I worked in e-commerce SaaS in 2011~ and this was true then but I find it less true these days.

Are you sure that you’re not the driving force behind those metrics; or that you’re not self-selecting for like-minded individuals?

I find it really difficult to convince myself that even large players (Discord) are measuring startup time. Every time I start the thing I’m greeted by a 25s wait and a `RAND()%9` number of updates that each take about 5-10s.

Discord’s user base is 99% people who leave it running 100% of the time, it’s not a typical situation

I think that they make the startup so horrible that people are more likely to leave it running.

As a discord user, it's the kind of platform that I would want to have running to receive notifications, sort of like the SMS of gaming.

A large part of my friend group use discord as the primary method of communication, even in an in person context (was at a festival a few months ago with a friend, and we would send texts over discord if we got split up) so maybe its not a common use case.

It leads to me dreading having to start it (or accidentally starting it - remember IE?) and opting for the browser instead.

I strongly doubt that!

Hikacking my own comment to mention that the normal thing on forums when a reasonable person reads an unreasonable comment is they move on, which can make the comment stand unopposed which gives it credence it doesn’t deserve. I believe if more of us actually showed our disagreement out loud as I have here, it could change things sometimes.

I have plenty of responses to an angry comment I made several months ago that supports your point.

I made a slight at Word taking like 10 seconds to start and some people came back saying it only takes 2, as if that still isn't 2s too long.

Then again, look at how Microsoft is handling slow File Explorer speeds...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44944352

I never said that 2s wasn’t too long. I just said your environment was broken if it took 10.

There is a high chance the extra nuts and bolts added to Windows, which slow it down, are IT required softwoods, settings, and security enhancements.

Took me almost a year to get a separate laptop laptop for office and development. Their Enhanced Security prevented me from testing administrative code features and broke Visual Studios bug submission system, which Microsoft requires you to use for posting software bugs.

By the way, I can brake Windows simply by running their PowerShell utilities to configure NICs. Windows is not the stable product people think it is.

I have the same experience on windows. On the other hand, starting up discord on my cachyos install is virtually instant. So maybe there is also a difference between the platform the developers use and that their users use.

Yep, indeed. Which is the main reason I don’t run Discord.

I strongly doubt that. The main reason you don’t run it is likely because you don’t have strong motivation to do so, or you’d push through the odd start up time.

Just going to throw out an anecdote that I don’t use it for the same reason.

It’s closed unless I get a DM on my phone and then I suffer the 2-3 minute startup/failed update process and quit it again. Not a fan of leaving their broken, resource hogging app running at all times.

Why not just respond to the dm on your phone?

It would fail to auto update as a system installed package, because that requires a system level package install.

It would not fail to update if installed as a user installed flatpak.

Many apps are this way now.

For me, I really dislike the fact Discord is completely closed off to the wider internet, and Discord, the company, has absolute control: from a privacy and freedom of speech point of view. This goes against the core ideas of a free and open internet.

I'll admit that the Discord service is really good from a UX point of view.

Agreed.

SQL Server is of equally high quality.

We just have postgres in the open source world (which is truly exceptional) so our expectations are higher.

I am the first to hate on Microsoft, their OS is a dumpster fire that I feel is forced on me. But sometimes they knock it out of the park.

Thats a solid callout. Not everyones favorite but honestly I never have insane issues when I work with it, nothing out of the ordinary anyway.

I love all of this.

I’ve never been brave enough to modify my laptops beyond the one time I sprayed a new (hard) topcoat on an Acer Aspire 5520g… which turned it from a flimsy piece of garbage into a slightly less flimsy piece of garbage.

I feel like running a Thinkpad x201 these days would be a lesson in frustration (for the browser bloat you mentioned) but that was my perfect laptop. If I could do a mainboard swap I would continue to use it.

Yeah, although the low-res screens on older machines are pretty limiting with modern UIs too. Try setting 800x600 for an hour and see how you fare. I have romantic dreams about spinning a new mobo for the Toughbook, but it would have to include a screen transplant too. And at that point I probably fail a lot of the toughness that made it worthwhile in the first place.

no, I got my puk code from my phone operator when I moved services before. at least in the UK it works that way.

Yes, but you are unlikely to have your PUK code (its on the card you got your sim with) if you have also lost the sim.

Its a much more losable bit of plastic, and without it (or a contract) why would an operator give you the PUK code for a number they can’t prove you used to have access to? It would be impossible to tell if you are trying to steal someones number.

you walk into the shop with your passport or driving licence....

Try it

Are you telling me this is a lie: https://www.vodafone.co.uk/help/unlocking-your-phone

Please continue up the line to find the context.

The grandparent does not have his sim card.

> The grandparent does not have his sim card.

which is not necessary for transferring your number to a new SIM. when you lose your phone here, you don't lose your number.

Depends. Google was not able to recover my Google Project Fi number because I was abroad. And when I was back in the US it was "too late"

People can’t think anything good of communism because they’re conditioned to feel that way.

Whats interesting is how equal it was for everyone, one comment I got when asking people who lived through the soviet era was that.

“there’s no advantage given to any religion” (hence, new years being the traditional family get together time). and “we were all comrades, men and women”. A lot of what they hear from the US about gender equality falls on deaf ears because thats what they had and they were told was bad.

A weird perspective, but certainly an interesting one.

It’s always difficult to hear things that doesn’t fit our narrative.

Even if you can point to some positive outcomes the is the main issue of the whole system being so easy to corrupt and coopt for personal gain & power trips.

You might get lower infant mortality, better access to healtcare ans aeducation (as long as the party considers you worthy) but you will almost immediately get crooks and incompetents in leadership positions, whose only qualities are the set of morals to get to a position of power no matter the cost.

And those leadership positions are appointed by or even part of The Party - and the party is never wrong. There is no free press to critisize them and if you do speak up, then you are logically an spy from The West, undermining the perfect communist utopia & need to be punished.

Only if someone is really epically incompetent they might get purged by the inner circles, but it is even more likely they will purge someone actually doing things right who still has some morals left.

You could be the most ideological communist trzing to build the bright future & will still end up sidelined or worse by the corrupt pigs holding to all the power in the communist state.

When the Soviets crashed the Prague Spring in the 1968 there were some interbrigadists that went to fight agains Francos fascists in Spain during the interwar period with international communist brigades. Only now they were watching soviet soldiers shoot people in the streets and crush them with their tanks...

> You might get lower infant mortality, better access to healtcare ans aeducation

literally, "what has communism done for us?!"

In a thread where everyone agrees that communism was a bad thing, you come up with this one fact that proves ?

Yeah, but it boiled down to “we want to move fast and modify the client on our whim”.

Which, is fair, but if absolute control of the client is required then there’s no benefit to E2EE.

The message I got was more "decentralized services have major coordination issues that prevent them from adapting to changing needs".

Also a major point in Signal's development philosophy is building a comms platform that doesn't require that you trust them, because the protocol is built in a way that leaks the absolute minimum of data about the user necessary to make the service usable for the general public.

I don’t really have a dog in the fight so to say (aside from running a relatively large IRC network for the passed 22 years)…

But I really do wish we had doubled down on XMPP. It was nearly everywhere in the late-00’s early-10’s. If we could have just solved the mobile case (which, was solved, just not in popular server versions) then we would have been in a better place today.

Hatred of XML has cost us so many wonderful things, the one that hurts me most is SMF (the solaris init system) which obviated the major issues people have with systemd. Except because it’s using XML people would rather carve off a limb over seriously considering porting it.

Now that i'm looking back at xmpp, i agree that i wish we would have doubled down on xmpp - either to make some things easier for hosting, etc. And, yeah, its funny that you mention about the hatred of xml...i never loved it, but never hated it. Same with json, etc....To me they're just data formats...but so much dislike seemed the cool thing to do back in the day. Ah, well.

It’s so easy to host, and I once implemented a partial in-browser client (using, basically, a web bridge that I also wrote on the other side) in no time, starting from not knowing a single thing about it aside from having used xmpp chat clients in the past. Like getting to the point of status online/offline indicators showing up and messages passing was so easy. I get that I was a far cry from supporting things like encryption extensions, but it’s a great sign when going from nothing to having at least some of a protocol working takes very little time.

The web platform’s still (for now) really good and fast at working with xml. Kinda wild we ended up with json everywhere.

You say that but has XMPP really improved over the past 10-20 years? The same issues plague it still.

because all the investment (and, crucially: time) has gone elsewhere.

I thought I was clear about that?

SMF also has not moved in 15 years.

My point was that "lack of investment" doesn't explain the standstill. If that would be the determining factor IRC should not have seen or should not be seeing any progress either. But we actually do have IRCv3 extensions and quite a few new implementations here and there.

There's something else hindering XMPP that it stands so still, alternatively it simply can't be improved.

People are pathological about IRC (I am one of them), and there’s a small but motivated handful of us.

XMPP doesn’t have those people, because there’s little nostalgia and an “ick” feeling about XML.

All those people would rather work on Matrix.

would XMPP 2.0 still be compatible with XMPP?

Sure, just standardise a set of XEP’s and ensure federation has some strictness in which XEP’s are used.

You can accept calls on the watch from Telegram.

So this sounds like a “whatsapp didn’t want to do it” more than a “Apple disallowed it”

Most probably. WhatsApp is also still using the old way of accessing photos where you have to define which photos WA has access to every time you want to share newly taken photos. I’m pretty sure they do that deliberately so you get annoyed and give them blanket access to all your photos. (Which they then probably secretly analyse in the background.)

I wish apple would deprecate the old way and force apps to adopt the new photo picker.

Then you will see here thousands of comments explaining how that is bad for small businesses, and apple is forcing them out of the market… is a balance…

Perhaps it should be by user base?

"You have 100M MAU, you need to be keeping up with the standards"

If juniors ignore guidance and advice, they stay in junior roles, handling simpler, less impactful tasks.

Everyone seeks career growth, but pushing for it too quickly often just leads to inflated titles without real substance.

It’s perfectly fine to remain a mid-level engineer for your entire career if it makes you happy; it’s solid, honest work that contributes meaningfully. Plenty of people in their 60s have held the same job for decades, and that’s okay; it can be a path to genuine satisfaction.

A junior or "mid" who doesn't take guidance repeatedly should likely be managed out.

It's perfectly fine remain "mid" (not junior IMHO) but is not ok to ignore guidance and advice from more experienced team members.

I don't want career growth, rather homeostasis. That is, growth that matches the rate of decay.

At most, maybe something like "tissue remodelling" to be lean, clean and flexible, so to speak, but not "big".

Some people that are immune to listen to people with more experience will continue to be ”junior” forever. They may eventually not have the title junior, but they really are.

We have been here before. Same reason why CV driven development is a thing. When you look for a job, if you are a junior or a mid dev for too long, recruiters will think something is wrong with you. The idea of being happy remaining at your current level is anathema in an industry where chasing the next new thing whether it is a JS framework or a new title is an axiom.

> Everyone seeks career growth, but pushing for it too quickly often just leads to inflated titles without real substance.

That's why I'm not a big fan of recommending people to often and quickly change jobs to increase titles and pay. Their skills don't level up the same way, and they end up with a title of senior/lead developer and can't actually build maintainable systems or solve problems that nobody tells them the solution to.

Agree.

If one is unable to work alone but manages to join a new company with an inflated title, people will notice. They're gonna have to keep job-hopping until they find a place that doesn't notice the bad performance anymore.

This is demonstrable by the amount of CVs with "12 jobs in the last 6 years" in my reject pile.

And what if no junior under a certain senior ever makes it past junior?

Any mentor type figure is going to be at least partially evaluated by progress of the mentees against some benchmark.

Hinging senior evaluations on junior promotions directly fuels the title inflation I’m decrying. Desperate to show “impact through development,” seniors (or managers) push for premature title bumps; turning fresh juniors into “mids” or “seniors” without the skills to match, just to hit metrics.

This is rampant in tech, where inflated titles compensate for everything from low pay to talent wars, eroding expertise and making hiring a nightmare.

We end up with a system that prioritises optics over substance, where growth takes a backseat to checkbox promotions. It’s frustrating and counterproductive.

Mentorship should inspire organic development, not force-fed ladders that collapse under their own weight!

Instead, let’s measure seniors holistically, decoupling from junior title escalations to allow people to excel at their level indefinitely. Alternatives include:

* Technical Proficiency and Individual Contributions: Use code reviews, technical assessments, or metrics like deployment frequency and bug resolution rates to gauge a senior’s direct impact, without needing to “graduate” juniors.

This focuses on their own output and problem-solving prowess.

* Knowledge Sharing and Enablement: Track things like workshops led, documentation created, or peer feedback on guidance quality via 360 reviews—emphasising team uplift without mandatory promotions. * Project Outcomes and Efficiency: Evaluate based on team velocity improvements, innovation (e.g., patents or architectural wins), or overall delivery success, rewarding systemic contributions over individual mentee milestones. These methods honour diverse career paths, letting juniors stay put if it suits them while still valuing (and evaluating) senior leadership.

Agreed, a direct metric of “promotion rate” is obviously flawed. I posed it more as a rhetorical question for reflection- at the limit, it’s clear that people with mentoring responsibilities should be accountable somehow for being good mentors. Terrible mentors who undermine, sabotage, or consistently fail their mentees definitely exist.

A lot of the comments are complaining about how this metric is a terrible way to evaluate seniors but I'd disagree. If one junior can't grow then it's a problem for that junior. If no juniors can grow then it's a problem for the senior - either they don't have good mentoring skills OR they need to work on improving the hiring pipeline for their team (either raising the bar in interviews/changing what skills you're evaluating for in interviews/working with recruiters to fix the pre-interview filters).

In either case it's an ambiguous problem that needs to be solved and just throwing your hands up and saying that you don't want to be evaluated for that is not going to help.

> Any mentor type figure is going to be at least partially evaluated by progress of the mentees against some benchmark.

Sounds like the same kind of mistake as evaluating teachers by the grades of their students. Soon people figure out the "one weird trick" how to get the highest score easily.

People perform to your metrics. If you don’t want people to be one trick ponies, you’d better have more than one metric.

I've never worked at a place like that, and I hope I never do. Although, I've never even heard of any reasonable person putting that into practice either, so I'm probably safe.