ativzzz (u/ativzzz) - Readit News

ativzzz commented on Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews? · Posted by u/_swfb

_swfb · 10 days ago

> If I'm hiring someone, I want to like working with them, and if I find them ranting online, I just mark them as negative and pessimistic. I can't help it - that's human nature

I understand this, but we can agree that this kind of sucks, doesn't it? Everyone has bad days where they're frustrated about something and could write something a bit cynical in the process. I don't think that's reflective of their entire personality. From Ted Lasso:

> I hope that either all of us or none of us are judged by the actions of our weakest moments… but rather by the strength we show when, and if we’re ever given a second chance

Dunno, obviously you don't want someone who's a downer all the time, but I feel like the permanence of the internet can skew perspectives.

ativzzz · 9 days ago

Sure, but when I've spent 30 mins talking to you and you look the same on paper as the other 5 competent candidates and I need to make a choice on who to hire, any data point that portrays you negatively is an easy way to narrow my decision.

ativzzz commented on Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews? · Posted by u/_swfb

codingdave · 10 days ago

Don't change who you are for an interview. It will just result in a job where you aren't happy being a different version of yourself. I know it is frustrating to not find work, but finding work that isn't right for you brings whole new levels of frustration later.

And, as others have said... this rejection might have nothing to do with you. If they had 1000 applications, and you were their choice above 998 of them, you still get the rejection because they hired the person who was above 999 of them.

ativzzz · 10 days ago

100% untrue. Hiring is a social game. You want to put your best foot forward, and then slowly let out your truer self over time. Much like dating - you don't want to air all your dirty laundry on the first date. Don't lie about who you are but at the same time people are more tolerant of your quirks once they get to know you better

ativzzz commented on Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews? · Posted by u/_swfb

loa_in_ · 10 days ago

A good reason to not have social media. Thinking if my vent post will upset a future employer on a Saturday afternoon is not the future I want.

ativzzz · 10 days ago

A good reason to have an anonymous account to post negative things on. Never post honest negativity under your real name. Unless you work for yourself or your vulnerability is a sort of marketing, you're only hurting yourself. Make an anon account, vent as much as you want.

If I'm hiring someone, I want to like working with them, and if I find them ranting online, I just mark them as negative and pessimistic. I can't help it - that's human nature

ativzzz commented on Ask HN: How to find mentors while working remote? · Posted by u/basketbla

ativzzz · a month ago

In any job I've had (all remote), just message any person with some experience with the thing you're working on. They're always more than happy to bounce ideas or hop on a call and chat about it

> Hey, I'm working on feature A that needs X, Y, Z solutions. I see you worked on something similar, I'm trying to figure out the right way forward. Can I bounce some ideas off you?

Works with people without the experience

> Hey I'm working thru a problem and having trouble coming to a solution, any chance I could bounce some ideas off you?

Basically I've never had a "mentor" and I just ask people questions

> working at a remote startup since

This was my first job too. The upside was the freedom to explore on my own. The downside was lack of experienced coworkers. So I quit after a few years to get more of those.

AI is also decent at answering these kinds of questions, but less rewarding since it's not a human you can chat with

ativzzz commented on Kiro: A new agentic IDE kiro.dev/blog/introducing... · Posted by u/QuinnyPig

suralind · a month ago

Here my problem with this: I don't want to be jumping an editor/IDE every 6 months, learning new key bindings and even more importantly, getting used to a completely new look.

In a space that moves as quickly as "AI" does, it is inevitable that a better and cheaper solution will pop up at some point. We kinda already see it with Cursor and Windsurf. I guess Claude Code is all the rage now and I personally think CLI/TUI is the way to go for anyone that has a similar view.

That said, I'm sure there's a very big user base (probably bigger than terminal group) that will enjoy using this and other GUI apps.

ativzzz · a month ago

Totally agreed, which is why I'm sticking with my editor (neovim) regardless of whatever AI thing is hot and using tools outside/analogous to it, currently claude code

ativzzz commented on Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT personneltoday.com/hr/fal... · Posted by u/lsharkey602

throwawaysleep · 2 months ago

> the most valuable use of LLMs is to make the software developers work more effectively

Which means you should need fewer of them, no?

> It can be the same people that were doing the low-level jobs; they just now can spend their human-level intelligence doing more interesting and challenging work.

Why were you using capable humans on lower level work in the first place? Wouldn't you use cheaper and less skilled workers (entry level) for that work?

ativzzz · 2 months ago

> Which means you should need fewer of them, no?

I've never worked at a company that didn't have an endless backlog of work that needs to be done. In theory, AI should enable devs to churn through that work slightly faster, but at the same time, AI will also allow PMs/work creators to create even more work to do.

I don't think AI fundamentally changes companies hiring strategies for knowledge workers. If a company wants to cheap out and do the same amount of work with less workers, then they're leaving space for their competitors to come and edge them out

ativzzz commented on Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry? · Posted by u/MongooseStudios

tptacek · 2 months ago

Hi! I've been doing this since 1994 (I started in the industry instead of going to college). I feel this way approximately once every 7-8 years. What I think I've learned is that I make stupid decisions reacting to those feelings.

ativzzz · 2 months ago

> I make stupid decisions reacting to those feelings.

Yea it seems like the right thing to do is to step away and take a sabbatical to cool down, and then remember that we like money, and that it's just part of the game to get paid.

ativzzz commented on The cultural decline of literary fiction oyyy.substack.com/p/the-c... · Posted by u/libraryofbabel

jl6 · 2 months ago

> Books like Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, etc still sell many thousands of copies every year, more than even big hits in contemporary literary fiction.

I think the author skips past the real answer right here. The old books haven’t gone away. Even if we assume there are good new books, they have to compete with the supply of existing books, which grows without bound - unlike the time and attention of consumers.

Every form of media has this problem. A human lifetime can only consume so many books, so many films, so many hours of music. A new movie comes out: what are the odds of it being more worth your while than one on the existing IMDb Top 1000? Decreasing.

Books are no different. What are the odds that something new is going to displace something existing off the shortlist of greats that you already don’t have time to read?

ativzzz · 2 months ago

It goes beyond this. Reading is a form of entertainment. There has been an explosion of new and different forms of personal entertainment, so books now have to compete not just with old books, but movies, video games, social media, etc etc etc

ativzzz commented on Ask HN: Is AI 'context switching' exhausting? · Posted by u/interstice

ativzzz · 2 months ago

While the AI is running, go work on something else. Go write a doc, or write a test, answer an email, work on another part of your feature that won't interfere with the AI, etc

I know some people have trouble with the context switching but I've been full stack at small companies my whole career so I context switch constantly every day so I'm used to it.

ativzzz commented on Phoenix.new – Remote AI Runtime for Phoenix fly.io/blog/phoenix-new-t... · Posted by u/wut42

ativzzz · 2 months ago

This is very cool. I think the primary innovation here is twofold:

1. Remote agent - it's a containerized environment where the agent can run loose and do whatever - it doesn't need approval for user tasks because it's in an isolated environment (though it could still accidentally do destructive actions like edit git history). I think this alone is a separate service that needs to be productionized. When I run claude code in my terminal, automatically spin up the agent in an isolated environment (locally or remotely) and have it go wild. Easy to run things in parallel

2. Deep integration with fly. Everyone will be trying to embed AI deep into their product. Instead of having to talk to chatgpt and copy paste output, I should be able to directly interact with whatever product I'm using and interact with my data in the product using tools. In this case, it's deploying my web app