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Indeed, you know those HR meetings that we always pretend to care and believe the company mission, while commenting afterwards with your co-workers how cringe i

Indeed, you know those HR meetings that we always pretend to care and believe the company mission, while commenting afterwards with your co-workers how cringe it all sounded? Does that not happen in Silicon Valley? What I learned is that people in Silicon Valley actually do drink the Kool-Aid. They may come from top universities, be technically knowledgeable, make a million dollars a year but yeah, I can't think of a more charitable word than "moron".

chii 4y ago
> I can't think of a more charitable word than "moron". how about just naivety? until you truly get burned, you'd want to believe that other people would have good intentions.
- voakbasda 4y ago
  But do they actually learn? Or ignore the sunk cost of living in the Bay Area and proceed to drink another flavor?
  - nowherebeen 4y ago
    I think cost of living in so high that many have no choice but to drink the koolaid. Software engineers in the US gets paid the highest in the world. The price for it is to become a part of the culture. It's sad, but how else will they be able to afford having a family?
    - Ancalagon 4y ago
      Live…somewhere…else?
      - nowherebeen 4y ago
        That's not a realistic solution for many people with families.
        Ancalagon 4y ago
        You just said SWEs are some of the highest paying positions in the US. Not to mention many are able to work fully remote. It should be feasible that even with a family they can move.
        metadat 4y ago
        If you move away then it becomes difficult to justify the high pay. If you move away and persist with the high pay and excessive resource acquisition, then congrats- you've just entered the category of being another needlessly greedy human, like Mollusk.
        hulitu 4y ago
        But working 12 hours a day is ?
    - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
      This is very interesting and reminds me of Shadowrun. Basically these people are living in a cocoon. They get a nice house and salary but in exchange the corporation gets their body and soul.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  Yes, when you go to a fancy school and make a lot of money you stop being a moron and start being naive.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  It is not naivety to have a passion (expressed as their work) and to be taken advantage of by management, billionaires, whomever. It's simply exploitation of someone's belief system by someone lacking some combination of morals, ethics, and empathy. Let's not blame good people for the contemptible actions of those exploiting them. We want to encourage more good people who channel their passion into their work (and hopefully that results in progress), and put the contemptible people into metaphorical boxes via laws and regulations to protect others from the harm they cause. If shitty people are still getting wildly wealthy and we keep churning out burned out cynical people in the process, that’s not progress nor sustainable.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    If you are tolerating exploitation by wealthy sociopaths when there is enough information available to know what they're doing and they have the resources to live a tolerable life without participating are either complicit or willfully naive and credulous. Either way they share the blame.
    - quantified 4y ago
      Can you edit that to be coherent? "You", "they", and the target of "are either..." seem out of sync.
    - tpoacher 4y ago
      "It's their fault for having feelings and empathy that makes them weak, it is my duty as an apex predator to exploit them": every narcissist ever. Sometimes a victim is just a victim.
  - Dudeman112 4y ago
    >It is not naivety to have a passion (expressed as their work) and to be taken advantage of It is. It totally is naivety. I find it incredibly odd that if someone goes to, say, a Brazilian slum showing off their expensive stuff people are fine with labeling them naive when (not if) they get robbed Some people have been so sheltered from reality that they'd put their hands in the mouth of a lion and be surprised when the lion bites it off. At some point it is indeed naivety. And on this specific case it's not even like said billionaires are trying hard to fake decency
- petre 4y ago
  That's why they need a union.
wildrhythms 4y ago
I work in SV and it's no different from any other big company. You nod your head to the obvious upper management self-ejaculatory "corporate culture", show up to the "strongly recommended" team building events put together by someone who I didn't even know works on my team, and act happy when your work and workmates are scrambled every couple of years by upper management engaged in its little warring fiefdom re-orgs shortly before they award themselves a job well done and leave for the next company. All pointless, meaningless... like most things, the core software engineering is interesting and useful; the corporate, capitalistic wrappings are the problem.
lovich 4y ago
Look at how these big silicon valley FAANGs and all the competition trying to emulate them hire. They shoot for kids coming right out of college and then do their best to make their life cushy and happy enough that they never question the situation. They're drinking the Kool-Aid because the companies give them just enough of the real stuff. Obviously this isn't true for everyone and there are people in the industry there who learn over time, but there's just too many people in the region who believe in the propaganda.
cafard 4y ago
"Unduly optimistic" might be not only more charitable but fairer. The syndrome is not limited to Silicon Valley or to the 21st Century. I remember very clearly my father almost sixty years ago remarking with disgust that some scientific organization had given an award to Union Carbide, which was notorious for bad treatment of its scientists.
- trash3 4y ago
  Even that sounds harsh. The Faang engineers are sociopaths chasing top dollar. The engineers at spacex are the other side of the coin. HN berating people for not getting their worth laughable seeing how a mediocre engineer still makes more than 80 percent of the population.

chii 4y ago

> I can't think of a more charitable word than "moron". how about just naivety? until you truly get burned, you'd want to believe that other people would have good intentions.

voakbasda 4y ago
But do they actually learn? Or ignore the sunk cost of living in the Bay Area and proceed to drink another flavor?
- nowherebeen 4y ago
  I think cost of living in so high that many have no choice but to drink the koolaid. Software engineers in the US gets paid the highest in the world. The price for it is to become a part of the culture. It's sad, but how else will they be able to afford having a family?
  - Ancalagon 4y ago
    Live…somewhere…else?
    - nowherebeen 4y ago
      That's not a realistic solution for many people with families.
      - Ancalagon 4y ago
        You just said SWEs are some of the highest paying positions in the US. Not to mention many are able to work fully remote. It should be feasible that even with a family they can move.
        metadat 4y ago
        If you move away then it becomes difficult to justify the high pay. If you move away and persist with the high pay and excessive resource acquisition, then congrats- you've just entered the category of being another needlessly greedy human, like Mollusk.
      - hulitu 4y ago
        But working 12 hours a day is ?
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    This is very interesting and reminds me of Shadowrun. Basically these people are living in a cocoon. They get a nice house and salary but in exchange the corporation gets their body and soul.
idiotsecant 4y ago
Yes, when you go to a fancy school and make a lot of money you stop being a moron and start being naive.
toomuchtodo 4y ago
It is not naivety to have a passion (expressed as their work) and to be taken advantage of by management, billionaires, whomever. It's simply exploitation of someone's belief system by someone lacking some combination of morals, ethics, and empathy. Let's not blame good people for the contemptible actions of those exploiting them. We want to encourage more good people who channel their passion into their work (and hopefully that results in progress), and put the contemptible people into metaphorical boxes via laws and regulations to protect others from the harm they cause. If shitty people are still getting wildly wealthy and we keep churning out burned out cynical people in the process, that’s not progress nor sustainable.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If you are tolerating exploitation by wealthy sociopaths when there is enough information available to know what they're doing and they have the resources to live a tolerable life without participating are either complicit or willfully naive and credulous. Either way they share the blame.
  - quantified 4y ago
    Can you edit that to be coherent? "You", "they", and the target of "are either..." seem out of sync.
  - tpoacher 4y ago
    "It's their fault for having feelings and empathy that makes them weak, it is my duty as an apex predator to exploit them": every narcissist ever. Sometimes a victim is just a victim.
- Dudeman112 4y ago
  >It is not naivety to have a passion (expressed as their work) and to be taken advantage of It is. It totally is naivety. I find it incredibly odd that if someone goes to, say, a Brazilian slum showing off their expensive stuff people are fine with labeling them naive when (not if) they get robbed Some people have been so sheltered from reality that they'd put their hands in the mouth of a lion and be surprised when the lion bites it off. At some point it is indeed naivety. And on this specific case it's not even like said billionaires are trying hard to fake decency
petre 4y ago
That's why they need a union.

wildrhythms 4y ago

I work in SV and it's no different from any other big company. You nod your head to the obvious upper management self-ejaculatory "corporate culture", show up to the "strongly recommended" team building events put together by someone who I didn't even know works on my team, and act happy when your work and workmates are scrambled every couple of years by upper management engaged in its little warring fiefdom re-orgs shortly before they award themselves a job well done and leave for the next company. All pointless, meaningless... like most things, the core software engineering is interesting and useful; the corporate, capitalistic wrappings are the problem.

lovich 4y ago

Look at how these big silicon valley FAANGs and all the competition trying to emulate them hire. They shoot for kids coming right out of college and then do their best to make their life cushy and happy enough that they never question the situation. They're drinking the Kool-Aid because the companies give them just enough of the real stuff. Obviously this isn't true for everyone and there are people in the industry there who learn over time, but there's just too many people in the region who believe in the propaganda.

cafard 4y ago

"Unduly optimistic" might be not only more charitable but fairer. The syndrome is not limited to Silicon Valley or to the 21st Century. I remember very clearly my father almost sixty years ago remarking with disgust that some scientific organization had given an award to Union Carbide, which was notorious for bad treatment of its scientists.

trash3 4y ago
Even that sounds harsh. The Faang engineers are sociopaths chasing top dollar. The engineers at spacex are the other side of the coin. HN berating people for not getting their worth laughable seeing how a mediocre engineer still makes more than 80 percent of the population.