No sadly, in Canada actually. You really wouldn’t like how low IT pay is here.

It took me 3 years and over 700 applications to get two interviews and one underpaid job, which I took because it beat working for minimum wage and getting no experience. I worked that for 3 years and then they ran out of work for me. I was not able to leverage that experience into a new programming job despite my efforts and have since moved onto administration.

Yeah now I understand why so many admins hate “developers”: they’re actually real fucking ignorant about so many things, especially licensing. I’ve had to do battle with Oracle twice because our people don’t understand the difference between personal use and commercial use.

Google searches have become increasingly worthless over time. I find it depressingly difficult to find things now.

Considering grabbing a sub on one of the paid search engines like Kagi: the search actually works.

100% this would be my reasoning. I love Python for prototyping and personal stuff, but on an enterprise team? There is a reason Java has survived this long.

I really don’t get the use of AI to replace creative roles. At worst I’ve used it as a sort of “lorem ipsum” generator but for various placeholders. I think AI’s true value is in understanding the sometimes overwhelming amount of documents, records, datasets and databases that organizations can amass. Being able to have an AI help sift through the garbage is real helpful actually.

I’ve seen governments using it to do things like handle access-to-information type requests or help patent examiners find relevant patents: those uses make a lot of sense.

lol your admin is a dumbass I wager

Fuck no. A beginner learning base concepts like arrays, conditionals, loops, variables, functions, etc. should use something much less punishing like Python. It’s much easier to iterate, to understand your mistakes, and to learn from others when you use a simpler language.

When you’re ready to learn about pointers, memory management, etc. then you can take on Rust.

I hate so much that this is true. How did we manage to go so far backwards despite an army of UX designers? Oh wait…

But seriously it’s all this bullshit driven by engagement and weird metrics no one likes. For some reason even our ticketing system at work is built like it’s supposed to hold my attention rather than be a purpose-built tool for making my job easier.

At least now we have options like Pikapods where you can just throw a containerized server up cheap. Even people who might be overwhelmed by a VM can do that.

Man what a trip, felt like I was hopping around the old web again.

Ah yes like the Boeing employees who shot themselves in the head twice.

A lot of management are coming out of “business schools” that are little more than indoctrination. These people don’t know the difference between a leader and a manager and qualify as neither.

More-or-less my wife’s situation. I feel for her and try my best to support her, but she’s miserable every working day for the same reasons as you. Maybe it’s time to grab a new job as an experienced tech or even a consultant?

Biggest thing I did to go from feeling like shit to actually feeling engaged was getting involved with my union. Life is so much more satisfying when you do something that matters, and when the existing union leadership who have been largely useless described me as “trouble” I felt validated lol.

Even if your union is running well they pretty much can always use an extra set of hands, so step up!

I suspect you mean Conservapedia. It is exactly what it sounds like: a shitty right-wing rag.

On the flipside is RationalWiki, which is basically neoliberal Americentric “reality has a liberal bias” made manifest. It’s also pretty shit.

Many of the editors are themselves neoliberal American cultural imperialists and proud of it. The issue isn’t direct control so much as an army of useful idiots.

Imagine it’s post-2001 and George Bush is saying we need to take away Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). You hear there is a controversy around this topic, so you look it up on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article may not even mention the controversy because it came from “fringe sources” or unreliable media, instead its rules mean they only share the message from approved media sources, and that means the article says Iraq definitely has WMDs and something must be done.

This is how it works now, and always had.

When I was in college in the second half of the 2000s, we were banned from using Wikipedia as a source due to the way it is built. Many complained but given how many controversies Wikipedia has found itself involved in which includes paid editors, state actors, only being able to use biased journalistic coverage to construct articles, refusing to use other media sources such as established bloggers…

Trusting Wikipedia at any point was the mistake. It’s not even the Wikimedia foundation that is the issue, it’s the structure of the site. If no approved journalists will speak the truth, your article will be nothing but lies and Wikipedia editors will dutifully write those lies down and lock down the article if you attempt to correct them using sources they personally dislike.

Wikipedia information is often made up of media reports and paid studies so we’re already there.

A few weeks ago the community manager of the Helldivers Discord got upset and deleted the whole thing. Years of discussions and knowledge (and memes) gone.

Naturally you can’t even bring up the idea that a Discord community takes on a life past its “owner” once it reaches a certain size or level of activity. “Your container, your rules” say the defenders unironically, while not acknowledging that you neither own the “server” nor make all the rules.

I urge everyone to install Adnauseum. You know what’s better than trying to starve advertisers of info? Filling their ad profile for you with total garbage.