gideon-rants

[gideon-rants]

Empath

Every so often, I’ll meet someone who claims to be an empath.

This means, essentially, that they have empathy, and it’s intense. They almost make it a super power. This has always bothered me, but the reasons have only come into focus recently.

Empathy is something that all human beings do. We do it pretty much all time. You interact with another person. You consult the evidence of your senses. You cross reference that with a lot of cultural context. You form a mental model of the other person’s mental state. This description is deliberately clinical. It just feels like you magically understand the other person. Except sometimes you’re wrong.

When someone tells me they’re an empath, they’re imbuing a completely normal part of the human condition with a supernatural element. They’re turning something mundane (wonderful, but mundane) into something magical. They’re taking it out of every day life and making it exceptional. It elevates the empath to a privileged position. It usually also makes the empath a martyr, because it’s both a blessing and a curse to have this exceptional capability.

By making empathy something exceptional, it also implicitly lets the rest of us off the hook. We’re not empaths. There’s no expectation that we should relate to the emotions of the people around us. I’m relentlessly materialistic in my approach to the world. Of course I can’t sense and respond to the emotions of those around me without the magical powers of an empath.

In short, it’s patronizing. I know it’s not (usually) meant that way.

It’s also a way to make oneself the center of a social group. Oh you’re an empath. That mean we all have to moderate our thoughts around you, because you can sense our bad vibes. It makes the supposed empath the center of any social group, and excuses bad behavior. I’ve also seen supposed empaths wildly mis-read a room.

Empathy is a completely mundane thing that everyone does. It’s not mystical. It’s not special. Relating to your fellow human beings is not a super power. Some people are better at it than others. The people who are good at it are just good at one particular aspect of being human. Let’s just hope that most of them use their powers for good.

[gideon-rants]

Why do you want to work for us?

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my career. Consequently, I’ve been to a lot of job interviews. I have opinions. I really wish there was one question that would be banned from all future interviews:

Why do you want to work at this company?

It sounds kind of reasonable on the face of it. Straightforward question. The problem is, there’s only one real answer.

“I got skills. You got money. Let’s do the Capitalism dance.”

Ok, that’s glib. Let’s limit the scope of discussion to well paid professionals seeking full time employment. This is the limit of my experience.

Let’s break down the question a little bit. It clearly imagines a world in which the employee has an emotional investment in the output of the work. Here are some of the answers that might be seen as the ideal:

I’m especially interested in the work your company is doing

I’m excited about the technical work I’ll be doing

Something that says you have an emotional investment in the work. 

Most professional positions, at most companies, just don’t involve doing anything any sane person would care about. Optimizing an investment fund in which you have no stake. Buying ads. Selling ads. Selling stuff. Delivering content. it all comes down to ways to make more money for people holding large stock positions in the company. As a prospective employee, that’s not you.

For the sake of argument, I’m assuming that the only valid answer is:

“I got skills. You got money. Let’s do the Capitalism dance.”

A disclaimer, before I continue. I don’t have a problem with the system in which I sell my labor, my employer makes money, and pays me a portion of that money in exchange for my labor.

Everybody involved in the process knows the answer to that question. Asking is silly. I tend to re-interpret the question. I see it as a veiled request to flatter the interviewer by saying nice things about the prospective employer. This might also provide the interviewer with a little personal validation for being correct in choosing this employer.

I no longer really care to blow smoke up anyone’s ass about what a wonderful company they work for. I’ve taken to answering with a more politic version of my catch-phrase above. I still get jobs, so obviously this deficiency doesn’t wholly kill my prospects.  

[gideon-rants]

Freedom of Religion

This might not completely make sense, as it’s pulled from the context of a Facebook comment thread. Lightly edited.

Speaking as an atheist, I strongly support freedom of religion. Let's be clear, though. There are religious and cultural practices that are beyond the pale. Relatively few of those exist in modern culture, but religious points of view absolutely do shift over time in response to the larger culture. Religion is part of culture, not separate from it.

One of my favorite hobby horses is honor killing. This is murder. It's illegal pretty much everywhere in the world, but many cultures will let it slide. Even some Americans see it as "less bad" than other kinds of murder. One hundred years ago, many jurisdictions in the United States had specific exceptions for, say, husbands who caught their wives cheating. This is a cultural legacy we've grown past, and we're better for it. Many such murderers justify their actions on religious grounds. We do not give them a pass, nor should we.

Like others in this discussion, I separate health care from, say, selling cakes, or fast food.

I dispute a hospital's right to refuse any service to a patient. I particularly dispute that right in the case of a patient who isn't choosing their hospital. For example, an unconscious person receiving emergency care. Or an individual visiting the only hospital that serves their region.

I dispute the right of a pharmacist to refuse to provide particular medications to particular individuals. By doing so, they are inserting themselves into a transaction between patient and doctor. This is just basic refusal to do one's job, and should be appropriate grounds for termination.

I dispute an employer's right to control what health care choices their employees make. Company health insurance is part of an employee's compensation package. The way that employee makes use of their insurance is every bit as much their decision as how they spend the cash portion of their pay check. Just like the pharmacist, this is a third party attempting to insert itself into a patient/doctor relationship.

I also assert that LGBTQ+ issues are, by and large, congruent with race. For most people, these are not choices they make, but aspects of self. If they're less visible than skin color, they are not less intrinsic. We call being gay a lifestyle. The best evidence that I'm aware of suggests that it's more of something one is than something one chooses. There are, of course, degrees.

[gideon-rants]

Career Shift?

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a new career for a while now. I’ve had this bug in my brain about becoming a lawyer. The intent would be a career that meets two goals.

The first would be emotionally satisfying work. Writing software is interesting and fun. However, my emotional involvement with the work is minimal. Most of what I’ve done for the past decade and more has been about e-commerce. And there’s one simple fact of e-commerce. I no fucks to give. In supporting people with loads more money than me to do the same things people have done for decades “but on the Internet”... I really don’t care.

I’ve been involved with government and national security work at various points in my career. This is often work that concerns me ethically. Particularly when I was involved in doing data mining research through ARDA (the Department of Energy work I’ve been involved in carried fewer ethical questions). But the truth is, I still can’t attach an emotional value to any of this work.

The second important criterion would be involvement with an industry that’s less youth-focused than software. It seems like it may be changing, but the software industry definitely has a focus on the young, especially in individual contributor positions that I enjoy the most. Young programmers are cheaper. It’s pretty much as simple as that. To the best of my knowledge, law doesn’t have that problem.

However, I’ve always been concerned with law.

I keep reading about how there’s an over abundance of lawyers in America. That there are more JDs out there than jobs for lawyers. It’s an odd thing, because there are also a lot of niches and markets that are under served. If you want to set up a practice in small town America, you’ll be in good shape. If you can find your niche, you’ll probably also be in good shape.

There’s also the inevitable fact of going from being a mid-career professional to being a freshly-minted lawyer in my (late) 40s. I’m accustomed to a certain salary level. I’m accustomed to a certain level of respect at work. I would have to earn those things all over again. I don’t look forward to that. My job doesn’t grind down my soul so badly that it constitutes a personal emergency.

Sometimes, you just have to wait and figure things out. See what strikes you. Something finally struck me.

I listen to audio books on long drives. I was driving from Albuquerque to San Diego recently, and my audio book was The Ethical Slut. An early chapter in the book discusses questions of non-traditional families using the law to protect themselves. It suddenly hit home for me that I could be that lawyer. I finally have an answer to one of the big unresolved questions about going into law in the first place.

This is still a huge decision, and one I haven’t yet made. However, I want to start doing the research. I believe, with great certainty, that this would be emotionally satisfying work. I also believe that it would be difficult work, and it probably wouldn’t pay as well as my current work. Even so, this seems worth pursuing.

[gideon-rants]

Healthy Debate

I’m a professional software developer. I have been for over twenty years. My employer refers to me as a “mid-career professional”. This is government speak for “middle-aged”. I like the work that I do. Occasionally, I even care about the work that I do beyond a certain baseline of professional pride.

One of the most important things I like in my work is something I’ve come to think of as “healthy debate”. A modern developer has lots to do that isn’t about writing code. There’s design, documentation, architecture, communication with immediate co-workers, communication with management, communication with customers, and so on. Notice that I called out at least four distinct flavors of communication there. That wasn’t an accident.

Many of these communication domains are characterized, to some degree, by debate. Communication with co-workers particularly so. A healthy software team will argue. Sometimes they’ll argue a lot. That’s OK. It’s part of the process of building consensus. A good team can disagree, discuss, decide, and move on without hurt feelings along the way.

Respect, conviction, humility, honesty. Those are some of the important properties with which a team must approach debate, in order for it to be healthy. I’ll go into a little more detail on each topic.

Respect

This is the umbrella under which many of the others fall. It’s worth calling out on its own. One might also say “good faith”. You enter a debate understanding that disagreements over technical choices are usually valid. Your team mates are worthy of your respect. You should expect it in return. You are working with intelligent, informed, passionate people who want very deeply to produce the best product they can.

Sometimes respect means fighting for what’s right. There’s an issue, and you’re confident in your views. It might be experience. It might be a flash of insight. It might be the simple knowledge that this decision is vital and it’s got to be done right. Sometimes it’s worth putting your stake in the ground and fighting for something.

I consistently argue for the vital importance of developer-led testing efforts in software projects. I’m passionate about code quality. I’m that guy who argues that the team should take a hit on velocity in order to keep our quality up. I will nearly always be the guy arguing against incurring new technical debt. I’m that weirdo who still find the technical debt metaphor to be inspirational. That’s me. That’s part of my respect for my team.

Sometimes, respect means that you acknowledge that someone else has won the day. Their point of view prevailed over yours. Respect means you can acknowledge that you lost the argument. You can accept defeat gracefully. You will accept the team’s decision, even if you think it’s wrong.

I used to work for an entertainment company. My team worked on certain back end systems. We had a system whose job was to track user transactions. It kept a lot of data. I wanted to use some optimistic locking techniques in our system. I proposed this and was shot down. Honest truth, I can’t recall what the argument was against me, but I was convinced at the time. No optimistic locks. I moved on.

I’ve just given two opposing examples of what respect means. The core to both is dedication to creating a good product, and the underlying presumption that your team mates are on your side.

Conviction

I’ve given an example of this already in my devotion to software quality. Part of healthy debate is conviction. If you are invested in your point of view, be loud and be opinionated. Advocate for your approach. Learn to be confident. Make sure that confidence is backed up by the best that you can bring to the table. Your customers deserve your best effort. Your professional pride demands it.

I’ve already given an example of what I see as a positive example of conviction. It can also be taken too far. I’ll use a hypothetical situation from that same entertainment company. For the sake of this discussion, I had a co-worker named Ralph. Ralph has conviction in spades. In fact, I think Ralph has a chip on his shoulder. When Ralph gets into an argument, he’s like a dog with a bone. He can’t even agree with you without arguing about terms for twenty minutes. Seriously, I once argued with Ralph for twenty minutes about something we actually agreed about. 

The team had a problem to solve where we should really only do something once. We settled, quite amicably, on a choice involving sequence numbers. This is a common trick used in messaging systems to deal with problems of multiple delivery. While this was about HTTP requests, most of the team felt that the message queue analogy was apt. Ralph did not. Ralph spent about two hours ravenously defending his point of view. Nothing else could get done, because Ralph was loud and vehement in his defense (and it was one of those open plan offices with no walls). In the end, my manager acquiesced to Ralph.

Why do I think Ralph was in the wrong here? Well, partly because Ralph was rude. Some of you in the audience are shaking your heads and calling me snowflake. I can’t say I care. If you can’t maintain a certain routine level of politeness at work, you’re a problem, you’re not “refreshingly honest” or a “straight shooter”. Ralph was also upending an established team decision (granted, it had been established for an hour or two). I don’t believe that Ralph was being respectful to the team, or to our manager. In the end, these decisions are subjective. Ralph, presumably, felt he was acting appropriately.

Humility

Humility is that magical ability to admit that you may be mistaken. Some members of your team have more experience. Sometimes you have to step back and let someone else shine. Sometimes you’re over-ruled by a higher power. Sometimes you’re just plain wrong. Accepting such situations with grace is an important part of healthy debate. You have to accept the possibility that you’re going to lose the argument. Sometimes you’ll lose for non-technical reasons. Someone with authority might over-rule you. The team might simply be in consensus, minus you. Accept these situations with grace and good humor.

Another example from my favorite entertainment company. In the murky mists of time before I arrived on the scene, there was an in-depth technical argument about an order processing system. June had authority to make certain technical choices. Rick was a very experienced developer. They were arguing over one of those things where there’s not really a right answer. June made a call, and the team (minus Rick) backed her on it. Two years later, Rick was still trying to re-litigate that decision. He just couldn’t handle having been over-ruled. Funny thing is, most of the time Rick was a good team member.

Another example of humility. Our big entertainment company had a major deadline approaching. There was an important architectural decision to be made. My manager felt one way. Literally the entire team felt differently. My manager pulled his manager trump card and told us to do it his way. We did it. The actual implementation fell to me. I may have left some passive-aggressive comments in the code, but I also did a damn good job. Fun fact. After Christmas vacation came and went, my manager had a change of heart, and came around to the team’s point of view. He apologized, and we scheduled the work to do the job right. That’s both a failure of humility, and a shining example of it.

Honesty

By honesty, I mean that, as much as possible, you only bring fact and informed opinions into the debate. You don’t bring personal motivations. You are motivated by doing what’s right for your customers and for the company. You don’t make technical choices with your resume in the back of your mind (Ok, in reality everyone does, but that doesn’t make it a good practice). You don’t try to adopt an out-sized role on the team just to satisfy your own ego. You don’t brow-beat your team mates into agreement.

On a team, I’m loud and opinionated. I’m not quiet about my beliefs or experience on technical matters. With my experience, I have very particular opinions about a lot of things. At best, these things make me an effective communicator. At worst, these can be intimidating or even serve to silence less assertive team members who disagree with me. As such, I see it as an important part of my role to dial it back sometimes. I try to invite contribution from team mates, especially those who seem like they’re remaining quiet.

Conclusion

In healthy technical debate, a team disagrees, discusses, decides, and then moves on. Maybe I should come up with a ‘d’ word for moving on. Healthy debate is characterized chiefly by respect. One bring one’s convictions to the table, and acts with humility when needed, and honesty at all times.

Some may note that these stories almost all paint me in a positive light. That’s the privilege of being the author. I have failed in respect, conviction, humility and honesty at times, and surely will again. Some may also recognize particular individuals or organizations in these stories. If any of my former co-workers are reading, I kindly request that you not name names.

[gideon-rants]

Dog-Whistle Dictionary

States’ Rights - Racism dressed up as a political movement.

Political Correctness - Whining that it’s not OK to be racist in public.

All Lives Matter - Racism pretending to be egalitarian.

Family Values - Sexism, with a side of racism.

Evolutionary Psychology - Racism and sexism and pseudo-science.

False Flag - Signal that the writer is a conspiracy theory whack job.

Affirmative Action - The writer is OK with racism and sexism in college admissions, especially if it benefits them or their kids.

[gideon-rants]

Milquetoast

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/896452967741747200

We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!

https://twitter.com/SpeakerRyan/status/896400866361704449

The views fueling the spectacle in Charlottesville are repugnant. Let it only serve to unite Americans against this kind of vile bigotry.

We have Nazis in Virginia. Like obvious, blatant Nazis. Saying Nazis slogans. Carrying Nazi flags. Giving Nazi salutes. Most people who know me know exactly what I think of that.

We also have... these tweets. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the precise definition of the word “milquetoast”. Wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed mumbo jumbo expressly designed so that anyone can read it and think “Hey, that’s about the other guy”.

No straightforward condemnations of racism here. No full-throated repudiation of white supremacy. Just a weakly phrased wish that we should all just get along. Like this was some minor disagreement. Something we can talk through over tea. We’ll just sit the Blacks and the Jews and the Women and the Queer folk down with these fuckers, and they’ll talk through their differences. And at the end, we’ll go back to a world where they’re all closeted, complicit, or beneath public notice.

Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck you, Donald Trump, for attempting, for the first time in your miserable life, to spare somebody’s feelings. The fact that you’re pussy-footing around actual fucking Nazis tells me a lot. Fuck you, Paul Ryan, for not growing a damned spine on this of all days.

I was going to throw Mitch McConnell under this bus. His public reaction (on Twitter, at least) was nearly as pale and worthless as these two, but it’s still a step up from... this.

To Trump’s supporters: you voted for this bag of dicks. The racism, the stupidity, the misogyny, the self-aggrandizement were all obvious in the election. This is a straightforward consequence of your collective choice to elect this piece of shit to the highest office in our land. If you’re still on the fence, I am no longer interested in your whining. If you still support him, then fuck you, too. 

UPDATE:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/08/13/white-house-doubles-down-on-trumps-charlottesville-comments-ignores-calls-to-directly-confront-white-supremacy/

The President has been shamed into clarifying his statement. He calls out the KKK and white supremacists by name, along with “all other extremist groups”. 

Too little, too late, Mr. President. It’s still a weak statement. It still equivocates and attempts to spread the blame around. You’re still trying to promote that false equivalence between the KKK and the people they want dead.

[gideon-rants]

Go Fuck Yourself

I feel like this is my mantra lately, on a wide variety of election-related topics.

To the butt-hurt Trump voters who can’t handle being called out for a racist act... go fuck yourself.

To the people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s so monumentally corrupt... go fuck yourself.

To the people telling us we should give Trump a chance... yeah we kind of have to now... but go fuck yourself.

To the people implying that protests and complaints are immature at this stage in the game... go fuck yourself.

To the people trying to tell me Trump isn’t racist, sexist, homophobic or thin-skinned... go fuck yourself.

To real, honest-to-god Trump supporters... go fuck yourself. Good and hard. We’ll wait. Back? Go fuck yourself.

To the Christian Conservatives who are cheering now, because they think they’ll be able to impose their religion on the rest of us... go fuck yourself. Or better yet, go get Jesus to fuck you.

To the KKK and other white supremacist and white nationalist groups who are celebrating this election as a win... don’t go fuck yourself... but I do hope you die in a fire with 12-inch steel dildo rammed down your throat.

I think I’ve run out of specifics. So, just for anyone that happens to deserve it...

I may update this as I find new inspiration.

[gideon-rants]

Independents

This is likely to be almost pure sour grapes. It’s something I’ve been mulling for a long time.

I’ve known a lot of people who claim to be politically independent. The most common sub-species of these is what I call the “I’m too cool for your partisanship” camp. They claim to take the best ideas from both parties and integrate them into a clean, balanced, superior whole.

I have to admit, I don’t have a whole lot of respect for this, and I’m going to go into some detail about why.

My first reason is simple. In most of the cases I’ve seen, this position is a transparent mask for indifference. If you don’t want to be involved in politics, just say that. Tell us you have better things to spend your time on. Of course you have opinions, but since you aren’t bothering to stay informed, those opinions probably aren’t very interesting.

And remember kids, all opinions are not created equal. Opinions can be ranked in a variety of ways. And none of those metrics rewards lack of data or lack of interest in the matter at hand.

This position also almost always indicates a lack of depth. People almost always talk about “both sides of the issue”. The two sides they mean are the Democrat and Republican sides of the issue. Trouble is, those two sides are almost always distillations of a far more complex set of dynamics. Those two views are usually drawn from particular framings that may be constructed to suit political needs. They’re often part of a broader strategy. 

If you really want to be above the fray, it’s incumbent upon you to see past the political strategizing. Make an effort to get to the heart of an issue. It’s difficult and it’s time consuming. You may decide it’s not worth your time. Please just be honest, if that’s what you’re doing.

[gideon-rants]

Empowerment

I’ve been sitting on this rant for a few days, trying to decide if it’s a good idea to say some of these things out loud. They’re not diplomatic. They’re not conciliatory. They’re not part of any path forward. It’s not a strategic thing for me to say. I think I’m just going to get it off my chest, and leave it there on the net for someone to find.

I feel very strongly about White Nationalism. I’m an atheist by choice. I come from a family with mixed backgrounds. My father was Jewish. You can imagine that the feelings I have toward White Nationalism are not positive, to say the least. It’s definitely personal.

Most of the time, on most days, I’m a vehement advocate of free speech. Even for White Nationalists, who spew bile and poison from their mouth holes. At the same time, I’m totally OK with living in a country where those people don’t feel empowered to speak in public. I’m OK with a country where those people feel that their children have been taken away from them, because the vile words they secrete have somehow not seeped into their offspring. I’m OK with a country in which these people are forced to hide in their caves for the rest of their natural lives while the rest of us move on and patiently wait for them to die, because sometimes that’s how progress is made.

Right now, I see a nation in which these people feel spoken-to. I see a nation in which they feel empowered. I see a nation in which they have been given new life. They feel this way, because the nation we share has chosen to elect a President who spoke to them, through his choices in who to associate with, and the words he’s said. I am pissed as hell. Those of you who voted for him, you may feel as I do, rejecting the racism that empowers the toad-disguised-as-men of the KKK. You may believe strongly in equality and social progress. You were still willing to throw those beliefs by the way side for a tax break or over a bogus email scandal, or whatever other horse shit you believe about Hillary Clinton.

So yeah, I’m a middle aged, well-to-do, straight white guy. Even as a Jew and Atheist, I am hardly in the worst shape going forward. This isn’t my call to action to my fellow holders of privilege. It’s just a rant. I’m pissed off. For the people who really are racist, anti-democratic, misogynistic, I have nothing but contempt for you. 

For the people who were OK with all of that for the sake of a tax break, I hope that you’ll come around to my point of view. This post isn’t going to do that. That’s why I was unsure of posting it. I’m just hoping that putting it out there will let me start doing the things that will actually help.

[gideon-rants]

Four Years of Narcissism, Bullshit and Pure Politics

I had been planning to inaugurate this blog with a rant about third party voting. The Jill Stein supporters have been annoying me. I never quite finished fleshing that one out. I will post it later. I may or may not finish it properly.

This blog is about me ranting and raving. It’s a place to vent my spleen without necessarily offending my friends and colleagues on other platforms.

Donald Trump is nothing more nor less than a narcissist. That’s really his defining quality. He believes only in Donald Trump. There is no greater good in his world. There’s no broader agenda. He’s proved that you can ride a wave of bullshit into the White House with nothing else to back you up.

The evidence has shown him to be thin-skinned, thoughtless, vain and shallow. He is willing to court absolutely anyone, so long as they’ll say something nice about him. Foreign dictators? Great! Neo-Nazis? He’s OK with that. Flagrantly anti-democratic regressives? Well, they said something nice about him, so they’re in.

Hillary Clinton didn’t have the luxury to say out loud that these people are contemptible, and it’s kind of a shame. I’m not aiming that accusation at “all Trump supporters”. Many of them are just fucking desperate, or they’re paranoid, or they don’t think they have much to lose, and they can afford to vote on a single issue. To all of you who are not alt-right shit-stains, or White Nationalist pig-fuckers or Socially Conservative Neanderthals, you are still supporting that.

Your arguments about why Clinton is worse are based on lies. Disproven over and over. I know I can’t convince you. If facts could penetrate your skulls, we wouldn’t be where we are. We wouldn’t be looking at four years of corruption and lies with a leader so comically inept that he will probably start a war by accident.

I did my part. I voted for Hillary Clinton. I gave money to her campaign. Next time around, I’ll do more. I want to make sure my friends who happen not to be white, male and Christian don’t get fucked over or killed in the coming few years.