Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th June 2025

https://awful.systems/post/4529515

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th June 2025 - awful.systems

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret. Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no. If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high. > The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them. (Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy Pride :3)

Little table of “ai fluency” from zapier via linkedin: linkedin.com/…/wadefoster_how-do-we-measure-ai-fl…

(original source old.mermaid.town/@Kymberly/114635617736977394)

The author says it isn’t a requirements checklist, but it does have a column marked “unacceptable”, containing gems like

Calls Al coding assistants too risky

Has never tested Al-generated code

Relies only on Stack Overflow snippets

Angry goose meme: what was the ai code generator trained on, motherfucker?

How do we measure AI fluency at Zapier? That’s the top question I’ve… | Wade Foster | 102 comments

How do we measure AI fluency at Zapier? That’s the top question I’ve gotten this week. Below are a few examples of how we assess AI fluency by role. Please note that these are not requirements or ‘boxes to be checked’. These are quick examples of the skill types we’re assessing to see where an applicant is on their AI journey. We map skills across 4 levels: Unacceptable, Capable, Adoptive, and Transformative. 1️⃣ Unacceptable: Resistant to AI tools and skeptical of their value. 2️⃣ Capable: Using the most popular tools. Likely under 3 months of hands-on experience 3️⃣ Adoptive: Embedding AI in personal workflows. Tuning prompts, chaining models, and automating tasks to boost efficiency. 4️⃣ Transformative: Uses AI not just as a tool, but to rethink strategy and deliver user-facing value that wasn’t possible two years ago These are evaluated through screenings, async exercises, and live interviews. Signals compound across stages. If you’re curious, here are some real questions we’ve asked in interviews: MARKETING - How is AI changing how you plan or execute campaigns? - How do you use AI to personalize messaging, generate content, or analyze performance? PEOPLE - Can you share an example of how you use AI in your daily work? - Can you share an example of a process or program you’ve built using AI? (Why AI, how does it work, tooling, outcomes, how you think about ROI?) PRODUCT - How is AI impacting SaaS? - Give an example of a time you used AI in a product feature. Did it improve with a better/faster/cheaper model? A few more things to note: 👉None of this is gospel. The best way to improve is to try things, collect data, then improve. The bar will keep rising. 👉AI skills vary and are heavily role-specific. These are not the only acceptable answers, just the ones we could fit in the table. 👉Engineering ≠ Marketing ≠ Support. Context matters. Requirements vary. I’ll continue to share what we’re learning as we refine what AI fluency means at Zapier. In the meantime, we’re hiring across a variety of roles. Excited to meet you. | 102 comments on LinkedIn

I wonder where Edsger Dijkstra would fall in this table.
0,0 position, to the left of the makeupless guy above the engineering bit.