polotek

polotek, 3 months ago to random

Somehow found myself arguing with someone who talks about "the fediverse" like it is a) a singular thing and b) a separate thing from bluesky. It helped remind me of a fundamental truth about talking to people who are mad on the internet. What they're mad about is entirely uncorrelated with how well they understand the issues. Anger is an emotion. So is fear.

polotek, 23 days ago to random

Questions for software engineers about estimates. Feel free to answer any of these in any order.

Have you ever had an explicit conversation about how to estimate projects? How did you learn?

If you feel that you were never taught the skill in any real sense, what do you feel you're doing at work when you're asked for estimates? Are you making it up? Have you developed your own personal guidelines?

On average, how confident are you in your own estimates? How do you measure success?

polotek, 2 months ago to random

Alex and I met a long time ago. When the js community was still niche and fun. We've stayed loosely connected, and I watched as he has done his best to steer the community away from the ridiculous place we currently find ourselves. For Alex to be entirely fed up is not a small thing. He has spent more than a decade being unfathomably nice and patient about it. I was there.
https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/112106647240601587

polotek, 3 months ago to random

I'm gonna spend the next hour or 2 learning a little more about performance in mastodon. I haven't looked at since this thread earlier in the week.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/111966879667140469

polotek, 3 months ago to random

I'm still thinking about how mastodon should be a hot bed of developer a activity trying to improve the platform. But it's not. Partly because of a small minority of users who flame anyone who tries to do anything. And partly because control of the core was captured by a small, insular group of people who don't know how to foster collaborative growth. So much potential being wasted.

polotek, 2 months ago to random

Last week was my first time really looking into what settings are available to admins who run their own instance. I was a bit surprised to find there isn't much there. At least through masto.host. I don't think they hide settings though. Only some of the deeper technical stuff.

polotek, 2 days ago to random

I started down this road because I asked about seeing a full activity log on my own server instance. And it turns out you just can't.

My goal is to make it easy to stand up two separate mastodon instances on my laptop. Then I can get them to talk to reach other and observe what is actually happening. I think that'll teach me a lot

https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112453817656490883

polotek, 5 months ago to random

I feel like the asshole here. But let's talk about it. I agree that a lot of people were "spooked" by this. But I think we've really confused everyone about what the problems are here. Dropbox is getting into trouble for being transparent about what they're doing. I thought that's what we wanted.
https://mastodon.xyz/@nextcloud/111579693858344707

polotek, 3 months ago to random

I keep having a specific kind of exchange about this mastodon/bluesky thing. It goes something like this.

Me: I have a bunch of concerns around what actions people are taking if they care about their privacy on here. Yelling at one guy is not sufficient.

Them: Of course he's wrong! You must be saying you don't care about privacy at all!

It's pretty frustrating.

polotek, 1 month ago to random

Open ended question. Do you have any investments besides stocks/bonds? Why did you get into them? Do you have a strategy, or was it more happenstance? If you have a strategy for investments, I'd like to hear about that too.

(Without judgment. It's okay to say cryptocurrency. But I will not be engaging directly with that topic.)

polotek, 1 month ago to random

“We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action,” he said in the memo, which the company posted online. “But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/22/google-nimbus-israel-protest-fired-workers/

polotek, 3 months ago to random

I've spent significant time on Bluesky and Mastodon for the last few months. They're very different experiences, and I like them both for different reasons. But I think they are headed in different directions. They're going to continue to diverge in terms of what they offer.

polotek, 3 months ago to random

I still maintain that the at protocol means that bluesky should be included in the definition of "the fediverse". I know it will take people some time to come around on that. And certainly bsky still has some promises to deliver on. But the actual fediverse will be so much messier than what people have in their heads right now. The lines will all be blurry and gray. By design.

polotek, 1 month ago to random

Me: I think I need more flexibility than what mastodon offers right now.

Them: What do you mean? Mastodon is super flexible! What do you need?

Me: Well I don't like X and I'd rather have Y.

Them: Oh, yeah it definitely doesn't do that. But you're sort of wrong for wanting that anyway. Glad I could help!

polotek, 24 days ago to random

I think we need to talk more explicitly about why we're settling on "safety" as the term we are pursuing. As a manager, I've been trying to reconcile that term with some of the real expectations and pressures of the workplace. I don't think we are doing enough to create clarity. And I worry instead that talking about "safety" is creating unrealistic expectations.
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/112349435602632842

polotek, 22 days ago to random

Yesterday we had a great conversation about engineers and delivering estimates. I wanna talk about the other side of it too.

For managers and leaders. What do you expect out of engineers when it comes to estimates? How do you evaluate whether you're getting good estimates?

What do you do with the estimates you receive from engineers? How does it impact other work activities and timelines?

Finally, how does the ability to give confident estimates factor into how you evaluate your engineers?

polotek, 4 months ago to random

So mastodon doesn't do quoted posts. I think I understand the goal of avoiding that feature. People have decided that "dunking" is the overriding usage of quoting and that we should avoid the inherent toxicity.

But quoted posts are also the foundation of true discourse in a medium like this. It is the primary way to start new conversation that is an offshoot of an existing conversation rather than a direct response.

I'm finding it hard to do that on here. And the result is I just don't post.

polotek, 24 days ago to random

I gotta tell you folks. One thing we need to talk way more about is estimates. Engineers are getting way too comfortable with this notion that things are impossible to estimate. Good estimation is a skill. People do it all the time. Yes it can be tough. Yes you can still fail at it. But pretending it's not a reasonable expectation to ask of people making huge amounts of money makes us sound ridiculous.
https://mastodon.social/@bitmaker/112366918452706612

polotek, 4 months ago to random

I can't imagine what it's like trying to become a developer in this age of tech "influencers". I've spent quite a bit of time trying to absorb the content. It feels very disorienting. It feels like the big problem is that it's on a "weekly new cycle" treadmill. People can't talk deeply about a topic. Instead they have to jump around to whatever feels popular this week. Sure we wanna educate people, but we gotta keep these numbers up.

polotek, 1 day ago to random

I'm still thinking about this conversation. I had some thoughtful exchanges about it yesterday. Today I'm having a different thought.

I feel like we spend a lot of time trying to take the things we like and make them free. And conversely we spend a lot of time taking the things we don't like and trying to force companies to pay us more money to do it.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112480963476171110

polotek, 3 months ago to random

Okay. I guess I'm gonna make this account a little more annoying. I'm gonna spend a little time each week exploring my mastodon experience and talking about how to make it better.

I say "annoying" because I'd rather be interesting than just useful. And I think this kind of content is the opposite. Potentially useful but overall not the most interesting. (It's okay if you disagree. We don't have to talk about it)
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/111966798276024291

polotek, 2 months ago to random

I'm not sure how often I've directly articulated this fundamental change in my thinking. Many people have been convinced that arguing and debating your goals and values with those in the opposition is the best way to influence people. I just don't believe that anymore. Debate has it's place. But it's not the best lever to reach the people I want to reach.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112050290234438314

polotek, 2 days ago to random

I've spent the last several days trying to get a local mastodon build running on my laptop. I've gotten pretty far, but I have yet to see an actual UI in my browser.

So far, I've been trying out various attempts to run it in docker. That should be easier than trying to get the various components set up myself. But for some reason it's not. Getting mastodon configured properly is pretty complex. Getting everything right "out of the box" feels pretty error prone.

polotek, 1 month ago to random

I'm reaching the end of my time as an unemployed person. I have been so fortunate to be able to not work at all for the last year. It's hard to convey all the things I've learned about myself.

polotek, 24 days ago to random

I try not to be this person all the time. But occasionally I like to gently remind people that the causality is backwards. Google’s profits are soaring in part because they’re doing layoffs. That’s why they are doing layoffs. There are always 2 ways to increase profits. Make more revenue or decrease operating expenses. (Hint: paying employees is an operating expense) https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/112360560095763105