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off-topic: I have been actively participating in HN since 2010, and recently I started seeing prominent tech people on twitter backlash against pg. Not sure if

off-topic: I have been actively participating in HN since 2010, and recently I started seeing prominent tech people on twitter backlash against pg. Not sure if It was there before, or if I'm barely noticing this. i.e. many of them show screenshots of getting banned by pg on twitter. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1329094570056032264 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1329094570056032264

TigeriusKirk 6y ago
Fashions come and go. Anyone screenshotting being blocked by anyone is definitely trading in fashion.
Swizec 6y ago
pg has fallen out of touch. The world is very different for the young ones. I’m not old but my tech career started back around 2007. It was very different. Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won. Tech is to 2020 what finance was to 1980. And VCs are seen as the big baddies. People don’t join this industry for the love of nerdy tech anymore. They come because it’s where ambitious people go.
- whalesalad 6y ago
  Been following you for a long time and also share a similar tenure. Your comment here is completely spot on.
- Benjammer 6y ago
  I'm even less old, my career started in 2009. My personal experience was that people back then were both more nerdy and more ambitious, not a tradeoff. And now people are "ambitious" but it's a personal ambition to play the game and earn more money than their peers. The people I worked with in 2009 were ambitious in the sense of building products and teams and companies to succeed in the marketplace, or creating new marketplaces. It seems like tech is where greedy people go nowadays, not ambitious people in any greater sense of ambition in the world at large.
  - birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
    Where can one find the ambitious people of 2009 to build products and teams and companies? Asking for a friend.
    - Benjammer 6y ago
      If I look back at the company I was thinking of when I wrote that, the "top half" of the people there are VPs/MDs in fintech, staff engineers at companies like Twitter, ~2-3 mildly successful founders, CTOs at startups, and several have one-person-consulting-shop lifestyle businesses. The other half are mostly engineering managers at (boring, non-FAANG) larger companies. I've bounced around doing greenfield projects / new products at several B2B companies. I just find interesting projects I want to work on and then leave after a few years once the politics become overwhelming for me. Our recruiting/interviewing process would be criticized nowadays as completely bias-ridden. We sent teams of just-graduated first-year people back to their school's career fairs, built relationships with career offices at those schools, and just basically would have people walk around and be outgoing and try to just chat with interesting students and see if they wanted to join a cool tech company in NYC with cool people. Our interviews were mostly gut-feel after talking to someone about whatever and doing a very simple many-to-many-linking-table exercise to see if they could visualize simple data relations in their head. We didn't even test coding skills, for the most part. I dunno if it would surprise anyone, but those teams actually were, by far, the most diverse teams I've worked on in my career in terms of age, gender, and race (not to mention socio-eco background). We invested heavily in training people on the job and building culture together internally. We ended up being merged into a larger entity by our parent company and the culture was utterly demolished, and everyone quit around the same time. I just don't see what context would attract these sorts of people back together at a tech company nowadays. If you find something that isn't a startup founded by rich brats trying to completely fleece slightly-above-average engineers in secondary-market cities with 10-yr-old market rate salaries, and isn't a big tech company ruining society, completely driven by political-insider-donors-- ahem, sorry, I mean investors -- please let me know also!
    - rhizome 6y ago
      Find the people who criticize current developments in terms of the original promises of (the relevant) technology. People with a sense of history and the big pictures that no longer exist or which are being actively destroyed as inconvenient to business plans.
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain right?
  - Loughla 6y ago
    I've never fully understood that saying. Failure to stay relevant and understand the world as it is without your blinders on doesn't make you the victim of time. That's a choice you've made. It's simple to lose touch. You did what the youth are doing a decade ago; hell, you're still in the game, albeit in a much different role. The world shifts around you, but you are so rich and powerful that people in your personal circle either don't see it themselves because of their wealth and power, or would NEVER point out your shortcomings because they need access to your wealth and power. In other words, assigning that statement - die a hero or live long enough to become the villain - says, to me, that he hasn't actually done anything wrong. That it's not his fault, he's just been around so long that tastes have changed. He's the victim, is what I read there. I would argue, though, that it is his fault. He's out of touch with the world as it is for people just starting out, AND he's made the mistake of believing his view is the view, right and proper. No idea what all that means in this context, but there it is, I guess.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      You usually don't become a hero without staking a position. Once you've staked it, it becomes part of your identity, and is pretty hard to let go of. Even if you shift your views, much of the rest of the world will hold you to your younger self. (Though with enough time, they'll forget. Remember when Arianna Huffington was a conservative commentator, or Donald Trump was a Democrat, or Elizabeth Warren was a Republican, or Benedict Arnold was a Patriot? Hmm, maybe some of those aren't great examples.)
- jariel 6y ago
  "Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won." You must be young. The difference between 1999 and 2009 was an order of magnitude greater than 2009 to 2019. This is your personal growth journey, not really an objective thing.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    I started coding in 1995 so yes I know the difference was huge. Reading Hackers reveals that back in 1960 tech was even nerdier still. Professionalization marches on. Exponentially.
    - jariel 6y ago
      I think the inflection point was when tech, the valley and the internet itself became mainstream, circa 2000. It came along with millenium hype. Even then only maybe 1/3 of Americans had consistent Internet access, but everyone was talking about it. 'The Matrix' films remember are about hackers. Then the metastasizing with mobile, which really took root post 2010 when even poor people around the globe became connected. I think AI, in the long run, won't be the thing we look at, it will be the internet itself. In 500 years, I wonder if even Television or Radio will be remembered as 'a thing' - they were foundational and transformational, but only for a few decades until the internet took over. The mishmash we have now, may resemble whatever it is we have in 1000 years. Protocols, sources, viewing tech will all change, but I think that it will actually kind of feel similar. It won't have the orthodoxy of 'TV Channels' with 'set program timings' etc..
      - Swizec 6y ago
        Well I’m from Eastern-ish Europe so we were a little behind maybe. We got internet at home in 2001. Before that I’d go to the library to try it out.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    It's like all those articles you see in Medium :"What life has taught me" They all start like : "In my youth, the US was a very different place, blah blah" Then you scroll down and notice the author is 28 yo at most.
- rhizome 6y ago
  Consider the possibility that they fucked it up. That tweet is actually pretty amazing though: pg discovering practices 37Signals has been using for a decade.

TigeriusKirk 6y ago

Fashions come and go. Anyone screenshotting being blocked by anyone is definitely trading in fashion.

Swizec 6y ago

pg has fallen out of touch. The world is very different for the young ones. I’m not old but my tech career started back around 2007. It was very different. Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won. Tech is to 2020 what finance was to 1980. And VCs are seen as the big baddies. People don’t join this industry for the love of nerdy tech anymore. They come because it’s where ambitious people go.

whalesalad 6y ago
Been following you for a long time and also share a similar tenure. Your comment here is completely spot on.
Benjammer 6y ago
I'm even less old, my career started in 2009. My personal experience was that people back then were both more nerdy and more ambitious, not a tradeoff. And now people are "ambitious" but it's a personal ambition to play the game and earn more money than their peers. The people I worked with in 2009 were ambitious in the sense of building products and teams and companies to succeed in the marketplace, or creating new marketplaces. It seems like tech is where greedy people go nowadays, not ambitious people in any greater sense of ambition in the world at large.
- birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
  Where can one find the ambitious people of 2009 to build products and teams and companies? Asking for a friend.
  - Benjammer 6y ago
    If I look back at the company I was thinking of when I wrote that, the "top half" of the people there are VPs/MDs in fintech, staff engineers at companies like Twitter, ~2-3 mildly successful founders, CTOs at startups, and several have one-person-consulting-shop lifestyle businesses. The other half are mostly engineering managers at (boring, non-FAANG) larger companies. I've bounced around doing greenfield projects / new products at several B2B companies. I just find interesting projects I want to work on and then leave after a few years once the politics become overwhelming for me. Our recruiting/interviewing process would be criticized nowadays as completely bias-ridden. We sent teams of just-graduated first-year people back to their school's career fairs, built relationships with career offices at those schools, and just basically would have people walk around and be outgoing and try to just chat with interesting students and see if they wanted to join a cool tech company in NYC with cool people. Our interviews were mostly gut-feel after talking to someone about whatever and doing a very simple many-to-many-linking-table exercise to see if they could visualize simple data relations in their head. We didn't even test coding skills, for the most part. I dunno if it would surprise anyone, but those teams actually were, by far, the most diverse teams I've worked on in my career in terms of age, gender, and race (not to mention socio-eco background). We invested heavily in training people on the job and building culture together internally. We ended up being merged into a larger entity by our parent company and the culture was utterly demolished, and everyone quit around the same time. I just don't see what context would attract these sorts of people back together at a tech company nowadays. If you find something that isn't a startup founded by rich brats trying to completely fleece slightly-above-average engineers in secondary-market cities with 10-yr-old market rate salaries, and isn't a big tech company ruining society, completely driven by political-insider-donors-- ahem, sorry, I mean investors -- please let me know also!
  - rhizome 6y ago
    Find the people who criticize current developments in terms of the original promises of (the relevant) technology. People with a sense of history and the big pictures that no longer exist or which are being actively destroyed as inconvenient to business plans.
Taylor_OD 6y ago
Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain right?
- Loughla 6y ago
  I've never fully understood that saying. Failure to stay relevant and understand the world as it is without your blinders on doesn't make you the victim of time. That's a choice you've made. It's simple to lose touch. You did what the youth are doing a decade ago; hell, you're still in the game, albeit in a much different role. The world shifts around you, but you are so rich and powerful that people in your personal circle either don't see it themselves because of their wealth and power, or would NEVER point out your shortcomings because they need access to your wealth and power. In other words, assigning that statement - die a hero or live long enough to become the villain - says, to me, that he hasn't actually done anything wrong. That it's not his fault, he's just been around so long that tastes have changed. He's the victim, is what I read there. I would argue, though, that it is his fault. He's out of touch with the world as it is for people just starting out, AND he's made the mistake of believing his view is the view, right and proper. No idea what all that means in this context, but there it is, I guess.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    You usually don't become a hero without staking a position. Once you've staked it, it becomes part of your identity, and is pretty hard to let go of. Even if you shift your views, much of the rest of the world will hold you to your younger self. (Though with enough time, they'll forget. Remember when Arianna Huffington was a conservative commentator, or Donald Trump was a Democrat, or Elizabeth Warren was a Republican, or Benedict Arnold was a Patriot? Hmm, maybe some of those aren't great examples.)
jariel 6y ago
"Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won." You must be young. The difference between 1999 and 2009 was an order of magnitude greater than 2009 to 2019. This is your personal growth journey, not really an objective thing.
- Swizec 6y ago
  I started coding in 1995 so yes I know the difference was huge. Reading Hackers reveals that back in 1960 tech was even nerdier still. Professionalization marches on. Exponentially.
  - jariel 6y ago
    I think the inflection point was when tech, the valley and the internet itself became mainstream, circa 2000. It came along with millenium hype. Even then only maybe 1/3 of Americans had consistent Internet access, but everyone was talking about it. 'The Matrix' films remember are about hackers. Then the metastasizing with mobile, which really took root post 2010 when even poor people around the globe became connected. I think AI, in the long run, won't be the thing we look at, it will be the internet itself. In 500 years, I wonder if even Television or Radio will be remembered as 'a thing' - they were foundational and transformational, but only for a few decades until the internet took over. The mishmash we have now, may resemble whatever it is we have in 1000 years. Protocols, sources, viewing tech will all change, but I think that it will actually kind of feel similar. It won't have the orthodoxy of 'TV Channels' with 'set program timings' etc..
    - Swizec 6y ago
      Well I’m from Eastern-ish Europe so we were a little behind maybe. We got internet at home in 2001. Before that I’d go to the library to try it out.
- cambalache 6y ago
  It's like all those articles you see in Medium :"What life has taught me" They all start like : "In my youth, the US was a very different place, blah blah" Then you scroll down and notice the author is 28 yo at most.
rhizome 6y ago
Consider the possibility that they fucked it up. That tweet is actually pretty amazing though: pg discovering practices 37Signals has been using for a decade.