Mostly backend for web development (django most recently), though I'm moderately proficient at react and JavaScript for frontend. Also testing and QA.

I've been applying to all of full stack, backend web dev, and test/QA. No bites. Learning more languages might help, but I feel like having 0 years experience in (say) Rust won't get a lot of traction.

Maybe it's imposter syndrome but I feel like I've always been a sort of middle of the road engineer. Good at some things , bad at others. It feels like with all the layoffs and AI, there's less room for broadly competent people. There's just going to be the top tier, fighting and getting paid less.

Wow those replies are terrible. I regret clicking.

If you own the company (or a lot of shares), you gain wealth by doing literally nothing if the company's value increases. On top of probably just keeping the profits. Plus the "use my stock as collateral, give me a low interest personal loan, that's not taxed as income lol" wealth back.

I'm not talking so much about the petit bourgeoisie that's working hard every day making donuts to sell. I'm talking about big C Capital that buys something and just takes the profits.

The CEO at my old job can't code. He can't do UI design. He doesn't do sales or customer service. He sometimes talks to other rich assholes to fundraise, but mostly he makes questionable decisions and hurts morale. But if the company goes big, he'll get filthy rich and the people who actually built the thing will not.

That said, higher taxes on the wealthy (plus closing loopholes like the loan thing) would help. So would universal basic income.

It's funny because conservatives cry about "welfare queens" that just take money for nothing, but it's the rich who can do that. If you have a few million, you can just coast on investments. Little to no risk. Once again, projection.

You could also have salaries 🤷

The problem to solve is a handful of people who aren't really doing much work get most of the profits. There may be other solutions.

Wasn't he already rich, though? Once you're over, like, $10mm, you don't really need to work anymore.

And then when he took the money, I think he just squandered it on bullshit.

If someone handed me 2 billion dollars I'd probably be building trains and houses, or maybe something for the climate crisis. Not jerking off alone in a house full of candy. He's a shithead failure of a human, if that's all he's done.

so what will be the point of failure

It feels like a lot of the maga hats will die cheering and waving trump flags. I don't know if that's historically precedented.

It's going to be hard to make any fixes when like 30-50% of the country wants hell on earth.

Job market is brutal, at least for tech. Every job gets 100s of applicants. There's a lot of AI slop. Offered salaries are down. For some reason, management wants people to go into the office (which is among other problems a pay cut compared to WFH).

I've been unemployed since the winter. Had a handful of phone screens. Haven't made it to a technical round yet.

My old job laid off all but one guy and a contractor.

Honestly, I kind of want to get out of tech but I don't know what I can do that doesn't require like a degree or is terrible.

Unemployment runs out soon. Not that the pittance the state gives is enough to live on. I asked what I should do when it runs out and they were like, awkward shrug.

Meanwhile there are billionaires living content lives of luxury.

Taking things too seriously, don't most plants benefit from their fruit being eaten as part of their lifecycle?

but they should be run by the government and get their own parking infrastructure.

Well, yeah, but some soulless husks want to profit. Personally I think we should hold some "disruption" conferences on a remote island, and then "forget" to pick them all up afterwards.

Also it's not like the workers typically get the long tail of profits. Most labor is only paid a salary, and the "owners" get to keep profiting. Workers should be entitled to the profits of their labor.

I found a setting that alleged to enable snoozing, but it doesn't seem to work. This is an older android phone though.

It would be helpful if my phone had a built in snooze function. Sometimes I get a text and I want to snooze it for an hour. Just dismiss the notification and remind me later.

mostly I avoid a lot of the big drains (social media, other than lemmy) and tell people I'll get back to them within 24 hours.

I tell people I have a 24 hour response window. Barring exceptional circumstances, I'll get back to a message within 24 hours. Often faster, but that's not guaranteed.

Make sure you speak clearly with minimal slang, or they might willfully misinterpret what you're saying to deny your rights. Like to think you want a lawyer dog.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/suspect-asks-for-a-lawyer-dawg-judge-says-he-asked-for-a-lawyer-dog.html

AI is a mistake and we would be better off if the leadership of OpenAI was sealed in an underground tomb. Actually, that's probably true of most big org's leadership.

Maybe, but now people will go "oh driving is easier so I'll drive" and now there are more cars in the system, and thus more traffic. If you instead also make rail easy, some of them will go "oh I'll just take the subway" and not drive.

This is an interesting point. They're going to get the final search string though, so does it matter much if when I search "baked potato recipe" they also get requests for [baked, baked potato, baked potato recipe] (assuming they denounce/split on space/etc) ?

I think Mage: The Awakening 2nd edition was a cleaner version of the game, but yeah no version is something you can just phone in.

I ran a game of it a year or so back, and one player just refused to read the book in any detail. She was always frustrated by not knowing what she could do, or how to do it effectively.

If they were smart, they would realize conservatism's solutions (eg: hurt the queers, blacks, etc) won't actually solve their problems.

I mentioned Zohran to my aging mother (who lives in a suburb, and cannot vote in NYC elections). She was like, "You didn't vote for him did you? He's a communist"

We decided not to go into details right then, but it's wild what a deep, emotional, response the idea of "communism" evokes. I don't know what she even thinks it is.