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> It used to be that everyone would dream of making a startup that big tech would acquihire. This really goes to show how pathetic the tech industry has been f

by bogwog 3y ago

> It used to be that everyone would dream of making a startup that big tech would acquihire. This really goes to show how pathetic the tech industry has been for the past ~2 decades. People don't aspire to build the next Google, just to get a job with Google. That's like saying the Matrix inspired you to land a job where you get your own cubicle. When I was a kid dreaming of the future, I never thought that "success" meant being acquihired by a tech giant. That seems stupid, why wouldn't I just apply like a normal person? Building something like eBay or YouTube and turning it into a massive success to rival the giants was the dream. All you needed was a keyboard and luck. I don't know if I'm alone in that, or if this is a generational thing? I'm currently under 30, so if it is, then it's probably a relatively recent phenomenon. I guess programmers born in the mid 00s probably grew up in a world already dominated by the same few tech giants, and missed the part where they were growing and fighting for dominance. Of course, I would say that's probably the most reasonable dream to have considering the circumstances. If you do manage to build an innovative and sustainable business, it's unlikely you'll survive once the tech giants attack you with anticompetitive tactics that they know they can get away with. ...that doesn't make it any less lame though.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago
Don't think it's generational. I'm 41 and had the same take. I think the core of it is that I internalized a (supposedly) fundamental hacker aesthetic of autonomy, and it seems the culture traded that away for a needy, zero sum, external-validation-needing void. Now we're told that we really should be working on our brands, amassing our GitHub stars, and other bullshit that is wholly orthogonal to actually building cool stuff. Cause who wants to do that when the rewards are uncertain? Follower counts are what really matters, this is the attention economy, and you can't be left behind!
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I think the amount of people in it for the sake of building hasn’t really changed. It’s just that the domain has been absolutely flooded by people in it for the money. Things felt nicer when we were all still just building.
financltravsty 3y ago
Such is life. Tech boomed because: the economy was "good" (people could afford to go after creative and speculative pursuits) and there was technology that hadn't been utilized in creative ways yet (computers, phones, the internet, GPUs, etc.). This allowed "hackers"/"geeks"/"creatives"/"entrepreneurs" to work on stuff that most likely wouldn't make any money, but would be more interesting and fulfilling than doing a job or going after a career. Then once the money started coming in, and others started hitting home-runs, the "sociopaths"/"prestige hounds"/"MBAs"/"money lovers" came in to formalize and formulize, so the gravy train would be more sustainable and predictable -- and that they could get theirs. Now we're here. Something cool is no longer cool. In another vein, what is there left to do? The economy needs to improve and there needs to be new -- actually ground-breaking and revolutionary -- technology brought to the world, so others may use it in novel and creative ways. Then we repeat the cycle. LLMs seem to be the only contender for "ground-breaking" tech right now. Otherwise, I can't think of anything else.
- fragmede 3y ago
  solar power, wind power, grid-scale battery storage, heat pumps, ev cars, ev aircraft, mRNA vaccines, cures for very specific kinds of cancer, spaceX... maybe it's just me, but there's a ton of intesting tech happening outside of computers
  - financltravsty 3y ago
    mRNA vaccines is the only one that really "pops" for me. The rest are just iterations on what we've already had, but more efficient/less costly/etc. Nothing really revolutionary, only the same old but better. In that vein, CRISPR, and how it enables individuals to pursue genetic modification and xenobiology/botany, is one that's being utilized right now to make a lot of very cool stuff (one that comes to mind is the S. Mutans strain that doesn't produce lactic acid). But it's still a very involved and very chaotic process that doesn't allow innovations to rocket off.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      Most things are iterations on what you already had. Transistors were just an iteration on tubes, but give it 50 years and… I think the most world changing tech of the last 20 years is the smartphone.
zaptheimpaler 3y ago
The people you're talking about are still out there, maybe there's just less of them proportionally as the industry grows. In absolutes there are probably a lot more tech entrepreneurs at every scale.
mhink 3y ago
I think this is missing a really, really important observation- it's only in the past two decades that the Internet (specifically, the World Wide Web) has become such a dominant medium of culture at large. Our view of "what tech culture was like" is very much skewed by the fact that relatively few people were participating in the early "online" culture, and the folks that were, were very much the ones taking risks that turned out to be the major companies of these latter years. We don't talk about all the programmers that ended up at (for example) Sun, or IBM, of one of the many other major tech companies that have since fallen from grace.

by bogwog 3y ago

mattgreenrocks 3y ago

Don't think it's generational. I'm 41 and had the same take. I think the core of it is that I internalized a (supposedly) fundamental hacker aesthetic of autonomy, and it seems the culture traded that away for a needy, zero sum, external-validation-needing void. Now we're told that we really should be working on our brands, amassing our GitHub stars, and other bullshit that is wholly orthogonal to actually building cool stuff. Cause who wants to do that when the rewards are uncertain? Follower counts are what really matters, this is the attention economy, and you can't be left behind!

Aeolun 3y ago
I think the amount of people in it for the sake of building hasn’t really changed. It’s just that the domain has been absolutely flooded by people in it for the money. Things felt nicer when we were all still just building.

financltravsty 3y ago

Such is life. Tech boomed because: the economy was "good" (people could afford to go after creative and speculative pursuits) and there was technology that hadn't been utilized in creative ways yet (computers, phones, the internet, GPUs, etc.). This allowed "hackers"/"geeks"/"creatives"/"entrepreneurs" to work on stuff that most likely wouldn't make any money, but would be more interesting and fulfilling than doing a job or going after a career. Then once the money started coming in, and others started hitting home-runs, the "sociopaths"/"prestige hounds"/"MBAs"/"money lovers" came in to formalize and formulize, so the gravy train would be more sustainable and predictable -- and that they could get theirs. Now we're here. Something cool is no longer cool. In another vein, what is there left to do? The economy needs to improve and there needs to be new -- actually ground-breaking and revolutionary -- technology brought to the world, so others may use it in novel and creative ways. Then we repeat the cycle. LLMs seem to be the only contender for "ground-breaking" tech right now. Otherwise, I can't think of anything else.

fragmede 3y ago
solar power, wind power, grid-scale battery storage, heat pumps, ev cars, ev aircraft, mRNA vaccines, cures for very specific kinds of cancer, spaceX... maybe it's just me, but there's a ton of intesting tech happening outside of computers
- financltravsty 3y ago
  mRNA vaccines is the only one that really "pops" for me. The rest are just iterations on what we've already had, but more efficient/less costly/etc. Nothing really revolutionary, only the same old but better. In that vein, CRISPR, and how it enables individuals to pursue genetic modification and xenobiology/botany, is one that's being utilized right now to make a lot of very cool stuff (one that comes to mind is the S. Mutans strain that doesn't produce lactic acid). But it's still a very involved and very chaotic process that doesn't allow innovations to rocket off.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    Most things are iterations on what you already had. Transistors were just an iteration on tubes, but give it 50 years and… I think the most world changing tech of the last 20 years is the smartphone.

zaptheimpaler 3y ago

The people you're talking about are still out there, maybe there's just less of them proportionally as the industry grows. In absolutes there are probably a lot more tech entrepreneurs at every scale.

mhink 3y ago

I think this is missing a really, really important observation- it's only in the past two decades that the Internet (specifically, the World Wide Web) has become such a dominant medium of culture at large. Our view of "what tech culture was like" is very much skewed by the fact that relatively few people were participating in the early "online" culture, and the folks that were, were very much the ones taking risks that turned out to be the major companies of these latter years. We don't talk about all the programmers that ended up at (for example) Sun, or IBM, of one of the many other major tech companies that have since fallen from grace.