"While I'm deeply sympathetic, the author should be discussing their issues with a therapist rather than spreading this on the internet." I am now the CEO at a very special data consultancy, Hermit Tech. If you are in management but have retained your soul, value the humanities, enjoy reading and so on, check us out! I'm as surprised as you are that this is a viable business model. I read all mail without exception, love getting it, and sometimes even take social calls. I may not respond, but…
Note: This has been cross-posted to my company's blog, in case you think there is some use in sharing with someone in a format that looks more authoritative. Link here . I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and it’s impossible to have rational conversations with them about it. I can’t name any specific people because they include personal friends I…
Pre-script: I've got a podcast episode out with Ed Zitron available here . It has been a year and a half since I quit my job to start a consultancy. It took me years to build up to quitting, and I had not only a chip on my shoulder, but to quote Seth Sentry, “the guac and the dip and the salsa.” The people that read this blog probably understand what I’m talking about. I looked around at how…
It’s my last day of writing for the year, so I’m going to try keep this one quick – it was knocked out over three hours, so I hope you can forgive me if it’s a bit clumsier than my usual writing. For some strange reason, one of the few clear memories I have from growing up in Malaysia is a particular moment when I was seven years old. It was the first day of school for the year, and I was studying…
I haven’t written anything in four months. This period of prolonged silence is best explained by the unexpected difficulties of the business that I started in 2024, on the assumption that it must be possible to make an ethical, human-centered business on the basis of how incompetent the general market seemed. In fact, one difficulty in particular has threatened to put an end to my writing in its…
A few days ago, I was presented with an article titled “My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts” by Thomas Ptacek. I thought it was not very good, and didn't give it a second thought. To quote the formidable Baldur Bjarnason : “I don’t recommend reading it, but you can if you want. It is full of half-baked ideas and shoddy reasoning.” 1 I have tried hard, so very hard, not to just be the guy that hates…
Note: This is an edited re-post of something I wrote in 2019 on a now-defunct blog, apparently a month before I started my first job in tech. I need to reference it in a future post. As a result, it is a little bit different stylistically from my current writing. I hope you enjoy it anyway! I'm talking about the brain-destroying threat that narratives pose to our thinking today, and we must credit…
Can't leave rap alone, the game needs me 'Til we grow beards, get weird and disappear Into the mountains, nothin' but clowns down here I. Judging A Book By Its Cover The most treasured object in my home is the cheapest bookshelf I could find. It has been overflowing for quite some time, despite my efforts to only buy books of exceptional quality and relegating the rest to my kindle. Many of the…
The steps in this guide have generated A$1,179,000 in salary (updated 13th April, 2025), measured as the sum of the highest annual salaries friends and readers have reached after following along, where they were willing to attribute their success actions in here. If it works for you, email me so I can bump the number up. I currently run my business out of my own pocket. If I don't make sales, I…
I. A few years ago, I had an annual one-on-one with the Chief Technology Officer of an employer with more than ten thousand staff. Senior management absolutely fawned over this person — extremely politically savvy, they would say. Amazing at acquiring funding. Really cares about everyone on the team. The platform that paid my salary would not exist without their incisive mind. They're invited by…
I've been absolutely slammed over the last few weeks, between moving to a new house, a large number of readers visiting Melbourne over the holidays and wanting coffee, and doing work for clients at the ol' consultancy. However, writing will pick up again in mid-January, more than ever before 1 , and we'll embark on my consulting arc together, where I will try desperately to remain interesting…
Why do I bother getting angry about software? When I started writing , it came from a place of ennui — absolute despair at the amount of waste I was seeing in the technology sector since leaving university. I was paid spectacularly well, but nothing I produced had any value. No one I knew in the corporate world was producing any value, save for those who were completely deluding themselves. Even…
It is 9:59 AM in Melbourne, 9th October, 2024. Sunlight filters through my windows, illuminating swirling motes of dust across my living room. There is a cup of tea in my hand. I take a sip and savor it. I text the other senior engineer, who unlike me is full-time, on the team: "I'm ready to start at 10", as is our custom. The minute hand moves. It is 10:00 AM in Melbourne, 9th October, 2024. The…
With the decision to focus on our consultancy full-time in 2025, my time as an employee draws to a close. My attitude has become that of an entomologist observing a strange insect which can miraculously diagnose issues, but only if the diagnosis is "you weren't Agile enough". My rage has quickly morphed into relief because this is, broadly speaking, the competition. 'A beetle clock?' she said. She…
I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, but you have elected the way of pain! 1 Every few weeks, I receive an email or have a conversation that makes me reflect on whether I'm living up to my own ideals. The emails talk about how refreshing it is to see someone saying what most people are thinking, and how it must be brave to put my thoughts out there. The conversations are about how you…
Mecatol Rex. A blasted hellscape, scarred and pitted, haunted by the ghosts of ancient custodians who await the next fools to aspire for lordship over its husk-corpse. A million billion xenos of species innumerable have spilled synth-blood and soul across flagstones that have witnessed aeons of death, sacrificed at the altar of failed ambition. Mecatol Rex. The hollowed-out heart of the galaxy.…
I. This Escalated Quickly I mentioned one post ago that this blog has done approximately 2M+ lifetime views, with over a million of them being in the past two weeks in response to the now-infamous rant about AI , then I went out of my way to not write the most maximally viral thing possible for personal don't-be-a-clickbaiting-grifter 1 reasons. But to say that the blog has done a lot of traffic…
This blog did so many hits last week that the host platform experienced timeouts. I've been invited onto podcasts, and offered both small technical projects and journalism work, of all things. It was a crazy time. But the internet moves on, as it always does, and I am left, as we all always are, to figure out what to write about next. The thread that runs through the emails I get is, surprisingly,…
Synergy Greg would like to see you in His office, it is the one down the hall, past the cubicles and dreary faces, uplifted only when He deigns to venture forth. You will know Him when you see Him, He is the one composed, of a thousand writhing forms, of a thousand professions, and a thousand colours, though mostly white, between the two of us. Multitudinous is Synergy Greg! As He offers you a…
The recent innovations in the AI space, most notably those such as GPT-4, obviously have far-reaching implications for society, ranging from the utopian eliminating of drudgery, to the dystopian damage to the livelihood of artists in a capitalist society, to existential threats to humanity itself. I myself have formal training as a data scientist, going so far as to dominate a competitive machine…
A few weeks ago, friend of the blog Nat Bennett wrote this article on lying to get jobs . It is strongly against lying, and the central thesis is that habitually lying is going to put you into a world where everyone is lying all the time, and every morning you wake up and think "Why am I surrounded by malevolent grifters that do nothing but backstab each other every day? Why is everything in the…
Growing up, my friends and I were in the unenviable position of being first language English speakers who were enamored by Western culture. The life of eleven year olds that read Eragon instead of playing football was isolated, to say the least. The main escapes we had in a world where we attended thousands of hours of schooling without being able to communicate with our Malay-speaking teachers…
I. I turned 30 today. I've taken a few stabs at this post, and nothing came out feeling right. I wanted to write about Terry Pratchett, the writing process itself, programming, improv theater, career nonsense, direction, and all the other bits in life that warrant reflection. Normally I try very hard to try and narrow my writing down to a single topic - just imagine how chaotic they'd be without…
A few weeks ago, I popped open the Y-Combinator application form and saw that one of the only things they ask for is a story about hacking a non-technical system. Well, I don't really have a reason to beg for money, lacking an unprofitable idea to beeline for an IPO 1 with, but I did find myself really wanting to write about this. Starting with all the hacking I did at university. I have many,…
It is a cold Anzac day in Melbourne, and I am brooding . I've followed through on my commitment to interview in the tech industry without relying entirely on in-network referrals as I normally do (for a good reason - my network consists largely of the most competent people at mediocre companies!). It is dystopian out there. These are some anecdotes on my interviewing experience, the treatment you…
It has been about a year and a half of working three days a week in response to burnout. It took me six months to regain the ability to do anything beyond resting the moment I was done working, and in the past year I have recovered much of my ability to function, though not necessarily in the sense of spending eight hours in an office - that is forever gone. Instead, I find myself producing all…
PS: This blog post has been converted into a talk, which GDG Melbourne very generously hosted. The audio quality is sketchy, but it has points which are not present in the blog post. It is less evocative but contains more concrete advice. You can watch it here . I. A scorpion wants to sell some software but cannot code, so it asks a frog to write the application. The frog hesitates, afraid that…
The time is upon us. I'll try keep it brief because I really don't think who I am is that interesting - but there is a podcast link which might actually be of interest if you wish to indulge in my dulcet tones. All links below may give you adblock warnings as I've shortened the ones containing my name via TinyURL to slow how rapidly this becomes the first page when recruiters look me up. Apologies…
This post is enormous, clocking in at 7.5K words. Strap yourselves in, make some tea, and I hope you can forgive any typos. Walsh: That's your opinion. Hitchens: Well, guess what? Guess who's saying it? That's a very clever thing to say. Shall I ask, would you prefer I answer with your opinion? What a fatuous remark. I. I have, for the most part, entirely ignored the most senseless negative…
Last week, I received the following invitation to a compulsory on-site meeting, following management's repeated engagements with some sort of Agile shaman. You have been invited to: Compulsory On-Site: Continuous Improvement Playback & Strategy Notes: This will be an all-morning meeting so arrive energized as we hit the ground running on Monday morning The Leadership Team Oh man , where do I even…
We need to talk about the kind of person that loves "flexible" schemas, and why I am unable to disclose what I will do the next time I see one without going on a watch list. I. A few years ago, I worked at a company that had received $1M from FAANG (that's Facebook et. al. for the one art historian who reads this blog) to produce an AI and data classification tool. For some of you super slick…
I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles Such are promises All lies and jest Still a man hears what he wants to hear And disregards the rest I. I'm somewhat frequently asked how I write. Here's the secret - I sit down and write, write until my fingers cramp, until my back aches from focus eroding my posture, until I have nothing…
Two things are true. The first is going to sound bad in a culture where engineers are encouraged to apologize for existing while it is totally acceptable for a grifter that can't code to insist that they're a "thought leader". It is that, in my immediate professional environment, I am consistently acknowledged to be one of the best engineers around. As a rough rule, I study more than the average…
This is the view from my window at this second. There are two significant things about this picture. The first is if that you squint very hard at the very center, you can just about make out a chair lying on the adjacent rooftop. Despite living in one of the fancier areas of Melbourne, someone threw that out there four years ago, and there it has lain through the entirety of my working life. I'm…
I've believed for a while that, if my company died, the most likely scenario would be dying without a single dollar earned. There are so many ways for this to play out. It's an endless minefield. There's just not talking to any real humans, which is the number one way that I've seen people fail at starting their businesses. They just start working on some product, frequently with some extremely…
Over the holidays, I picked up a book titled The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity , recommended by Nassim Taleb as a "masterly" work. The introduction to this extremely concise book is as follows: The following pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, know, and thus possibly neutralise one of the most powerful, dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and…
... and a Happy New Year, as I won't be writing until January. It seemed like the natural time to talk about the weirder things I've done in the past two years, how they turned out, what comes next, and most entertainingly, how my employer is almost certainly going to fire me next year. I. On My Soul and Exiting the Safe Path Selling out (I'd rather call it "compromise") Is easy to do (sometimes…
I was recently introduced to the following paper on the Australian fire service , which is an absolute banger. It starts with the following quote. The basic state of affairs is ignored, to wit, that modern society has no control center. It's a wonderful piece on ritual and absurdity, against a backdrop of a bunch of people doing their best to save an environment that they love amidst a swirl of…
A few months ago, I wrote about saving my employer about half a million dollars by clicking a few buttons in Snowflake. In it, I expressed a lot of cynicism around the likelihood of my employer rewarding me. I had reached out to the most senior person in my organization outside of the executive heading our department to ask for more money, and received total silence in response for several weeks.…
We're trying something new today. I. The swirling, putrid-green heavens begrudgingly opens its yawing maw and unleashes a lazy torrent of acid-rain-drool upon the slowly awakening inhabitants of Valadia IX. The deluge of thick droplets sizzles through the air, splashing against fortified architecture and sliding slug-trails along the sides of buildings before eventually terminating either in a…
The most talented data engineer I know, and my first manager, is a man that loves cooking. I mean, you might think you love cooking, but this guy loves cooking. The most excited text message I received this year was from him, proudly sharing the goddamn analytics on the heat distribution of chicken in his oven with his newly imported thermometer . We're talking about a culinary madman, capable of…
I've mentioned that I'm starting a company with friends - no, this isn't a plug for us. The name of the company won't even be mentioned. We now have five engineers on board, one being a 15-year industry veteran, though we're all working on it part-time. Without getting into the details, I've had a very easy time succeeding in the tech industry despite moving to a country with no network and decent…
Bad news everyone - today's post is high on reflection and low on inarticulate rage. It's actually two posts. Reflections on lunch with a reader, and my reflections on the many emails I've received over the past few weeks. Incidentally, I had such a great time getting lunch that I'm going to erode my SecOps a little bit further. While I love being in touch with people from around the world, and…
In 1985, I murdered a man in cold blood over something petty. I can't remember what it was - all I remember was the fleeting sense of relief that the struggle was over, then years of panic, trying to hide what I'd done from the authorities. Thankfully Microsoft released PowerBI in 2015, so I put all the evidence in a dashboard and now I sleep soundly, secure in the knowledge that no one is ever,…
Before I get into it, I'm on Mastodon now . Now I have a platform for all my intrusive thoughts during standup. Anyway... There is an incredibly patient and kind lead engineer on my team - the kind of person that gives me hope that maybe, while the corporate world is run on horrific incentives, it isn't efficient enough to crush all that is good and holy from this world. They have been at this…
I had my first interview with a serious tech company - the kind that isn't Google but actually has some name recognition amongst people deeply into the tech space. It starts normal and promising, and then fucking derails in spectacular fashion. Strap yourselves in, this is a long one. I. Details On The Company For reasons of anonymity and politeness, I won't identify them outright in public. A few…
Sweet merciful Jesus, I woke up this morning and my inbox was flooded with horrific stories about how employers treat people. I knew things were fucked, but this was so much worse than I imagined, and that's not even getting into the comments on Hackernews. I am going to dig into some of those emails, but first... I usually don't waste time on the negative comments because usually the person…
I saved my company half a million dollars in about five minutes. This is more money than I've made for my employers over the course of my entire career because this industry is a sham. I clicked about five buttons. Let's talk about why happened and why it's a disgrace that it was even possible. I. Background Let's start with some background, because it is fucking wild that an inefficiency that…
This year, I've attended my first two large tech conferences. One was hosted by a trendy database vendor, and the other was a general tech conference in a non-hub that no one should know about. Despite some highlights, I would describe both experiences as "grotesque", "troubling", and "oily". Or, to quote a friend upon reporting in: Conferences are an empty hall of smiling assassins. At some point…
This is a list of all my favorite articles, accompanied by some brief discussion. I'd like to maintain a list like this somewhere to update periodically, along with the little notes, and notify readers if I've added anything particularly good. Let me know if you are aware of any good solutions for this at ludicity.hackernews@gmail.com. I. Patrick McKenzie's Career Advice Link . Patrick McKenzie,…
I woke up one morning this week to find out that we're YouTube famous now - my all-time favourite tech YouTuber, Primeagen, ended up reading my post on the social fiction of most organizations wanting to improve things on his stream. On one hand, senpai noticed me. On the other hand, senpai didn't agree with me. The main complaints were: You can affect change at your organization Looking down on…