Whether or not your manager is capable of helping you shape your career is an open question, for sure. But 20 people, over an 18-year career, and not a single one of them bring it up in a 1:1? And, oh okay, all those managers have worked at the same company? Seems like maybe a culture problem. I've had plenty of managers in sub-FAANG enterprises bring it up unprompted.
From a game-theory perspective, if players rush the field with AI-generated content because it's where all the advantages are this year, then there's going to be room on the margins for trust-signaling players to advance themselves with more obviously handspun stuff. Basically, a firm handshake and an office right down the street. Lunches and golf.
The real question to ask in this gold rush might be what kind of shovels we can sell to this corner of hand shakers and lunchers. A human-verifiable reputation market? Like Yelp but for "these are real people and I was able to talk to an actual human." Or diners and golf carts, if you're not into abstractions.
Who will take the coal from the mine?
Who will take the salt from the earth?
Who'll take a leaf and grow it to a tree?
Don't look now, it ain't you or me
This reminds me of the American Science & Surplus catalogs we used to get in the mail. Hand-drawn pictures of each product along with cheeky copy for almost all the little motors and breakers and push buttons and on and on. Sad that they stopped their mail order business.
Starts so strong with "governance structures, accountability, how their data is used, jobs being lost, etc," refutes that what we mean is some sci-fi scenario when we ask about ethics, and then ends with a sci-fi scenario: "...how do we know it will do what we want it to, and not try to subvert us and… take over the world? How do we know it will stay on humanity’s side?"
Wait, go back to the jobs! What was that about accountability?
Sectoral unions are a key to this kind of strength in labor. But the political landscape in the US, both in the form of laws already on the books and the "us vs them" mindset that polarizes workers along political lines, would make getting those kinds of unions together tough.
Not every day you click a link on HN and see Minutemen in the header image on the article. Chalking that up as a win and a sign to go do something splendidly useless with the rest of my day.
I built automated tests and frameworks. You can get pretty far in a career in test automation while still learning and getting better because people perceive the code as important but the whole company doesn't (usually) fall apart if you mess something up in your code.
More important, in my experience, is to find someone tough but super knowledgeable to review your code. Try to anticipate what kind of notes you'll get if open you a PR with your code as it is, and then fix that stuff before you open the PR. Write a checklist of stuff that keeps getting picked on by better coders than yourself, print out the list, and tape it to your office wall.
Advocating for laws that promote reasonable childhood independence benefits families where all the adults have to work more hours to get by, leaving their kids in safe but unsupervised situations more often.
I think it's smart to frame this as an anti-poverty issue. People often imagine "suburban" families falling victim to overreaching child neglect laws and enforcement. In fact poor children are separated from their families for reasons of child welfare far more often than non-poor kids. (Of course, this ends up affecting black families disproportionately.) Families are being broken up in the US for the crime of being poor.
Editing to add a link to a study detailing "Drivers of Inequalities among Families Involved with Child Welfare Services: A General Overview" for folks who find the Bar Association's article to be limited in scope.
Take improv classes. You’ll learn how to listen and how to carry on conversations about other people’s deals. You might even find more confidence about your own sense of humor. You’ll also make new friends, and those friends have friends and siblings and coworkers who you’ll meet and charm and be charmed by.