I got dinged on my latest review for not participating enough in the team channels, and I feel like I’m back in middle school. Apparently, shipping clean, bug-free code ahead of schedule takes a backseat to not dropping enough memes in the #random channel. My manager literally told me that social presence is a core metric for our remote culture this year. Is this normal? I’m so grumpy about it.

Do you think AI will ultimately make society more equal or more unequal? Why?

I just found out I didn’t get the promotion that I was certain I would get. I’m feeling very emotional about it. For those who have experienced this, what are the next steps? What should I do and what should I not do?

Does anyone else find it difficult to get another job while you are currently employed? Most people say that it's easier to get a job while you have a job, but that has never been the case for me. What normally happens is I go to an interview with the knowledge that I can mess up the interview and perform poorly. Sometimes I ask questions that I know are going to make the interviewer uncomfortable. This is probably both good and bad. Most jobs I have landed happened when I was unemployed.

I’m currently managing a project where the Product Manager and the Lead Designer are exes, and my life has become a high-stakes telenovela. Every single roadmap meeting turns into a passive-aggressive debate about user flows that feels way too personal. The rest of the engineering team just sits there on mute. Should I take this straight to HR?