EnderMB

joined 1 year ago
[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago

One of the two bosses didn't turn up for work one Friday. On the weekend, we all received a call that he had died.

Monday was horrible. We had new starters that came into an office full of people crying, and people from our HQ joining to set people up with any counselling.

The worst part? We had deadlines to meet, and clients didn't give a fuck that the person responsible had died. One large client outright said to me on the phone on that first Monday "that's sad and all, but I don't really give a fuck, have it done by end of day". To HQ's credit, after I had told them they asked me to stop what I was doing (had already delivered the work) and our CEO called them and told them we were to terminate our contract with them. One woman I worked with, a Project Manager, was repeatedly brought to tears by clients checking on work or trying to sort out meetings with a guy that was in a morgue. I was able to power through, up until the day of his funeral when we all went to the pub after and saw his children playing without a care in the world.

Initially, it brought us all closer together, but within three months people started to leave - and by the end of the year the HQ decided to just close the office entirely, firing everyone that was still there.

I hate to say it, looking back, but this gave me without question one of the best answers for behavioural interviews in tech, since I ultimately ended up having to help deliver everything and onboard people in a stressful scenario. Knowing the guy, it's what he would have wanted.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

No idea, I don't work in fintech, but was it a fundamental problem that required a solution?

I've worked with blockchain in the past, and the uses where it excelled were in immutable bidding contracts for shared resources between specific owners (e.g. who uses this cable at x time).

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (4 children)

I'm not entirely sold on the technology, especially since immutable ledgers have been around long before the blockchain, but also due to potential attack vectors and the natural push towards centralisation for many applications - but I'm just one man and if people find uses for it then good for them.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 19 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

When the rats start jumping, the ship is sinking.

They might be rats, but it's a good sign.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 49 points 10 hours ago (8 children)

It's worth noting that the new CEO is one of few people at Amazon to have worked their way up from PM and sales to CEO.

With that in mind, while it's a hilariously stupid comment to make, he's in the business of selling AWS and its role in AI. Take it with the same level of credibility as that crypto scammer you know telling you that Bitcoin is the future of banking.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 27 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I have IBS, and while I've had many close calls I can proudly say that I've never shit myself. As someone that's basically a flight risk for accidental pooping, as well as having heard these stories before in-person, I often wonder if more people have stomach/bowel problems than they'd like to let on.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Oh for sure, it's not perfect, and IMO this is where the current improvements and research are going. If you're relying on a LLM to hit hundreds of endpoints with complex contracts it's going to either hallucinate what it needs to do, or it's going to call several and go down the wrong path. I would imagine that most systems do this in a very closed way anyway, and will only show you what they want to show you. Logically speaking, for questions like "should I wear a coat today" they'll need a service to check the weather in your location, and a service to get information about the user and their location.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I had a chat with someone that is a Senior Staff Engineer at a huge company a while ago, on what I'd say is a pretty big service that millions use.

They don't write much code any more, but they debug a lot of issues. The way they described the workflow to mastery is:

  • If you know nothing, ask someone that knows something
  • If you know something, Google, and there will be answer from an expert
  • If you're an expert and Google doesn't work, read the docs and specs from the masters
  • If you're a master, start writing the specs, and offer addendums for when the spec needs to change.

IMO, Googling gets you 99% of the way there in many situations, but if you know nothing the answer might be in front of you and you wouldn't know it.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I work on LLM's for a big tech company. The misinformation on Lemmy is at best slightly disingenuous, and at worst people parroting falsehoods without knowing the facts. For that reason, take everything (even what I say) with a huge pinch of salt.

LLM's do NOT just parrot back falsehoods, otherwise the "best" model would just be the "best" data in the best fit. The best way to think about a LLM is as a huge conductor of data AND guiding expert services. The content is derived from trained data, but it will also hit hundreds of different services to get context, find real-time info, disambiguate, etc. A huge part of LLM work is getting your models to basically say "this feels right, but I need to find out more to be correct".

With that said, I think you're 100% right. Sadly, and I think I can speak for many companies here, knowing that you're right is hard to get right, and LLM's are probably right a lot in instances where the confidence in an answer is low. I would rather a LLM say "I can't verify this, but here is my best guess" or "here's a possible answer, let me go away and check".

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

It's depressing that this isn't the common viewpoint.

Some people commit crimes that are truly sickening, but even in those circumstances the point of prison is rehabilitation and separation of them from the public. Having it become a place for people to fetishize punishment like it is in TV/movies is also sickening.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago (4 children)

A few questions here:

  • Why the fuck does Starbucks have a corporate jet? I know they're a global company, but surely the CEO doesn't need to be abroad that often?
  • Why would a company subsidise travel for a CEO to the tune of (likely) as much as he would get paid in a salary? If I were to tell my employer "I want to supercommute it'll cost you $100k" I'd be laughed out. Hell, if I asked for $100 I'd probably be laughed out of the room...

Jets aren't even remotely cheap to run. They cost millions, they cost tens of thousands to operate, and that doesn't include personnel costs or costs regarding runway rental or the kind of shit a CEO would need while in the air.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I'm surprised that Vimeo hasn't decided to take advantage of the enshittifcation of YouTube. They have been a social video platform for years, and are probably the best placed platform to come close to overtaking YouTube - should they choose to move away from the professional space and embrace the social aspects of video.

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