11 ms·

6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

237 points by zoul 2y ago

jmathai 2y ago
This resonates with me - someone who left big tech 2 months ago. It is so refreshing talking with business owners and thinking of smaller scale ideas. In addition to being a lot more authentic, they seem to generate a lot of wealth.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
While this author is of a younger generation, this really resonated with me as a Gen Xer. I feel there is so much disillusionment among folks that came of age during the 90s because there was so much techno optimism then, and it didn't quite turn out like we envisioned. Two things made me think about this recently: 1. I saw a Reddit post that was titled something like "The 90s were peak humanity. Enough tech to make life comfortable, but not so much that it had totally taken over the focus." It was a video of a packed mall around the holidays filled with generally happy people socializing in public. 2. That viral quote that was making the rounds, "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." I just feel there has been a growing chasm over the past 25 years where tech is no longer solving pressing human problems (generally, obviously not true in all areas e.g. decarbonization tech) but is more concerned with just rent-seeking value extraction.
- XorNot 2y ago
  > "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." Except this quote is just...internet clickbait. As though technological development is a straight line with easily predictable outcomes. Hell it's even engaging in a bait and switch argument: "I want to art and writing" -> well, AI isn't stopping you from doing those thing versus the reality of creative work for hire -> "I want to be paid to do art and writing". Setting aside the obvious "when your hobby becomes your job it tends to cease being your hobby" which so many Twitch influencers discover, the headline argument is as though someone has overtly set out to build generative AI and not "done the obvious thing of making a laundry and dishwashing robot" (while you know, also ignoring that technically we have both those things and built them almost immediately - literally washing machines and dishwashers). The complaint is...well frankly classist as hell. "Why should lower myself to manual labor? Take those other people's jobs away first". It sounds profound but says nothing: Twitter in a nutshell.
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    If wanting to reduce menial tasks in my life is classist, then sign me up.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      You're on a website of software developers. Our entire job description is to eliminate white collar work. Not a lot of secretaries and typists anymore. Less and less classic sysadmins as well.
      - daseiner1 2y ago
        Not entirely clear to me how that’s relevant. I merely disagree with valorization of menial work and the people who do it.
        roenxi 2y ago
        > I merely disagree with valorization of menial work and the people who do it. With you all the way on wiping out menial work; if we can automate it away that is a win for all of us. But do be careful when talking about the people who do it - they're generally wonderful and making very real and measurable contributions to the wellbeing of everyone else. They deserve a bit of valorization. Not saints, but but certainly up there on the scale of people putting in a good effort.
    - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
      Girl, same. I am never going to the grocery store again. Thank god for the economic underclass willing to do delivery. They're like the plankton of the economic ecosystem. Without them, it all falls apart. Sad but necessary. But, as karma, delivery will eventually be the only job left for all of us, until we get deep enough into Moravec's paradox for that to eventually be automated too.
      - metadat 2y ago
        Moravec's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
- tmpz22 2y ago
  Technology innovation's highest priority has always been to move money from the middle class to the ownership class. Why so many people assume altruistic outcomes is beyond me. Why so many people see any other outcome of OpenAI then increased income inequality is beyond me.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    That's pretty demonstrably not true, historically. The explosion of the middle class of the 20th century was because technology still required a huge amount of labor, but it increased productivity to the point where that labor could live much more comfortably on their wages.
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      Productivity has been increasing even more rapidly, but the middle class is collapsing, so I'm skeptical that these two things are very strongly related
      - wnc3141 2y ago
        A great many of our problems (in much of the developed world to varying extent) stem from just this. Below: a chart of "share of gross national income from wages", read this as "Labor Share of Income." https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA
        randomdata 2y ago
        Doesn't that suggest that the working-class is collapsing rather than the-middle class?
        dgb23 2y ago
        Most of the so called middle class are just well paid members of the working class. Small business owners and others who get much of their income via ownership rather than wages/salaries are often indirectly but strongly dependent on the salaries of the working class to stay competitive. So really most people are in the same boat when it comes to these things. It just manifests differently.
- cen4 2y ago
  Well people have discovered you can make cash irrespective of the quality of tech you pump out. Two routes have been discovered and milked to high heaven - Financial engineering - this is where if you accumulate more capital and faster than the next guy you win. Add to that globalization ie arbitrage on interest rates/tax rates/forex/labor cost/rent/real estate/govt regulation in generating capital. Demand engineering - related to capital raising - since attention is finite - who spends more on marketing/ads/pr captures more attention faster than the next guy. The creatives/engineers/scientists haven't spent enough time coming up with a response to either. So they all end up dependent on the financial and demand engineers. This will change with time as people come up with ways to respond.
  - arthurofbabylon 2y ago
    This strikes as both optimistic and pragmatic. We do have reason to believe the current model is not permanent, and it is most empowering to believe we can play a role in crafting the new model.
  - herewulf 2y ago
    I don't disagree but I think it's sad to see the word "engineering" used in this context. What you describe I would call highly optimized bullshit artistry. Maybe the watering down of the term started with "social engineering". Engineers build things that do things and/or are built to last.
    - otterley 2y ago
      It started happening a long time before that. There was a popular meme in the 1980s where housewives humorously referred to themselves as “domestic engineers.”
    - CleaveIt2Beaver 2y ago
      But then you're just changing who gets disparaged from a technical expert to an emotional one. If you're offended by the term engineering, may I suggest scheming? I think that would better convey the nefarious aspect of the term.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > That viral quote that was making the rounds, "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." We developed machines that would do your laundry and dishes decades ago. The current trend is to make them less and less functional over time.
  - lukan 2y ago
    You still have to load and unload the machines. Sort it, organize it. Still lot's of work. It is just not a trivial problem, to solve.
    - achenet 2y ago
      brb, founding AI startup to solve this important, non-trivial problem via burning through large stacks of VC cash. :DDDDDD
  - crucialfelix 2y ago
    The focus of the joke is on the automation of creative work. The joy is in the doing. It's nonsensical to just push a button to pretend to do creative work (generating art). Laundry and dishes is a standin for all things that technology does very well and we appreciate it for doing that for us.
- atoav 2y ago
  Tech is now a mercenary in the battle for people's attention and/or a fraction of their monthly money. The number of people in tech grew in absolute terms. That also means the fraction of people giving back to open source also grows and we are getting better open source software. Many however don't give back, they just take.
  - zoul 2y ago
    Are we demonstrably getting better open source software? By what metric? (Not sure myself, asking in good faith.)
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      I sure don't see it. When I look at how fast FOSS advanced between the late 90s and the mid 00s, and compare to after the '08 meltdown, it doesn't look the same at all.
      - yetihehe 2y ago
        When you have small domain, any progress can be seen as big. Now when you have many millions of lines in linux kernel, half a million new lines is "oh, just another module". The same with whole foss domain. It's so big now that progress is seen as slow. Comparing Blender now to Blender in 2014 will show you how big progress we still make, just as an example.
        Muromec 2y ago
        Another module in linux isn’t half a million of lines. A whole new class of hardware with all the drivers may be.
    - atoav 2y ago
      Arguably by the metric of my own annecdotal evidence.
    - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  Google and advertising killed everything off. Google is directly responsible for making tech and the world shitty. They started the whole making money of your attention thing and then everyone sort of just followed it. Not to mention the whole SEO industry that pushed off smaller, high quality websites for gargantuan mess of word salad articles. And finally now the present generation of developers are slavishly solving leetcode to get a high TC (total compensation). We need a whole new generation of hackers to take us out of this mess. There are some clues, in the Patron, open source, community. I just hope kids make useful software for them and their friends.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    my 8 year old (then 7) used to spend a lot of time in the roblox creation tool, whatever that's called. in 3rd grade we had access to Apple ][e and c in the school library - and i learned basic on an atari so it was relatively straightforward to code silly things that impressed other children - fill the screen with random characters (random colored characters on the c!) draw lines, make the printer buzz. windows 3 and/or 95 included abasic and qbasic (iirc). if you held down shift while booting, you'd drop to a prompt and could just write code. I'm not sure where that leaves today's kids - there's nothing what you can just push a button and a few seconds later be at a prompt and just start typing commands and statements; further, nearly no-one will be impressed with filling a screen with random characters in the same way adults and kids were impressed back when there were 9 computers in the entire school and 4 didn't work. I know there's projects out there that attempt to capture that magical spark of all of those 6502 and 808X machines just had by merely existing.
    - tim333 2y ago
      >nothing what you can just push a button and a few seconds later be at a prompt and just start typing commands and statements Well you can do ctrl shift J or similar in the browser and start typing javascript, or open the terminal. It is all a bit more complicated than BASIC in the old days though.
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  Tech is fine. It's the money we made along the way that ruined it. Somehow money ruins everything. The internet just made it easier for people to extract money from everything.
  - mordae 2y ago
    Sadly it's not money. It's inequality. To build a stable business, you need to carer to the rich more then to anybody else.
    - nickff 2y ago
      This is palpably false, as Schumpeter described: “Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend to them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man.”
      - yellowapple 2y ago
        This is palpably false, as evidenced by the tendency for rich people to want to make themselves richer. Notice how the overwhelmingly-vast majority (if not entirety) of the rich happily did away with those candle-lighting servants in favor of electric lighting; why pay a bunch of servants, after all, when that money could be invested elsewhere? Likewise with the cheap cloth and cheap cotton and rayon fabric and boots and motorcars and so on; the ultra-rich have adopted these in droves because the alternatives require money better spent elsewhere. Yeah, candles and silk garments and horse-drawn carriages do still exist, but for the rich they are nothing more than novelties for occasional enjoyment; for their day-to-day lives it's all lightbulbs, cotton, and cars. Not only that, but the rich tend to be the early adopters of these very innovations - that is, capitalism begot these innovations specifically to cater to those able to afford them, and only later (after the requisite infrastructure and economies of scale took hold) did they serve as any sort of boon to the common man. Electric lighting and automobiles are two particularly-egregious examples, and they continue to be examples to this day; it ain't the rich who are still reliant on candlelight and animals pulling wagons, after all, but rather the poorest of the poor.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I used to love computers and software. When the next great thing came out, I’d be an enthusiastic early adopter, and enjoyed the new powers the technology gave me. Now, whenever something new comes out, my first thought is: “how is this thing going to suck up my personal data and monetize me?” And my second thought is “how is this going to wreck some part of life and/or humanity and turn it into profits for the rich?” You can’t be a techno-optimist anymore. Everyone is working on a similar, but slightly different wealth-siphoning Torment Nexus these days.
  - bboygravity 2y ago
    It's interesting to read this from a market research perspective. I have a very similar opinion and also consider(ed) myself an early adopter. This may just mean that early adopters are now signaliing that they are getting bored with software/tech and the rest of the market may soon follow that opinion.
    - copperx 2y ago
      Maybe it means they're not bored with what tech gives them right now. In the past we adopted new startups such as JustinTV, YouTube, and Instagram because they gave us something we didn't have front and center. Live streaming, video, and stylized photos. Now every social network offers all kinds of media and in different engagement foemats, and the algorithms keep us entertained enough. There's not a whole lot of reasons to adopt something new, unless it's even more addictive. Maybe the reign of the incumbent social networks will last much, much longer than we initially expected.
      - genewitch 2y ago
        Hosting video is expensive; a Twitch streamer (Thor) mentioned that an 8-hour stream at 1080p with 8,000 viewers costs Twitch nearly $5,000, while 720p still costs around $1,300. Personally, I prefer 720p. It's easy to play on any device, the file sizes are much smaller, and the quality is fine. I don't need 4K for most content and save it for exceptional visuals like Godfrey Reggio's Trilogy or Yojimbo — one of the most visually stunning movies I've ever seen in high resolution. My preference also reduces hosting costs for platforms, at least from my account. Social media constantly pushes high-res, addictive content, but alternatives like Fediverse exist. After adjusting to these communities, I deleted my X account and rarely use Facebook. On Fediverse, server operators encourage efficient file sizes (and types,) unlike Instagram or TikTok. The network effect drives people to the few social networks, but I'm not convinced people actually want what they're being given. Repeating for emphasis: I'm not convinced this is what people want!
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  > during the 90s because there was so much techno optimism then Was there? I remember the 90s as an intermittent software dark age we had to crawl out for the next decade until things started to improve around 2010. The unbearable OOP hype, turds like CORBA and Itanium, UML, "Enterprise scale" software development with Java, the first big VR hype cycle, the worst of the desktop operating systems won (Windows), and I could go on and on... there was also the same amount of human bullshitters in important positions. We are much better off today than in the 90's in that good stuff can actually win traction (at least as long as no money is involved - once there's money involved, the bullshitter will home in like flies on a pile of shit).
  - genewitch 2y ago
    IRC. NNTP. Email. dare i mention AOL (some of us are younger and didn't know OOP from OOM), the first 3d games that were immersive, Hotline, massively multiplayer voice chat like mpath (Mplayer.com, then gamespy), and for that matter, multiplayer gaming with people anywhere. &c
  - bzzzt 2y ago
    And yet here we are with energy wasting crypto scams, AI 'innovation' which is just an app sending a line of text to ChatGPT, a simple video call needing 2Gb of memory (Teams), lots of developers bundling functionality they want instead of what their users want and don't get me started about all the JavaScript ecosystems. It seems to take more time than ever just to get a nice app off the ground since we keep reinventing frameworks instead of expanding on a few good ones.
    - benzible 2y ago
      The author of the post is "@daojoan.eth"... personally, not who I would choose to lead the charge against "tech BS".
  - dudul 2y ago
    You're talking about how it was to be in tech as opposed to using the tech - what the parent meant I think. From the consumer's point of view, the parent is completely right. In the 90s/early 00s there was a real feeling that tech was trying to improve your life and make it easier without necessarily controlling every aspects of it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- quaintdev 2y ago
  There's this comment that I read said that the world really did end back in 2012. Because today's world seems way different than it was before 2012.
- BerislavLopac 2y ago
  > The 90s were peak humanity Yeah, sure. At the same time a large European country was falling apart in a bloody and cruel war that saw many innocent people outright murdered or displaced.
  - bratbag 2y ago
    You will find a country doing that somewhere every decade, so it's irellivent to this analysis.
    - BerislavLopac 2y ago
      Let's agree to disagree -- I find it very relevant. "Peak humanity" is a very general statement, and ignoring large parts of the target cohort makes any analysis quite meaningless.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    I think some folks are missing the point. I don't literally think it was "peak humanity", worldwide (to be clear I was just quoting from this post, https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/1dbsgnc/90s_were_peak_humanity_enough_tech_to_make_life/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/1dbsgnc/90s_...) Yes, there were still wars and genocides. But, as it relates to the article here, the other part of the title, "Enough tech to make life easy, not enough to become life" is very relevant, and that's the negative change I feel like a lot of us who remember the 90s well can identify with.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  I walked through Salesforce Park. There were families everywhere. Some twenty kids were playing Marco Polo. I went online: everyone was miserable. Miserable people drive away others so they create a Dead Sea Effect where their world seems universally miserable. I’m enjoying the diffusion model art. My wife is a creative director and illustrator and it’s loads of fun for us to play with. Besides I have a washer/dryer and a dishwasher. 80% of Americans are happy with their personal lives so why is everyone so miserable online? One should never forget the 1/9/90 rule of interaction. Technology is fantastic. Today it’s amazing. Without it my wife and I would struggle to have children. Nah, this is the Golden Age.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > 80% of Americans are happy with their personal lives I think it's fair to point out that this number (actually 78% who say they are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their lives) is "near a record low". https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/02/12/american-satisfaction https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/02/12/american-... But I do agree, the "miserableness" online seems much greater than "the real world", but that's also kinda my point. So much tech is designed to addict you (i.e. doom scrolling), that I find I'm happiest when I get rid of tech from my life (leave my cell phone at home, go for long walks in nature, etc.) This wasn't the case for me in the 90s primarily because lots of tech was a nice diversion but not a constant negative distraction.
- lawrenceyan 2y ago
  There’s a lot to be optimistic about to be fair. You live at the cusp of an inflection point. Something potentially to consider and be grateful for.
- meheleventyone 2y ago
  For me it was the success of “platformization” suddenly it wasn’t enough to be a large player (or even just successful) in the market but to have a monopoly or near monopoly position instead. Ideally co-opting the market at the same time. Now every idea tries to overextend in all sorts of obnoxious ways.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > The 90s were peak humanity Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. I was a teenager during the 90's, and I do have fond memories of things from that decade, but it would do well to keep your nostalgia in check. Even when we restrict ourselves to the realm of tech, a lot of things back then sucked horribly. Large tech companies already showed their rent-seeking tendencies, there was crazy hype for shit ideas (the dotcom bubble popped for a reason). In fact, I think that the current mindset of people being increasingly jaded, skeptical, and mistrusting of tech is healthy. It shows that at least some people are learning their lessons, even if this mindset is somewhat restricted to bubbles like this.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Yes, it's good to be cautious against nostalgia, but it's also bad to just pretend that everything just basically repeats. To be clear, since I feel a bunch of comments are taking that "90s was peak humanity" quote overly literal (another commenter pointed out there were still horrible wars during the 90s), I'd point out that it was about the expectations of how tech would improve human lives. Most specifically, there was a very broad belief that things like the Internet would bring people closer together. But by lots of objective metrics (measures of loneliness, polarization, pessimism for the future, youth mental illness, etc.), not only did tech not "bring us closer together", it actively helped rip us apart. And I think if you time traveled back to the 90s and explained those outcomes, the vast majority of people would be genuinely shocked and surprised.
  - ForHackernews 2y ago
    It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-so-sad-when-old-people-romanticize https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-so-sad-when-old-peo...
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Indeed so. For a while now, I've been struggling with the realization that I may need to just leave this industry entirely as a dev. The tickle in my brain that tells me that as an industry we have ceased to be a force for (on the whole) good and have instead become a force for profit extraction above all else is getting too loud for me to ignore. It seems to me that the tech that I've been helping to build for decades has been repurposed and weaponized against people instead of helping people and improving everyone's situation.
- sydbarrett74 2y ago
  I'm with you. 1999 was the last year I remember being genuinely content with life. Since then, it's been nothing but accelerating entropy and ennui.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
Great summation of how it looks (and smells) from the outside. The only thing that jarred me out of furious agreement was this line: > At least I have my integrity. And I may be throwing stones from a glass house but, in my opinion, they have 6 months of integrity on a backdrop of <unknown number> of years of quite specific non-integrity. Exiting the speeding-train-with-no-brakes saves you. Helping to stop the train has at least the chance to save others, which earns integrity. Write an (anonymous?) blog describing how to recognise the bullshit, what the strategies are that you, yourself employed to convince the rubes. Expose your methods so that others who are employing them are made toothless. There lieth integrity. Edited to add: This kinda thing, it's good to see the reversal: https://www.joanwestenberg.com/techs-accountability-tantrum-is-pathetic https://www.joanwestenberg.com/techs-accountability-tantrum-...
- et-al 2y ago
  It’s easy to wax poetic about integrity when you got a few million in the bank.
- spencerflem 2y ago
  That's what they're doing , but not anonymously. They're writing tech critical articles, which their friend advised them not to do
monero-xmr 2y ago
If you are grounded in religious faith, your whole life won’t revolve around whatever your job is. The author seems very intertwined with his job and the output. I’m not saying you shouldn’t analyze the meaning of your work, but he seems fairly un-anchored
- Arainach 2y ago
  Belief in a higher power is not a substitute for finding goodness in what you do. I agree - with rose tinted glasses, there was a period that lasted all the way to shortly after the release of the iPhone where it was reasonable to be (and much of society was) excited about the possibilities of technology. Those times are dead. Financial engineering and the monetization of every piece of user data, ever flat surface, every eyeball, from birth to death have left me a sad husk sitting in a chair typing for a paycheck. My solace has been the kind of creative activities now undermined by generative AI. So many great artists got their start at the entry level - whether as a mall portrait photographer, an understudy at a newspaper, or what not. With those roles killed by AI, where will innovation or even passion come from?
  - williamtrask 2y ago
    > Belief in a higher power is not a substitute for finding goodness in what you do. But it can be, namely because it’s one path to finding motivation to do good. Not saying it ends up there for everyone, but it certainly can be for some.
    - Arainach 2y ago
      Belief in a higher power won't make you feel better about lying to boost stock prices. If your higher or is supportive of lying without feeling bad, find a new one.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    Belief in higher power gives you the coordinate system that is not moving with the train. Doesn’t have to be religious really, bit it gives more credibility if the value system if X thousand years old.
extr 2y ago
This person acts like they were disseminating propaganda for the reich. I get that doing corporate PR probably feels very cynical in general but coaching founders not to fumble the bag in an interview or writing blog posts about funding rounds are on the lesser evils side I think. Who is the victim of manipulation there? VCs? Lol
- fiatpandas 2y ago
  > Who is the victim of manipulation there Sometimes your own soul becomes the victim that affects you the most.
- akira2501 2y ago
  > This person acts like they were disseminating propaganda for the reich. I think part of the comfort one could enjoy when working for the Reich is that you are working for your own government and you are part of a large network of people that are actively telling the same lies you are. You might also assume that large parts of the population know you are lying, but you're lying "patriotically," so you feel much less guilt or confrontation over it. > are on the lesser evils side I think. It is interesting that this _often_ takes a much larger toll on people than those working in war. More interesting that people think a little moral relativism is the obvious cure. "It could be worse. You could be a Nazi." > Who is the victim of manipulation there? VCs? Did you read the article? This person clearly believes that VCs are poisonous entities that pervert the original vision of the founders they invest in so that they may see larger and faster returns on their speculative investments. So.. probably.. the entire industry?
  - extr 2y ago
    I don’t know. The whole thing feels pretty insular. Who even pays attention to this kind of content that isn’t in the industry? The general public doesn’t care about this. An actually bad example of corporate PR is spinning oil spills or dangerous side effects with prime time advertisements. This is just good business imo
- keiferski 2y ago
  You don’t need to be not-doing evil things to feel dissatisfied with your work. There was a line in the post about not having written anything they actually believed in for a long time. That kind of thing weighs one’s soul down, even if it’s not “evil” in a grand sense.
ang_cire 2y ago
Great piece. Good on them for getting out.
mehulashah 2y ago
“Technology has potential when it's guided by ethical considerations and a genuine desire to improve the human condition.” Yup, and Bill and Dave are probably the last two that I can really point at to say that’s what they had. True ethics and a genuine desire. Probably also the Fab 8. It may have stopped there. “The tech industry has a long memory.” Nope. I think it has no memory and zero penalty for failure. That’s, of course, a double-edged sword.
aaronbrethorst 2y ago
I kept on gritting my teeth, waiting for the author to try to sell me something, or on something. Says something about this bullshit industrial complex, I suppose, that I’m so jaded about anything contrarian in this vein.
seoulmetro 2y ago
>Give me a half-baked startup idea, a semi-charismatic founder and a fistful of VC dollars, and I could write a story compelling enough it barely mattered whether there was an ounce of truth in it. Pretty sure anyone can do this. The setup is not in the writing of the story but in the things you just listed...
deleted 2y ago
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Animats 2y ago
Advertising. That's the problem. Computing has become a branch of the ad industry. What we need is a big tax on advertising and marketing. In the US, it doesn't create more demand, because most people are spent out. It just moves demand around. So much of that effort is a net lose that pushes prices up. (This might be politically possible during an "anti-tech" Trump administration.)
- imiric 2y ago
  Advertising is a big part of it, sure. But it is merely a component of late-stage capitalism. Using psychological manipulation to sell products is the most profitable way of sustaining a business we've invented yet, but we have many other ways to unscrupulously exploit one another for financial gains. Humanity has been doing that for millennia, and we've gotten very good at it.
  - Animats 2y ago
    > most profitable way of sustaining a business we've invented yet Which is why it's something to tax. As opposed to more productive endeavors.
- RachelF 2y ago
  Sadly, advertising is the best way to pay for your online product in most cases. Micro-payments have been tried a few times but most people did'nt like to pay for stuff that they used to get for "free". Since everyone is now locked into a few big tech platforms, they can now supplement their ad income by charging users, too.
  - Animats 2y ago
    That seemed to work for a while, but now everybody who actually has original content of any value seems to have a paywall.
imiric 2y ago
This is very well written. Good on them for following their integrity. More people in this industry should realize that there are large sections of it that are deeply toxic to humanity, and reconsider whether they want to be a part of that. For all the "disruption" caused by "unicorns", has it really had a net positive effect on our lives? Big Tech companies keep building technology that is designed to extract as much value from their users by any means necessary. Most of the startup world revolves around growing companies based on this premise, in the hopes of one day making it big as well. There are still companies that ignore this rat race and try to do the right thing, but they are hard to come by. Those are the real unicorns, IMO. I realize the irony of this opinion on a VC forum. But this needs to resonate here more than anywhere else.
arthurofbabylon 2y ago
I love it. There have been a few times in my life where I put everything on the line (or so I felt then) for a value I deeply held. Risking friendships, letting go of money, deeply uprooting behaviors… all for abstract (yet impactful) ideas like honesty and kindness. I in no way regretted those choices, ever, and found that after a few weeks or months my position was strengthened. Integrity has this effect — it closes feedback loops. The result is a deep empowerment. I praise the author and wish them continued courage.
keiferski 2y ago
It would be interesting if someone analyzed the “California communication style” and its effects on the startup industry. As someone that grew up on the East Coast, I often notice how the communication style on the West Coast is much less confrontational and more “everything is awesome”, which I think leads to the sort of fake enthusiasm the author grew tired of projecting. Of course, there’s no lack of hype and BS in NYC/DC/Boston, but there seems to be a much more developed culture of criticism and analysis than in California. And so the default attitude on the East Coast is a bit more cynically pragmatic, which is both good for the above reasons, but also less imaginative and more restricted - which is why SV has more “dreamers” that do crazy things. Hope I’m not firing off too many East Coast vs. West Coast battle shots here :)
- tayo42 2y ago
  Everyone in silicon valley is a transplant.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Sure but there is still a particular communication style that prevails, and people adopt it, or try to adopt, to fit in. It’s less about the accent or vocabulary and more about the tone. A lot of this was parodied pretty effectively by the Silicon Valley TV show.
    - tayo42 2y ago
      I don't think that's location based. More likely industry. Even in California once you leave SaaS /software /internet startups the corporate culture is different. My wife doesn't have pronoun police at her California office job. Me working in web software, I had a guy from the Midwest scold me about pronouns.
      - keiferski 2y ago
        I guess what would be interesting (and what my original comment was about) is how / if the California communication style got started in SV and then traveled around everywhere else via the tech industry. I think it likely started as an aspect of a particular location and then became an industry thing later.
langsoul-com 2y ago
Good on them, I applaud them for deciding to change even at the cost of a fat check. I would not, my bank account really matters Integrity might sooth my soul, but not my retirement. Life increasingly feels like a trade off between integrity and living in modern society.
benzible 2y ago
It would be easier to take her seriously as a critic of tech industry BS if her LinkedIn didn't list her as a current advisor to "MODA DAO" and her social media handle wasn't "@daojoan.eth". Yee-ikes.
mihaaly 2y ago
Thank you for your honest words, I needed that. I am one of the tiny wheels in the corner of this industry in an organization not built on top of loose bullshit from the start with the speed of light but made to build useful tools for engineers decades ago. However along the road the 'do whatever that looks good' overruled the 'do something good' in the competition with the pretentious capitalists and their servants wandering in all corners of the industry now poisioning good places with attitudes they learned and grown with in bad places and now being considered 'experts of the industry', not to mention the need of survival pushes you in this direction, the must pick up the indutry trends or die panick makes you do things you hate, and all this sweeped in to my low level of building parts so I have to make things that look good with degrading quality tools and degrading quality operating system built to look good to sell instead of helping the user so my every day, yes, every day work is a piss in headwind uphill. The products of the industry serves itself rather than the users, we can do a lot very fast that we wouldn't need to do if things were made right not pretentious. The life got difficult on a whole different level, not easier, with the products of the industry. I see little option than getting out, it is poisioned to all parts now. I have two babies so it is hard and very risky but I will need to show example to them soon and this is not something to show with integrity. Not to mention that staying is also risky when you are increasingly handled as commodity (Human Resources is a very hones title indeed!!). The previous personality of yours made this happen with the likes but still thank you for not doing it anymore and for spreading your story. I might never be in a position to work with you but if I will I will recommend you.
surfingdino 2y ago
Public Relations used to be known as Propaganda. It rebranded, because of the use of its techniques in war, but it's still based on grabbing attention on the masses who are then put through the sales funnel. It doesn't matter what you are selling, all that matters is that you follow some basic rules. It is not for people with conscience or those who are able to see that what is being sold is not good for the buyer. One of the early commercial successes claimed by that field human activity was successfully encouraging women to smoke cigarettes by hijacking women's liberation movement. When you start that low and are paid more to do more of it, you have to choose money or conscience.
negativelambda 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation#From_the_act_of_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation#...
Yodel0914 2y ago
> A nagging doubt. An odd moment of "Jesus, what the hell am I doing?" > I would lie awake at 3 AM, staring at the ceiling. My life was slipping away, and I had nothing to show for it Perhaps the bullshit industrial complex just accelerates this realization. I think I'm a bit older than the OP. I work on notionally quite pro-social software and still wake up thinking the same thing.
Terr_ 2y ago
> Tech is an out-of-control locomotive with no fucking brakes. The way I see it, "tech" is simply the area where a very old pattern is playing out. In another era, the dreams being peddled would involve gold from transatlantic expeditions, Dutch tulips, textile machines, railroad networks, etc.
GolberThorce 2y ago
in other words, she had a midlife crisis
leocgcd 2y ago
Sort of a vapid piece. The optimism and buy-in that excited people about tech from the debut of the iPhone until fairly recently was a function of PR and technology marketers-- like the author-- doing their jobs very well. For any industry, generating interest and excitement is more than a purely descriptive process. The magical venture doesn't just appear and then the marketers have the simple job of describing it. Marketers/strategists/PR people play a very important role surveying the project and then articulating a compelling vision. That vision then becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy since stakeholders (both creators and users) have bought into the promise of worth. If strategists aren't able to see a path forward, to survey the field and identify the things that make the project worthwhile, exciting, sustainable, tactical, etc... then they're just not great at their job. Admitting that you haven't really believed in anything you've worked on as a marketer is a bit like an actor admitting that someone else is reading their lines. A good marketer, like a good actor, lives in their promises like they are already real. The realer and more convinced you are, the more you can speak your vision into reality.
- imiric 2y ago
  > A good marketer, like a good actor, lives in their promises like they are already real. The realer and more convinced you are, the more you can speak your vision into reality. Wow. Don't you see the problem with selling something that doesn't exist? There's a thin line between making up a story to make people buy a product, and straight up scamming people with a nonexistent product. Elizabeth Holmes was a genius marketer, but is that really somebody you want to idealize?
  - leocgcd 2y ago
    Marketers necessarily sell something that doesn't exist because part of their job is creating that thing. Theranos is an example of a failed project through and through, but even something unarguably successful like the iPhone was built through market strategizing-- not just technical engineering. Identifying what consumers wanted, conveying that vision, shaping a compelling brand, these are all things that can easily be written off as "fake" by people who cannot buy into the vision, but when done well they are just as important as the technical innovations.
rvz 2y ago
> The inflated valuations, cult-like frat house “culture,” and the relentless, mindless pursuit of growth that comfortably glossed over the human cost of "disruption." It has been finally admitted. The entire VC grift that was seen through unfounded valuations was purposely executed to gloss over the issues and positive spin to unprofitable startups and startups generating little to no revenue for years rather than necessary scrutiny in their business models.
Neil44 2y ago
Everyone with an ounce of common sense can see that the gig economy is just a way to pay people less and side step labour laws, so a small number of people can sleep on a bed of money. I find it obscene and sociopathic.
jokoon 2y ago
Easy to say when you made money, that's the good moment to get out.
t0bia_s 2y ago
I'm freelancing about ten years in audiovisual production and design. I'm avoid commercial sphere. I'm absolutely avoiding product advertising. In those 10 years I realized how fake it is. Basically product advertising is proof that product is not good enough to be sold on market. Good product is advertising by itself. With this honesty, you cannot participate in fake indistry.
- mihaaly 2y ago
  "Good wine needs no bush".

237 points by zoul 2y ago

This resonates with me - someone who left big tech 2 months ago. It is so refreshing talking with business owners and thinking of smaller scale ideas. In addition to being a lot more authentic, they seem to generate a lot of wealth.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

While this author is of a younger generation, this really resonated with me as a Gen Xer. I feel there is so much disillusionment among folks that came of age during the 90s because there was so much techno optimism then, and it didn't quite turn out like we envisioned. Two things made me think about this recently: 1. I saw a Reddit post that was titled something like "The 90s were peak humanity. Enough tech to make life comfortable, but not so much that it had totally taken over the focus." It was a video of a packed mall around the holidays filled with generally happy people socializing in public. 2. That viral quote that was making the rounds, "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." I just feel there has been a growing chasm over the past 25 years where tech is no longer solving pressing human problems (generally, obviously not true in all areas e.g. decarbonization tech) but is more concerned with just rent-seeking value extraction.

XorNot 2y ago
> "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." Except this quote is just...internet clickbait. As though technological development is a straight line with easily predictable outcomes. Hell it's even engaging in a bait and switch argument: "I want to art and writing" -> well, AI isn't stopping you from doing those thing versus the reality of creative work for hire -> "I want to be paid to do art and writing". Setting aside the obvious "when your hobby becomes your job it tends to cease being your hobby" which so many Twitch influencers discover, the headline argument is as though someone has overtly set out to build generative AI and not "done the obvious thing of making a laundry and dishwashing robot" (while you know, also ignoring that technically we have both those things and built them almost immediately - literally washing machines and dishwashers). The complaint is...well frankly classist as hell. "Why should lower myself to manual labor? Take those other people's jobs away first". It sounds profound but says nothing: Twitter in a nutshell.
- daseiner1 2y ago
  If wanting to reduce menial tasks in my life is classist, then sign me up.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    You're on a website of software developers. Our entire job description is to eliminate white collar work. Not a lot of secretaries and typists anymore. Less and less classic sysadmins as well.
    - daseiner1 2y ago
      Not entirely clear to me how that’s relevant. I merely disagree with valorization of menial work and the people who do it.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        > I merely disagree with valorization of menial work and the people who do it. With you all the way on wiping out menial work; if we can automate it away that is a win for all of us. But do be careful when talking about the people who do it - they're generally wonderful and making very real and measurable contributions to the wellbeing of everyone else. They deserve a bit of valorization. Not saints, but but certainly up there on the scale of people putting in a good effort.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Girl, same. I am never going to the grocery store again. Thank god for the economic underclass willing to do delivery. They're like the plankton of the economic ecosystem. Without them, it all falls apart. Sad but necessary. But, as karma, delivery will eventually be the only job left for all of us, until we get deep enough into Moravec's paradox for that to eventually be automated too.
    - metadat 2y ago
      Moravec's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
tmpz22 2y ago
Technology innovation's highest priority has always been to move money from the middle class to the ownership class. Why so many people assume altruistic outcomes is beyond me. Why so many people see any other outcome of OpenAI then increased income inequality is beyond me.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  That's pretty demonstrably not true, historically. The explosion of the middle class of the 20th century was because technology still required a huge amount of labor, but it increased productivity to the point where that labor could live much more comfortably on their wages.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    Productivity has been increasing even more rapidly, but the middle class is collapsing, so I'm skeptical that these two things are very strongly related
    - wnc3141 2y ago
      A great many of our problems (in much of the developed world to varying extent) stem from just this. Below: a chart of "share of gross national income from wages", read this as "Labor Share of Income." https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA
      - randomdata 2y ago
        Doesn't that suggest that the working-class is collapsing rather than the-middle class?
        dgb23 2y ago
        Most of the so called middle class are just well paid members of the working class. Small business owners and others who get much of their income via ownership rather than wages/salaries are often indirectly but strongly dependent on the salaries of the working class to stay competitive. So really most people are in the same boat when it comes to these things. It just manifests differently.
cen4 2y ago
Well people have discovered you can make cash irrespective of the quality of tech you pump out. Two routes have been discovered and milked to high heaven - Financial engineering - this is where if you accumulate more capital and faster than the next guy you win. Add to that globalization ie arbitrage on interest rates/tax rates/forex/labor cost/rent/real estate/govt regulation in generating capital. Demand engineering - related to capital raising - since attention is finite - who spends more on marketing/ads/pr captures more attention faster than the next guy. The creatives/engineers/scientists haven't spent enough time coming up with a response to either. So they all end up dependent on the financial and demand engineers. This will change with time as people come up with ways to respond.
- arthurofbabylon 2y ago
  This strikes as both optimistic and pragmatic. We do have reason to believe the current model is not permanent, and it is most empowering to believe we can play a role in crafting the new model.
- herewulf 2y ago
  I don't disagree but I think it's sad to see the word "engineering" used in this context. What you describe I would call highly optimized bullshit artistry. Maybe the watering down of the term started with "social engineering". Engineers build things that do things and/or are built to last.
  - otterley 2y ago
    It started happening a long time before that. There was a popular meme in the 1980s where housewives humorously referred to themselves as “domestic engineers.”
  - CleaveIt2Beaver 2y ago
    But then you're just changing who gets disparaged from a technical expert to an emotional one. If you're offended by the term engineering, may I suggest scheming? I think that would better convey the nefarious aspect of the term.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> That viral quote that was making the rounds, "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." We developed machines that would do your laundry and dishes decades ago. The current trend is to make them less and less functional over time.
- lukan 2y ago
  You still have to load and unload the machines. Sort it, organize it. Still lot's of work. It is just not a trivial problem, to solve.
  - achenet 2y ago
    brb, founding AI startup to solve this important, non-trivial problem via burning through large stacks of VC cash. :DDDDDD
- crucialfelix 2y ago
  The focus of the joke is on the automation of creative work. The joy is in the doing. It's nonsensical to just push a button to pretend to do creative work (generating art). Laundry and dishes is a standin for all things that technology does very well and we appreciate it for doing that for us.
atoav 2y ago
Tech is now a mercenary in the battle for people's attention and/or a fraction of their monthly money. The number of people in tech grew in absolute terms. That also means the fraction of people giving back to open source also grows and we are getting better open source software. Many however don't give back, they just take.
- zoul 2y ago
  Are we demonstrably getting better open source software? By what metric? (Not sure myself, asking in good faith.)
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    I sure don't see it. When I look at how fast FOSS advanced between the late 90s and the mid 00s, and compare to after the '08 meltdown, it doesn't look the same at all.
    - yetihehe 2y ago
      When you have small domain, any progress can be seen as big. Now when you have many millions of lines in linux kernel, half a million new lines is "oh, just another module". The same with whole foss domain. It's so big now that progress is seen as slow. Comparing Blender now to Blender in 2014 will show you how big progress we still make, just as an example.
      - Muromec 2y ago
        Another module in linux isn’t half a million of lines. A whole new class of hardware with all the drivers may be.
  - atoav 2y ago
    Arguably by the metric of my own annecdotal evidence.
  - throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Google and advertising killed everything off. Google is directly responsible for making tech and the world shitty. They started the whole making money of your attention thing and then everyone sort of just followed it. Not to mention the whole SEO industry that pushed off smaller, high quality websites for gargantuan mess of word salad articles. And finally now the present generation of developers are slavishly solving leetcode to get a high TC (total compensation). We need a whole new generation of hackers to take us out of this mess. There are some clues, in the Patron, open source, community. I just hope kids make useful software for them and their friends.
- genewitch 2y ago
  my 8 year old (then 7) used to spend a lot of time in the roblox creation tool, whatever that's called. in 3rd grade we had access to Apple ][e and c in the school library - and i learned basic on an atari so it was relatively straightforward to code silly things that impressed other children - fill the screen with random characters (random colored characters on the c!) draw lines, make the printer buzz. windows 3 and/or 95 included abasic and qbasic (iirc). if you held down shift while booting, you'd drop to a prompt and could just write code. I'm not sure where that leaves today's kids - there's nothing what you can just push a button and a few seconds later be at a prompt and just start typing commands and statements; further, nearly no-one will be impressed with filling a screen with random characters in the same way adults and kids were impressed back when there were 9 computers in the entire school and 4 didn't work. I know there's projects out there that attempt to capture that magical spark of all of those 6502 and 808X machines just had by merely existing.
  - tim333 2y ago
    >nothing what you can just push a button and a few seconds later be at a prompt and just start typing commands and statements Well you can do ctrl shift J or similar in the browser and start typing javascript, or open the terminal. It is all a bit more complicated than BASIC in the old days though.
seoulmetro 2y ago
Tech is fine. It's the money we made along the way that ruined it. Somehow money ruins everything. The internet just made it easier for people to extract money from everything.
- mordae 2y ago
  Sadly it's not money. It's inequality. To build a stable business, you need to carer to the rich more then to anybody else.
  - nickff 2y ago
    This is palpably false, as Schumpeter described: “Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend to them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man.”
    - yellowapple 2y ago
      This is palpably false, as evidenced by the tendency for rich people to want to make themselves richer. Notice how the overwhelmingly-vast majority (if not entirety) of the rich happily did away with those candle-lighting servants in favor of electric lighting; why pay a bunch of servants, after all, when that money could be invested elsewhere? Likewise with the cheap cloth and cheap cotton and rayon fabric and boots and motorcars and so on; the ultra-rich have adopted these in droves because the alternatives require money better spent elsewhere. Yeah, candles and silk garments and horse-drawn carriages do still exist, but for the rich they are nothing more than novelties for occasional enjoyment; for their day-to-day lives it's all lightbulbs, cotton, and cars. Not only that, but the rich tend to be the early adopters of these very innovations - that is, capitalism begot these innovations specifically to cater to those able to afford them, and only later (after the requisite infrastructure and economies of scale took hold) did they serve as any sort of boon to the common man. Electric lighting and automobiles are two particularly-egregious examples, and they continue to be examples to this day; it ain't the rich who are still reliant on candlelight and animals pulling wagons, after all, but rather the poorest of the poor.
ryandrake 2y ago
I used to love computers and software. When the next great thing came out, I’d be an enthusiastic early adopter, and enjoyed the new powers the technology gave me. Now, whenever something new comes out, my first thought is: “how is this thing going to suck up my personal data and monetize me?” And my second thought is “how is this going to wreck some part of life and/or humanity and turn it into profits for the rich?” You can’t be a techno-optimist anymore. Everyone is working on a similar, but slightly different wealth-siphoning Torment Nexus these days.
- bboygravity 2y ago
  It's interesting to read this from a market research perspective. I have a very similar opinion and also consider(ed) myself an early adopter. This may just mean that early adopters are now signaliing that they are getting bored with software/tech and the rest of the market may soon follow that opinion.
  - copperx 2y ago
    Maybe it means they're not bored with what tech gives them right now. In the past we adopted new startups such as JustinTV, YouTube, and Instagram because they gave us something we didn't have front and center. Live streaming, video, and stylized photos. Now every social network offers all kinds of media and in different engagement foemats, and the algorithms keep us entertained enough. There's not a whole lot of reasons to adopt something new, unless it's even more addictive. Maybe the reign of the incumbent social networks will last much, much longer than we initially expected.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      Hosting video is expensive; a Twitch streamer (Thor) mentioned that an 8-hour stream at 1080p with 8,000 viewers costs Twitch nearly $5,000, while 720p still costs around $1,300. Personally, I prefer 720p. It's easy to play on any device, the file sizes are much smaller, and the quality is fine. I don't need 4K for most content and save it for exceptional visuals like Godfrey Reggio's Trilogy or Yojimbo — one of the most visually stunning movies I've ever seen in high resolution. My preference also reduces hosting costs for platforms, at least from my account. Social media constantly pushes high-res, addictive content, but alternatives like Fediverse exist. After adjusting to these communities, I deleted my X account and rarely use Facebook. On Fediverse, server operators encourage efficient file sizes (and types,) unlike Instagram or TikTok. The network effect drives people to the few social networks, but I'm not convinced people actually want what they're being given. Repeating for emphasis: I'm not convinced this is what people want!
flohofwoe 2y ago
> during the 90s because there was so much techno optimism then Was there? I remember the 90s as an intermittent software dark age we had to crawl out for the next decade until things started to improve around 2010. The unbearable OOP hype, turds like CORBA and Itanium, UML, "Enterprise scale" software development with Java, the first big VR hype cycle, the worst of the desktop operating systems won (Windows), and I could go on and on... there was also the same amount of human bullshitters in important positions. We are much better off today than in the 90's in that good stuff can actually win traction (at least as long as no money is involved - once there's money involved, the bullshitter will home in like flies on a pile of shit).
- genewitch 2y ago
  IRC. NNTP. Email. dare i mention AOL (some of us are younger and didn't know OOP from OOM), the first 3d games that were immersive, Hotline, massively multiplayer voice chat like mpath (Mplayer.com, then gamespy), and for that matter, multiplayer gaming with people anywhere. &c
- bzzzt 2y ago
  And yet here we are with energy wasting crypto scams, AI 'innovation' which is just an app sending a line of text to ChatGPT, a simple video call needing 2Gb of memory (Teams), lots of developers bundling functionality they want instead of what their users want and don't get me started about all the JavaScript ecosystems. It seems to take more time than ever just to get a nice app off the ground since we keep reinventing frameworks instead of expanding on a few good ones.
  - benzible 2y ago
    The author of the post is "@daojoan.eth"... personally, not who I would choose to lead the charge against "tech BS".
- dudul 2y ago
  You're talking about how it was to be in tech as opposed to using the tech - what the parent meant I think. From the consumer's point of view, the parent is completely right. In the 90s/early 00s there was a real feeling that tech was trying to improve your life and make it easier without necessarily controlling every aspects of it.
deleted 2y ago
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quaintdev 2y ago
There's this comment that I read said that the world really did end back in 2012. Because today's world seems way different than it was before 2012.
BerislavLopac 2y ago
> The 90s were peak humanity Yeah, sure. At the same time a large European country was falling apart in a bloody and cruel war that saw many innocent people outright murdered or displaced.
- bratbag 2y ago
  You will find a country doing that somewhere every decade, so it's irellivent to this analysis.
  - BerislavLopac 2y ago
    Let's agree to disagree -- I find it very relevant. "Peak humanity" is a very general statement, and ignoring large parts of the target cohort makes any analysis quite meaningless.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I think some folks are missing the point. I don't literally think it was "peak humanity", worldwide (to be clear I was just quoting from this post, https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/1dbsgnc/90s_were_peak_humanity_enough_tech_to_make_life/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/1dbsgnc/90s_...) Yes, there were still wars and genocides. But, as it relates to the article here, the other part of the title, "Enough tech to make life easy, not enough to become life" is very relevant, and that's the negative change I feel like a lot of us who remember the 90s well can identify with.
renewiltord 2y ago
I walked through Salesforce Park. There were families everywhere. Some twenty kids were playing Marco Polo. I went online: everyone was miserable. Miserable people drive away others so they create a Dead Sea Effect where their world seems universally miserable. I’m enjoying the diffusion model art. My wife is a creative director and illustrator and it’s loads of fun for us to play with. Besides I have a washer/dryer and a dishwasher. 80% of Americans are happy with their personal lives so why is everyone so miserable online? One should never forget the 1/9/90 rule of interaction. Technology is fantastic. Today it’s amazing. Without it my wife and I would struggle to have children. Nah, this is the Golden Age.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > 80% of Americans are happy with their personal lives I think it's fair to point out that this number (actually 78% who say they are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their lives) is "near a record low". https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/02/12/american-satisfaction https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/02/12/american-... But I do agree, the "miserableness" online seems much greater than "the real world", but that's also kinda my point. So much tech is designed to addict you (i.e. doom scrolling), that I find I'm happiest when I get rid of tech from my life (leave my cell phone at home, go for long walks in nature, etc.) This wasn't the case for me in the 90s primarily because lots of tech was a nice diversion but not a constant negative distraction.
lawrenceyan 2y ago
There’s a lot to be optimistic about to be fair. You live at the cusp of an inflection point. Something potentially to consider and be grateful for.
meheleventyone 2y ago
For me it was the success of “platformization” suddenly it wasn’t enough to be a large player (or even just successful) in the market but to have a monopoly or near monopoly position instead. Ideally co-opting the market at the same time. Now every idea tries to overextend in all sorts of obnoxious ways.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> The 90s were peak humanity Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. I was a teenager during the 90's, and I do have fond memories of things from that decade, but it would do well to keep your nostalgia in check. Even when we restrict ourselves to the realm of tech, a lot of things back then sucked horribly. Large tech companies already showed their rent-seeking tendencies, there was crazy hype for shit ideas (the dotcom bubble popped for a reason). In fact, I think that the current mindset of people being increasingly jaded, skeptical, and mistrusting of tech is healthy. It shows that at least some people are learning their lessons, even if this mindset is somewhat restricted to bubbles like this.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Yes, it's good to be cautious against nostalgia, but it's also bad to just pretend that everything just basically repeats. To be clear, since I feel a bunch of comments are taking that "90s was peak humanity" quote overly literal (another commenter pointed out there were still horrible wars during the 90s), I'd point out that it was about the expectations of how tech would improve human lives. Most specifically, there was a very broad belief that things like the Internet would bring people closer together. But by lots of objective metrics (measures of loneliness, polarization, pessimism for the future, youth mental illness, etc.), not only did tech not "bring us closer together", it actively helped rip us apart. And I think if you time traveled back to the 90s and explained those outcomes, the vast majority of people would be genuinely shocked and surprised.
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-so-sad-when-old-people-romanticize https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-so-sad-when-old-peo...
JohnFen 2y ago
Indeed so. For a while now, I've been struggling with the realization that I may need to just leave this industry entirely as a dev. The tickle in my brain that tells me that as an industry we have ceased to be a force for (on the whole) good and have instead become a force for profit extraction above all else is getting too loud for me to ignore. It seems to me that the tech that I've been helping to build for decades has been repurposed and weaponized against people instead of helping people and improving everyone's situation.
sydbarrett74 2y ago
I'm with you. 1999 was the last year I remember being genuinely content with life. Since then, it's been nothing but accelerating entropy and ennui.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

Great summation of how it looks (and smells) from the outside. The only thing that jarred me out of furious agreement was this line: > At least I have my integrity. And I may be throwing stones from a glass house but, in my opinion, they have 6 months of integrity on a backdrop of <unknown number> of years of quite specific non-integrity. Exiting the speeding-train-with-no-brakes saves you. Helping to stop the train has at least the chance to save others, which earns integrity. Write an (anonymous?) blog describing how to recognise the bullshit, what the strategies are that you, yourself employed to convince the rubes. Expose your methods so that others who are employing them are made toothless. There lieth integrity. Edited to add: This kinda thing, it's good to see the reversal: https://www.joanwestenberg.com/techs-accountability-tantrum-is-pathetic https://www.joanwestenberg.com/techs-accountability-tantrum-...

et-al 2y ago
It’s easy to wax poetic about integrity when you got a few million in the bank.
spencerflem 2y ago
That's what they're doing , but not anonymously. They're writing tech critical articles, which their friend advised them not to do

monero-xmr 2y ago

If you are grounded in religious faith, your whole life won’t revolve around whatever your job is. The author seems very intertwined with his job and the output. I’m not saying you shouldn’t analyze the meaning of your work, but he seems fairly un-anchored

Arainach 2y ago
Belief in a higher power is not a substitute for finding goodness in what you do. I agree - with rose tinted glasses, there was a period that lasted all the way to shortly after the release of the iPhone where it was reasonable to be (and much of society was) excited about the possibilities of technology. Those times are dead. Financial engineering and the monetization of every piece of user data, ever flat surface, every eyeball, from birth to death have left me a sad husk sitting in a chair typing for a paycheck. My solace has been the kind of creative activities now undermined by generative AI. So many great artists got their start at the entry level - whether as a mall portrait photographer, an understudy at a newspaper, or what not. With those roles killed by AI, where will innovation or even passion come from?
- williamtrask 2y ago
  > Belief in a higher power is not a substitute for finding goodness in what you do. But it can be, namely because it’s one path to finding motivation to do good. Not saying it ends up there for everyone, but it certainly can be for some.
  - Arainach 2y ago
    Belief in a higher power won't make you feel better about lying to boost stock prices. If your higher or is supportive of lying without feeling bad, find a new one.
- Muromec 2y ago
  Belief in higher power gives you the coordinate system that is not moving with the train. Doesn’t have to be religious really, bit it gives more credibility if the value system if X thousand years old.

extr 2y ago

This person acts like they were disseminating propaganda for the reich. I get that doing corporate PR probably feels very cynical in general but coaching founders not to fumble the bag in an interview or writing blog posts about funding rounds are on the lesser evils side I think. Who is the victim of manipulation there? VCs? Lol

fiatpandas 2y ago
> Who is the victim of manipulation there Sometimes your own soul becomes the victim that affects you the most.
akira2501 2y ago
> This person acts like they were disseminating propaganda for the reich. I think part of the comfort one could enjoy when working for the Reich is that you are working for your own government and you are part of a large network of people that are actively telling the same lies you are. You might also assume that large parts of the population know you are lying, but you're lying "patriotically," so you feel much less guilt or confrontation over it. > are on the lesser evils side I think. It is interesting that this _often_ takes a much larger toll on people than those working in war. More interesting that people think a little moral relativism is the obvious cure. "It could be worse. You could be a Nazi." > Who is the victim of manipulation there? VCs? Did you read the article? This person clearly believes that VCs are poisonous entities that pervert the original vision of the founders they invest in so that they may see larger and faster returns on their speculative investments. So.. probably.. the entire industry?
- extr 2y ago
  I don’t know. The whole thing feels pretty insular. Who even pays attention to this kind of content that isn’t in the industry? The general public doesn’t care about this. An actually bad example of corporate PR is spinning oil spills or dangerous side effects with prime time advertisements. This is just good business imo
keiferski 2y ago
You don’t need to be not-doing evil things to feel dissatisfied with your work. There was a line in the post about not having written anything they actually believed in for a long time. That kind of thing weighs one’s soul down, even if it’s not “evil” in a grand sense.

ang_cire 2y ago

Great piece. Good on them for getting out.

mehulashah 2y ago

“Technology has potential when it's guided by ethical considerations and a genuine desire to improve the human condition.” Yup, and Bill and Dave are probably the last two that I can really point at to say that’s what they had. True ethics and a genuine desire. Probably also the Fab 8. It may have stopped there. “The tech industry has a long memory.” Nope. I think it has no memory and zero penalty for failure. That’s, of course, a double-edged sword.

aaronbrethorst 2y ago

I kept on gritting my teeth, waiting for the author to try to sell me something, or on something. Says something about this bullshit industrial complex, I suppose, that I’m so jaded about anything contrarian in this vein.

seoulmetro 2y ago

>Give me a half-baked startup idea, a semi-charismatic founder and a fistful of VC dollars, and I could write a story compelling enough it barely mattered whether there was an ounce of truth in it. Pretty sure anyone can do this. The setup is not in the writing of the story but in the things you just listed...

deleted 2y ago

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Animats 2y ago

Advertising. That's the problem. Computing has become a branch of the ad industry. What we need is a big tax on advertising and marketing. In the US, it doesn't create more demand, because most people are spent out. It just moves demand around. So much of that effort is a net lose that pushes prices up. (This might be politically possible during an "anti-tech" Trump administration.)

imiric 2y ago
Advertising is a big part of it, sure. But it is merely a component of late-stage capitalism. Using psychological manipulation to sell products is the most profitable way of sustaining a business we've invented yet, but we have many other ways to unscrupulously exploit one another for financial gains. Humanity has been doing that for millennia, and we've gotten very good at it.
- Animats 2y ago
  > most profitable way of sustaining a business we've invented yet Which is why it's something to tax. As opposed to more productive endeavors.
RachelF 2y ago
Sadly, advertising is the best way to pay for your online product in most cases. Micro-payments have been tried a few times but most people did'nt like to pay for stuff that they used to get for "free". Since everyone is now locked into a few big tech platforms, they can now supplement their ad income by charging users, too.
- Animats 2y ago
  That seemed to work for a while, but now everybody who actually has original content of any value seems to have a paywall.

imiric 2y ago

This is very well written. Good on them for following their integrity. More people in this industry should realize that there are large sections of it that are deeply toxic to humanity, and reconsider whether they want to be a part of that. For all the "disruption" caused by "unicorns", has it really had a net positive effect on our lives? Big Tech companies keep building technology that is designed to extract as much value from their users by any means necessary. Most of the startup world revolves around growing companies based on this premise, in the hopes of one day making it big as well. There are still companies that ignore this rat race and try to do the right thing, but they are hard to come by. Those are the real unicorns, IMO. I realize the irony of this opinion on a VC forum. But this needs to resonate here more than anywhere else.

arthurofbabylon 2y ago

I love it. There have been a few times in my life where I put everything on the line (or so I felt then) for a value I deeply held. Risking friendships, letting go of money, deeply uprooting behaviors… all for abstract (yet impactful) ideas like honesty and kindness. I in no way regretted those choices, ever, and found that after a few weeks or months my position was strengthened. Integrity has this effect — it closes feedback loops. The result is a deep empowerment. I praise the author and wish them continued courage.

keiferski 2y ago

It would be interesting if someone analyzed the “California communication style” and its effects on the startup industry. As someone that grew up on the East Coast, I often notice how the communication style on the West Coast is much less confrontational and more “everything is awesome”, which I think leads to the sort of fake enthusiasm the author grew tired of projecting. Of course, there’s no lack of hype and BS in NYC/DC/Boston, but there seems to be a much more developed culture of criticism and analysis than in California. And so the default attitude on the East Coast is a bit more cynically pragmatic, which is both good for the above reasons, but also less imaginative and more restricted - which is why SV has more “dreamers” that do crazy things. Hope I’m not firing off too many East Coast vs. West Coast battle shots here :)

tayo42 2y ago
Everyone in silicon valley is a transplant.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Sure but there is still a particular communication style that prevails, and people adopt it, or try to adopt, to fit in. It’s less about the accent or vocabulary and more about the tone. A lot of this was parodied pretty effectively by the Silicon Valley TV show.
  - tayo42 2y ago
    I don't think that's location based. More likely industry. Even in California once you leave SaaS /software /internet startups the corporate culture is different. My wife doesn't have pronoun police at her California office job. Me working in web software, I had a guy from the Midwest scold me about pronouns.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      I guess what would be interesting (and what my original comment was about) is how / if the California communication style got started in SV and then traveled around everywhere else via the tech industry. I think it likely started as an aspect of a particular location and then became an industry thing later.

langsoul-com 2y ago

Good on them, I applaud them for deciding to change even at the cost of a fat check. I would not, my bank account really matters Integrity might sooth my soul, but not my retirement. Life increasingly feels like a trade off between integrity and living in modern society.

benzible 2y ago

It would be easier to take her seriously as a critic of tech industry BS if her LinkedIn didn't list her as a current advisor to "MODA DAO" and her social media handle wasn't "@daojoan.eth". Yee-ikes.

mihaaly 2y ago

Thank you for your honest words, I needed that. I am one of the tiny wheels in the corner of this industry in an organization not built on top of loose bullshit from the start with the speed of light but made to build useful tools for engineers decades ago. However along the road the 'do whatever that looks good' overruled the 'do something good' in the competition with the pretentious capitalists and their servants wandering in all corners of the industry now poisioning good places with attitudes they learned and grown with in bad places and now being considered 'experts of the industry', not to mention the need of survival pushes you in this direction, the must pick up the indutry trends or die panick makes you do things you hate, and all this sweeped in to my low level of building parts so I have to make things that look good with degrading quality tools and degrading quality operating system built to look good to sell instead of helping the user so my every day, yes, every day work is a piss in headwind uphill. The products of the industry serves itself rather than the users, we can do a lot very fast that we wouldn't need to do if things were made right not pretentious. The life got difficult on a whole different level, not easier, with the products of the industry. I see little option than getting out, it is poisioned to all parts now. I have two babies so it is hard and very risky but I will need to show example to them soon and this is not something to show with integrity. Not to mention that staying is also risky when you are increasingly handled as commodity (Human Resources is a very hones title indeed!!). The previous personality of yours made this happen with the likes but still thank you for not doing it anymore and for spreading your story. I might never be in a position to work with you but if I will I will recommend you.

surfingdino 2y ago

Public Relations used to be known as Propaganda. It rebranded, because of the use of its techniques in war, but it's still based on grabbing attention on the masses who are then put through the sales funnel. It doesn't matter what you are selling, all that matters is that you follow some basic rules. It is not for people with conscience or those who are able to see that what is being sold is not good for the buyer. One of the early commercial successes claimed by that field human activity was successfully encouraging women to smoke cigarettes by hijacking women's liberation movement. When you start that low and are paid more to do more of it, you have to choose money or conscience.

negativelambda 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation#From_the_act_of_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation#...

Yodel0914 2y ago

> A nagging doubt. An odd moment of "Jesus, what the hell am I doing?" > I would lie awake at 3 AM, staring at the ceiling. My life was slipping away, and I had nothing to show for it Perhaps the bullshit industrial complex just accelerates this realization. I think I'm a bit older than the OP. I work on notionally quite pro-social software and still wake up thinking the same thing.

Terr_ 2y ago

> Tech is an out-of-control locomotive with no fucking brakes. The way I see it, "tech" is simply the area where a very old pattern is playing out. In another era, the dreams being peddled would involve gold from transatlantic expeditions, Dutch tulips, textile machines, railroad networks, etc.

GolberThorce 2y ago

in other words, she had a midlife crisis

leocgcd 2y ago

Sort of a vapid piece. The optimism and buy-in that excited people about tech from the debut of the iPhone until fairly recently was a function of PR and technology marketers-- like the author-- doing their jobs very well. For any industry, generating interest and excitement is more than a purely descriptive process. The magical venture doesn't just appear and then the marketers have the simple job of describing it. Marketers/strategists/PR people play a very important role surveying the project and then articulating a compelling vision. That vision then becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy since stakeholders (both creators and users) have bought into the promise of worth. If strategists aren't able to see a path forward, to survey the field and identify the things that make the project worthwhile, exciting, sustainable, tactical, etc... then they're just not great at their job. Admitting that you haven't really believed in anything you've worked on as a marketer is a bit like an actor admitting that someone else is reading their lines. A good marketer, like a good actor, lives in their promises like they are already real. The realer and more convinced you are, the more you can speak your vision into reality.

imiric 2y ago
> A good marketer, like a good actor, lives in their promises like they are already real. The realer and more convinced you are, the more you can speak your vision into reality. Wow. Don't you see the problem with selling something that doesn't exist? There's a thin line between making up a story to make people buy a product, and straight up scamming people with a nonexistent product. Elizabeth Holmes was a genius marketer, but is that really somebody you want to idealize?
- leocgcd 2y ago
  Marketers necessarily sell something that doesn't exist because part of their job is creating that thing. Theranos is an example of a failed project through and through, but even something unarguably successful like the iPhone was built through market strategizing-- not just technical engineering. Identifying what consumers wanted, conveying that vision, shaping a compelling brand, these are all things that can easily be written off as "fake" by people who cannot buy into the vision, but when done well they are just as important as the technical innovations.

rvz 2y ago

> The inflated valuations, cult-like frat house “culture,” and the relentless, mindless pursuit of growth that comfortably glossed over the human cost of "disruption." It has been finally admitted. The entire VC grift that was seen through unfounded valuations was purposely executed to gloss over the issues and positive spin to unprofitable startups and startups generating little to no revenue for years rather than necessary scrutiny in their business models.

Neil44 2y ago

Everyone with an ounce of common sense can see that the gig economy is just a way to pay people less and side step labour laws, so a small number of people can sleep on a bed of money. I find it obscene and sociopathic.

jokoon 2y ago

Easy to say when you made money, that's the good moment to get out.

t0bia_s 2y ago

I'm freelancing about ten years in audiovisual production and design. I'm avoid commercial sphere. I'm absolutely avoiding product advertising. In those 10 years I realized how fake it is. Basically product advertising is proof that product is not good enough to be sold on market. Good product is advertising by itself. With this honesty, you cannot participate in fake indistry.

mihaaly 2y ago
"Good wine needs no bush".