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Chris Pitts
@thirstybear@agilodon.social
mastodon 4.7.3Software delivery coach, personal coach, mentor, developer, team whisperer, mad cat man, mogfather 🐈, foster dad 🐈, ex-diver 🤿, biker 🏍️💨. Less Certified, more Certifiable. Dodgy taste in music and shirts 🎸. Old as the hills. I probably trained your CTO when she was a baby developer.
Specialist in using HI (Human Intelligence).
Located somewhere south of London, UK
Admin & Bill Payer for Mastodon server agilodon.social. Donations welcome!
460 Followers
263 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 08, 2022
LinkedIn:
Help fund agilodon.social:
“Experienced middle-aged men who can’t find work”
I admit this fits with what I can see out there, and I find it utterly terrifying. Decades of knowledge, experience and skill simply thrown away for cheaper, naive fixes.
As for the “start your own business”, that’s a non-starter too in the UK IT business, killed off by the legislative straitjackets on hiring interim help.
This will not end well.
[Edited to add headline since archive.is doesn’t seem to serve one]
https://archive.is/20260927150606/https://www.thetimes.com/money/family-finances/article/middle-aged-men-out-of-work-n2mqnwvkj
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
Random, totally left field question. Does anyone have a recommendation for a drip irrigation system for a small greenhouse? Must be available in UK. No mains electricity or water but there’s a small water butt.
Preferably something someone is usuing and works well.
Replying to
@teledyn@mstdn.ca They knew. They knew and did it anyway. All for a fast buck at our expense 🤬
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@feisty_lemming@zeroes.ca @evacide@hachyderm.io @matthewskelton@mastodon.social They are >< this close to getting it.
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@jasongorman@mstdn.business Some days I just look at our industry and wonder how it ever managed to fall so low. There was a brief period of enlightenment but I feel we are back to being voices in the wilderness. And I’m tired of fighting.
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
Replying to
Also, a friend of mine has commented regarding this whole LLM in software thing:
“It does feel a lot like a war against engineering….”
Yes. Yes it does. It is beginning to feel like a power struggle to deskill those of us who know what we’re doing. Why? Who knows. But I suspect it has something to do with money and power.
What’s that quote I saw recently?
“The underlying purpose of Al is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth."
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@nixCraft@mastodon.social Agreed. LLMs are lousy at anything requiring accuracy-like coding. And they can only ever reproduce what they have seen before. “Stochastic parrot” is a remarkably accurate term.
But there are signs the bubble is bursting. The companies are putting up prices, and LLMs are becoming more expensive than developers (and the cost trend is up). Funding is getting more difficult. Anti-AI sentiment is on the rise, especially around data centres. People will not tolerate the climate effects.
A reminder that I am looking around for a new opportunity. So if anyone is looking for someone UK based with a pretty broad, deep experience of software development delivery (teaching, coaching, doing, both the process AND technical side of things) using modern, iterative tools and techniques then do get in touch.
Oh, I do leadership coaching as well, helping leaders work with high performing teams for greatest effect. And can help with project rescue when needed.
#GetFediHired #FediHired
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@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems But on the plus side, never give up. We fostered a litter of semi-ferals a couple of years ago. One perfected the art of staying *exactly* just out of arms reach at all times. For some reason he became a “foster fail” and stayed, and now loves fuss albeit on his own terms.
Meet Dexter… (because my wife wouldn't let me call him Salem 😉)
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@nixCraft@mastodon.social As someone who partly specialises in project/programme recovery, I am waiting for my phone to start ringing.
🍿
“News of the talks [to provide $250billion to OpenAI] knocked Nvidia’s shares on Monday; they closed 5% lower, while the cost of insuring the chip company’s debt against default using a credit default swap (CDS) rose.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/28/ai-sell-off-chip-stocks-sk-hynix-samsung
I hate to say it, but there might finally be a use for this accursed AI technology
RE: @tomshardware@flipboard.com
So let’s get this straight. Nvidia is guaranteeing a $250 billion loan from a bank already $130 billion in debt, on the promise for a $350 billion vapourware side order of chips.
When these chickens finally come home to roost, it’s going down hard 💣💥😱
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@joeposaurus@chaos.social But for me, it is beginning to look like a drop in reliability and productivity is a price management are prepared to pay to get rid of those pesky developers who keep refusing to just shut up and deliver to made up timescales.
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@DelilahTech@tech.lgbt @dneary@mastodon.ie Another vote for Kaiju Preservation Society here. I’m new to the author so playing catchup, but everyone mentions the Old Man’s War series.
It’s coming…tick tock 💣💥
#PopGoTheWeasels
‘In a Tuesday note, Bank of America warned that “speculation is hitting extreme levels as high multiple stocks have gapped up demonstrably, an event that has historically preceded a valuation ‘snapback.'”’
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/bank-of-america-ai-investors-reality-check
Soon…soon… The AI collapse is in sight 💣 💥
#PopGoTheWeasels
“The overvaluation of US stocks has now surpassed the level that brought the stock market crashing down in 1929. At a rating more than double that of their British and European counterparts, and the highest since the peak of the dotcom bubble, US equities are in for a hairy decade.”
The bad news is the crash could be on par with - or worse than - the Great Depression of the 1930s…
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@jefframnani@mastodon.social @stevefenton@mastodon.social Round and round we go…learning the same lessons each time.
“Oh look, a tar pit…”
“Oh look, a tar pit…”
“Oh look, a tar pit…”
Brooks-tastic
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@matthewskelton@mastodon.social @gadi@infosec.exchange Umm. Isn’t governance of access rights (and by implication blast radius) simply good practice anyway? We limit what real people can do based on what they need and the risk? We’ve been doing it for decades.
It truly puzzles me what it is about LLMs that makes people remove their brain and park it on a shelf somewhere 🤷♂️
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@Ruth_Mottram@fediscience.org @matthewskelton@mastodon.social Oh if you insist. It’s a sacrifice I am willing to make… 🍺
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@gavin57@toot.wales @daycoder@toot.wales 1.6G?!?! That’s better than I get here in Surrey!
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@glyph@mastodon.social Me too, my friend. Me too.
I’m used to always having engineering conversations to help folks understand software better, but the current onslaught that amounts to little more than shouting “BUT AI!!!” is vexatious and wearisome.
It’s Brandolini’s Law weaponised to kill dissent. It’s taking its toll on my mental health too - I am just tired of fighting the nonsense.
Replying to
@cwebber Where I am folks are playing with having agents provide the illusion of review.
Which scares me 💩less.
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@owlsintowels@mas.to Ever thought of doing some merch to raise funds for these places? I'd certainly be interested in buying an official owls in towel calendar.
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@joeposaurus@chaos.social I am hearing two sides to this.
On one hand, you have some well respected folks saying that AI assisted code produces something just as good & maintainable as before, just faster.
On the other, all the data is pointing to James being right. AI assisted coding causes significant loss of production and value delivery.
My best guess? Code craft and mastery. And the data seems to support this too. But mastery is something fundamentally neglected, even discouraged, by the industry.
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@stevefenton@mastodon.social Agreed. If you look at the investment companies are making in AI compared to what they used to invest in their people tells you everything you need to know.
And the sad thing is it is probably cheaper and easier to train up your teams than try and configure a random text generator to replace them. Which tells you even more.
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@gadi@infosec.exchange @matthewskelton@mastodon.social Having had easy access to places I really shouldn’t have over the years, fair point 😁
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@tastapod@mas.to I'll read it more closely later. It's been an “interesting" week and I’m frazzled. Beer o’clock I think.
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@tastapod@mas.to I’ve just skimmed that, and my first question was “Where are these numbers coming from?”. It's certainly not what I’m seeing in the field.
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@markwyner@mas.to What a very kind offer. I’ll do the same here in the UK, but first I need to get my ducks in a row. Except they are squirrels. And several are rabid.
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@daycoder@toot.wales Love it! That’s my dream. Now, as you say, about practicalities. How fast is the broadband, and how far is the nearest GBG pub?
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@sanityinc @cwebber Indeed. It’s almost as if typing was never the bottleneck.
It’s not stopping them wasting an awful lot of effort trying though. I sense a reverse centaur in the making 🤷♂️
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@jay_peper@chaos.social Splendid! A technology that drags most teams back AND is more expensive than developers. Comedy gold 😁
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@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems Wobbly kitten syndrome?
https://www.cats.org.uk/help-and-advice/health/disabled-cats/cats-with-cerebellar-hypoplasia
But do keep a close eye. There are other conditions that cause similar (and the prognosis isn’t so good ☹️ We recently lost 2 of 4 of a foster litter to what we think was a genetic anomaly that started with wobbles/balance issues)
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@tastapod@mas.to I don’t know, but you have given me an idea for a truly awesome metaphor for a project sometime 😁
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@jasongorman@mstdn.business Is there a sweet spot? At all? Compared to a decent developer with good habits?
I was listening to the tail end of Sideways on Radio4 ealier. Something about (physical) models and creating them. Someone was pointing out that the act of crafting a model is a fundamental part of the thinking process, feeling the shape form and making subtle tweaks and decisions as you go.
And I found myself thinking “Yes. Software is the same. And AI takes that away”. The act of coding is a fundamental part of the thinking about software.