I help organizations overcome the challenges of software development. DM is always open.
Oregon, USA
Joined May 2017
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Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
When the PR description has 18 paragraphs, 6 headings and a table.
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
HR forced me to hire a junior systems administrator last week.
He's 23 years old and showed up on day 1 carrying a physical notebook.
He spent his first morning looking at our backend and realized my automation scripts were written in 2008.
He asked me why we're running deprecated code that relies on an unpatched version of Windows 7.
I told him we employ a strategy of chronological obfuscation.
I explained that modern malware is designed to attack modern architecture.
By keeping our infrastructure trapped in the Bush administration, we're immune to zero-day exploits.
You can't hack what you can't interface with.
He looked at me like I was insane and asked about data compliance.
I leaned back in my chair and whispered the phrase "asynchronous legacy tunneling".
He immediately closed his notebook and apologized for questioning my vision.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching a 4-hour documentary about the Roman Empire at my desk.
Next week I'm going to make him untangle category 5 cables for character development.
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
I reject your assertion.
The entire field of software engineering evolved under the fundamental constraint of the human ability to manage complexity.
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
Have you ever noticed that the worst people keep getting promoted?
You’re sitting in a meeting thinking, How is this person in charge?
That’s not bad luck. That’s a system working exactly as intended.
Here’s the truth:
A lot of workplaces don’t promote the most capable people; they promote the least threatening ones.
The people who move up fastest aren’t always driving results.
They are the ones who keep leadership comfortable.
- They don’t challenge decisions.
- They don’t surface problems too clearly.
- They make things feel calm, even when nothing is actually improving.
Real competence creates friction.
When you are genuinely good at your job, you expose gaps, weak processes, bad decisions, and poor leadership.
And that makes people above you uncomfortable.
So instead of developing strong leaders, many organizations quietly sideline them.
What gets rewarded instead is loyalty, predictability, and the ability to manage optics.
Once that pattern starts, every layer protects the one above it.
Promotions stop being about skill and start being about safety.
And over time, the people doing the real work either burn out from carrying everyone else or they leave.
- That’s how mediocrity becomes a culture.
- That’s why leadership can feel hollow.
- And that’s why, when you look around and wonder why so many managers seem unqualified, the answer isn’t random.
It’s structural.
They didn’t fail upward by accident.
They were rewarded for not rocking the boat.
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
AI CEO SAID SOMETHING HONEST
looks under covers
oh dax, yeah checks out
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
[reads file]
"Now I see the issue."
[reads another file]
"Now I understand the full picture. Let me check ..."
[reads a third file]
"Now I understand the problem."
good lord man
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
A story is a unit of deployable end-user functionality.
It is not intended as the unit of individual coding assignments.
We're supposed to work on them together.
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
dev reviewing their 57th PR from product manager who just discovered claude code
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
I need your advice.
Should I fire this junior dev?
They don't remember anything from one story to the next. They need constant hand holding.
They often make changes outside the scope I gave them.
They never question anything. Just blindly do what I say.
I have to spend a ton of time detailing EXACTLY what they need to do.
They never improve.
See what I'm getting at...
This isn't a human. This is AI.
If a human behaved like this, I'd fire them in a heartbeat.
Yet many hail AI as "you don't need juniors anymore"
That's nonsense.
In a sick twist of irony, human juniors learn to become autonomous over time.
AI doesn't.
I could be mentoring a junior dev who will stand on their own two feet and not need me one day.
That's real productivity.
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
Vibe coding, done right, is:
25% Writing your careful prompt
25% Watching it generate code
50% Fixing the code it generated
If you're not an actual developer, that last half is a lot harder, and it's where slop begins.
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
Stop using the world burning power of a large language model in AI coding to do something basic like moving a CSS element five pixels to the left.
Use it for something that is actually complicated like centering a div
Steve (Big Red) Bishop 👨💻 retweeted
Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.
$30 per seat per month.
$1.4 million annually.
I called it "digital transformation."
The board loved that phrase.
They approved it in eleven minutes.
No one asked what it would actually do.
Including me.
I told everyone it would "10x productivity."
That's not a real number.
But it sounds like one.
HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.
I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."
They stopped asking.
Three months later I checked the usage reports.
47 people had opened it.
12 had used it more than once.
One of them was me.
I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.
It took 45 seconds.
Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.
But I called it a "pilot success."
Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.
The CFO asked about ROI.
I showed him a graph.
The graph went up and to the right.
It measured "AI enablement."
I made that metric up.
He nodded approvingly.
We're "AI-enabled" now.
I don't know what that means.
But it's in our investor deck.
A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.
I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."
He asked what that meant.
I said "compliance."
He asked which compliance.
I said "all of them."
He looked skeptical.
I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."
He stopped asking questions.
Microsoft sent a case study team.
They wanted to feature us as a success story.
I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."
I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.
They didn't verify it.
They never do.
Now we're on Microsoft's website.
"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."
The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.
He got 3,000 likes.
He's never used Copilot.
None of the executives have.
We have an exemption.
"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."
I wrote that policy.
The licenses renew next month.
I'm requesting an expansion.
5,000 more seats.
We haven't used the first 4,000.
But this time we'll "drive adoption."
Adoption means mandatory training.
Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.
But completion will be tracked.
Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I'll be SVP by Q3.
I still don't know what Copilot does.
But I know what it's for.
It's for showing we're "investing in AI."
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we're serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.
