely identify components, not to mention the car fully understands it's own location.
It would take a serious criminal organization to get away with the theft and sell it for profit, and at that point you're gonna lose regardless of the type of exploit invoked.
Imagine stealing a smart phone today What's the incentive when the technical overhead of getting away with it is so high?
There are cheap devices that block mobile networks so car won't be able to transmit coordinates. Then just drive the car to junk yard, remove batteries and sell car for parts. This is what actually happen to majority of stolen cars in US.
this misses the point. Theft may not be the sole motivator.
If someone moved my car 200 m away, i would then be forced to go get it. If someone moved my car and parked it where parking wasn't allowed, i pay a fine.
If you ever wonder why these products using graphene aren’t commercially viable, it is insanely difficult to work with and prepare. Imagine trying to make a sandwich that’s 5x5 microns in area and about 2-3nm thick. Graphene is essentially atomic tissue paper subject to all sorts of contamination and small scale effects.