namingthingsiseasy

Relevant (median salaries in the EU): https://www.levels.fyi/heatmap/europe/

The best UIs are the ones that never change.

It's good. The pay is good and it's very flexible. I get to work with some pretty cool technologies (especially Kubernetes). I'm glad that I have an opportunity to improve my skills in these areas where I'm honestly not that good. I work with brilliant people, most of whom are better than me in almost every way possible. I should be grateful.

But I'm bored. I feel like I'm just maintaining other people's work and that I'm not really building anything novel. I feel like I'm just tweaking and maintaining things that are already mostly finished. I don't feel like I'm learning as much as I'd like to. It's very mentally challenging too - which feels like it should be a good thing, but after a while, I just want to be assigned something that I feel confident that I can do without too much trouble or difficulty so I have some spare energy to focus on other things that I find more interesting.

I'm really wondering why I feel like I'm in a rut lately. I took a nice long holiday break, and yet I still haven't got much done so far this year. I've been sick, and still feel a little burned out from the inevitable pre-holiday rush. I also think there's definitely a bit of wintertime depression at play too. So I'm hopeful that things will get better soon if I just bear on and wait for a bit.

I'm still looking at new jobs, but very casually and being very picky about it. It's hard to say if the right thing to do is to change jobs or just change my outlook on life instead. I feel like the smart thing to do is to stay and wait for my mood to improve. I really don't want to change to a new job, just to find myself feeling the exact same way a couple more years down the line. But all the same, I just want to look around and see what's out there. As I go through the applying/interviewing process, I think I'll get a better feel of whether the problem is me or my job.

Sigh. Is it too early to retire yet? I'll be 30 in just a few more years, surely that's old enough....

Anyway, thanks for posting this. Would definitely like to see it become a regular topic!

No you don't! That's why we have key-signing parties!

Interesting! I was already vaguely aware some of these efforts, but that was still quite informative. Nonetheless, from what I've observed, it seems that these kinds of funding initiatives aren't very popular politically. Most people don't benefit from it enough, and then it's only natural to ask why we are spending, néé, wasting money on them. I think better messaging is needed on these types of issues.

And education would help a lot too - most people don't think about where the software that they are using is coming from and that is a big problem. When you present people with two pieces of software, they don't really give any thought to where those pieces of software came from or how it's made. So they won't be able to understand issues like the fact that vendors can just pull the rugs from under their feet whenever they feel like it. If people don't understand concepts like these, then obviously they won't understand how to avoid these things from happening!

I do think there's hope on the horizon though. If we can brand Microsoft et. al. as American companies and successfully convince people to be more and more skeptical of the USA as a whole, then maybe we have a chance in stimulating people to take more initiative in getting off these products and adopting other ones.

We should be worried about Windows as well to be completely honest. But at the very least, it's still more replaceable.

Nextcloud is a great start point, but it's terribly underfunded... as are all of our "alternatives" to big tech companies.

We've had FUCKING DECADES to do something about this. DECADES!!!

When will we ever learn....

It's not money they want. It's power. They want global domination. And this is not an exaggeration by any means.

It is very sad indeed. I went through the same experience when I wanted a license plate to commemorate Albert Heijn.

Not to oversimplify but a shit economic situation was a large part of the reason the Nazis were able to rise to power.

And as I look at around at our current world.... Oh. Shit.

But jokes aside, I think a lot of people are just not aware enough to realize how easy it is for extremism to fester in a society where people are economically (and morally) depressed. If you want to know why Hitler rose to power, then look no further than 1930s Germany to understand that. Our world doesn't look too different from that.

And besides, it's not like anyone knew exactly what was going to happen as events unfolded. Nothing like WW2 had ever occurred in the history of the planet, so even if you had a perfect time machine so you could go back and tell people what was about to happen, it's not like they would actually believe you. People were miserably, angry and desperate... so they wanted to fuck around, and eventually they found out, so to speak.

And one last point: Nazi Germany is also an extreme example of what can happen to a depressed society, and it's not like things always turn out the same way. I'm pretty sure that things are going to end pretty miserably before the world becomes a better place, but it doesn't necessarily mean WW3 or another Holocaust or anything like that. We can't know any of this with certainty - all we can do is hope for the best (and prepare for the worst, as they say).

This is the thing UI designers never understand[0] - if you keep changing shit around, nobody will ever figure out how to use it. If you keep it consistent and don't make dramatic changes, users will have a much easier time using it because they don't have to keep relearning the damn thing. Consistency is the most effective UI paradigm.

[0] or to put it in better terms, they're paid to not understand this so they can justify their jobs....

While I think this is a good idea (because copyright is a stupid concept in the digital age), the problem with this proposal is that Europe is also very pro-copyright. Doing something like this would probably piss off Americans, but if it also pisses off your next best ally as well, it's probably not going to work out.