I was a manager and a lead technical analyst (basically a CTO with a much narrower scope than a full company). I now refer to the nine years I spent doing this so-called "work" as The Lost Years, because I wrote very, very little code and my skills dried up.

There are some people who enjoy it. But I found it to be exactly as unfulfilling you described it, for much of the same reasons (spent too much time fighting management fires and not enough time solving technical problems), and it ultimately drove me back to being a software developer. Thank goodness my skills hadn't atrophied completely, but I'm definitely behind my cohort in terms of expertise, and I spend too many cycles regretting the lost time I could have spent growing my skills.

I took it as a statement of a fact, followed by a statement of astonishment at that fact.

Speaking from personal experience only, I work with people who are on the other side of the fence from me politically. We manage to have conversations on political matters without it boiling over into contempt and dislike. Probably the fact that it is a workplace and we all want to keep our jobs serves to keep a lid on it.

I find it far easier to depersonalize someone who I don't see in the flesh on a daily basis.

Are you sure about the contempt and dislike? When I hear somebody say something stupid at work I won't necessarily say anything, or say what I think, but I will change my like/dislike of that person.

Like, for instance, if they make a comment that sounds like anyone who disagrees with them politically is stupid?

If your only interaction with them is the disagreement, it's far easier to assume they "are stupid" rather than just "have a different opinion."

I think he's explicitly saying _expressed_ contempt and dislike: "Probably the fact that it is a workplace and we all want to keep our jobs serves to keep a lid on it."

That was her one redeeming statement in that blog post. :)

I would imagine that the go-to for situations like this is "Ma'am, just following my training."

As a prospective organ donor, I am comfortable with "dead enough" organ harvest for myself as long as my living will and my family's wishes (subordinate to the living will) were respected.

I can't draw that line for anyone else, though. From my perspective, the moral thing for the government to do is to make it legal and require an extra opt-in above and beyond the typical DDR version of organ donation enrollment we have now.

"Typical lawyers" make well under $100k per year.

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Attorney_%2F_Lawyer/...

Average salaries are skewed because the top-end is so high. If you have all the bona fides (top-tier law school/clerking opportunities, high-paying specialty, good track record of winning cases) you can command an astronomical hourly rate.

However, the vast majority of lawyers don't get those opportunities, and are working schlubs just like the rest of us.

My favorite podcast "Judge John Hodgman" has the honorable judge singing Happy Birthday more than once to the tune of the Alphabet Song.

Happy birthday to you! hap- / -py birthday to you! Happy / birthday to you! Happy birth- / -day to you! Happy birthday / to you! Happy birthday to / you! Happy birthday to you!

I can't select more than 3 or so words at a time before being bugged to go premium, and some words refuse to translate altogether, just bringing up the "go premium" box.

Neat idea though.

If you select 2 adjacent words it will try to combine them into a phrase and you only get 10 phrases / day for free on the free plan. You get unlimited single words for free though so you CAN continue using it heavily without paying if you like, it's just not quite as useful.

Have you played with this number at all? 10 phrases per day seems awfully low in my mind. If I was to download this extension, I would want to use it for a day or two before paying for an upgrade. I imagine you hit 10 phrases quite quickly, and this might turn some people off of the product before they fall in love.

You could be right. It used to be 20 for free, but I lowered it so that more people would actually hit the limit and get the "Go Premium" message. It's hard to know what the optimal number should be. For a while I had a split test running where some users had 5, some 10, and some 20 per day. But there weren't enough users to see a significant difference in conversions.

I think the sweet spot is probably closer to 100... you want people to see how great it is when they use it a lot.

How easily we forget that people change, and sometimes not for the better. It's easy to start well; ending well -- that's the trick.