Smart cats

It's often said that when going for a job interview, you should be kind and courteous to everyone you meet; famous anecdotes about not holding the front door to the building open for the person who ended up being the hiring manager reinforce this idea. Why, then, don't we extrapolate this idea and apply it to our daily lives—both professional and personal? When one lives their life in this way, they negate the chance of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time, like this sor…

Being a relatively new programmer is like living in two completely different worlds. Non-programmers think you are the absolute dog's meow. They act like you cured cancer, achieved world peace, and are worth 20 billion dollars. That kind of validation for choosing a well-paying career path can feel good, but it wears off soon enough when you're around senior programmers . You feel like the most useless ant at the picnic basket when you're with guys who've been doing it for years. In that room,…

The insane ways that tech companies treat their employees never cease to amaze me. This past Friday, workers at Google in NYC found out whether they were getting laid off with a borderline dystopian method. Workers lined up early to test their employee badges. If they scanned it and the light turned green, they didn't lose their job. If the light turned red, they were laid off. Of course, Google didn't intend to act like an evil government in a young adult novel. They sent emails the night befo…

It's not every day that you get a chance like this thrust upon you—a chance for everything wrong in your life to suddenly sing to the symphonic rhythm of poetic justice. Well, this tech guy got exactly that chance when their boss told them that they needed to increase their sales with “No Exceptions.” This tech guy was working for an internet service provider as tech support when, one day, their boss came in and bizarrely told them that they needed to get their sales figures up. The tech guy wa…

Like taxis, but worse

One of the coolest things about being a programmer is the lack of formality. People laughed at Mark Zuckerberg in the 2000s for enabling a culture where everyone wore a t-shirt and sweatpants to work. These days, it's not even a second thought that tech workers are not dressing up in a suit and tie. As somebody who works in an artsy-fartsy industry, I openly enable coders and programmers wearing their pajamas to work. We've got to stick together in this world and fight against the rules and reg…

It is often said that you don't realize what you had until it's gone. It's crazy how often this plays out with employers undervaluing their essential over-performing employees for the sake of saving a few dollars or as a means of exerting their power over them. They are then shocked and surprised when the employee decides to seek greener pastures and finds a whole world of other recruiters who are hungry for their experience. Some managers and organizations aren't capable of recognizing that it…

It seems like artificial intelligence is coming to replace everything these days. So many news sources are reporting on AI being able to solve complex coding problems or write whole essays. Allegedly it can create art too, but all of the robot art I've seen has like seven weird phantom knuckles, so I'm not entirely buying it's art proficient. Luckily, we're not at the point where AI can really replace us yet. It's advanced, but it's not that advanced yet. AlphaCode, a new artificial intelligenc…

Positive reinforcement is not always effective.

Once upon a time, in an age before the iPhone...

There are times in your life when you go out of your way to accommodate someone only to have them throw it back in your face and blame you for their stupid unrelated problems. It's like planning your birthday gathering at your favorite restaurant only to have that entitled friend complain that you're excluding them because they don't like that restaurant or have devised one of the dozens of other reasons to make your birthday about them. So, you let them pick the location for your birthday, onl…

Sometimes in life… the low road is the right one. This Karen brought a metaphorical knife to an actual nuclear arms race when she decided to go toe to toe with this IT guy and blamed him for all of her stupid nonexistent troubles. As readers have pointed out in the comments: It's never a good idea to pick a fight with the guy who writes code when your job is easily replaced by a single line of it — that's just begging for the unfortunate outcome that has occurred for Karen here. After the repea…

We all have a “Dave” in our life. The thing is — Dave can sometimes be wound a little too tight…

In this world, you get what you pay for.

Tech savvy and tired.