The man can’t release an affordable electric car, despite it being on his roadmap for over a decade. Cunt isn’t releasing an affordable taxi lol

Has anyone seen the comments on popular stories on LinkedIn lately? The site is overrun by AI scammers.

No shit, good fucking luck getting a business to purposely neuter itself.

Any reduction in operations or separating into new businesses would almost certainly be an effort to trim expenses/fat, and not a realistic effort into creating multiple viable businesses.

With that said, I’d definitely cut Cloud. They’re a distant and expensive third to AWS and Azure, and it probably doesn’t make the kind of money that other arms will make.

While I do think that many of these companies need regulation, I think it would be very easy for many of them to cut off a finger or two to save the body, especially when you factor in that many departments of these companies either operate at a loss, or are in positions where they are losing market share.

For Google, losing Chrome would do very little for them. Fill the board with several execs, and it’ll be Google-aligned for the next decade or so. They could also kill off Music, Docs, Fit, Pay, Keep, almost a dozen products that could either be killed or spun off into separate businesses. The same goes for Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, countless businesses that have a finger in a lot of pies.

EDIT: This is why people on the fediverse don’t like Lemmy…

It might have been a few years ago, but having Amazon on my CV has offered almost nothing. If anything, I get fewer legitimate interview offers than I did before.

Is there a way to rank tech companies on how shitty they are? I’d love some kind of directory of companies and all the cunty things they have done in the last few years - like uncov but for established companies.

IMO it’s worse than this. It’s likely to do with Seattle real estate only, because Amazon has their HQ in Seattle, most of the STeam is in Seattle, and it’s where most of the big decisions are focused. There is an acronym that has existed at Amazon for decades, NEWS (Not Everyone Works in Seattle). Sadly, like many Amazonian things, they’re not really a thing any more…

When I joined Amazon, I was told that for some roles in the US Amazon received more applications than corporate employees worldwide - so I assume 1M+.

That number has probably reduced significantly, given we’ve now had two rounds of RTO. I know some recruiters are really struggling to find external candidates to join, and rightly so, but I don’t doubt that Amazon can find someone to fill these roles, or can find someone outside of North America or Europe to take that role.

The FAANG acronym was the worst thing to happen to tech, because people will flock to Amazon to say “I worked for FAANG”. Prestige is a powerful thing to some, and they’ll deal with some insane shit for the clout that comes from being here.

(FWIW, I’ve been at Amazon as a software engineer for close to four years now, and I’ve noticed zero improvement in opportunities afforded to me)

It’s absolutely mad to me that Sonic Team have done nothing with this since SA2: Battle.

I hate to say it, but it’s literally built for mobile devices! Have a Chao Garden game on consoles/PC, have them be downloadable onto your mobile device, and basically turn it into a Pokémon Go type thing where you can get kids and weebs to exercise and explore the outdoors.

I’ll die on this hill.

If you want an easy language for beginners, Ruby is a much better alternative. It’s like a simpler Python, and aside from a crazy loop syntax teaches clean programming principles better than most languages.

With that said, Rails IS a ghetto, and many of the kinds of companies that use Ruby as their main language are stuck in the past or are full of the biggest toolbags you’ll ever meet. DHH, in particular, built a reputation on being a programming contrarian, so much so that there’s a golden rule where if he says something, the opposite is probably the correct choice.

It’s embarrassing at times, much like it was almost two decades ago when Slashdot used to shit on “Micro$oft” for everything. Lemmy also has a tendency to be emotional to tech news rather than factual, so there’s that too.

Pretty much every tech company is shit in some way, but it’s not productive to call it out everywhere. This is a good thing.

I’m not entirely sold on the technology, especially since immutable ledgers have been around long before the blockchain, but also due to potential attack vectors and the natural push towards centralisation for many applications - but I’m just one man and if people find uses for it then good for them.

It’s worth noting that the new CEO is one of few people at Amazon to have worked their way up from PM and sales to CEO.

With that in mind, while it’s a hilariously stupid comment to make, he’s in the business of selling AWS and its role in AI. Take it with the same level of credibility as that crypto scammer you know telling you that Bitcoin is the future of banking.

Working in Ruby did 10x more to help me write clean code than reading Clean Code ever did.

Many of the lessons drilled into me with Ruby (keep a consistent style, tests are cheap, keep your methods relatively small where possible, reduce nesting where possible) carry over nicely into other languages without needing to go through any OO bullshit.

IMO, the best lesson around Clean Code is this: you’re not clever, write obvious code that works with as few tricks as possible.

There’s a long-believed attitude in venture capital where they believe the reason why there are so few British billionaires is because many people will have a great idea, cash out, and then sit on their wealth once they’ve accumulated enough for a fancy lifestyle for their family. In America, the attitude is towards being a serial entrepreneur, where one success leads from another.

It’s a long-winded way of saying that to many UK businesses, they probably don’t give a fuck if some millionaires decide to fuck off. Get rid of the fancy property they own in Devon/Cornwall, sell their London property, and tell them to GTFO. They’re probably barely paying any tax, barely contributing to local economies, and are just a drain on the system.

I can answer this!

There’s a term in tech called “empire building” where middle management looks for promotion up the chain towards directorships or VP roles. If, for example, you have a CEO that’s nuts for AI all you’ll want to do to get on their good side is to build a team around AI for some random service you already have (e.g. AI in Google Search) and you’ll get a ton of funding and HC. Suddenly you run a huge division and get a fancy important title because you can shit some metrics about how well you’re performing while customers say “wait, search is shit now”. That’s the search team’s problem, your AI stuff performs great!

It’s everywhere in big tech, and it’s why so many big tech companies seemingly work extremely hard and have nothing to show for it.

The IC’s at the bottom of the ladder are just minding their own business, trying to do the best work that they can, while the leader of the empire sets ridiculous timelines and goals because they’re trying to cement a legacy, rather than build the right thing. Naturally, the product flops, the director gets moved to a new division to protect them, and the IC’s are laid off - with the CEO saying that they didn’t meet expectations or cost too much.

If I’m responsible for the outcome of the business, I want a fair share of the profits of the business.

Is it? It’s where most people still post publicly, and until someone unseats Twitter on that throne (which I hope is really soon) no other network is going to compete in terms of having the users people want to follow…

Lol have you ever tried to report abuse on Facebook or Instagram?

They won’t do shit about obvious racist abuse or hate speech. Let them define what they want, they will do what they always do - nothing.

A lot of people are giving Tesla shit here, but surely there should be regulations in place to ensure something like this isn’t allowed to be released for public use?

I work in AI as a software engineer. Many of my peers have PhD’s, and have sunk a lot of research into their field. I know probably more than the average techie, but in the grand scheme of things I know fuck all. Hell, if you were to ask the scientists I work with if they “know AI” they’ll probably just say “yeah, a little”.

Working in AI has exposed me to so much bullshit, whether it’s job offers for obvious scams that’ll never work, or for “visionaries” that work for consultancies that know as little about AI as the next person, but market themselves as AI experts. One guy had the fucking cheek to send me a message on LinkedIn to say “I see you work in AI, I’m hosting a webinar, maybe you’ll learn something”.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of cool stuff out there, and some companies are doing some legitimately cool stuff, but the actual use-cases for these tools where they won’t just be productivity enhancers/tools is low at best. I fully support this guy’s efforts to piledrive people, and will gladly lend him my sword.

Like most big tech companies, they’re actually several divisions all competing with each other. Lately, the AI divisions have latched on to the hype and they’re pushing their wares to other divisions, often with enough clout to keep those in security/privacy quiet. Integrating LLM’s is also a great way for a middle manager type to curry favour with the bosses, and to build little empires for themselves.

That’s not fair. The switch is a great console for indie games.

Obviously, so is the Steam Deck, but that doesn’t discount the Switch for having a solid library of games outside of the usual Nintendo shite.

Uhhh…it’s had AI backing it for most of the decade

There has never been a better time for someone to swoop in and remake web search. Hell, there are probably dozens of software engineers from Google that have direct experience with search AND were laid off.

I’m surprised that no one is trying to compete with Google at the weakest point it’s been since going public.

I’d love to, but in terms of pure availability I can get almost everything I’ve ever wanted to listen to, aside from some weird geoblocking or removal of defunct band’s back catalogues.

Not all programmers live in the US. In the UK, especially outside of London, the pay is surprisingly bad.

I mean…if operating in a country meant selling your US business, you’re probably not going to say “oh gods someone please buy us 🙏”, if you want a big payout…

Way back in 2010 I did some paper reading at university on AI in healthcare, and even back then there were dedicated AI systems that could outperform many healthcare workers in the US and Europe.

Where many of the issues came were not in performance, but in liability. If a single person is liable, that’s fine, but what if a computer program provides an incorrect dosage to an infant, or a procedure with two possible options goes wrong and a human would choose the other?

The problems were also painted as observational. Often, the AI would get things with a clear solution right far more, but would observe things far less. It basically had the same conclusions that many other industries have - AI can produce some useful tools to help humans, but using it to replace humans results in fuck-ups that make the hospital (more notably, it’s leaders) liable.

When put like that, that’s absolutely mad! How can shareholders possibly think that this is good value?

I wonder if there was ever an entry-level model to begin with. It’s been on the cards for about a decade, and many people have looked at Tesla saying “wow, a good electric car, I’ll definitely get one once they’re affordable”.

I went to look around a nursery the other day, one that is attached to a school. We walked past kids that couldn’t have been older than 6-7 dancing (possibly filming) to a TikTok vid, on a brand-new looking iPhone.

I’m usually against governments getting involved in the internet, since they have such a piss-poor understanding of tech, but it would be good to see some kind of regulation that bans people of a certain age from operating a smartphone without a limited set of operations (i.e. to contact parents, to get school alerts, etc), alongside school bans for the use of social media on school grounds. My wife is a teacher, and cyber bullying is rampant, whether it’s the police getting called in over someone (underage) sending nudes and having them posted online once they break up, or fights being planned via iMessage or WhatsApp, and sometimes even people creating fake Tinder/Grindr profiles of their teachers (or to try to match with them).

Obviously, there are parents that’ll just say “fuck it, it keeps them quiet” or ones that’ll let them use a smartphone due to peer pressure, but a lot of it can be cut down before it becomes a problem.

In many ways, I’m quite glad I grew up with AIM and MSN Messenger. This kind of online power would have been crazy to me as a kid, and I don’t envy kids that have to deal with this landscape.

Bezos isn’t CEO of Amazon. He’s still paying lots more.

If you completely take Musk out of the equation, my issues with Tesla are:

• The whole carbon credits thing
• The price point is premium, but the build quality often isn’t
• Other companies have largely eaten their lunch, launching solid EV’s that rival or better Tesla
• Their reputation was built off of the end-goal of mass-producing affordable EV’s, something they will now not do.

I’m all for this!

It’s what basically every other AI tool wants to do, because building and operating LLM’s at this scale is horrifically expensive.

So let them do it. Those that want these tools will pay, and the 99.999% of people that don’t give a fuck about AI can just continue as normal.

Hell, if Google want to deshitify their search by removing the ML nonsense they’ve been loading into it for the last decade or so, even better! Let me pay for that too, and I’ll pay them exactly nothing.

Sounds like typical flag-shaggers, yearning for “the good old days” when there were four channels, you played in the road because the Tories took the playgrounds, etc - so they want to force it on their kids instead of accepting that the world has changed.

While I don’t think she should have been terminated from her role, I do wonder why this tactic seems to work so well.

Many smaller news outlets (especially in the UK) regularly run stories about a young woman going through employment disputes, being dumped in some way, or going through something borderline newsworthy, and many times these women have a OF page they actively promote.

I wonder if it’s just easy stories from people that want to be promoted?

I’m glad to see that something I’ve been raising for about 18 months now seems to be coming true.

IMO this is happening all over the tech industry. I work for a competitor, and the shift over the last year or two has been seismic. Back when Google was the king, new engineers wanted to build “the next Google”, and startups were where the magic happened. The big tech companies saw this, and they hired the best and brightest en-masse to work on moonshot ideas. For the last 5-8 years, you could work for Google, Amazon, Apple, any of the big tech companies in any number of industries - if it worked out, your career would be solid, if it didn’t you’d move on to the next thing while keeping your job. All of this was secured with great salaries, freedom of movement to live/transfer wherever you want, and job security (assuming you’re not at Amazon).

Now, not only are the moonshots gone, but also the following:

• Scrutiny for all hiring, with established teams struggling to secure any headcount to improve, or even maintain due to previous layoffs.
• A push to do more with less, often resulting in obvious enshitification to boost metrics or make more profit at the expense of users.
• A focus on speed over completeness - with companies favouring technical debt, hiring externally to get people in seats fast, etc. You could be a strong performer internally, and you’d be overlooked for an internal role because someone with far fewer credentials can be brought in immediately from outside.
• Zero job security. Layoffs have been rolling for over a year now, and with companies that PIP, you’ve got the worry of both being laid off AND being one of the 5-15% of people that are fired to meet performance quotas.
• Leaders taking zero ownership, or skirting the culture and rules of the company, like with Amazon going on CEO “gut feeling” while expecting others to use data, or Google basically shifting towards being “ungoogley” and “evil”.

Outside of pay, the benefits of working for a big tech company are gone. The innovation is happening elsewhere, and these companies have purposely bled talent to appease shareholders. Students don’t want to prep for months for a job that’ll fire them months later, especially when opportunities are limited. Finally, no one wants to work on things that don’t generate profit - especially when whole orgs are laid off or shut down, all while the leaders that set the direction to fall off a cliff are parachuted into roles elsewhere in the business. That last one is key, because tech employees now look at VP+ level moves as a sign of them losing their job, another distraction from being able to do your job or caring about your output.

So yes, Google will be the new IBM, and I don’t think there’s a way back for any of the FAANG tech companies. They either course correct through new leadership and focusing on their talent/prouct again, or they become relics of the 2000’s and crumble when their share price inevitably drops.

ChatGPT is nowhere near being able to replace search, and even if it was remotely similar, many people don’t even really know what it is, whereas Google is ubiquitous with search.

To say they only have a lock on Gmail is doing them a huge disservice. They own a huge part of online advertising and search.

That’s not really accurate. Layoffs tend to be at a senior leadership level, and I’d be shocked if they had an idea of IC performance. Most, if not all layoffs in tech at large companies have been team/org-based, and isn’t a reflection of ability.