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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2025

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  • I never understand places that dont have some sort of work management methodology.

    In technology, we often use agile. Its complicated, but one key part is that the individuals determine what needs to be done to get an overall effort completed, creates the individual tasks in an application, schedules them for completion and makes notes about status as they go.

    Its a little micro, but it ends all questions of “is this person working”. Either theyre getting stuff done or they aren’t. We have regular sessions to check progress and reports are generated on an ongoing basis. If someone is dicking around it shows up real fast.

    I can’t imagine that places still just raw-dog all the work. What is Joe doing. No clue. When is he going to finish? Dunno. How is the project going? Beats me. Are we staffed appropriately? Good question.


  • Last two places I worked we used HireRight to run background checks on all new hires. I have my own document. I worked in Cyber; one company was data analytics, the other was finance.

    The service will take the information you submitted at application and verifiy if it is true. They literally call former employers and the schools you list (college only). They run a public records check and when its all done, it goes to the HR goons. I never saw the reports except my own. Each one costs about $600. There are always some minor discrepancies, the company will add a note; if there are little ones, they will note and advise that there is nothing concerning. I never had one come back bad. A different leader did, and it just means that they have a conversation with the candidate and let them explain.

    On mine, I had some criminal history hits for a different person with the same name as me. They were in states where I did not live and it was pretty clear it was someone else. They also did a credit report.

    So they are real and they do happen. They are VERY thorough. They are also expensive and most places dont want to pay for them. I had it done as I was a senior director in cyber security. I doubt all parts of the workforce have it done.









  • Before it was lead, chromium and Christ knows what since there was little visibility and less oversight.

    Now we have inexpensive, easy to install reverse osmosis that is within reach of nearly any person who isn’t destitute. During the lead days, it was out of reach for nearly everyone due to size, relative complexity, cost and general availability.

    Today we have test kits for many type of pollutants and the water authorities have mandated reporting for water quality.

    When I was a kid 30 years ago, we lived in the country and drank shit water from a well out in the country. Tasted and smelled like sulfur. We also had a neighbor who owned property with nothing on it but what looked like a cistern cap (underground water tank). Every so often a tanker truck would show up and leave shortly thereafter. We never knew what the hell that tanker was putting into the cistern or if there was even one down there. It could have very well just been a cap that led right into the damn dirt. Every person in my immediate family has endocrine/thyroid problems, none of the extended family does. Was it the mystery truck that was dumping fucky chemicals right into the ground? I will never know, but if we had reverse osmosis back then, none of us would be at the fucking doctor as much as we are. Hormone replacement as a 35 year old man is some shit. Hashimodos is a pain in the dick.

    My kids grew up drinking nothing but purified water. If the local water authority was lying and producing shit, at least I’ve been able to add a layer of protection all for about $250 and an hour of my time to set it up.’

    I’m voting for better now, shittier then.



  • blargh513@sh.itjust.workstoScience Memes@mander.xyzcall of the void
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    15 days ago

    There’s nothing wrong with AI, these contextual problems are not a mistake–they’re a choice.

    AI can be trained for deeper analysis and to root out issues like this. But that costs compute cycles. If you’re selling a service, you want to spend as little on compute power as possible while still being able to have a product that is viewed as good enough to pay for.

    As with all things, the root of this problem is greed.




  • I’ve had this happen a few times. It’s such a relief when shit is jammed back to the walls. They did it at O’hare once, shit was crazy in there and they’re all like, “just gtfo, don’t blow anything up” everyone came stomping through the metal detectors. Not sure if it was related, but they had just sent sniffy dogs through the lines so maybe they planned it? I mean, I don’t think the dogs can smell a knife, but I am not a dog, so I don’t know for certain.



  • You speak truth. My way to quietly fuck up this system has been to hire good people, not assholes. I pay them as well as I can get away with, I treat them well. I never yell at my staff, I show them what I want and I make things clear. I refuse to believe that work has to be this miserable and I encouraged all of my people to do the same. The managers I hired to run other teams also worked this way so that anyone throughout my organization were treated well. I had ONE fellow quit in the last year but that was only because someone offered him a fat pile of money. Otherwise my retention rate was damn near 100% which is unheard of in cyber.

    I genuinely love the people that work for me. Yes that sounds crazy, but after a lot of reading, thinking and soul-searching, I’m comfortable with saying that directly to the people I work with. I do not use that term in a watered-down way, I mean it in the same way that I would use it to describe one of my (actual) brothers. I don’t weird people out by saying “thanks I love you” at the end of 1:1 calls, but I do say it to the entire team. I see what they do, I see how hard they work, I see the sacrifices they make when they get called out for an off-hours incident. I know how hard that shit is because I’ve been in their shoes, I know what it’s like getting a stupid automated system calling you at 2AM because something just blew up. Hell, even though I lead the teams, I still get calls like that, but it’s usually one of the team calling me in because they’re in over their head and some other boss is chewing their ass. I join those meetings and swat down the assholes, refocus on getting shit fixed.

    I told them constantly that I appreciate everything they do. I had so few opportunities to put my money where my mouth is because of the imposition of so much bullshit. Bonus or merit increase time, these companies love to wrap it all in so many fucking dumb rules, it makes it impossible to reward people as they actually deserve. I typically get a bonus pool and a merit increase pool. Both are fucking tiny. The cunts in HR host a useless call describing how we should cut it up and no matter what company I work for, they all do the same thing. They put the burden on us and say stuff like “you should reward your high performers” so that we’re forced to fuck anyone who doesn’t qualify. However, when we’re hiring, they tell us “only hire high performers”. I hire quality people and I don’t bring in people who aren’t worthwhile–so now I’m sticking excellent people under the bell curve because some useless HR drone who doesn’t know shit about shit has decided this for me. If I were to cut the pie evenly, everybody gets dogshit for increases. Try telling your staff something like “well, you got fucked this year, but next year, I’ll pay you back and fuck someone else”.

    Maybe I’ll just buy myself a hotdog cart and sell drugs out of it, might be more steady and less risky.