It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.
For as much as the author may get roasted for stating the obvious, I've often seen this "measure everything" mindset, coming from those you'd think should know better than that.
I've even seen this stupidity in myself sometimes. In a way it's funny how you can get so lost on the numbers that you forget about the thing.
I quit a $400k+ job to get away from IaC. I loath yaml. More and more, my day was filled with "you have an error on line 1, good luck." It was more k8s than tf, but I get the same sneer on my face when messing with tf.
I refuse to let such a shitty experience be what defines my day.
I was hoping pulumi would help. Haven't used it yet, but it is sad to hear it doesn't live up to the hype.
Good thought, but corporations don't care, and a whole lot of folks that play the corporate game won't, either. Money will still be made. Careers will still be advanced.
It think it was Theodore Sturgeon that said "90% of everything is crap."
For myself, I enjoy what I do. I write software that I want to use, in a way that makes me feel good.
I have no illusions that I would be allowed to work like this, if I were still in the workforce, though.
Oh, i thought it was a satirical critique of how arbitrary promotion criteria can be. Turns out someone is seriously claiming that someone else "doesn't not feel the right way" about the work they do, and THAT is their core problem. Ha. Well, at least the author feels that they are feeling the right way, good for them I guess.
I went through a longer quest, called "getting naturalized in another country".
Went through the grind of getting visa, then the work permit, then the different visa, then the short-term residence permit.
Changed jobs, had to go to the immigration department again, because these residence permits are tied to the employer.
Kept a spreadsheet with dates of each exit and entry.
Had to keep all my paperwork ducks in a row.
To be able to get married, I had to get a permit from a judge.
Got married and had to go through the immigration office again, as this changed the primary purpose of my stay yet again. The queue to the immigration office was so long that I had to come there at 2am (yes, 2 in the morning) to even have a chance to file my paperwork.
Still had to keep the spreadsheet with exit/entry dates, the printout was attached to each application.
Went to another city to pass the language exam to be able to get the long-term residence permit.
In a couple of years, applied for citizenship. Had to go visit my birth country and gather some more paperwork from there, get it translated.
All the while it all felt as if I was a student again and this was an important exam each and every time. Stressed. Constantly afraid that a document would be missing and I would need to start over.
Then finally they texted me. I went to collect the papers that certified that I now was the citizen of my new country, almost ten years after starting the quest. I could apply for my new shiny national ID. I now wasn't a second-class person anymore.
Upon leaving the government building, I felt nothing. I had expected that with all that stress and buildup, some kind of relief would come. But it never came. No relief, no joy, not a sausage.
I remember that the weather was miserable on that day.
It would help to know what your reason was to go through with that. Relief and joy can be more expected if it changes your life circumstances in a way that you were looking forward to. Something related to family etc. Easier travel to some places that you couldn't go before etc.
Smart move by Mitchell to omit (in his opinion) _why_ you have to feel it, as evidenced by the spread interpretation in the comments.
In my opinion, you have to “feel it” in order to do your best work.
However(!), and also in my opinion, you shouldn’t always strive to be in a position where you “feel it”. While it is important to spend most of one’s life feeling it / doing their best work in order to be fulfilled, the hazard of insatiably “feeling it” is that you can much more quickly burn out.
Working with passion fuels a level of intensity and emotional involvement that can take a while to recover from if you don’t get the result (read: success) you desired.
This is one of the things that I’ve tried really hard to impress upon engineers new and old while working on various projects, and IMO it applies to just about every layer of the stack; ultimately everything flows up into the UX.
This vibe was pervasive at Apple and could be taken more or less for granted, but elsewhere it’s all over the place.
And, like, sure, there are projects and industries where this doesn’t matter. But giving a shit and feeling it can be a major differentiator.
I dunno. A good demo is all about the feeling it gives. One thing I got out of my adventures in startup land is how to go up on stage and demo some software that barely works and make it look like a million bucks.
At the last hackathon I went to I was sitting in the audience at the presentation at the end with one teammate while the other one was upstairs pounding away at last minute revisions. We were scheduled last but I still had to make excuses to the organizers.
He showed up with something that basically worked but I kept cool under pressure, made sure I didn't commit to anything until I was sure about it, and used good showmanship. We were all shocked when we won the 'player's choice' award. Mind you, it helped that he was experienced at writing platformers in Unity and the other student could draw, but thanks to my showmanship people saw everything that didn't worked and didn't notice the bugs and people were left with the impression that 'wow that looked like a polished game' whereas the main author said 'I don't think I'd want to play it' afterwards. My continuous push towards a 'minimum viable product' combined with their push to make something that looked polish really helped that showmanship work.
So glad someone posted this. Their videos hit so close to home on the reality of the soul sucking drone work that is tech. Like a modern day office space sketch comedy.
I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded. Or a terrible argument that plays to some emotional point so is accepted. It's all feelings. Rare is the opposite.
Another way to look at it is parallel processing vs sequential processing.. our brains can make a judgement call about a thousand subtle variables and data points that we can't exactly put our fingers on unless we really dig into it, which we usually label as 'feelings', using the parallel part of our brain. The sequential (logical) part can only consider a limited number of variables at a time. I don't think either mode of thinking is inherently worse (we need both), but in our society the feelings part has traditionally been discounted as being 'illogical' by academics.. I think AI has shown us that parallel processing is actually incredibly important to thinking.
But back to the original post, I think 'having good taste' and knowing when something feels like the right solution is one of those hard to define qualities that can make the difference between average and great products (and has far reaching effects in any business).
I think a lot of the dysfunction we see in the world can be attributed to people feeling positive emotions towards deeply problematic logical decisions, so they favor them for whatever perceived benefit they'll get from that decision, often overlooking the long-term impacts or how it affects others around them.
We walk a dangerous line when feelings are the executive decision maker, even when we know what we should do (what's right) doesn't give us the same emotional response.
It's like working out. Nobody really wants to do it, but it only stands to benefit the body in the most logical, tangible sense.
Even expressions of rationality comes from a feeling we must do so.
Rationalists cannot get away from empiricism. There's nothing to rationalize about without observation of the empirical.
Western philosophy has always tried to carve out very precise lanes of thought like empiricism and rationalism, but one requires the other.
There's no nature or nurture debate. It's all emergent aspects of nature.
Humanoids went centuries learning to adjust to internal feelings of enough water and food. Strived to find balance.
Language came along and agrarian warlords focused effort on made up balancing acts of gods; He will be mad if we don't do things right. Lame projection
Unfortunately, the tech industry has completely lost touch with anything resembling this. It's a cold machine now; I'd call it soulless but I think that gives it too much animation.
Really, I think we’re all talking around some notion of beauty here. Not in the sense of personal vanity, but more of a sense of internal cohesiveness.
Also, the feeling he’s referring to is what sold me on Ghostty. It was clear that he’d thought quite a bit about good defaults. Performance is great without having to tweak anything. In a way, I love that this sort of thing cannot be qualified, because it means that it cannot be commoditized or democratized. It either connects with someone, or it doesn’t.
> When you feel it, you know. The feature makes you smile when you use it. It fits right in, like it was always meant to be there. You want to use it again. You want to tell people about it. This is the difference. This is what metrics, specifications, and demos miss.
Totally absurd! The metrics and specifications are what make all of that possible.
This feels like it was written for execs and managers who bury their heads in the sand when they're overwhelmed.
49 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 65.3 ms ] threadThe corporate machine does not feel it.
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.
I've even seen this stupidity in myself sometimes. In a way it's funny how you can get so lost on the numbers that you forget about the thing.
Pulumi isn't much better. I feel IaC done that way isn't the way we will settle on long term.
I refuse to let such a shitty experience be what defines my day.
I was hoping pulumi would help. Haven't used it yet, but it is sad to hear it doesn't live up to the hype.
It think it was Theodore Sturgeon that said "90% of everything is crap."
For myself, I enjoy what I do. I write software that I want to use, in a way that makes me feel good.
I have no illusions that I would be allowed to work like this, if I were still in the workforce, though.
Went through the grind of getting visa, then the work permit, then the different visa, then the short-term residence permit.
Changed jobs, had to go to the immigration department again, because these residence permits are tied to the employer.
Kept a spreadsheet with dates of each exit and entry.
Had to keep all my paperwork ducks in a row.
To be able to get married, I had to get a permit from a judge.
Got married and had to go through the immigration office again, as this changed the primary purpose of my stay yet again. The queue to the immigration office was so long that I had to come there at 2am (yes, 2 in the morning) to even have a chance to file my paperwork.
Still had to keep the spreadsheet with exit/entry dates, the printout was attached to each application.
Went to another city to pass the language exam to be able to get the long-term residence permit.
In a couple of years, applied for citizenship. Had to go visit my birth country and gather some more paperwork from there, get it translated.
All the while it all felt as if I was a student again and this was an important exam each and every time. Stressed. Constantly afraid that a document would be missing and I would need to start over.
Then finally they texted me. I went to collect the papers that certified that I now was the citizen of my new country, almost ten years after starting the quest. I could apply for my new shiny national ID. I now wasn't a second-class person anymore.
Upon leaving the government building, I felt nothing. I had expected that with all that stress and buildup, some kind of relief would come. But it never came. No relief, no joy, not a sausage.
I remember that the weather was miserable on that day.
However, I would say that when a battle lasts long enough, one might have no emotional resources left to feel the victory.
That also applies to TFA.
It's hard to feel the feelings of many types of users.
In my opinion, you have to “feel it” in order to do your best work.
However(!), and also in my opinion, you shouldn’t always strive to be in a position where you “feel it”. While it is important to spend most of one’s life feeling it / doing their best work in order to be fulfilled, the hazard of insatiably “feeling it” is that you can much more quickly burn out.
Working with passion fuels a level of intensity and emotional involvement that can take a while to recover from if you don’t get the result (read: success) you desired.
But yes, you do indeed mostly have to feel it.
This vibe was pervasive at Apple and could be taken more or less for granted, but elsewhere it’s all over the place.
And, like, sure, there are projects and industries where this doesn’t matter. But giving a shit and feeling it can be a major differentiator.
At the last hackathon I went to I was sitting in the audience at the presentation at the end with one teammate while the other one was upstairs pounding away at last minute revisions. We were scheduled last but I still had to make excuses to the organizers.
He showed up with something that basically worked but I kept cool under pressure, made sure I didn't commit to anything until I was sure about it, and used good showmanship. We were all shocked when we won the 'player's choice' award. Mind you, it helped that he was experienced at writing platformers in Unity and the other student could draw, but thanks to my showmanship people saw everything that didn't worked and didn't notice the bugs and people were left with the impression that 'wow that looked like a polished game' whereas the main author said 'I don't think I'd want to play it' afterwards. My continuous push towards a 'minimum viable product' combined with their push to make something that looked polish really helped that showmanship work.
But back to the original post, I think 'having good taste' and knowing when something feels like the right solution is one of those hard to define qualities that can make the difference between average and great products (and has far reaching effects in any business).
If you didn't know about the case, Damasio's Eliott is the personification of this observation : you have to feel first.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250614042654/https://www.thecu...
We walk a dangerous line when feelings are the executive decision maker, even when we know what we should do (what's right) doesn't give us the same emotional response.
It's like working out. Nobody really wants to do it, but it only stands to benefit the body in the most logical, tangible sense.
Rationalists cannot get away from empiricism. There's nothing to rationalize about without observation of the empirical.
Western philosophy has always tried to carve out very precise lanes of thought like empiricism and rationalism, but one requires the other.
There's no nature or nurture debate. It's all emergent aspects of nature.
Humanoids went centuries learning to adjust to internal feelings of enough water and food. Strived to find balance.
Language came along and agrarian warlords focused effort on made up balancing acts of gods; He will be mad if we don't do things right. Lame projection
Also, the feeling he’s referring to is what sold me on Ghostty. It was clear that he’d thought quite a bit about good defaults. Performance is great without having to tweak anything. In a way, I love that this sort of thing cannot be qualified, because it means that it cannot be commoditized or democratized. It either connects with someone, or it doesn’t.
Totally absurd! The metrics and specifications are what make all of that possible.
This feels like it was written for execs and managers who bury their heads in the sand when they're overwhelmed.
my best guess is that it is far easier to deeply feel complex concepts rather than to arrive to similar conclusions purely based on reason/logic