Tech industry folks have been so coddled for decades that many think their astonishing intellect has earned them a cushy life rather than being in a field with high labor demand. It’s one reason tech workers are often considered arrogant and out of touch… and that’s why people think they can get paid to lightly orchestrate agents to do their jobs. Oof.
If efficiency gains create an oversupply of tech labor, even the bestie BFF bosses will notice the hoards of more qualified people who will kill for any job that pays more than CVS or Uber— so a lot less than most developers make now. The tech world regularly, shamelessly cuts higher-earning higher-skill workers for cheaper “good enough” replacements. Best of luck.
Even many of the folks that see the writing on the wall have fanciful visions of using their astonishingly capable genius developer brain to maintain or quickly re-achieve some of their high status in the trades. As a union tradesman, I’d find that misconception hilarious if I didn’t feel so bad for them. A lot of folks are going to have a lot of bitter medicine to swallow.
It's basically the blog post version of "Yes | Remind me later". I have very little trust at this point that anything tied to short term financial interest will change (OneDrive, AI, Recall, Microsoft accounts vs local accounts, data collection etc.). Obviously (to us, but apparently not to them) it is ultimately tied to long term financial interest. I don't believe they are able to see that based on the decisions they've been taking the last decade.
Short-term profits vs long-term profits is a tension that many companies end up making bad choices about. A comment elsewhere in this discussion by safety1st mentioned the stages companies tend to go through. First, growth, growing market share by providing a good product. Then, in safety1st's words, "TAKING PROFITS wherever it can find them. This includes but is not limited to cutting back on its investment in product, as much as it can. If it can cut budgets and quality and give that money to the shareholders it will. If it can inject ads into the product or resell your data it will." Then decline, because you've focused so hard on short-term profit that you've sacrificed the long term.
The only part of safety1st's comment that I disagree with is that all companies go through this. It's not true. Most do, but not all. There are SOME companies that manage to resist short-term thinking, and remain focused on long-term profit by continuing to make good products that their customers like. They do tend to be the ones owned by a small number of people, rather than publicly traded, but they exist. To name just one, McMaster-Carr. They still make quality machine parts, just as they did about a hundred twenty-five years ago when they got started, and from all reports their customers remain quite happy with them. Their website is one of the better websites out there, too.
But yes, Microsoft is falling victim to the short-term vs long-term thinking trap that so many other companies fall into. They're trying to claim, in this post, that they're going back to thinking long-term, i.e. NOT alienating the customers you'll still need ten, twenty, thirty years from now. But I don't think they're truly shifting their mindset.
This. Just asking it to ask you questions before proceeding has saved me so much time from it making assumptions I don’t want. It’s the single most important part of almost all my prompts.
Flagging is the new downvote, with extra power. No one can say no to you, if enough people (who knows how many, 1, 5, 20? Definitely an order of magnitude less that upvotes least) do it the system automatically hides it. And unless the mods care, the system can be abused very easily.
I’ve seen posts with 500+ upvotes that were still flagged. I think the balance and automation around flagging is completely off and too easily abused.
Along with MAGA supporters who buy pizzas and leave threatening messages for judges and politicians who rule against or oppose Trump after he makes a social media post decrying them. Senator Elissa Slotkin talked about all the death threats she and her family received when the president was calling her treasonous and saying she along with the five others who were reminding military and intelligence members of their oath to the Constitution.
That's because we stopped calling others out for shameful, disrespectful or unethical behavior as a rule. So there is less or nothing to be ashamed about anymore.
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