Engineering managers should not exist? I agree in an ideal world they shouldn’t. Ideally all teams should self-organize in harmony and dance barefoot singing kumbaya forming a perfect holacracy. Alas, we don’t live in an ideal world, and some people like me decided is a problem worth working on even if we don’t enjoy it as much as writing code.
> Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc).
I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user. Netflix revenue keeps growing (and subscribers), despite the "crackdown" on password sharing that many predicted would cause massive cancellations.
> I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user.
You overestimate your view of piracy. The average person isn't curating libraries of lossless music collections and carefully re-encoding Anime dubs to match their sound system.
People are Googling for the hundreds of sites that will stream a feed of a DirecTV box somewhere showing an NFL game, or show grandma how to connect to the Plex server their cousin runs.
My comment was explicitly replying to an argument about how streaming services would "suffer" because of how piracy is much easier today. There's no signs of that. Just because Netflix mentions that risk in their SEC filings. The article admits as much, it's their responsibility and of course if there were no other alternatives it'd be better for Netflix, but is hardly something that has changed significantly to make a dent in their business. As I said, subscriptions and revenue keeps growing, there's no evidence of them "suffering" because of the alternative (viable to many) that piracy provides.
> I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user. Netflix revenue keeps growing [...]
According to TFA piracy is also growing rapidly, so it's apparently easy enough.
You may be thinking of usenet, torrenting, seedboxes etc. when it comes to piracy, but there are also (ad supported) public web sites where you can watch almost any content, or IPTV providers where you can pay a yearly fee and watch most things streaming providers offer once set up.
The number of 'normies' who talk about torrenting casually is a decent amount. Most at least know what it is. If not, they "have a guy" they get media from.
People that cannot afford Netflix will go to great lengths to get the content they want. They're also not mutually exclusive. Piracy growing doesn't mean Netflix isn't. People pay for Netflix AND download pirated movies all the time.
It's the lack of content availability that pushed them over the edge. Sports are a special case, notoriously hard that is super stupid and pushing people to piracy. I tried paying many times to watch a game my kid wanted and either the dumb apps or websites would not work on my TV. Make it easy to pay for the content and most people will take the easy route rather than search online for ad-ridded or dubious websites (unless they can't really afford it and then is not a real loss for the company anyway).
They talk about piracy "services," which is not your normal torrent user presumably. I guess it's Popcorn Time and the like, which makes it somewhat easier for the general populace.
Yeah, still, it's easier, but not as easy nor convenient or widely available (e.g there's no Popcorn app in that TV you just bought. Defaults matter a lot.
Apple has spent years teaching people that if it runs without modification, it's safe. End of story. It came from the App Store, or it's allowed by Safari, so it's good to go.
Couple that with malware getting more subtle [0], and Windows Defender getting better, and most people will assume they're virus free and have been for years (even if they're not).
[0] think cryptominers in the background and data exfiltration vs so many browser toolbars you get 3" of any given webpage at a time, and pop-ups on pop-ups
Debating is another form of waiting. You're not waiting to be told, but you're waiting to reach consensus. As long as the decision makers have bias for action you won't get caught up in either debating endlessly or waiting to be told what to do. Finding out how long to "wait" in either incarnation is only learned through experience IMHO, using general principles such as "one way" vs "two way" doors, etc.
As someone with family members with ADHD and as a manager who has had employees with ADHD, the challenge is differentiate and find those cases where it can be "advantageous". Is not easy at all. Also, there are different types and levels of ADHD. It's not a super power to forget things you wanted to remember and being late all the time, there's no benefit on that for anyone. Sometimes the extra creativity or hyper-focus on things that are not a goal for an organization is not an advantage. It's very complicated. I wish I had a solution.
Yeah, agreed. My dad had undiagnosed ADHD until a year or so ago. He loved research and got a PhD, but couldn't do the tasks that were expected of a professor and ended up not getting tenure. After that he struggled to hold a job for most of my childhood.
It's definitely not all upside, especially in modern contexts. But I do believe what I said—he would have thrived in the more Wild West academia of Isaac Newton and John Locke. The things he struggled to do were the accidental complexities of the job of professor, not the truly important aspects of that role.
> He loved research and got a PhD, but couldn't do the tasks that were expected of a professor and ended up not getting tenure. After that he struggled to hold a job for most of my childhood.
This sounds horrific for both the individuals and their families. Talented individuals with so much to offer not finding their place.
> He would have thrived in the more Wild West academia of Isaac Newton and John Locke.
Yes, I agree. I just don't know how to create a system where the strengths of such individuals are leveraged. If an organization of 100 people is trying to build a bridge and the tasks required are challenging for the 1-5 ADHD individuals in the group, the persons will struggle and the organization will struggle. Both individuals and organizations need to get better at routing those individuals to the right places to leverage their strengths. This is true of anyone but 10x more important for ADHD or other disabilities.
> The things he struggled to do were the accidental complexities of the job of professor, not the truly important aspects of that role.
I have mixed feelings about this because sometimes I have heard people dismiss aspects of work they're not good at as not important. E.g I have had sw engineers claim they solved the problem in their head and writing it down and communicating it to others is not important. At large organizations is just as important unfortunately.
> I have mixed feelings about this because sometimes I have heard people dismiss aspects of work they're not good at as not important. E.g I have had sw engineers claim they solved the problem in their head and writing it down and communicating it to others is not important. At large organizations is just as important unfortunately.
Yeah, I get that. I guess when I say "important" I mean that we have hundreds of years' worth of examples of people doing great research and teaching without doing the kind of bookkeeping tasks that my dad couldn't keep up with (I honestly don't remember what they were, but it wasn't communicating—he's an avid writer).
There's no question that that part of the job isn't an inherent part of the researcher skillset, and to the extent that we need it to happen there's no reason it couldn't be either automated or done by a different group of people who have that skillset. For example, I often wonder how much we lost when having a secretary or executive assistant stopped being a available to anyone but the highest level employees.
Yes. I think is key to re-assess assumptions about what a job or role profile "should be" and make the requirements and expectations flexible to make room for those differences.
The news is Google layoffs and is interesting to many how the culture of such a large and influential tech company has changed. The person laid off is also a known OSS author (Subversion). If you don’t find it interesting you can just move on you know? Many others find these posts interesting and that’s enough according to HN guidelines.
We don't have any context to assess that. Depending on the complexity of the product and target customer sales cycle it can be perfectly normal to not close a deal in your first 4 months (one of which is December).
As a manager, I've been told at some companies they don't need me there after providing all documentation (emails, 1:1 notes, missed expectations, etc). I think is an attempt to avoid getting into live arguments between the employee and the manager. They think is "easier" for the company (if clearly less human and personal) to have someone else deliver the message and try to move on, not get into answering too many questions, etc.