The thing that convinced me is that this timeline is not just objectively bad, it’s that it’s always getting worse. Even if you think you know what to expect, somehow the future has been consistently more disappointing.

This is the typical Jack Welch stack-ranking nonsense. The theory is that there will always be a bell curve or similar distribution that requires a certain percent (Welch said 10%, but it’s all over the map) be cut while new hires are constantly brought on.

It kills morale and forces employees into short-term impact patterns to avoid the constant churn of cuts. It also means that performative work rather than actual substantive work is encouraged, since the appearance of productivity in whatever metric is stack-ranked is all that matters.

Finally, it encourages people to do the minimum, because the alternative is to compete for bonuses that are only going to the people who meet the highest appearance of productivity metrics, which doesn’t correlate strongly with actual productivity, just as actual productivity (in terms of “producing” output) is also not strongly correlated with value (such as by knowing enough to efficiently complete tasks such that you are not appearing to “produce,” due to being extremely efficient).

He’s not holding aid hostage, he’s holding people’s lives hostage.

They are at best a one-person propaganda shop, and at worst part of a targeted influence campaign by other actors.

I’ve written many times on this user in the lead-up to the US election, when there was cumulative evidence they were spamming content meant to split the left vote. I welcome moderate or right-leaning good faith discussion, but this user is not that. They sealion any responses with canned / apparently-LLM-assisted non-answers to legitimate constructive comments and debate, apparently to drive up “engagement” on their posts. I’ve read probably 30 threads where this happened - they do not answer direct questions or engage in actual debate, but immediately go into “I’m a victim” mode and turn the debate into a performative martyred “oppression” by everyone else. Effectively every response by them I’ve read is a misdirection and nonsense.

My strongly held opinion is that they are a bad faith actor, no matter what their motive or tools actually are. They are literally the only Lemmy user I’ve come across that I can say, without reservation, deserves a perma-ban.