There’s been no lack of pixels pushed talking about the current job market, and I don’t know how much I’ll add to it. But Im enjoying writing again, so… talking with people on all sides, there are some interesting, and weird, things at play. Everyone is acting in their own best interest and doing things that are reasonable, meanwhile it is not working well for anyone.
Locally rational, globally dysfunctional systems are tough to solve.
It’s interesting how a lot of old are new again. And I guess I’ve been around the block enough times to see the similarity in things that have longer cycle times. Strategy doesn’t always repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
Looking at things through the eyes of a relatively well seasoned technology executive it’s hard not to see the same patterns emerge just with a slightly different flavor to them. The advances in AI are, without a doubt, going to change the way a lot of things work. But we’re seeing the same knee jerk reaction of creating executive titles with “AI” in the name, similar to what we saw with executive titles with “Data” in them, not too long ago. Sometimes it’s the right call at the time and can really be useful in helping an organization get its feet under it in a new area or a new way of working by making a new seat at the leadership table to advocate for it and educate about it.
I’m a long time novice user of LaTeX. For a while I was using a pipeline from emacs org-mode to pdf that used LaTeX as an intermediate format, and I even used it as part of typesetting a cookbook a few years ago. But theres no denying that it’s pretty cryptic to use and not the most welcoming syntax. Its the kind of thing that it’d have to “relearn” every time I had a gap between using it in projects.
Hilton Head Rugby recently closed out our men’s XV 2024/2025 season. We had some wins, had some losses, had to deal with both hurricanes and ice storm related weather issues during it, ending the season with a playoff berth in our union. Along the way we’ve got the foundations of a great women’s XV team coming together, had a very successful first season of youth flag rugby program in partnership with our local recreation center, and provided quite a few volunteer hours for various local causes.
This weekend I spent a few moments playing with some of the new generative ai engines that have recently been in the news so much lately. It’s interesting, and of course there is a ton of power there, much of it yet to be unlocked. For someone like me who’s been a big fan of procedurally generated content, from nethack to some approaches I’ve taken in testing and “dummy” data creation, its neat to see new developments in these (related) spaces.