Eu não sou gerente, sou dev sênior, com uns 20 anos de xp. Nunca me interessei por liderança técnica, gerência ou coisa do tipo, de maneira que quando cheguei a sênior a minha carreira meio que parou por ali, e nunca me arrependi de nada.

Quando eu rodei ano passado quando começou a putaria do presencial (moro em uma cidade longe da minha ex-firma, e depois de fazer as contas concluí que não quero voltar para São Paulo por nenhum dinheiro no mundo), o pessoal da gerência ficou sossegado. Eles implementaram os layoffs e meio que para eles estava tudo sussa.

Hoje eu vejo o post de "open to work" de um dos meus ex-gerentes no linkedin. E assim, com todos os defeitos dele, o cara era super competente no que ele fazia, leal à empresa até os ossos e tinha décadas de casa. E não, eu não tenho motivos para puxar saco dele por que já rodei daquela merda um ano antes dele.

Pouco tempo depois, fiquei sabendo de um colega que outro gerente foi demovido à analista (possivelmente com o mesmo salário), e o trabalho dele é basicamente olhar para a janela e conferir a paisagem, aparentemente por que a empresa não tem caixa no momento para mandar ele embora (o cara também tem décadas de casa e tudo mais), e está vendo se consegue gerar atrito o suficiente para o cara pedir as contas ou ficar louco.

De início eu fiquei chocado com isso. Os dois eram os caras mais cuck de empresa que eu conheci na minha vida, que concordavam com tudo o que os executivos cagavam na cabeça deles e policiavam a gente para ir na mesma onda... E agora a cabeça deles está no toco também!

Mas depois as peças começaram a se encaixar. Se você manda dev embora por causa de IA, contração de capital ou seja lá qual for o motivo e enxuga o time, você pode juntar os times menores e ter menos times na empresa. Você não precisa de um gerente para comandar 3 desenvolvedores... Mas pode juntar 4 times de 3 para formar um de 12 e mandar 3 gerentes embora no processo...

Só que ai, se estes 4 times eram uma divisão inteira da empresa, e você já tem um chefe da divisão, você também pode mandar este gerente embora, fazer o chefe da divisão acumular o trabalho dele de executivo com o de liderança direta e achatar o organograma da empresa...

Todos estes gerentes provavelmente são gente de cabeça branca 50+, que apesar da vasta experiência vão ter muito mais dificuldade do que nós para se recolocarem no mercado (por que a tendencia é fechar vagas de gerencia, não abrir, e tem décadas que eles não encostam em código e mesmo quando eles encostavam eles nem eram muito bons nisso para começo de conversa).

Fora isso, para muitos a gerencia é o caminho que o dev que está ali nos seus 35-40 tem para subir na carreira, e agora este degrau está quebrado, tanto quanto o do júnior para entrar na carreira... Se você não é sênior, não tem emprego. Se você já é sênior, sua carreira vai morrer ai.

Sem falar que mais dia, menos dia estes gerentes que ainda estão na ativa se aposentam, e assim como a quebra do degrau do júnior vai criar um problema sério na formação de sêniores, a quebra do degrau do gerente vai gerar o mesmo problema na formação de liderança.

Talvez este pessoal C-Suite esteja crente que todos os problema gerados pela tecnologia se resolvem com ainda mais tecnologia, e isso se mantém mesmo quando você desemprega todo mundo que mexe com tecnologia. Ou talvez o pescoço deles seja o próximo no tronco, na medida em que empresas médias vão sendo adquiridas por empresas grandes e eles, pouco a pouco vão sendo postos para escanteio em uma espécie de torneio highlander onde no fim só pode restar um...

O fato é que ou eles vão automatizar a coisa toda e a automatização da automatização vai tornar a raça humana obsoleta. Ou o mercado de TI terá graves problemas com mão de obra em um futuro não muito distante.

This particular build is thought around the Haruspex. The Haruspex is a job swap for the Bureaucrat if you have taken the Cybernetic Creed origin, and it's selling point is the fact that it generates, on it's base, 1 engineering, 2 unity and 400 amenities per 100 pops.

If you go Megacorp, you can add to it another +2 trade. By taking Dimensional Worship, your Haruspexes also produces another +1 physics, and with Sequenced Securities, they will also produce more 1.5 Society. If you build a monument, will also produce more 300 amenities and +10% ethics attraction.

So, with those civics, authority and origin, after building the monument you get 2 unity, 1 engineering, 1 physics, 1.5 society, 700 ammenities and +10% ethics attraction, for two consumer goods.

But hear me out: With the Numistic Shrine, they can produce 8 trade per 100 jobs! That's right, as much as an actual trader.

And, if you then enact Consumer Benefits, those 8 trade converts back to 2 Consumer Goods! The exact same ammount of CGs they consume. And that before other planetwide or empirewide bonuses, meaning that rather than consuming CGs, they can actually generate net CGs.

So, here we have a job, that produces about as much science as a scientist without those science specialization buildings (3.5 science between engineering, physics and sociology), unity and trade, out of basically thin air (with the right policies and a little bit of luck), just by praising the Ominisiah and Capitalism! And you don't even need to wory about their confort...

The only thing that they need is basically food and energy.

And there are lots of ways to improve their efficiency. For starters, high stability, which they also create for free, by the virtue of the massive ethics attraction (so be sure to keep their faction happy) and ammenities production you can hit 100% stability without really trying.

Then there are species traits. You can stack Traditional (+10%, thus becoming discount intelligent), Chromalogs (+20%) and Compliance Filters (+10%). On top of that, any Augumentations that you get as replacement for your Ritualistic Implants will also add another 10% to your Haruspex.

You can easy nab +50% job efficiency for bureaucrats from traits alone. Add that the +33% from stability (that as I explained can easily be bosted to 100%), +10% from the Sacred Nexus, +5% from egalitarian, +30% from a fully ascended eclesiastical world and +20% from ecumenopolis and we will be talking something in the range of 152% extra job efficiency...

Kinda modest (I know that with psionics, knights of toxic god and rogue servitors one can blow job efficiency out of the water), but again, it's on a job that has basically no upkeep and produces science, unity and consumer goods.

I was taking a look at the Domestication traditions for Nomads, and while it lacks the Voidlure, which would be great for building around hunting, it has the Void Shepherds tradition, that makes your cloned fauna to produce some resources, and the finisher that makes them produce research or special resources, depending on the kind.

I'm going to focus on Voidworms here, because they are the ones that can produce net strategic reserves, and while Crystal Entities also can produce those, voidworms are more balanced and survivable in a fight.

So, let's start with our barebones voidworm nymph chassis. It has to be nymphs because the production is per ship, not per used command points, so a Troika produces as much resources as a nymph, but consumes a lot more in upkeep.

In their most vanilla state, with the most basic sensors, thrusters, drives and computers; and with no mutations whatsoever, their upkeep is 1.58 strategic resources and 0.36 food.

But have means to lower this upkeep by a lot. For starters, the Beastmasters civic lowers cloned fauna upkeep by 10%, and so does finishing the Domestication traditions.

Secondly, by taking Nutrient Rationing policy and keeping your voidworms starved you can lower their upkeep even further, by another 30%.

Thirdly, when you research Advanced Mutations you get Starborne Biology mutation. This replaces the food upkeep with strategic reserves upkeep and reduces the upkeep further down by another 20%. Multiplicativelly.

By appliying all those bonuses, you can reduce the upkeep of your voidworms by 60%. Adding their 1 Strategic Reserves production to their upkeep, each nymph will yield .224 strategic resources and 1 biology as long as you stay below your naval capacity. And you can go up to 30% your naval cap without having to pay for a fleet during peace time.

Sure, it's a dogshit fleet of naked voidworms... But those voidworms costs you nothing and gives some trickle of biology research! And you can get them into shape by retrofitting them into a more offensive form if you are gearing up for war.

I just give them as many defensive mutations (the only offensive one I give is catalyctic bladders) as I can and make them stand in front of my arkship to absorb incomming fire and lock enemy fleets in place while the arkship heats up the Devastator Cannon. Then after the war I can just retrofit the surviving ones back into their "mothballed" form.

Another thing you can do is to give them cammuflage in their mothballed form. It will add some small tickle of Exotic Gases, Rare Crystals or Zro upkeep to them, and make them even slower, but it will protect them from getting into fights they don't have to. With Arcane Engineering (a must pick for nomads for the Fallen Empire buildings) and Subterfuge Traditions (another must pick, in my opinion because the tracking bonuses alone makes your Devastator Cannon a lot better) you can add +3 to cloaking, so even with the most basic cloaking component they get to lvl 4 cloaking.

Eater of Worlds:

• Doom: Doom intensity depends on your aura, and Nomads cannot project their aura much further away from their arkship. I never managed to get my Doom past 3, so all I can get from it are a few crappy destroyers for a good sum of Zro
• Digest: Situational... One time 10% damage to enemy fleets and 40% devastation to planets where your Arkship is. Can help you if you are in a though spot on a fight.

Composer of Strands:

• Transformation: One random uninhabitable world becomes a size 10 Gaia World. Overpowered for settled empires... Useless for Nomads.
• Expansion: +100 founder pops on each Arkship. Useful if you have lots of arkships, less so if you just have a few, or more likely, just one.

Cradle of Souls:

• Thoughtbound: +100% faction output is situational... Can be useful if you make your build around it. Useless otherwise. But that was so for settled empires too. +25% unity from jobs (the Gestal Swap) is much better though, and still useful for nomads.
• Favor: Consume favors and get unity and influence. Influence is kinda useless for Nomads. And favors are somewhat hard to come by (although it would be nice if you got favors as rewards for contracts).

Instrument of Desire:

• Ascension: Free planetary ascension on one of your arkships. One of the few powers that are as useful for nomads as they are for normal empires
• Exploitation: +1% Resources from jobs from each 100 entertainer jobs... Too bad the space you have to sacrifice in your arkship for entertainer jobs reduces the jobs you want to improve faster than this improvement.

Whisperers in the Void:

• Foresight: 50% instant research progress is great. I approve
• Hindsight: You have no planets to convert into Relic Worlds...

I believe some swaps, like it already happens for gestalts are in order here... Perhaps decoupling Doom from the aura and making it as an additional reward for completing Deeds...

Digest is victim of power creep... It should hit as hard as the Starfire Cannon, but only in the system where your Capital Arkship is. You are calling upon the wrath of your god to be unleashed upon the Galaxy... It shouldn't be weaker than a mere cannon firing.

The devs are talking about making Gaia World bonuses apply to Arkship, so the Baol remain relevant for nomads... they could also use the same mechanics here for Transformation... It would still be subpar when compared to what settled empires can do with it, but would be an improvement.

As for Favor, if you could get Favors as rewards for contracts (perhaps that could be part of the Cradle of Souls covenant), it would be a lot more relevant for nomads.

Hindsight could do a similar transformation to your Arkship... Perhaps converting it into a Relic Ship, with all it's weapons, shields and armors replaced with their Archaeotech versions. Or it could convert one random building within an Arkship to the most basic Fallen Empire version of that building if the Arkship is already a Relic Arkship.

Now, looking into the accords:

Vacant Throne:

• +2 Defense Armies per Telepath: Complete and utterly useless for Nomads. To be fair, I never rolled the Vacant Throne as a Nomad... Only the Black River, which thematically makes sense. And The Black River is orders of magnitude better for Nomads than it is for settled empires. Perhaps just disabling it for nomads is the right move... both mechanically and thematically.

Instrument of Desire:

• All the Resort World related things are useless on an Arkship... Unless you could make an Arkship into a Cruise Arkship, with the same benefits as the Resort World. We have an origin for it though...

Pale Mountain:

• +10% miners efficiency per 100 Telepaths. I cannot understate how powerful this is for settled empires... But for nomads that should apply to Harvesting rather than miners.

As for the Auras, as I said previously, they didn't grow as fast as Settled Empires auras. This isn't an issue, because unlike settled empires, you can move your auras around by moving the Arkships... In fact, there should be even a contract for settled empires to request aura projection of a given patron in one of their systems until it maxes out...

But, as I said before, some auras are more useful than others... And nomads, because the arkships keep moving, never quite manage to max out their auras on a given system.

My issues are mostly with the Doom mechanics to be dependent on aura and the Cradle of Souls producing defense plataforms, that are absolutely useless for nomads, though they could benefit settled empires if aura projection contracts were a thing.

I was itching to make a Nomad hunter build.

The good old Primal Calling + Beastmasters + Warrior Culture on the new Nomad chassis.

I even picked the Military Arkship for proper hunting.

Then I noticed that there are no Void Lures for Nomads, and well, fair enough. You are not one of those settled empires and can track down your prey...

But then I got hard pressed to get any prey at all. I had to set Cthuloids and Voidworms to max just to have something to shoot at.

Tiyanky, due to their peaceful nature, can be tracked by my science ships. But other more hostile prey, such as Amoebas and Crystals gets harder and harder to come by as the empires expand.

I just wish that I could do something to have more prey.

Everyone is hyping the Knights of the Toxic God Nomad build...

I'm more hyped to do a "Call of the Wilds" + Beastmasters Nomad build.

Hunting space fauna is an actual legitimate reason to be a nomad... Travel the void in a huge beast (I'm assuming that they will have Biological Arkships), hunting amoeba swarms, tiyanky pods, crystaline entities and even voidworms...

While paying not much attention to the political drama in the galaxy at large... You need resources? You hunt.

Eventually you do some contracts and barter some goods in the gal-mart, but your main sustenance source is just hunting in the void.

Sending your science ships ahead to scout for prey, and then comming right behind with firepower to take the beasts down.

Second civic could be anything... Warrior Culture, Chosen (probably of the Eater of Worlds), Reanimators, Scavengers, etc...

Two weeks from now we will find out if such playthrough is viable.