> Sean Goedecke wrote a post arguing that you should never be angry at work — a post with which I strongly agree. Anger can be a useful signal, but being angry at work rarely improves the situation. More often, it makes life worse for the people around you, many of whom have no more power over the source of your anger than you do. I did learn that lesson, but it did not come naturally. One thing in particular that I learned is that in a company there is a shared vision, and if you don’t agree with it and are not in a position to change it, you should not start a mutiny, not even a small-scale one. Nothing good comes from that.

Say your company is acquired. The acquiring company promises how much better the world will be, how many resources they'll give you, etc. etc. Your companies get merged, hiring is basically all but shut off, management never lets another product release occur, and the entire acquisition is strangled until the day that the employees — but of course not the management responsible for this — is laid off.

I'm supposed to not be angry, while my co-worker sits there sobbing because her entire life is now in turmoil?

I sort of want to agree, in that, yes, it is generally fruitless to argue with corporations. In the above case, I'm laid off, no amount of screaming or tears is going to change it. But seeing people get away with such levels of incompetence — if not anger, what emotion should I be feeling? There's certainly some anxiety, but that's separate: I'm anxious about my coming lack of income, and needing to find new employ, sure, but that's what I feel towards my own impending future. But towards the management? I certainly don't feel agency: absolutely nothing I could have said or done would have changed things. The anger stems from the injustice of having to suffer the consequences for someone else's mistakes.

It's a borderline "how's the boot taste" attitude, in that we should never be angry, and just accept whatever bilge comes down from on high.

With regards to the AI stuff, we're watching the world (rightly) revolt against being told that glorified RNGs should dictate the outcomes of their lives in various imperceptible ways. And that leaves me feeling that, it wouldn't matter if we were building a "traditional", small-scale datacenter — the AI enthusiasts are going to so poison the well that we can forget about building anything ever anywhere ever again. All the while, the product being hawked is simply a garbage out generator, and I think the layperson gets that.