llm/3a862c31-848e-4e32-be93-99402d2b43b6/batch-3-f7b4c931-4e40-48a3-a4b4-6542744158db-input.json
You are a comment classifier. Given a list of topics and a batch of comments, assign each comment to up to 3 of the most relevant topics.
TOPICS (use these 1-based indices):
1. Bugs Having Users at Scale
2. Automation Impact on Workers
3. Workplace Politics vs Technical Skills
4. Google's UX Quality Criticism
5. LLM-Assisted Writing Detection
6. Career Advancement and Networking
7. Clarity vs Cleverness in Code
8. User-Focused Engineering Culture
9. Innovation Tokens and Boring Technology
10. Abstraction and Complexity Management
11. Silent Resistance in Debates
12. Glue Work Recognition
13. Performance Optimization Strategies
14. Engineer-Customer Communication Barriers
15. Time vs Money Tradeoffs
16. Psychological Safety in Teams
17. Process and Bureaucracy Critique
18. Code Plagiarism Ethics
19. Big Tech Organizational Dysfunction
20. Goodhart's Law and Metrics Gaming
COMMENTS TO CLASSIFY:
[
{
"id": "46496148",
"text": "I think most people don't really claim, that complexity is gone when properly abstracted, but claim that you don't have to deal with it every single time. That's the purpose of abstracting something.\n\nSimple example: You are not dealing with the complexity of process management of the OS, every time you start any application. Sometimes you might need to, if you are developing software. Or if your application hangs and you need to kill it via some task manager. Most users however, never deal with that, because it is abstracted \"away\". That's the whole point. Nevertheless, the actual complex work is always done. Behind the scenes."
}
,
{
"id": "46494411",
"text": "> I first learned about the \"innovation tokens\" idea in \"Novelty is a loan you repay in outages, hiring, and cognitive overhead\" from this, still one of my favorite essays on software architecture: https://boringtechnology.club/\n\nI don't think this is consistently true - in particular, I think that a lot of current well-known practices around writing code result in code that implicitly relies on assumptions in another part of the system that can change without warning; and novelty is necessary in order to make those assumptions more solid and ultimately result in software that is less likely to break unexpectedly."
}
,
{
"id": "46495342",
"text": "I don't follow. Following the robustness principle doesn't necessarily introduce novelty. Perhaps a bit more complexity, but just how much depends on how clever you try to be.\n\nWhat did you mean?"
}
,
{
"id": "46497545",
"text": "Like most of the things Spolsky says in that article it’s pretty dubious. Following it to its logical conclusion, presumably on-call debugging work be even easier if the software had been handwritten in assembler."
}
,
{
"id": "46493943",
"text": "My former boss had a rule of “One novel thing per project”. This was both an upper and lower limit, which ensured that he was “always learning”.\n\nI’ve followed that rule for decades and always regretted it when I couldn’t: projects were either too boring or too stressful except at the magic level of novelty."
}
,
{
"id": "46496181",
"text": "That's fine ... only have to size your projects accordingly!"
}
,
{
"id": "46494838",
"text": "That actually sounds brilliant!"
}
,
{
"id": "46490787",
"text": "15 years in leadership worked at 3 jobs lead major transformations at retail where nearly 100B of revenue goes through what i built. Ran $55-$100M in a yearly budget… over 300 FTEs and 3x contractors under my or my budget,…largest retailer in google at that time…my work influenced GCP roadmap, Datastax roadmap, … much more all behind the scenes…. besides your capabilities and ability that had to be there to get you in those positions - but once you are in those positions - only that mattered is politics and asskissing. I know so many people smarter than me, always stayed lower b/c they didn’t know how to play politics. Only reason i never got higher was I didn’t know how to play politics and kiss ass any more or any better.\n\nThe top people are all who kissed each others ass and looked out only for their cohort (e.g. people who were in same positions as them in early 2013). So teach your kids to kiss ass and play poltiics."
}
,
{
"id": "46491238",
"text": "So teach your kids to kiss ass and play poltiics.\n\nOr to stay far away and do something useful with their lives."
}
,
{
"id": "46491355",
"text": "This is what I really don’t get about these types of folks. Do they really want to remember their life’s work as “kissing ass and playing politics”? I get the “work to live” and all that, but you’re basically tossing away half your life…for what, money? How much money do you need!?"
}
,
{
"id": "46498518",
"text": "For some, that's not only their competency but they enjoy it.\n\nIs building relationships and status less worthwhile than building code or bridges or houses or painting pictures?\n\nPeople get to choose the game they play."
}
,
{
"id": "46494702",
"text": "Because that's not how they perceive their works. Instead it is \"advocating for one's own team and passion\", \"helping others advance their career\", \"networking and building long-term connections\"."
}
,
{
"id": "46494941",
"text": "Well you can \"work to live\" in a nice big house, with a nanny, eating steaks, flying business class to ski in the alps or scuba in the Galapagos... I think it takes a lot of money before you feel like you don't need more money."
}
,
{
"id": "46496003",
"text": "Not at all. Most people can be super happy with less than the average tech salary (at a point where they don't feel they need more if it comes at the expense of work life balance, time with family, job satisfaction, etc)."
}
,
{
"id": "46496445",
"text": "I’ll never understand this WHY X - BECAUSE Y - WELL Y IS TOO MUCH, Z IS MORE THAN ENOUGH comment trifecta. Obviously a lot of people are not super happy, otherwise they wouldn’t kiss asses and play politics to get more money."
}
,
{
"id": "46496160",
"text": "Other than the big house, which can easily be achieved in much of the country, nothing in the list above incentivizes me to either work harder or kids ass."
}
,
{
"id": "46498080",
"text": "Sure, lots of people don't care about those things and therefore don't shape their careers to get them. But some do, and that's what we're talking about.\n\nThough to be clear I should have said \"it can take a lot of money...\""
}
,
{
"id": "46493691",
"text": "You need to have the right personality. Either actually enjoy the game, or have an unsatiable (fear-driven?) need for status, or something else of this sort. We don't get to choose our personalities, though some limited modifications are possible - see treatments for personality disorders, for example."
}
,
{
"id": "46494024",
"text": "> actually enjoy the game, or have an unsatiable (fear-driven?) need for status, or something else of this sort\n\nIe. Somewhat serious mental disorders as requisite for leadership.\n\nI wonder how we got onto this darkest timeline?"
}
,
{
"id": "46496952",
"text": "Humans were like this since the inception of times. Chieftains, Khans, Czars, Kings, etc."
}
,
{
"id": "46494925",
"text": "If it's adaptive it's not a disorder."
}
,
{
"id": "46495657",
"text": "sweet , a new way to justify addiction"
}
,
{
"id": "46494165",
"text": "Evolution. It is a brutal process."
}
,
{
"id": "46496895",
"text": "Well, I think that it depends on perspective and motivations.\n\nKissing asses/politics can be treated as skill used for different purposes. Imagine your ambition is to build bridge, skyscraper or fancy opera house.\n\nTo be chosen as the one for such projects, you must play many games including politics.\n\n(I assume good intentions, selfish ones are possible too, but are they worth discussing?)"
}
,
{
"id": "46497210",
"text": "> …for what, money? How much money do you need!?\n\n\"more\" seems to be the answer to many."
}
,
{
"id": "46493724",
"text": "Depends where you want to live, but $5M to $10M would help with enough passive income to future proof one’s family and their kids."
}
,
{
"id": "46498264",
"text": "Why not both?"
}
,
{
"id": "46495861",
"text": "It isn't the highest paying path in life, but this is what I chose as well. Working for small companies with good people is infinitely better than working at massive companies with decent people. No matter how many good intentions there are, the politicking is utterly exhausting and unfulfilling.\n\nThen again, I'm the kind of person who moved to the countryside to get away from the city life, so YMMV."
}
,
{
"id": "46496924",
"text": "This is OP's lesson 20: Eventually, time becomes worth more than money. Act accordingly.\n\nI’ve watched senior engineers burn out chasing the next promo level, optimizing for a few more percentage points of compensation. Some of them got it. Most of them wondered, afterward, if it was worth what they gave up."
}
,
{
"id": "46491904",
"text": "we are human being interacting with other human beings. what you call \"kissing ass\" is just learning to influence and work with other humans. It is by far the most useful skill to have in workplace. But don't worry. continue your disdain of it, includeing calling it negative names, and watch your career stagnate."
}
,
{
"id": "46494485",
"text": "> It is by far the most useful skill to have in workplace.\n\nThis might be defacto true in most workplaces, but defending \"politics over competence\" boils down to \"I deserve the rewards from other people's work\".\n\nPeople oppose it because it is morally wrong, not because they think it is an inaccurate description of reality."
}
,
{
"id": "46496183",
"text": "It’s not politics over competence. It’s getting things done in the real world"
}
,
{
"id": "46497724",
"text": "(Every gang leader and dictator ever): That's right!"
}
,
{
"id": "46496941",
"text": "You say that as if politics is optional. It isn't, decisions need to be made and politics is the process of making those decisions: who decides, and why.\n\nIn academia, for example, there is less politics because the publishing system sort of becomes the decision process. You apply with your ideas in the form of papers, the referees decide if your ideas are good enough (and demonstrated well enough) for the wider audience to even get to see. Then some politics, a popularity contest. But crucially this system famously leads to a LOT of resources being wasted, good research that never goes anywhere because nobody cares about it, or bad research that does nothing but everyone cares (cold fusion).\n\nPolitics is just a name for how we decide things. And yes, it sucks, but that's because we suck."
}
,
{
"id": "46497667",
"text": "With this understanding of academia, you are perfectly suited to doing software development for them, because if you think there is \"less politics\" in academia, you are being foolish.\n\nAcademia is notorious for politics, especially around tenure and grants, scholarships, etc.\n\nPublication politics are just a small part of that, but even there, working out which name goes in what order of the authorship of the paper is political."
}
,
{
"id": "46491977",
"text": "Sometimes.\n\nSometimes it's just bullshit .\n\nLearn the lingo, the language, the proper way of posturing and the correct way to shirk responsibility and that's what matters in certain orgs.\n\nI sound really bitter, but I'm not, I'm actually quite good at the game and I've proven that, I just don't really like the game because it doesn't translate into being able to take pride in what I've done. It's all about serving egos. Your own and others.\n\nEvery french multinational I've worked for is entirely built on this."
}
,
{
"id": "46492096",
"text": "> I'm actually quite good at the game and I've proven that,\n\nGood. I failed and very likely about to face consequences."
}
,
{
"id": "46492461",
"text": "Nobody that actually matters will hold it against you.\n\nFuck the posers. Do real shit."
}
,
{
"id": "46496197",
"text": "You're not wrong. You're just missing the thing people are complaining about: The existence of people who succeed in pushing for inferior solutions, and managing to leave before it becomes clear (which can take years in a large company).\n\nMy previous company is in a bad position and many such folks are finally being outed. But it takes lots and lots of screwing up before the fat is trimmed."
}
,
{
"id": "46496298",
"text": "> The existence of people who succeed in pushing for inferior solutions, and managing to leave before it becomes clear\n\nGuess this is just random evolution at play. Some companies will pay a bigger price than others. And not everyone even recognizes it and pinpoint it like you did.\n\nBut overall influencing people is on net good skill for the individual. And what is good for the geese is good for the gander??"
}
,
{
"id": "46496743",
"text": "> Some companies will pay a bigger price than others.\n\nThe problem is that typically a large company has one or a few golden geese. They can milk it for a long time because of an existing moat. The moat keeps shrinking, but it can sometimes take a decade or two for others to catch up.[1] That's plenty of time for such folks to make a career of playing politics well without contributing much.\n\nLots of people at that company left before things went bad and are poisoning other companies.\n\n[1] Just look at Google and search. Or Microsoft and Windows. Or even Microsoft and Internet Explorer."
}
,
{
"id": "46494010",
"text": "I've literally never had the thought of \"how do I influence other people.\" Why is that considered a valuable skill? It just sounds like a nicer version of \"manipulation\"."
}
,
{
"id": "46494973",
"text": "If other people are not smart enough to see why your ideas are superior then you need to explain it to them or otherwise convince them to go along somehow.\n\nMost of my \"influencing\" is just repeatedly explaining things to people and letting them think through all the bad ideas and dead ends themselves."
}
,
{
"id": "46496410",
"text": "> I've literally never had the thought of \"how do I influence other people.\" Why is that considered a valuable skill?\n\nIf you're a software developer you must have thought \"current priorities are not right, we should do X for the users / Y to get better quality\" and tried to influence your management to get those priorities moved. Maybe by starting a campaign with your users so the demands come from multiple services and not just you, or by measuring quality indicators and showing how what you want to implement would improve them etc.\n\nThat's why you want to start getting coffee with people, maybe go outside with the smokers. It can take months of \"work\" to get people to propose the idea you want done.\n\nBut this kind of influencing won't help your career."
}
,
{
"id": "46495321",
"text": "Do you consider educating people “manipulation”?"
}
,
{
"id": "46494733",
"text": "I don't disagree with you, except that a career can stagnate. Maybe you are already working in your ideal role, solving cool problems every day. Maybe moving up the ladder nets you more money but less of what you actually want in life.\n\nLess a comment for yourself and more for the reader by the way. It is important to know what you want and strive for that."
}
,
{
"id": "46494112",
"text": "Nah, people say this all the time but organisations where these sorts of gratuitous social games are absent tend to BTFO of organisations where they're present/expected."
}
,
{
"id": "46494022",
"text": "Or continue being an ass and kissing asses, and watch the workforce unionize and see how the people YOU disdain shows you who has the real power"
}
,
{
"id": "46493982",
"text": "I agree -- the career advancement bent of this article is the most off putting aspect."
}
,
{
"id": "46494459",
"text": "> The top people are all who kissed each others ass and looked out only for their cohort (e.g. people who were in same positions as them in early 2013). So teach your kids to kiss ass and play poltiics.\n\nAfter more than 20 years in big tech, I agree, this is basically it. Your work can only get you so far. If it makes you feel any better, you can reframe politics as 'people systems' and work on optimizing the relationships in the system. Or whatever. But the gist of it is to find a powerful group and try to become a member of that group."
}
]
Return ONLY a JSON array with this exact structure (no other text):
[
{
"id": "comment_id_1",
"topics": [
1,
3,
5
]
}
,
{
"id": "comment_id_2",
"topics": [
2
]
}
,
...
]
Rules:
- Each comment can have 0 to 3 topics
- Use 1-based topic indices
- Only assign topics that are genuinely relevant to the comment
- If no topics match, use an empty array:
{
"id": "...",
"topics": []
}
50