> If we can't make the cars just as smart as an alert and capable driver, then maybe we need to meet halfway and make the roads a littler "dumber" (simpler) to accommodate the robots.
This aspect of FSD has always fascinated me and I'm a little surprised it doesn't get more discussion. Meeting halfway. At what point could/would/should FSD influence the environment around it?
For example - a poorly painted road sign*. Tesla/Waymo could say "We cannot support L5 FSD on this road until you fix this sign." If it meant a step forward in autonomy, Tesla/Waymo could even offer to share the cost of that improvement!
There are a million reasons why implementation of that would be problematic. Costs and incentives would be all over the place. But I am more interested in the framing: The machines are the ones that need to adapt. Which is essentially hoping for continued hardware improvements or a spaghetti mess of if/else statements. ie "do this weird thing if you see this other weird thing in front of you". Can we get rid of the weird thing and avoid the engineering challenge altogether?
* Yes, this is an overly simple example. Some environment changes could be so large that they would require a full redesign of a city/buildings/traffic patterns. But surely there are classes of improvements where some are easier than others.
Last Spring (21) when we thought the pandemic was subsiding, we started optional in-office days. I went in one day, stopped by the kitchen, and bumped into a peer I had not seen in a year. Not even on Zoom. Our teams had worked together on something a year or so prior, but the paths of our products diverged. We never had a reason to interact after.
And I'll tell you what -- it was _amazing_. A typical "5-second good morning" conversation turned into a 10-minute catch-up. Which turned into a 30-minute system design discussion. I loved it, we were both juiced. If you could guarantee that all in-person connections in an office would go like that, I would give up remote work in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. People get used to the grind, the commute, and their office environment. They don't (generally) bring that kind of impromptu excitement every day. Our interaction was a mix of curiosity, pandemic anxiety, and joy in our work. You can't snap your fingers and expect that to materialize every day.
The bean-counter in me can't justify the millions of dollars in the annual office spend to (hopefully) enable connections like that. Which is why I am fully on the quarterly-or-semi-annual-retreat train. Ditch the office, and point that money towards infrequent in-person events. Pay for people to come in from wherever they are (if they want to). I suspect that's a _much_ better ROI.
> Don't project into the future. What is now is not indicative of the future.
This is fantastic.
Nobody cares that the neighbor kid started walking at 8 months while yours hasn't yet. It doesn't mean anything. You'll barely remember yourself in a year or two.
Is it really not thriving? Surely it's relative vs SF/NYC, but when I got here in the 90s, it was all just banking & insurance. Also advertising, but very little tech there. It was super frustrating at the time, but the last decade has shown quite a bit of growth of "modern" startups, imo. It may not be those other hubs, but as Mr Bourdain would probably say, Chicago doesn't care.
On the weather...
"A nice day in Chicago is a nicer day than anywhere else in the world." -- Anonymous.
75 degrees with no humidity is heaven here, and _everyone_ you see feels the same way. Outdoor dining, festivals, parks, etc. People grind through January just to see June, and it shows. 75 degrees with no humidity in San Diego is just another Tuesday.
I am not going to wade into the crime chatter all over this thread, people have their own stories and barometers on that stuff.
But I cannot let Bean anecdotes slide without an alternate take. We take our kids (two under 10) down to the Bean/Millennium Park area 4-5 times a summer, without fear. It's a fantastic place for families. Super diverse, good exercise, breeze off the lake. The Bean + the fountains + Maggie Daley Park can be an awesome Saturday/Sunday afternoon.
Oh 100%, this drives my consultanty-productivity-efficiency brain mad. I get doing this so people can check that they are paying for what they ordered, but mistakes/inaccuracies are exceptions. The vast majority of restaurant payments have to be correct and should be seamless. Seems like we should be optimizing more for the latter. Not that the former isn't important, but the process seems skewed inappropriately.
I made a rule with my phone - only read content that was created > 1 year ago. This immediately rules out Facebook, Twitter, and (usually) WashPost/NYT. I am left with academic papers and books. (Podcasts and audiobooks are ok.)
Sometimes more of a guideline than a rule. I make exceptions for new works from authors I enjoy, or longform recommended web articles.
Best leader I ever worked with had a "7 second silence" rule. Just don't say anything for 7 seconds. Requesting input on a topic/idea in a meeting? Wait in silence for 7 seconds. Dropping an important point in a presentation? Wait for 7 seconds. Not sure of the answer to a question? Wait for 7 seconds. If you have doubt about what to say or do? Just wait and breathe for 7 seconds.
It is extremely difficult to do in practice. But it is crazy what a breather can do to help you organize your thoughts. Or what other people will do to fill the void.
(Note: It's not a novel idea, I've seen other folks use 5, 6, or 8 seconds. imo 7 is _just_ on the border of uncomfortable.)
I am probably 95% in line with this, SAFe is mostly terrible, but there are some nuggets in there that I think are good. Mostly around the cadence and checkpoints on progress in delivery. (Yes, we can argue whether some of these things originated with SAFe, but it's how I was originally exposed, so that's how my mental model is mapped.)
- Quarters (every 12 weeks): Big ticket things that should move the business forward. This requires Engineering participation because items like technical debt, system re-architectures, pipeline improvements, etc. should be on the table.
- PI (every 3-4 weeks): Light checkin on progress to current items. A ballpark estimate on what can be delivered in the upcoming PI given the current constraints (capacity, quality, etc.). This works out to 3-4 checkpoints per quarter.
- Sprint (every 1-2 weeks): Real commitments to tangible requirements are made here. If thorough discovery leads to changes to the ballpark estimates or development is delayed for other reasons, it is communicated at the PI checkpoint and forecasts can be adjusted.
(imo) SAFe is just a solution to problems that may or may not actually exist - eager-beaver middle management-types adopt it chiefly because they think it makes them look good, but also because Product/Engineering teams don't commit-escalate-communicate well.
I encourage folks to take a step back and ignore the specific SAFe guidance, but do consider the value of the inputs & outcomes.
> Product/Engineering teams don't commit-escalate-communicate well
I'm not sure which way the causality points, maybe you're right and organizations that already have poor communication tend to adopt SAFe, but my experience is that it discourages communication between teams and encourages passive-aggressive irresponsibility. In a healthy organization, anyone responsible for the success of a project (management leadership, project managers, and senior individual contributors) will periodically think, "Next week we will do X, but only if Y is going to be done soon, so I need to check in with the team working on Y," and people constantly keep their finger on the pulse of work relevant to their own. SAFe claims to replace this with process, so people don't do it.
In the company where I work now, there's no plan (I mean, there are various plans and timelines, but they're tools, not totems) and we constantly talk. I can message anyone I want or schedule a quick informal meeting with anyone I want without thinking about the political ramifications. Under SAFe sometimes we needed info from another team and discussed how to approach them, who to ask, how to frame it, etc., and ended up deciding there wasn't a good way and it would be better to make our best guess and not engage with them. A few times I was put in the position of refusing to say how I knew something, because I found a way to get the information I needed to do my job, and I didn't want my source to suffer any consequences from communicating outside the SAFe process.
More than two years into this, "*returning* to the office" is incorrect framing in a lot of cases. I have been hired via Zoom to companies out of state TWICE in this period, each headquartered more than 1k miles away. I had/have no office to "return" to. If either decided to roll back their remote policy and require physical presence, they are essentially firing me (along with ~100 other folks).
I guess I am on the other side - the more remote permeates, the harder it will be to claw it back. Not just because people like it and are now empowered, but also the practical/logistical headaches involved.
This aspect of FSD has always fascinated me and I'm a little surprised it doesn't get more discussion. Meeting halfway. At what point could/would/should FSD influence the environment around it?
For example - a poorly painted road sign*. Tesla/Waymo could say "We cannot support L5 FSD on this road until you fix this sign." If it meant a step forward in autonomy, Tesla/Waymo could even offer to share the cost of that improvement!
There are a million reasons why implementation of that would be problematic. Costs and incentives would be all over the place. But I am more interested in the framing: The machines are the ones that need to adapt. Which is essentially hoping for continued hardware improvements or a spaghetti mess of if/else statements. ie "do this weird thing if you see this other weird thing in front of you". Can we get rid of the weird thing and avoid the engineering challenge altogether?
* Yes, this is an overly simple example. Some environment changes could be so large that they would require a full redesign of a city/buildings/traffic patterns. But surely there are classes of improvements where some are easier than others.