Thank you, I appreciate the response 🙏

Cos they’re work, and I’d like to not have to talk to my colleagues as I don’t particularly like them. I do make an effort to enjoy my time with my friends, and I am better at not interrupting them.

It might work but it’s really not a long-term solution. Confrontation is uncomfortable and I know you mentioned he has personality issues but is there somebody who could talk to him? When the guy I work with joined, he would constantly tap his feet and it would shake my desk, and the desks of like four other people around us. Eventually we just asked him to stop – he didn’t even realise it was bothering us because nobody said anything.

Granted, he’s actually friendly, but still… Someone might just have to ask Noiseguy (nicely) if he could maybe be a bit quieter? Or poke your head in and say “you okay? Oh, sorry, I could hear you from across the office.” - just something to maybe remind him like, hey, keep an eye on your volume. This might not get solved by just closing the door!

If you want to avoid confrontation, find a reason to talk to him in his office and then calmly and “accidentally” close the door on the way out. As long as everyone else works with their doors closed, you can laugh it off as a mistake if he even notices.

Some people really are just accidentally obnoxious though, he might genuinely not know he’s being a pain in the arse. We have a similar coworker. Always with these shitty unfunny quips, often plays air horn sound effects interrupting other people’s conversations if they think something positive has happened… Just so much fucking noise from one person.

They’re on holiday this week and I’m over the fucking moon lol

I often find that, when talking to my project manager, I’m wrong when I assume I know where the sentence will end. Even if just a little bit (and even if sometimes it’s because she’s wrong in what she’s saying).

How can I get better at shutting up and listening to people? It’s absolutely fucking mortifying and makes me feel childish when I notice I keep interrupting people and getting it wrong.

Yeah I just thought you lot were talking about Alien 🤷‍♂️

Oh duh, of course it is! I didn’t even notice 😂

Wait, hang on, is the expression not “stepped foot?” What am I missing?

That’s in the sequel tho innit?

The Witch is SO good. I’ve actually never seen First Blood. Great shout.

I actually got out to see Aliens at the cinema lately and it was fuckin awesome. I have a few films I want to watch! Any recommendations tho?

It’s not a proof of concept, or an MVP - I’m saying it’s what is given to the client as a full, finished solution.

What I’m saying is that the “this was built by AI!” effect is so strong that copy/pasting ChatGPT results together with no forethought or understanding is miserable and brings only technical debt - but that that’s irrelevant to management, because they’re impressed by the robot and don’t want to “fall behind” other agencies.

That is not what I’m saying - the situation I’m describing is the situation I’m currently in: I work for a small web agency, we have the agency owner, the project manager, and the development lead as our “management”.

A client asks for something, the agency owner says yes, and then the development lead cobbles something together over the course of a few hours with results from ChatGPT or Claude.

The thing works, but only for that specific request and cannot handle edge cases, and he doesn’t know how it works nor how to extend it, so he cobbles on more ChatGPT or Claude results.

The management team love it, but it’s just mountains of technical debt piling up.

I see what you’re saying, but I’m not talking about proof of concepts. I’m talking about “fully fledged” Frankenstein apps that get cobbled together by cowboys. Documentation written by ChatGPT that is full of hallucinations. Managers love that stuff because the thing they’ve asked for works but nothing outside of that one thing works, which doesn’t matter because they’re not testing it.

I’m not talking about small proof of concepts. I was referring to myself in a professional capacity as a developer; I’ve been a web developer full time since 2015.

I’m so sick of hearing about AI. I’ve been struggling with the concept that “authenticity” seems to be completely irrelevant to a lot of people lately. I’m a developer and have been for 10+ years at this point, and am struggling to understand why I would stay in this field.

When I get down, I start to question if there’s any point in learning anything. I started up a side project with somebody I respected in a niche hobby space and have been using that to learn a new framework, but I’m rapidly feeling like it’s pointless to bother learning when you can badly cobble something together with a chatbot and the managers of the world will ejaculate themselves dry about how good robots are, even when the bloody thing barely functions.

It seems that a lot of people don’t give a shit if something is actually made by humans. Those same people don’t seem to value the hard work it takes to make something. I feel like I’m having a hard time fitting in at the moment.

I would suggest breathing and taking time to respond if you need to respond at all. I’d also, genuinely (and I’m not trying to say anything about you here) try to check in with your internal monologue.

If you want to effectively resolve conflicts, you have to make people feel like you’re listening to them even if you disagree, and even if you think they’re inane or annoying or stupid. In my experience, to make people feel like you’re hearing what they’re saying and not just being dismissive (being dismissive absolutely will antagonise people), I have to make an effort to try to empathise, try to understand where they’re coming from, and try to be charitable.

To me, just picking up on terms in your post like “Karen”, and “snippy”, it feels like you’re dismissing this person - which I totally get. You’re not going to resolve conflicts that way, if you’re trying to resolve this particular conflict. It’s not possible to resolve every conflict, and some people simply will not engage with your attempts to work things out and will shout you down and try to trample you, but if you want a resolution you have to be willing to try.

Aside from that, yeah, walking away from your colleague I can see them feeling a bit abandoned by that. It’s not weird to just stand there quietly in support - in fact, some people may even feel threatened if you try to interject as it’ll then be two against one, and that might escalate things.

Anyway, good that you’re asking, and good luck! Remember, you’re allowed to take time to respond. It’s better for you to breathe and calm yourself if you feel nervous during conflict, rather than leaping to reply and listening to any kind of nervous, defensive reaction. Take time, slow down, and breathe. It’s normal to feel nervous and uncomfortable and upset when facing conflict. ✌️

Ubisoft? The notorious video game publisher that had several high-up members of staff accused of sexual and psychological harassment?

Ubisoft? The company described in a lawsuit filed by employees in 2021 as ‘a legal entity for institutional sexual harassment for setting up, maintaining and reinforcing a system where sexual harassment is tolerated because it is more profitable for the company to keep harassers in place than to protect its employees’?

That Ubisoft? They cancelled a game? Oh no :(

I would argue that most web traffic is bots. Scrapers are everywhere, all the time, constantly. The uptick of LLM search tools is bringing ever more of them online, too.

Whether that kind of web traffic has an account on Reddit, probably not. But Reddit bots surely could upvote/downvote/report to influence things rather than just posting?

Why would it be safe to assume non-content posting users would not be bots?

Absolutely love this!!! Love the texture