> At some point, a business should shift from growth state to a steady state.

I was on a department-wide call; many, many years ago. The person talking was telling us how well we were doing and how we needed to grow. At the end, they asked if there were any questions (which, thinking back, seems odd given the size of the meeting, but.. it was a long time ago). I asked them "Why? Why do we need to grow? We're doing a good job at our core business. We're making money doing it. Why do we need to expand; specifically expand our offerings into something that _isn't_ our core".

My question didn't get answered. But it _is_ a valid one, imo.

Businesses do not always need to grow at all, neither do investors as a class, demand that business keeps growing. A mature business generates a stream of dividends and everyone is happy. There are many, many such businesses.

One famous example is See's Candy, which Warren Buffet famously discussed in one of his newsletters. See's is a mature company with zero mandate to grow. It turns the profits over to Berkshire and Berkshire uses that to invest in other companies.

The economy as a whole keeps growing because human desires and ingenuity are unlimited. But a specific firm reaches its natural limit, at which point it turns into a cashflow machine to generate dividends for owners.

The problem you are facing is that Management does not want to acknowledge that it's time for them to start paying out dividends and leave growth alone, because that would be an admission that the profits of the firm are best invested by some other firm, and not by them.

It is all about management ego, in not recognizing their limitations, and then destroying the core company as they invest in areas where they can't compete. Shareholders and boards need to replace management when this happens, but it is hard to do because Management keeps insisting that they can earn an above average return if they keep the money rather than returning it to shareholders. And people love to hear stories of above average returns.

> Naming the variables can help readability

It can, or it can't; depending on the situation. Sometimes it just adds weight to the mental model (because now there's another variable in scope).

Sure, I like chained method calls too, for simple things. But it gets ridiculous sometimes where people write a ten-stage pipeline in a single expression and then call that "readable."

I'm with you 100%. The main thing is that sometimes a "break point" (using a variable rather than _more_ chain) can help readability. And sometimes it makes things worse. It's really a case-by-case type of thing.

The original reasons for not putting your elbows on the table (limited space, as well as some others) just don't apply anymore. There's no reason _not_ to put your elbows on the table other than "that's how it's always been done". As such, at least in my opinion, the rule no longer applies.

Until you do it on a temporary table and knock over everyone's drinks

sailors eat with their elbows on the table, to keep their fare from sliding as the boat rocks. don't look poor!

That could only work as a reason to avoid the behavior if people were familiar with sailors.

There's a pretty large area between "no consequences" and "banned forever"

It has been shown time and again that, for most people, teaching them to be better and giving second chances is more effective than using forever-punishment as a warning for others.

> one input for the instructions/conversation and one "data-only" input

We learned so many years ago that separating code and data was important for security. It's such a huge step backwards that it's been tossed in the garbage.

It bothers me that the article seems imply there is only minimal truth and wasting a ton of time.

> What it means in practice is that your colleague can write "this approach is wrong, here's why" instead of "hey, hope you're doing well, I had some time to look at your PR and I just wanted to shared a few small thoughts, please take these as just one perspective, and of course you know the codebase better than I do, but I was wondering if maybe we could potentially consider [useful thing here]" and then bury the actual point six paragraphs deep. Both messages contain the same information, however one of them respects time.

There's a LARGE grey area between those two. It's entirely possible to value someone's emotions _and_ not waste a bunch of time.

And yes, other people's emotional reactions to what you say _should_ matter to you. Because 1) empathy matters and 2) you need to continue working with those people. It's a pretty widely held belief that the people are say "I'm not being mean, I'm just stating the truth; I'm a straight shooter" and, in fact, just jerks.

What makes you think they'll be doing the same thing?

But do they need to? If a <role X> job at a top tier company making $600k is eliminated and two <role X> jobs at a "more average" company making $300k replace it; is that really a bad thing? Clearly, there's some details being glossed over, but "one job paying more than a person really needs" being replaced by "two jobs, each paying more than a person really needs" might just be good for society as a whole.

It doesn't seem too bad when you cherry pick an outlier example, but what about when the person making $100k now makes $50k?

I'm sure the retort of the AI optimist will be that AI will make the things that person buys cheaper, and there may be truth to that when it comes to things that people buy with disposable income...

But how likely is AI to make actual essentials like housing and food cheaper?

Are there that many people at top tier companies making 100k? I was under the impression that they were top tier because they paid really well.

Its hard to imagine that it won't launch _already_ expanded beyond it's original purpose. My expectation is that there will be precisely 0 seconds between it and it being abused. The people building it will plan the abuse before it's even launched.