3 ms·

I agree it's a bit of a cheap shot. I don't think it's inaccurate. There is no doubt the ad system is valuable. There is no doubt that creating the advertisi

by LPTS 18y ago

I agree it's a bit of a cheap shot. I don't think it's inaccurate. There is no doubt the ad system is valuable. There is no doubt that creating the advertising systems google uses would be an intellectual challenge. But people don't want to see ads. This work is mostly the work of deciding how to best trick people into being distracted by text they don't want to see in the first place. The better the ad people do their jobs, the worse off most people are for it. This is the basis for the work being soul numbing. Conversely, on what basis would working on google's ads be the kind of soul affirming work you look back happily on as you cough up blood while you're dying 50 years from now? Then the googlers can look at all the stuff someone like Ludwig Mies or Steve Reich or Jonathan Ive comes out with. I am sure that google has a huge amount of talent that would be capable of creating at this level (the peak of human potential), and they don't produce much at this level.

mrtron 18y ago
I think that we will see excessive commercialization as something evil in 50+ years, along with the whole institution of corporations. So, going on this train of thought, how can you be a slave to any corporation where the huge number of employees are making very few very rich and die happy? On my death bed I will not look back and say 'I am really glad I worked for X and sacrificed time from my friends and family to make the company extra money.' I just want to be proud of my accomplishments and know I worked hard and played hard. Whether or not I got by with ad revenue probably won't factor into it too much for me.
- gojomo 18y ago
  If you live in a highly-developed country, 'the whole institution of corporations', legal fiction/invention that it is, is probably responsible for most of your modern comforts. The institution of corporations is certainly responsible for the startup opportunities cherished by this community. On your death bed, you might wish somebody had worked harder at their company to cure whatever's killing you.
  - mrtron 18y ago
    I don't think there currently is a better social and economic system than capitalism and corporations. What I was trying to say wasn't really anything more than most people who work for ANY corporation (not just advertising) probably can't reflect and say they lived idealistically in regards to morals. Also I was trying to say exactly that: I want to do all I can regardless of what I am doing or where I am working. Current stress is crushing my writing skills, especially coding.
  - jshen 18y ago
    "On your death bed, you might wish somebody had worked harder at their company to cure whatever's killing you" Or you may wish that you hadn't eaten the nutrionless high calorie corporate created food products that lead to your chronic disease? Or maybe it was the corporate toxic wasted dumped in the river upstream from your small town, while the corporate CEO lived on the other side of the country in a mansion and couldn't care less about the environment in your small town? Don't get me wrong, I agree with you too. But you are only half right.
    - mrtron 18y ago
      I definitely was trying to bring these sort of situations into light, but my attempt was poor. As a general followup, and providing far more personal information than I ever do online, my father is currently hospitalized. He has a few things wrong with him, but several are almost certainly tied to chemicals he used at work. This was the reason I posted the 'corporations can be evil' post. It is why I feel strongly that we need to improve the current system to include some social and environmental costs of certain corporations. I do understand that will not happen soon, and we are forced to work within the rules of the current system.
  - LPTS 18y ago
    I really think you are wrong about google being a great job where people can easily be fulfilled. But, I sure agree with you about corporations doing a lot of good for the world. Corporations are great. The problem with corporations is in a combination of the shitty supreme court ruling that gives them all the rights of people, and the laws that say (unlike people) there only obligation is to maximize shareholder value. A lot of corporate abuse comes from them having all the legal rights of personhood but none of the moral responsibilities or ethics that come with personhood. We need corporations, but they should only get the rights of personhood if they agree to the ethical and moral responsibilities of personhood too. The problem isn't with corporations in and of themselves, it's this shitty legal context they exist in. The other problem with corporations is that they can pass off costs to the public. For example, the true cost of oil includes the environmental damage from burning hydrocarbons, but this doesn't show up on the balance sheet. Or, if you prefer, the costs of bottling pepsi include water rights issues, yet bottlers often don't have to pay market price for this access, and may continue to get heavily subsidized water during a drought. If these two problems were solved, corporations would be a lot better. I think people who attribute the problems corporations are confused and the problem is really a subtler issue around the particular way we allow corporations to selectively get the benefits of citizenship without the responsibilities, and to pass off costs like environmental, opportunity, and subsidies.
gojomo 18y ago
Well-matched non-obnoxious ads don't make people worse off and aren't a 'trick'. For example, for many Google queries, the paid results are more interesting to me than the natural results. Since ad revenue makes other content possible, the better ad people do their jobs, the better off audiences are. If only dumb and ineffective people worked on ad systems, we'd lose a lot of quality web content. Not all work has to be 'soul affirming' work like a missionary might perform. There is honor and dignity in just doing something people want at a price they're happy to pay. Especially so if applying your smarts makes things wildly cheaper, better, or more plentiful than before.
- Tichy 18y ago
  "for many Google queries, the paid results are more interesting to me than the natural results" Which is kind of ironic, given that Google wants to be the best search engine. Yet their ads engine seems to be better than the search engine?
  - rms 18y ago
    The paid results are only particularly useful to me when I want to buy something because the ads are always commercial compared to the often non-commercial results.
    - gojomo 18y ago
      Exactly -- both the 'natural' and paid listings are informational, but for different reasons. Even when I find the paid listings more useful, I wouldn't call them 'better' than the natural results -- just interesting along another dimension.
- LPTS 18y ago
  So basically google is an extortion racket where people can't find you on the internet unless you either pay outlandish SEO fees to people to battle against google for tricking it into displaying your results high, or pay google for ads? And maintaining this system (to googles benefit, not the consumers) is mostly a battle of fighting off the SEO guys so that your advertising money goes to google, or you don't get seen. There is honor and dignity in this endless, pointless fight? That doesn't sound like meaningful work that will satisfy people with a burning desire to change the world. That sounds like extortion. (Pay us ads, pay your nerds to fight with our nerds about SEO, or get kicked off the block). Obviously, there are tons of people for whatever reason just want a job they can live with. That's fine. I'm not saying everyone should quit google or anyone who works at google is a soulless spineless fuck or anything like that. But these google guys are at the edge of what's possible, and some of the brightest folks around. I'm not talking about finding a great job you can live with. I'm talking about the people who have both the desire and ability to set the world on fire. Those are the people google wants and can't hold. I completely agree not all work has to be soul affirming to be worth doing. But there are some people who won't settle for less than truly meaningful work. These are the people google both needs, and can't hang onto.

by LPTS 18y ago

mrtron 18y ago

I think that we will see excessive commercialization as something evil in 50+ years, along with the whole institution of corporations. So, going on this train of thought, how can you be a slave to any corporation where the huge number of employees are making very few very rich and die happy? On my death bed I will not look back and say 'I am really glad I worked for X and sacrificed time from my friends and family to make the company extra money.' I just want to be proud of my accomplishments and know I worked hard and played hard. Whether or not I got by with ad revenue probably won't factor into it too much for me.

gojomo 18y ago
If you live in a highly-developed country, 'the whole institution of corporations', legal fiction/invention that it is, is probably responsible for most of your modern comforts. The institution of corporations is certainly responsible for the startup opportunities cherished by this community. On your death bed, you might wish somebody had worked harder at their company to cure whatever's killing you.
- mrtron 18y ago
  I don't think there currently is a better social and economic system than capitalism and corporations. What I was trying to say wasn't really anything more than most people who work for ANY corporation (not just advertising) probably can't reflect and say they lived idealistically in regards to morals. Also I was trying to say exactly that: I want to do all I can regardless of what I am doing or where I am working. Current stress is crushing my writing skills, especially coding.
- jshen 18y ago
  "On your death bed, you might wish somebody had worked harder at their company to cure whatever's killing you" Or you may wish that you hadn't eaten the nutrionless high calorie corporate created food products that lead to your chronic disease? Or maybe it was the corporate toxic wasted dumped in the river upstream from your small town, while the corporate CEO lived on the other side of the country in a mansion and couldn't care less about the environment in your small town? Don't get me wrong, I agree with you too. But you are only half right.
  - mrtron 18y ago
    I definitely was trying to bring these sort of situations into light, but my attempt was poor. As a general followup, and providing far more personal information than I ever do online, my father is currently hospitalized. He has a few things wrong with him, but several are almost certainly tied to chemicals he used at work. This was the reason I posted the 'corporations can be evil' post. It is why I feel strongly that we need to improve the current system to include some social and environmental costs of certain corporations. I do understand that will not happen soon, and we are forced to work within the rules of the current system.
- LPTS 18y ago
  I really think you are wrong about google being a great job where people can easily be fulfilled. But, I sure agree with you about corporations doing a lot of good for the world. Corporations are great. The problem with corporations is in a combination of the shitty supreme court ruling that gives them all the rights of people, and the laws that say (unlike people) there only obligation is to maximize shareholder value. A lot of corporate abuse comes from them having all the legal rights of personhood but none of the moral responsibilities or ethics that come with personhood. We need corporations, but they should only get the rights of personhood if they agree to the ethical and moral responsibilities of personhood too. The problem isn't with corporations in and of themselves, it's this shitty legal context they exist in. The other problem with corporations is that they can pass off costs to the public. For example, the true cost of oil includes the environmental damage from burning hydrocarbons, but this doesn't show up on the balance sheet. Or, if you prefer, the costs of bottling pepsi include water rights issues, yet bottlers often don't have to pay market price for this access, and may continue to get heavily subsidized water during a drought. If these two problems were solved, corporations would be a lot better. I think people who attribute the problems corporations are confused and the problem is really a subtler issue around the particular way we allow corporations to selectively get the benefits of citizenship without the responsibilities, and to pass off costs like environmental, opportunity, and subsidies.

gojomo 18y ago

Well-matched non-obnoxious ads don't make people worse off and aren't a 'trick'. For example, for many Google queries, the paid results are more interesting to me than the natural results. Since ad revenue makes other content possible, the better ad people do their jobs, the better off audiences are. If only dumb and ineffective people worked on ad systems, we'd lose a lot of quality web content. Not all work has to be 'soul affirming' work like a missionary might perform. There is honor and dignity in just doing something people want at a price they're happy to pay. Especially so if applying your smarts makes things wildly cheaper, better, or more plentiful than before.

Tichy 18y ago
"for many Google queries, the paid results are more interesting to me than the natural results" Which is kind of ironic, given that Google wants to be the best search engine. Yet their ads engine seems to be better than the search engine?
- rms 18y ago
  The paid results are only particularly useful to me when I want to buy something because the ads are always commercial compared to the often non-commercial results.
  - gojomo 18y ago
    Exactly -- both the 'natural' and paid listings are informational, but for different reasons. Even when I find the paid listings more useful, I wouldn't call them 'better' than the natural results -- just interesting along another dimension.
LPTS 18y ago
So basically google is an extortion racket where people can't find you on the internet unless you either pay outlandish SEO fees to people to battle against google for tricking it into displaying your results high, or pay google for ads? And maintaining this system (to googles benefit, not the consumers) is mostly a battle of fighting off the SEO guys so that your advertising money goes to google, or you don't get seen. There is honor and dignity in this endless, pointless fight? That doesn't sound like meaningful work that will satisfy people with a burning desire to change the world. That sounds like extortion. (Pay us ads, pay your nerds to fight with our nerds about SEO, or get kicked off the block). Obviously, there are tons of people for whatever reason just want a job they can live with. That's fine. I'm not saying everyone should quit google or anyone who works at google is a soulless spineless fuck or anything like that. But these google guys are at the edge of what's possible, and some of the brightest folks around. I'm not talking about finding a great job you can live with. I'm talking about the people who have both the desire and ability to set the world on fire. Those are the people google wants and can't hold. I completely agree not all work has to be soul affirming to be worth doing. But there are some people who won't settle for less than truly meaningful work. These are the people google both needs, and can't hang onto.