I was on a non profit board where the founder realized he wasn't the right person for the job after 20 years of growing the org. It finally got to a point that he felt like the growth was beyond what he ever imagined or wanted.
He was, on every metric, very successful. He grew the org from nothing, got millions of dollars in donations, amassed a huge base, and no one would have thought different if he just kept going.
I remember sitting down with him one-on-one and asked him why. He thought about it for a minute and said, "It's time for someone to make it even better."
Looking back, I think I see the exhaustion. To constantly innovate, to push people forward, to push the org, the mission....it was all one person at a time. He reached a point in both age and in life that it just wasn't something he could keep doing.
He loved the mission so much he knew it deserved better.
Trump 1. When I saw very close friends who voted for Trump, not because of who he was but the fact that abortion would be over turned.
That's when I knew that these people would vote in Satan himself if he promised to get rid of abortions.
It took almost 2-3 to get from "I'm not voting for Trump" to progressive.
I sat in the middle for a while as a conservative leaning independent but still caring about social issues. But once I understood that conservatism was really about oppression, I hard lefted to be a progressive.
I want to agree with you but I doubt it. LinkedIn's value is generated by corporations, not it's users. So long as companies use it to vet people, it will be used.
It's the same reason why we still have applications. Recruiters hate them because they have to sort through hundreds of applications. Candidates hate them because they spend precious time updating their resume for the job post only to get buried under a bunch of AI slop.
Tell me you don't understand how GPL works without telling me how GPL works.
GPL has been battle tested in court and has the most precedence than any other license. Hell I'd even include property licenses.
Core Android and ChromeOS are FOSS because they have to be. But because Linus Torvalds didn't want to move Linux to GPL3, we have proprietary bootloaders with free software.
THAT'S how we have corporations profiting from GPL. Not because GPL allows anyone to use it.
If you're in any sort of white collar job, not having a LinkedIn profile that is decent will make employers (specifically HR people) think you are a bot.
It's terrible. But you will have a much harder time getting a job without it.
Learned about it from this episode of the Team Human podcast
But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.
And when they are, that's going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it's going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we're not going to criticize them openly, and they're not going to criticize us openly.
If we're the pacifists, we're not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don't know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we're not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.
It's not like they have to come out and tell the media, oh, we approve of our more sort of confrontational colleagues. They just keep quiet. They just keep quiet.
Understanding that a range of tactics is probably going to be necessary. Nobody really knows what's going to work. But if everybody's pushing back against a particularly violent state, then everybody's really on the same side.
You're getting down voted right now and I think it's important to understand why because I had a similar reaction not too long ago. I was curious to understand my own biases and what I think it's important to share what I learned as a cis male in IT.
Women just want to be women. Some want to wear nail polish and "look pretty" while others want to just rock a T-shirt and jeans. Like men who wear full tux and debug code at 6pm on a Friday (because they aren't farmers), they want to be what they want to be.
Men have the luxury to wear whatever they want (for the most part) and not get shit for it. Women have to do everything that men do and do it with maturity while handing the shit that men throw their way.
I learned this lesson when I was the sole male STEM counselor at an all girls camp. It was a volunteer gig that my company put together. They had last minute cancellations and I had time on my calendar and so I volunteered. I did not know it was all girls and I certainly did not know I'd be the only guy.
I stayed curious and helped where I could. My job was to be a project manager, help teams understand how to win their competition that had set requirements. So I walked them through all that and looked over their code. There as a dedicated "make up hour" where the girls were encouraged to make their presentations "pretty" with make up, glitter, etc. I personally found it pointless given how far behind we were but I kept my mouth shut.
And I observed.
The fact that these girls could do this and do IT was immensely powerful. You could see their spirits lifted. It rocked my world and made me check my own beliefs. Why not allow them to be pretty? Why not let them take an hour to put glitter and stickers on their board if it made them happy?
Did we win? No. But they enjoyed it.
In my 20+ years in tech, we need more women because they bring perspective in ways I don't. Not because they want to be pretty because they provide insight in ways I don't expect. Anything I can do to help make that happen I'll gladly do.
It's safe to assume anything redacted is Trump. They have the burden of proof to say it's not.