I’m almost positive that David Beckham isn’t a citizen of the US. That’s almost definitely by choice, given that he’d meet the criteria for investment several times over.

While I appreciate the offer, I think my wife would probably not be too happy with me taking another lover. 😂

That’s absolute nonsense. Most countries have similar paths to entry. They also have paths that support specific jobs that are required by the country - something the US does not. Finally, many of them have easy and clear paths to naturalisation - again something the US doesn’t have.

Just because unskilled nationals make it into your country, it doesn’t mean that immigration in your country is easier than other countries. Every right-winger moans about the same thing in every country you’ve listed…

Haha, what do you base that on?!

My experience is the exact opposite. I’m a software engineer at a big tech company, and in this climate even they are unable to sponsor a visa to the US from the UK. Literally anywhere else? Sure, no problem at all, whether it be Europe, Singapore, China, Japan, Egypt, Australia, anywhere we have an office - except America.

Americans, welcome anywhere! We’ve got two in my team alone this year, and in 5 years they can get permanent residency. I know managers that want me on their team because I built tooling for them, but they’re not allowed to hire me because it would require a visa…

To be fair, outside of London you’ll find that the starting salary for many degree-level jobs is around that, including jobs like software developer. I’m in Bristol, and the pay disparity is hilariously bad - a senior designer will earn less than a manager at Burger King…

I think the “underpaid teacher” thing isn’t necessarily rooted in reality,. especially outside of the US. My wife is a teacher in the UK, and she’s a head of her subject. For many years her pay was similar to mine as a software engineer, but everyone often treated her as if she was poor and that I was rich.

When I was at school, Sunny D and Vodka was a recommended mix to make you ill enough to throw up and miss school the next day. I can’t believe people willingly drink this shit…

From a company perspective, it’s a common sentiment. Google and Amazon have mantras around trying to stay agile and relevant despite being behemoths, and both have arguably kept into boomer tech territory the second they made a poor CEO hire. Microsoft had their Ballmer era, and while Nadella did a lot of good at Microsoft they’ve had a lot of failures in established divisions to be soaked up by AI and sales.

I think that all of big tech has struggled over the last 3 years. Sacrificing employee skill for shareholder value has ultimately moved them all into IBM territory, whereas the cool tech is happening at startups again. If AI is a bust, and another company comes along and eats their lunch in their established markets like consumer devices, web tooling, or cloud computing, they’re in real danger of another huge set of layoffs and resetting their businesses to only core profit-making ventures. What I think we’ve seen companies shift towards death, Day 2, rotting from the inside, or whatever your business calls stagnation.

Definitely not a US thing. Here in the UK I don’t think I’ve worked 9-5 for over 20 years…

Yep!

I’m in the UK, and First basically hold the monopoly in my city. There are so few buses that they often skip stops at rush hour because they’re already full, or because they’ve decided in the moment that your stop doesn’t matter.

Nothing wakes you up during your commute like listening to a woman get fired over the phone because she’s going to be late for work, despite still being 60 mins early for what should be a 20 min journey.

My dream is an “internet archive” for all video games, modded to run offline. If the game becomes unavailable for purchase, the archive opens that game and makes it available for all.

The next step is for this kind of release to become law, and supported by manufacturers.

Haha, what?

We literally predicted Trump before you voted for him, because of the right-wing populism that caused Brexit.

The show had so much potential, but at times it was an absolute mess of ideas, whether it was weird musical numbers, or bizarre tone shifts. The whole “they’re the chosen one with amazing powers given by birthright/zero effort” trope aside, it often felt like the show was an audition for the actors/writers to show range for future work. I started the show happy, and finished it feels a mixture of confusion and annoyance…

The aunties were great, though - and always great to see Eowyn on screen again.

Oh, they still do these…

I’ve heard some stories where managers had to lay off most of their team, then put the remaining on performance plans, and then when those people were fired, they had no directs and then had to convert to a IC role they were woefully unable to do, transfer (lol good luck), or leave.

My understanding is that while you’re 100% being terminated (and are ineligible for rehire) what you sign indicates that you’re actually volunteering to resign.

For more info on it, look up Amazon’s Focus and Pivot programs.

For many, it’s the severance offered that makes them sign. If you’re about to lose your job, a few months pay, and free relocation back home if your visa is due to be cancelled is likely enough to make you sign something.

I’m not condoning it, at all. I think the practice is fucking disgusting, and have seen it wreck lives, but it’s a reality in many tech companies, including Google under Sundar.

I think that Amazon and Meta (where this is a known practice) do both. I’ve not signed anything in tech that stops me talking about internal company practices or any work that might have resulted in “voluntary” dismissal, but others in these companies that do the Jack Walsh thing and fire their employees do…

Some companies have you sign things after leaving.

Obviously, when you start laying people off, or do stupid shit like stack ranking, some people are going to walk out and just blab about all the dumb shit your employer does/did - and they’re heroes for doing so.

I work in AI.

We’ve known this about LLM’s for many years. One of the reasons they weren’t widely used was due to hallucinations, where they’ll be coerced into saying something confidently incorrect. OpenAI created a great set of tools that showed true utility for LLM’s, and people were able to largely accept that even if it’s wrong, it’s good for basic tasks like writing a doc outline or filling in boilerplate in scripts.

Sadly, grifters have decided that LLM’s were the future, and they’ve put them into applications where they have no more benefit than other, compositional models. While they’re great at orchestration, they’re just not suited to search, answering broad questions with limited knowledge, or voice-based search - all areas they’ll be launched in. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of a LLM being used for critical subjects that require knowledge of health or the law, because those companies that decided that AI will build software for them, or run HR departments are going to be totally fucked when a big mistake happens.

It’s an arms race that no one wants, and one that arguably hasn’t created anything worthwhile yet, outside of a wildly expensive tool that will save you some time. What’s even sadder is that I bet you could go to any of these big tech companies and ask IC’s if this is a good use of their time and they’ll say no. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost, and many worthwhile projects were scrapped so some billionaire cunts could enter an AI pissing contest.