You were replying to “The job market is much different when you're just starting out”. The past is not now, and you are not just starting out, so your comparison of their position and yours is invalid IMO.
> and will do it again.
Good for you for sticking to your guns, I'm about to do the same with a company that has all but said “dig into AI or get left behind”¹, but those starting out as freshly minted grads likely do not have the luxuries that we might have² and the jobs market is freakishly competitive for them right now³ in a way that I don't think it ever has been before.
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[1] time will tell if I leave of my own volition before getting kicked!
[2] experience (both actual experience and experience “talking the talk”) to help getting the next gig, a mortgage paid off so making ends meet is easier, etc.
[3] It had been heading that way for a while, the recent explosion of GenAI+agnetics has made it worse.
Lack of adequate calories and nutrition negatively compound. You lose the ability to focus, you increase your medical risk.
I experienced that in my childhood. It’s terrible. I did very poorly academically when I did not have access to food. It’s astonishing to me how fast my academic performance improved after consistently having access to food.
Saying you would rather put yourself at risk instead of hedge your answer on a minor interview question in order to increase your chances of getting a job offer seems like an issue with prioritization.
That's fucked up. If those are your values, that's all well and good, but you can't expect someone else to make the same decision.
Job interviews are a performance where you demonstrate you understand what professional expectations are and can abide by them. It's not dishonesty to not respond "I drink too much" when they ask "what's your biggest weakness?" just like it's not dishonesty to respond "can't complain" when someone asks "how are you today," even if you have a lot to complain about.
Once I interviewed someone and they described their tax fraud scheme to me. We didn't go with that candidate. Not per se because they committed tax fraud; because they demonstrated terrible judgment.
Having any kind of integrity is expensive, financially, emotionally and sometimes physically.
Software development is not that high-stakes of a job anyway. There is always another interview. I got another one soon enough, where the employee AI policy fully aligned with mine, so telling the truth was an easy, pleasant experience.
Imagine you are a pilot or doctor. Any kind of interview reply that doesn't fully align with your values now carries a real risk for human lives.
What I'm telling you is that it isn't an issue of integrity, and that only makes sense from a false premise - that the strictest, most blunt response is what is truest, what is being asked for, or a reflection of your alignment with the organization's values. That's really not the case. If I asked you how you were doing would you tell me about the traumas you're currently processing? Would you feel like it was a violation of your integrity if you didn't?
If that's what your values are, okay, I'm not going to tell you how to live, but it would be premised on a misunderstanding of what "hi, how are you today?" means.
I am not worried about what my pilot said in a job interview, I'm worried about what the check pilot thinks of their performance. Worrying about what they said in a job interview is like worrying about what they scored on the SAT. Once that hurdle is cleared, it instantly becomes irrelevant, because it was never measuring what we're actually interested in. It's a filter for people who are completely unqualified, it doesn't really measure a level of performance or alignment.
Culture begins at the front door, corporate or personal.
I would expect absolute sincerity from pilot or a doctor during the interview, including history of mental health and professional mistakes. Authority over lives of people must come with full transparency. If you are caught lying or misrepresenting your experience and skills, not only you would lose your job, you should be blacklisted from occupation as well.
In every skill, everyone benefits from honesty, both employers and employees. But I am aware this is a minority view.
Again, while I respect that that is your view of sincerity, I don't agree, and I'm not talking about lying, which is obviously inappropriate. Framing is not the same as lying (though taken to an extreme it becomes a lie of omission). There's also just a misunderstanding of what is being asked by questions like "what's your biggest weakness?" Language can be ambiguous, just because a very literal and extreme interpretation of a question exists doesn't mean that is what is being asked.
I don't think we're going to bridge this gap but I also don't think that's really necessary. People have different values and it is what it is.
What if the way you use AI isn't particularly important to you? Are you willing to sacrifice employment for a principle you wouldn't draw as a line in the sand?
Sometimes it's okay to say "I don't know" and it's okay to say "I don't care" and it's okay to say "It doesn't matter much to me".
Every interview is corpospeak where you infer the intended meaning of words anyway.
We live in an ecosystem where we (engineers/developers) can promote ourselves and display our skills/acumen/values/professionalism/responsibility in an unequivocal way. Regardless of your experience level.
I bootstrapped myself from poverty to Staff software engineer, past the age of 45.
Is that privileged? Or sheer will and force of effort?
Privilege, yes. You had the privilege to dedicate time to learning skills required, obtaining an education, probably bias during hiring processes, etc.
Even though your position might be the result of effort on your part, you do have to acknowledge that you’re privileged to be in a position to expend that effort on what you want, instead of something else, like finding fresh water daily, or whatever. It’s not sheer will that you were born in a (even marginally) more favorable environment than others.
The term “privilege” here doesn’t just mean a trust fund nepo baby.
How far could you reduce this down? Do you only clap for malnourished Ethiopian babies that can't find waterthat grow up into full silicon Valley software engineers?
You can be dismissive all you want, but the point is to acknowledge you don’t understand everyone’s situation and you can’t make sweeping generalizations like “I did it and I can judge you if you _didn’t_ do it”.
You can also acknowledge that most people abandon their principles long before they are anywhere close to starving and will not be harmed (physically) by being reminded of that.
To the people subscribing to "privilege theory", all positive differences are privilege and all negative differences are oppression, no matter if earned or self inflicted.
That's the logical conclusion you're forced to arrive at if you take these people seriously.
OK how about some real achievements in life, is raising kids the hard way? Career is but a small portion of QoL and overall achievements as human beings, basically all of us software devs these days live have very above-average incomes although most feel like they are deserved or even not enough. So studying from poverty to software is an achievement and big move, usually, but what specific position afterwards is not that important or impressive, its just a question of a) mental capacity, mostly genetic and b) effort put into work, while not elsewhere.
Ie I increased my salary, doing same job, all 100% perm position, roughly 30x compared to my first fulltime software dev job after university. Who cares? It doesn't mean anything, just an afterthought. I am father of 2 small kids, and trying my best to be a good father and role model, often succeeding, sometimes failing. Its by far the hardest effort of my life, it takes relentless 20-25 years and I see otherwise brilliant folks failing at this hard left and right.
Also I wish folks in IT were a bit more humble and considered other engineering careers, with +- same effort taking to get a degree, and much worse career progress/compensation/freedom to choose one's path. Arrogance is much more rare there.
Hacker news is full of people having given up, building torment nexii and coping/rationalizing _incredibly_ hard.
So while I agree that privilege is certainly a factor, so is what I've just said.
A lot of people here live very cushy lives that cushion them from very pointy thoughts and questions.
As someone who too has to live in this world, I'd rather they didn't.
When I was starting out in my career it was "take the first job offer that comes along or starve/become homeless" so no, sometimes the personal cost would be unreasonably high to expect of anyone
This effectively does mean that I was not a moral actor at the time
Highly paid enginners hiding behind "I have no choice I would be hungry" are usually just lying to themselves.
And you dont even get these nearly as often from people who work in lower paid positions. Or who are actually making moral tradeoffs that affects their income.
I have seen engineers take paycut or risk it because of this or that moral conviction. Not wanting to lie to customer, refusing job for gambling company, working one day less per week so that he volunteers for biblical something.
Just telling management no or just communicating about your work with ai or lack of it are not even one of those.
I believe that I must be truthful because of my faith, though I understand people feeling pressure otherwise. I have had to quit places that I found lying to part of the employees before.
It is very sad to me that people do feel that pressure, and how the current job market is.
On topic with the article, I would love to be able to trust AI with more, but have found that I have some useful moments with it, but more because of Internet search not being how it used to be for quality.
I think it depends. The people that I know that have made significant sacrifices to live along their morals are usually people who 1) are intensely bitter when others will not sacrifice as much as them; 2) are completely understanding of people who will not sacrifice as much as them or acknowledge that they simply have less to sacrifice than others. For example someone who is willing to live the "dirtbag" lifestyle out of their car to dedicate to their outdoorsman activity who is either bitter others have the relative financial security or feel immensely grateful they have consistently good enough health that allows them to be outdoors with so little resources.
For example I think the decision to stick to certain morals is very hard if someone has a disabled dependent, are disabled themselves, or require consistent access to healthcare. There are different lines for different people of course. Our ire shouldn't go towards individuals who make these decisions but the people in power who force others to be in a position where these decisions need to be made.
"Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes"