Dorota Parad

In case she wants practical philosophy (as in doing philosophy yourself rather than just reading what old men wrote), Tao Te Ching is what got me started. And you may laugh, but I consider the Dune series a gateway drug for thinking like a philosopher, very unserious but so effective.

So, Generative AI is a stochastic parrot regurgitating the average of all the world’s most mediocre code… Yet, somehow, the “upper elite 1% of talent” is getting massive productivity gains from it? To the point where Elite Performing tech corporations mandate it?

That doesn’t add up

I wrote a longer bit on this topic: dorotaparad.ch/aiaiaiaiai/

The myth of complexity: why microservice architecture doesn’t work for you | Value Added Thoughts When I started my company, it was very obvious that we were going with a microservice architecture from the get go. Even though we were just two people, it seemed like the right choice. Different piec...

I keep hearing this claim again and again - microservice architecture comes with extra complexity. Is that really so?

dorotaparad.ch/microservice...

In recognition of doing nothing | Value Added Thoughts Rewarding problem solving creates a paradox. Imagine two different teams. One team, let’s call it Team A, is not very dynamic. The team members are content, they do solid work every day, and work well...

When we only reward teams for delivering features or solving problems, we encourage two things:
1) releasing features that don’t matter 2) creation of problems to be solved.

If you want reliable software, reward teams when nothing happens.
dorotaparad.ch/recognition-...

@british-airways.bsky.social what's up with your booking system? I'm trying to book a flight and both your website and the app throw errors for the second day now, can't complete the process.
Are you not selling tickets anymore? Don't you want my money? 🫠

Could it be because there's "AI" in "samurai"?

The most surprising fact about this process is that it was fun. Well, minus the part involving React. I hope to some day recover those bits of my soul I’ve lost.
(6/6)

Then I found Zola and that’s what I ended up using. It has some quirks and the templating language is too verbose for my taste, but overall felt really intuitive. Minimal, logical, straight forward - what else can a girl ask for?
It’s also super fast, which is a nice bonus (yay Rust!)
(5/6)

I’m now convinced that React is a tool devised by Satan to steal our souls and lead us all astray, and Docusaurus is simply an extension of that plan. (4/6)

I’ve started with Docusaurus, simply because that’s what my team at Authress uses. I thought that was going to make things easy, since I’d have a baseline to copy and tinker with. Ugh. Big mistake. (3/6)

What took me longest was finding an appropriate static site generator framework. And by “appropriate” I mean one that’s clean, logical, not bloated or too opinionated, and at the same time compatible with how I think about websites. Surprise, surprise, that’s a challenging set of requirements… (2/6)

I’ve finally created a home for some of my scribbles: dorotaparad.ch

I will fill it out with my past and new articles in the coming weeks and beyond. (1/6)

I have a very simple heuristic: If you and the CEO aren't on first-name speaking terms by the end of your first month, either the company's too big for you to matter, or the CEO thinks it is. Neither's a good omen.

It is so much easier to destroy than to build.

Even if you have certifications, most companies still ask you to fill in their silly paperwork, because that's "their process".

You can always direct them to a filled out CAIQ questionnaire, especially if it's a low value prospect.

I've said this before: AI is good for raising the floor, not raising the ceiling.

Replacing friends with LLM chatbots would be like replacing missing nutrients with eating your own feces. Even if you're not put off by the idea, you won't get anything that wasn't already chewed and digested.

Those operators will be angry, but it won't suddenly cause them to think. Instead, someone will point out a convenient target "responsible" for the situation. Migrants, minorities, those queer weirdos, whoever is not like them and can't defend themselves.

Hemaris fuciformis, known as broad-bordered bee hawk-moth sitting on a concrete gravel pavement in full sun, just chilling.

Look at this beauty I've met on the side of the road

Most folks don't actually want unbiased news. They want news biased in ways that match their existing beliefs while appearing objective to outsiders.

Don't you know that nipple is the ultimate embodiment of lust, the very avatar of carnal desires? Otherwise innocent men turn into pervy demons when exposed to a mere suggestion of a female nipple's existence. They must be protected!!!

Contrary to the narrative peddled to us by tech bros, the AI is not going to cause a revolution or bring huge breakthroughs. The value of AI is not in raising the ceiling, it's in raising the floor.

Slow and boring. And doesn't make money.

AI changes only part of a part of the equation - some of the initial cost of implementation. That's peanuts compared to the total cost of ownership. AI is an intern replacement at best. Someone has to micromanage the intern.

An engineering team to write and maintain each tool costs way more than 5k/y, and that's not counting the cost of opportunity. At no scale it's cheaper to build something that's not your core business.

If your talent acquisition system doesn’t have a way to recognize that it under-leveled someone after hire (and correct it!), you’ll inevitably build a pipeline that incentivizes identifying “hidden” talent to exploit

This is the main reason why the gender pay gap is worse than we think it is. I've seen this too many times: woman gets underleveled at hire because she's "too quiet", then broken perf system keeps her there. Meanwhile, she performs better than her boss and does his job for him 😬

If you're hiring in tech, read this thread. The whole thing. And then read it again.

Even as feminists, it takes conscious work not to give greater weight to the opinions of men. We've spent our lives absorbing untrue messaging that men are more serious and trustworthy.

For commerce, you're right. Documentation, codebase search, research - mostly irrelevant. Browsing creative work - 50/50 (sometimes you want to explore or be surprised).

I agree with your ending conclusion - it's down to knowing what your users expect in your given context.
search!=search