I don't think the principle is meant as a critique so much as a statement of a regrettable tendency in the way that things in employment situations simply are.

Yes, in practice it's usually a mix of the two, so the principle is more an abstract model than an argument about real, concrete thresholding.

But the general idea is that by the time someone stops being promoted, if they continue in the job that they are in while not being promoted for an extended period of time, it means that they are likely not amongst the highest-merit individuals around for that particular job and responsibility list—because if they were, they'd have been promoted and/or would have moved to another job elsewhere that offered an equivalent to a promotion.

The best way to understand the principle is to imagine the counterfactual.

When does a person *not* get promoted any longer? When they are not actually that great at the position into which they have most recently been promoted. At that point, they do not demonstrate enough merit to earn the next obvious promotion.

So, the cadence goes:

Demonstrates mastery of title A, promoted to title B.
Demonstrates mastery of title B, promoted to title C.
Demonstrates mastery of title C, promoted to title D.

Does not manage to demonstrate mastery of D = is not promoted and stays at that level indefinitely as "merely adequate" or "maybe next year" or "still has a lot to learn."

That's the principle in a nutshell—when you're actually good at your job, you get promoted out of it. When you're average at your job, you stay there for a long time.

I'm not so sure. You didn't need to be wearing stupid goggles to use Bob. But yeah, I made the same connection when I saw this demo: It's Bob, in threeee deeeeeeee! There's even a virtual yellow dog.

Um, and that minor incident at the Bikini Island Atoll. Entire island nation loses their homes permanently and a bunch of people get cancer and die within a couple of years. But you know, you want to make an omelette, you need to break a few eggs. The USA and the USSR were doing open-air testing until nearly 1960, when the USA finally screwed the pooch hard in the south pacific. And then there was that time some jackass decided to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Van Allen Belt. That was in the mid 60's and for a year or so you couldn't launch anything without it being disabled by the trapped radiation. There was some concern that we'd ended space exploration permanently. But you know, minor little whoops there, no need to mention that in history class.

He never was the Libertarian messiah. Anyone who thought he was just wasn't paying attention. He has a marginally more interesting back-story than most congresscritters (Joker killed his parents and then he spent his teenage years spanking it to Ayn Rand novels,) but he's really only qualified to be a Fox News android.

The winning entry will be a heart warming story about a robot that kills all humans.

Of all the companies I've worked for, IBM was the one that by far knew how to do software development. IBM was also focused on delivering products that customers needed, backed with the reputation of a company that has been around for over a century. If IBM has a problem now, it's that the company has lost that focus. The impression is that they're aimlessly flailing about trying to find something new that can fill in the blank "IBM is a _____ company." It used to be hardware. They've tried to make "software" and "services" fit in that slot, but obviously that didn't work very well for them.

Find a word that fills that blank and really focus IBM on being that company. The agile process won't fix bad leadership at the top. The agile process never fixes bad leadership at the top.

projects and in academic research, which are an already tiny, extremely competitive, and ever-smaller part of the general pool of engineering labor.

Most of what engineers do is in the broader consumer economy, engineering objects, systems, etc. for people that are already amongst the world's wealthy (i.e. consumers in the largest national economies), that they don't really need, to enrich still wealthier people that don't really need any more enrichment.

I may be a woman underneath it all, because despite being gainfully employed in a high-skill position that makes use of my Ph.D., I can't stand my job, which is all about making stuff with little direct bearing on daily life to help make rich people even richer—yet of course it is taken deadly seriously by everyone in the company, and there is a general disdain for and scoffing at "causes," like say, preventing climate change, expanding human knowledge and capability, or helping to address the massive wealth inequality on the planet.

If they sense that disaster is impending, they simply turn themselves off to prevent the driver from becoming overly distressed in his last moments! (Think Peril-sensitive shades for your car!)

Pandora's MAKING IT RAIN! Just do that dance 1000 more times and I'll give you a penny!

Nobody said that the nerves are going to work. Post transplant, the person will certainly be paralyzed from the neck down. That's why this kind of surgery is only appropriate for a paraplegic whose body is about to fail. He or she is not going to stop being a paraplegic, but might get many extra years of life by acquiring a robust new body.

I mean, of course, 660. Getting over a bout of food poisoning that seems to be affecting my focus more than I thought it was.

If I read this right, wouldn't "sudo find / -type f | sudo xargs chmod 440" at a command line render the system completely immune to any further tampering?

The Yellowstone supervolcano killed ME in both 2004 AND 2008, you insensitive clod!