I only hope that our field becomes heavier in the upper age category. Then maybe people will be more sympathetic towards my fumbles around languages I use frequently. ... I feel like I am always looking something up.

Now how do I deal with an engineer who seems to be brilliant - though this is sometimes hard to gauge since code quality can be subjective - who always leaps in to answer things quicker and is loved by upper management because he, I guess, constantly codes even outside of work hours, but who is extremely grating to get along with. Lord I need a different job.

That sounds very familiar to me... I know of a guy like that, who will rapidly jump on and propose and implement half-baked "tactical" solutions to any production incident. As you say, he is valued by management, because he is very responsive, at all hours, and always has some kind of snake oil "fix" to offer for any problem, and generally maintains a bit of a "mad scientist" vibe.

The issue is that, most of his "fixes" are just rearranging deck chairs, increasing timeouts, decreasing timeouts, adding memory, upgrading random libraries, etc., and he's constantly operating in "emergency mode", trampling on other people's work and priorities to get his "urgent" stuff out the door. He also just sort of throws things at the wall - "what if we change / disable X to fix this, would that break any client use cases?"... well, I dunno buddy, you are the one proposing the change, you have access to the logs, you are the genius, why is it _my_ job to evaluate your stream of half-baked ideas to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Ultimately, we co-exist, and I'd even say there are things to learn from him, i.e. being responsive is important and hugely valued. Over time, I've learnt not to get sucked into his urgent, half-baked proposals to save the world, I just say look, if you think that's a good idea, go for it, do it, but... you don't get to force it down everyone's throat and pretend there is consensus, I have my own, different priorities that I am not going to drop for you.

I’d go so far as to say that you and this other engineer both fill vital roles on your team. It’s not that you’re right or he’s right; you’re both right.

I’ve been on teams where I needed to be the methodical engineer who carefully built critical infrastructure and agonized over every decision. I’m currently at a small startup that hasn’t yet reached breakeven, so I’m scrambling like crazy to build things our customers and investors will pay for. That’s what this team needs.

Thank goodness for both of you. Your team would be worse for it if they lacked either.

Could replace them both with an “overpaid” even-keeled and unemotional engineer who will make sure it fits just right…

Great insight and advice I need to take - your description captures my current situation almost to a tee, better than I’ve been able to understand it for myself, so thank you.

In addition to what you described, in my case this engineer quickly recognizes other highly-effective and/or important people, and aggressively tries to build that reputation by privately messaging and even privately demoing work where the recipient has some stake in the outcome.

I would onboard him to a project, sharing all of my tools, key contacts and personal insights, e.g.

“our manager Smith is hinting that there is a big customer interested in X capability, which I’ve discussed with their power user Wilson and product owner Flores informally in recent demos. I think we could use Y approach and want to start prototyping if we get the go-ahead”

This engineer would start messaging Flores, Wilson and Smith privately and schedule calls about X excluding me and other core maintainers to push the thing forward, often proposing Y in his own words.

This strategy worked wonders for him in terms of upward movement. He is a diligent and extremely responsive to important people. But the strong engineers from whom he has effectively stolen credit, or even the opportunity to have a seat at the table in critical early discussions, obviously resent it.

His direct manager is lackadaisical and basically just gets bombarded by this engineer asking for frequent, long 1-1 calls where he shares “his” accomplishments and ideas. I’ve watched this play out in person (we are a remote-only team except for big project-related events) — his manager clearly trying to leave the event after it concluded, keys in hand and facing his car door, everyone else has said goodbye and given space, and this engineer keeps him there talking for no less than 10 more minutes.

I’ve never met someone so comically ambitious and overzealous to be seen as the MVP He was promoted in record time, much to the frustration of stronger and more critical maintainers.

I am baffled by the whole thing, and just laugh at this point. My most charitable interpretation of manager’s actions are that they do recognize the dynamic, and just don’t care because ultimately their job is slightly easier for the meantime. But if any 2+ of the critical core maintainers split in frustration, the whole thing will suffer, badly

ETA: it seems to me that remote-only teams are particularly susceptible to this kind of thing getting out of hand, because the capacity for secret communication is immensely greater

I can see that talking directly to Flores, Wilson and Smith, and proposing other peoples ideas could be grating for others. However, another way of looking at it is, that's just called "taking initiative". There's nothing to stop _anyone_ from talking directly to Flores, Wilson and Smith, go meet with them, take them out to lunch, make friends with them, etc.

If people think that Y approach is good, and talk amongst themselves about it, but don't actually write it up, pitch it to the powers that be, "sell" it, etc., then people are going to do that for them.

If Flores, Wilson and Smith are overwhelmed with one on one chats and meetings, then they'll probably push back and organize some group meetings and communications that everyone is in on. Conversely, if _nobody_ is doing that, then that leaves things wide open for _someone_ to do that, and that person is actually adding some value in doing so.

The person I work with also has a habit of cornering people when they are leaving. If you him "goodnight, see you tomorrow" at 5:30p, and pick up a bag, he will somehow interpret that as an opportunity to broach a whole new topic, and tie you up for half an hour. He does it with senior people too, it can be interesting to watch... hard to say whether it is not picking up on the social cues, or just not caring...

Well I wouldn't characterize they guys work as half baked. I am rather shocked by how vast and deep his knowledge base appears to be. I guess the struggle for me personally I no longer feel like I bring anything valuable to the table and since this guy is very aggressive about being the first to answer anything I find myself giving up. I have kids and other duties and I just ... I guess I am getting old.

> implement half-baked "tactical"

That’s easy, though. What if he’s actually “brilliant” and very productive but hard to get along with

As a manager? Coach your report on his soft skills. Software dev is about being a good team member as much as a good individual contributor. If the strongest guy is dominating meetings and dominating the team's direction with his opinion, that's something to work on.

He has to give others space to contribute by not jumping in. And his manager should be coaching this directly. As the EM, you want your whole team to be able to confidently do what he does. Functioning teams have multiple engineers concurrently owning your scope.

If your company isn't toxic, over-working would also be seen as a negative because of the precedent it sets. If this guy wants to be a leader and not a monkey, he has to appreciate that. And senior/staff counts as "leader" here.

This sounds similar to the guy I'm working with. He's great in certain ways and takes his job seriously but can be really grating to work with. (Frankly, I think it probably has something to do with taking stimulants, just based on similarities between him and another engineer I worked with who was open about being on a big dose of stimulants, and who resembles this guy but about 2x worse.)

I would say no because microsoft seems to have a magical ability to over-complicate systems, UIs, etc. Not to mention the fact that they were out to crush Linux not so many years ago (through proxies even!). Trusting them to make good, unix-like choices seems ill-informed.

This is simultaneously funny and sad. I wonder when alcoholism will get a front row seat during zoom meetings (or even IRL meetings). "Can't help it hick I'm an alcoholic".

I think a lot of societal change these days can be summarized by the idea that self-labeling is seen as transforming something into "everyone else's problem".

Modern treatments do actually treat alcoholism like a disease. The one that cant be cured, but can be managed.

It is trying to remove the shame from the equation, because it is not a productive emotion. It makes people postpone and avoid steps necessary for treatment.

Yes but the issue here is that treatments exist for alcohol use disorder and that one cannot use the simple presence of alcohol use disorder as an excuse to dodge accountability.

And yet people are using things like "time blindness" as excuses.

I think socially it's because addiction is stigmatized heavily. Despite having real psychological disorders that fuel it, addiction is still largely viewed as self-inflicted. Of course this stigma doesn't come out of nowhere - people who are addicts almost always devolve into dangerous and asocial behavior. If someone is an asshole who stole 50 bucks from you to shoot up, it's easy to think they're a heroin addict because they're an asshole. But really it's the other way around.

As the great philosopher Hedberg once said, alcoholism is the only disease you can get yelled at for having.

Mitch Hedberg was a genius.

This is interesting point.

Western society has basically built a hyper capitalist system that creates individualistic consumers, but has failed to hold individuals accountable to minimum standards.

The bar has never been lower and we just sort of amble on as a lonely, isolated society so long as the stock market grows quarter to quarter.

No that is ridiculous. Stop blaming capitalism for every problem in the world, it just makes you look childish.

Especially when it comes to alcoholism. As if the soviet union was a bastion of soberness with a high bar or something.

> Stop blaming capitalism for every problem in the world, it just makes you look childish.

Economics is intertwined with every other study. We can't pretend socio-economics isn't real, social interactions fuel the economy and the economy influences our social interactions.

Also, making connections to way capitalism might fuel addictive disorders, such as, say, talking about advertising of alcohol and tobacco, does NOT mean that we are saying communism is perfect. Communism fuels disorders in other ways. It's actually quiet childish to take any analysis of capitalism as a praise of communism. It's the sort of "team sport" mentality you see in politics among the most uneducated and reductive among us.

If you want to criticize capitalism on a website run by literal capitalists then the onus is on you to propose a better alternative. So far none of the other economic systems that humans have applied at scale have worked out better. I mean Islamic fundamentalist theocracies have lower rates of alcoholism but that advantage comes with some pretty severe downsides.

But nobody is trying to prove or show a better alternative, that's my point. A critique of capitalism doesn't mean we should dismantle capitalism.

I don't get it, because we do this with other stuff all the time. I program in C#, guess what? I have plenty of critiques of C#. That doesn't mean I want C# to go die, I love C#. It seems to me everyone understands this... until it's capitalism. And then, suddenly, it's our first day on Earth.

Also capitalism, like everything, is not just one thing. It's a complex beast and there's infinite possible implementations of a capitalist economy. Nobody actually wants raw, unregulated capitalism because that sucks major ass. Yes, that's a technical phrase.

Meaning, we can, and should, be looking to progressively improve our economic system. I mean, it's what we've been doing since forever.

It was created because those hyperindividual consumers will not enact any political change as it requires numbers and solidarity, something that our society of snowflakes finds disgusting. Everything else is a byproduct.

I would like to know what sort of AI is trained to do this.

I have very similar problems with remembering "events" that people typically like to share. I have traveled to many memorable places (for those who are able to) but my recollection in terms of details that would move a conversation forward is sparse at best. It is really frustrating to be honest. My memory problem spills into work and tech and makes me wonder if I am going to be able to employ myself for the next 20 years (as I need to) or not. The deluge of details and the constant change ... it is exhausting.

I can type at the incredible level of 70wpm.

With the long tail, maybe repeat the same slotted pattern forming a triangle (of sorts) so that the tail can be shorter (and will be elevated from the ground). Just be careful not to make it too narrow.

The first season seriously builds up. The prison arc and the last episodes on Ferrix are absolutely top notch.