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>in favor of being some of the most ruthless and sharky people in the business world. A lot of techies, especially young guys, are hyper-competitive from very

>in favor of being some of the most ruthless and sharky people in the business world. A lot of techies, especially young guys, are hyper-competitive from very early on. I think a lot of shops have a problem where the cut-throats are a good part of the staff, then these guys start graying a bit, have kids, etc and realize they can't keep up but they've already created a cut-throat culture. So they burn out and move onto a company with better benefits and values. Its easy to blame CEOs, and obviously they should share the blame here, but a lot of this culture is grassroots. The most miserable environments I've been in are CS classes and early career tech work. Holy shit, are the egos huge and the attitudes bad. Social skills in IT are below average in general in my experience, so we're talking a lot of serious and dedicated misanthropes with stereotypical male social aggression, bullying, and intimidation. (gee, women don't feel comfortable in CS classes, I wonder why?) The real question is why aren't we teaching the values of work-life balance, win-win, etc from early on. Is it schooling with its emphasis with grades and "doing better than the other guy?" By the time it gets to the CEO level, its already been ingrained in society. My pet theory is that CEO behavior just reflects the rest of us. If it didn't they'd be kicked out of by the board or an employee uprising. A lot of people love Bezos and his heavy-handed ways, in fact, they think this is why Amazon products provide such a good value. As we move towards automation and post-scarcity these questions are going to become important. It may be the case that today's batch of CEO bad guys are the last generation as GMI and other concepts become political realities to handle later stage capitalism, economic drive-downs, loss of jobs via automation, and lower costs of living.

vonmoltke 10y ago
> A lot of techies, especially young guys, are hyper-competitive from very early on. I think it is only "a lot" when you only look at the relatively small sample who frequent sites like HN. I used to work for a large defense contractor, where out of hundreds of engineers of all disciplines I could count on one hand the number of HN readers, and only 20% or so of engineers fit the hyper-competitive mold. Obviously there was some level of self-selection (part of the reason I am not there anymore), but places like this represent the bulk of engineering jobs.
afarrell 10y ago
> schooling with its evidence on "doing better than the other guy"... Is this culture common at many tech-focused universities? It certainly wasn't at MIT 5 years ago.
- davewritescode 10y ago
  Yes, I can't speak for MIT but where I went to school your grades basically dictated where you ended up placed in internships. Grading on a curve also fosters competition by its very nature. Doing well on a test doesn't mean mastering the material, it means beating 90% of the class to ride the curve to an A.
  - afarrell 10y ago
    Yea grades as a zero sum game really decreases collaboration.
tristor 10y ago
I agree, there's a ton of room here for discussion. There's something at a more fundamental level that is broken in our society and it seems to have worsened with the rise of technology enabling people to still conduct their lives while being anti-social. The same exact things that have in some ways been a boon for me personally have also been detrimental to society because they've been enablers for an increase in the number of psychopaths who are running companies. At some point society will need to make a choice (if it doesn't end up being made for us in one way or another along the way). We need to figure out if we want to prioritize wealth or welfare (in the broadest sense of those terms). That is, do we consider it ethical and acceptable for one person to lord over others within their micro-fiefdom merely on the justification of "getting there first". Or do we consider how the entry into a post-scarcity society empowers us to think globally and communally, where the goals are the advancement of everyone as a whole rather than individuals. Personally, I follow a highly individualist philosophy, but I'm not ignorant to some of the unintended consequences that can come from that philosophy, and I think the fact we govern ourselves at a crossroads without wholly committing to either side actually worsens these consequences. Collectivism philosophies come with their own consequences, but I think once resources no longer are limiting factors for individuals or groups, it becomes about allocation of intellectual energy instead and this is where a collectivist philosophy might shine. It's easy to say we shouldn't blame the CEOs, but in this case I think there's something related between how shareholders and boards think about CEO behavior, how employees think about CEO behavior, how CEOS think about their own behavior, and our social trend towards cults of personality and celebrity. We as a society have put a significant amount of effort into glorifying people who are act like total dicks in the business world. To some extent, it's helped us get to this point. But there's a huge amount of ethical concerns with that, and it's just simply no longer necessary and is now detrimental to getting further. At the end of the day though, we've enshrined a ton of power and wealth in these individuals and they have a responsibility to themselves and to all those that depend on them to make the right choices. Ethics is a huge component of this, and the fact so many of these CEOs behave unethically towards one reliant party (shareholders, customers, vendors, employees) or another is a testament to their willingness to compromise ethics in favor of personal enrichment. That's an individual choice and we can't blame anyone else for making it. It's even more egregious when the CEOs in question are also founding members of their companies, such as Bezos and Ellison that I called out in my original post by name.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
We proclaim valuing work-life balance as a signal. It's "look at me; I have enough valuable free time to spend it playing golf." We may or may not actually be all that committed to it. We just use it for purposes of signalling status. People pursue status almost unconsciously. If you don't pursue status, you might pay for it with your job. The thing I find appalling is that employers seem to encourage this - after all, if your people are so busy knifing each other in the back, they're probably not actually working. Of course what I'm missing with that is - that's how they got there.

vonmoltke 10y ago

> A lot of techies, especially young guys, are hyper-competitive from very early on. I think it is only "a lot" when you only look at the relatively small sample who frequent sites like HN. I used to work for a large defense contractor, where out of hundreds of engineers of all disciplines I could count on one hand the number of HN readers, and only 20% or so of engineers fit the hyper-competitive mold. Obviously there was some level of self-selection (part of the reason I am not there anymore), but places like this represent the bulk of engineering jobs.

afarrell 10y ago

> schooling with its evidence on "doing better than the other guy"... Is this culture common at many tech-focused universities? It certainly wasn't at MIT 5 years ago.

davewritescode 10y ago
Yes, I can't speak for MIT but where I went to school your grades basically dictated where you ended up placed in internships. Grading on a curve also fosters competition by its very nature. Doing well on a test doesn't mean mastering the material, it means beating 90% of the class to ride the curve to an A.
- afarrell 10y ago
  Yea grades as a zero sum game really decreases collaboration.

tristor 10y ago

I agree, there's a ton of room here for discussion. There's something at a more fundamental level that is broken in our society and it seems to have worsened with the rise of technology enabling people to still conduct their lives while being anti-social. The same exact things that have in some ways been a boon for me personally have also been detrimental to society because they've been enablers for an increase in the number of psychopaths who are running companies. At some point society will need to make a choice (if it doesn't end up being made for us in one way or another along the way). We need to figure out if we want to prioritize wealth or welfare (in the broadest sense of those terms). That is, do we consider it ethical and acceptable for one person to lord over others within their micro-fiefdom merely on the justification of "getting there first". Or do we consider how the entry into a post-scarcity society empowers us to think globally and communally, where the goals are the advancement of everyone as a whole rather than individuals. Personally, I follow a highly individualist philosophy, but I'm not ignorant to some of the unintended consequences that can come from that philosophy, and I think the fact we govern ourselves at a crossroads without wholly committing to either side actually worsens these consequences. Collectivism philosophies come with their own consequences, but I think once resources no longer are limiting factors for individuals or groups, it becomes about allocation of intellectual energy instead and this is where a collectivist philosophy might shine. It's easy to say we shouldn't blame the CEOs, but in this case I think there's something related between how shareholders and boards think about CEO behavior, how employees think about CEO behavior, how CEOS think about their own behavior, and our social trend towards cults of personality and celebrity. We as a society have put a significant amount of effort into glorifying people who are act like total dicks in the business world. To some extent, it's helped us get to this point. But there's a huge amount of ethical concerns with that, and it's just simply no longer necessary and is now detrimental to getting further. At the end of the day though, we've enshrined a ton of power and wealth in these individuals and they have a responsibility to themselves and to all those that depend on them to make the right choices. Ethics is a huge component of this, and the fact so many of these CEOs behave unethically towards one reliant party (shareholders, customers, vendors, employees) or another is a testament to their willingness to compromise ethics in favor of personal enrichment. That's an individual choice and we can't blame anyone else for making it. It's even more egregious when the CEOs in question are also founding members of their companies, such as Bezos and Ellison that I called out in my original post by name.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

We proclaim valuing work-life balance as a signal. It's "look at me; I have enough valuable free time to spend it playing golf." We may or may not actually be all that committed to it. We just use it for purposes of signalling status. People pursue status almost unconsciously. If you don't pursue status, you might pay for it with your job. The thing I find appalling is that employers seem to encourage this - after all, if your people are so busy knifing each other in the back, they're probably not actually working. Of course what I'm missing with that is - that's how they got there.