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by dreambuffer 17 days ago
This post resonates with my situation very much, although I have not made even a tiny fraction of the contributions this person has. I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed, it suggests the software industry is in very big trouble.

That being said, and speaking from my own experience, one can develop ego problems if they've been undervalued by society. You can start viewing other people as lesser than you for not understanding your situation. I managed to escape those toxic thought patterns by practising empathy as a deliberate activity, and forcing myself to give love and grace to others until it felt natural.

7 comments

> I managed to escape those toxic thought patterns by practising empathy as a deliberate activity, and forcing myself to give love and grace to others until it felt natural.

> but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed

The juxtaposition of these two statements is amusing.

I think people often make this mistake, where they think they've killed their ego, and then fail to notice when their ego returns.

I think people generally underestimate how hard it is to permanently kill their ego. What ends up happening, then, is that a lot of people genuinely believe that they have humility when in actuality they don't.

Don't kill your ego. It's innocent.

Find who framed it.

I never said I was better than them, but I can acknowledge that some people are. Even then, only in the domain of software, not in terms of human value.
Sorry, to be clear: I'm not calling you out or judging you. It just made me chuckle.
Donkeys are noble animals!
No worries, I can see how it would lol
> I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed, it suggests the software industry is in very big trouble.

Based solely on this blog post, I would question if this person would be capable of holding a regular job, and it has nothing to do with skill. It also kind of reads like they already know this about themself.

> Based solely on this blog post, I would question if this person would be capable of holding a regular job

The blog post states quite clearly that this person has had regular employment in the past, which suggests they may be just as capable of it in the future. There are some bad optics in the post, but they have more to do with wanting to buy a home in SF and fly private aviation than whether OP can hold down a job.

People have regularly done things in the past that they can no longer do in the present. I don’t know what they were like in the past but a blog post like this would concern me if I was hiring.
> I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed...

It's effective to apply a filter of eccentric vs predictable on these sort of matters. The issue isn't so much whether someone is capable or not, but whether they fit into one of the standard boxes the bureaucracy has prepared. And to make it even worse, managers don't have the skill or inclination to try and make the best of the specific person who they employ. They generally have an approach that they've worked out based on the average of people who they have managed. If they get an employee who falls too far outside that range they may literally not know what to do. Usually at that point they will decide that they are dealing with a deviant and the problem must inherently be the deviance.

It's an unfortunate situation. Particularly if you're the sort of person who cares about getting to the best outcome and you realise how many geniuses must get shut down when the best way isn't the usual one. In practice incompetent but routine gets a lot more tolerance than competent but eccentric. Someone needs to be very competent indeed to overcome eccentricity.

This isn't an ego problem (though I think she may additionally have an ego problem). The author has espoused techno-fascist views (something she avoids actually mentioning in this post), and that seems to be the real reason why many people are uncomfortable working with her.
I just took that as a given for someone who loves 4chan so much
Like what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justine_Tunney:

> In 2012, Tunney started working for Google as a software engineer.[4] In March 2014, Tunney petitioned the US government on We the People to hold a referendum asking for support to retire all government employees with full pensions, transfer administrative authority to the technology industry, and appoint the executive chairman of Google Eric Schmidt as CEO of America.[5][6] Tunney has been inspired by the political views of Curtis Yarvin.[7]

This person seems to be extremely online and Wikipedia has a petty high bar for inclusion of things like that. I wouldn't be surprised of their social media was littered with even more extreme things (like support of slavery, which the talk page mentions).

Thanks! I don't know, a cheeky petition and an off-hand tweet don't seem conclusive or comprehensive to me.
Of course, but if it's managed to make it on to Wikipedia, it's probably the tip of the iceberg.

Feel free to make the conclusive and comprehensive survey of their online presence, and report back your findings.

I tried pretty hard, but even the Wikipedia refs are just people (wildly) extrapolating from the petition. I'm not saying these aren't her beliefs, I'm just saying we don't have enough to know, definitely not enough to cancel her, which this thread feels like it's about.
> I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed, it suggests the software industry is in very big trouble.

I don’t think so. I think what happens is that people believe in meritocracy or karma or universal justice. Generally, one cannot rely on that. You make one mistake and then another and you are out, no matter how much goodness you have done. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s absurd, but we must keep pushing the rock and be happy (or else the alternative is s…)

Can’t even write the word “suicide” without having so self censor

What freedom indeed!

Every time I get my rock to the top I put another sticker on it.
> This post resonates with my situation very much,

How does it resonate with your situation? What do you have in common?

Being rejected for being racist and neo-fascist? Being frustrated by not being able to afford private aviation? Wanting to raise donations to pay for a house and travel? Lots of comments here substantiating that, BTW.

I didn’t get that they’re struggling to find work from the article. Did I miss something?
> I didn’t get that they’re struggling to find work from the article. Did I miss something?

They're just struggling to buy "a home in San Francisco" and "travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation."

Also this person apparently went from being part of Occupy Wall Street to being "inspired by the political views of Curtis Yarvin" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justine_Tunney).

> Also this person apparently went from being part of Occupy Wall Street to being "inspired by the political views of Curtis Yarvin"

A lot of the far right are anti-globalisation as Occupy Wall Street was, both are a rejection of consensus politics, and people who tend to go to extremes are more likely to go to a different extreme than become moderate.

There is also a type of brilliant person (and Justine is brilliant) who tends to go off the rails in some way. Look at the number of weird or nasty creative artists and authors.

> "travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation."

I did not read that far and thought the post arrogant and entitled! That is a Musk like level of being out of touch with reality. Again, something people who indulge a sense of their own brilliance are prone to.

I suspect that on some level, many of the people slating Justine feel threatened by his genius, and that is part of the reason why they keep bringing up the same tired old laundry list of perceived sins in an attempt to do so.
Did you make this account just to misgender her a couple times? You haven't posted before or since but are very careful to use the masculine pronoun to describe someone that uses the feminine pronoun in the only posts you've made.