The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left.
The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?)
Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.
Where I live, it seems like half the streets don't have street signs (this isn't a backwater where you'd expect this, it's Boston).
I made acquaintance to a city worker who, to her non-professional friends, is very proud that she takes home a salary for about two hours of work per day following up with contractors, then heading to the gym and making social plans.
There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal?
Typically (almost ubiquitously, really) this comes in the form of time constraints. I mean, come on, we're (nearly) all engineers here.
How much suboptimal code have you shipped? How much of it was due to a lack of skill or motivation vs. time constraints or other external factors?
Where I live, it seems like half the streets
don't have street signs (this isn't a backwater
where you'd expect this, it's Boston).
So, are Boston's missing street signs a symptom of people not caring? Or a symptom of that department probably being underfunded? I obviously don't know, but my money would be on the latter.
In my experience the only people not trying their best on an indivdual basis are people who have been completely screwed over and beaten down by their jobs. Everybody else is trying, if only out of rational self-interest (wanting promotions, or at least needing to keep their jobs)