6 ms·

I'm not a target of tech's fascist turn, but my head is still spinning from the change of direction. When I entered this industry it was for hackers, nonconform

by jhp123 2y ago

I'm not a target of tech's fascist turn, but my head is still spinning from the change of direction. When I entered this industry it was for hackers, nonconformists, weirdos, nerds, people who don't care about titles or clothes or what your genitals are. What particularly stings is that the vipers at the top tricked people into giving away an enormous amount of intellectual property. Zuck is removing tampons from the men's room—will he also remove open source code written by queer people from his company? Of course not.

cmos 2y ago
It's time for tech to go back to its roots and starve the kings and 'noblemen' of our talent. Stop working for billionaires.
- neom 2y ago
  Remains to be seen, but attention_is_all_you_need.pdf might put a kink in your plan.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
aclimatt 2y ago
Amazing what a little (a lot of) money and power can do to a culture. Some of our worst traits come out when we're all of a sudden in charge.
itsoktocry 2y ago
[flagged]
- enragedcacti 2y ago
  So a person you knew personally for years asked for your respect and understanding of an extremely difficult and personal decision, and you thought "Wow, I didn't care about this 5 minutes ago but now I've decided to get really bitter and vindictive about it"
  - itsoktocry 2y ago
    Can you read? I don't care what my coworkers wear or who they screw. Not my business. When it bleeds over into forcing me to alter reality, yes, I have an issue.
    - enragedcacti 2y ago
      Saying "she" != altering reality because no one is litigating what you believe, just that you treat someone's genuinely held identity with a modicum of deference. Otherwise if I were your coworker I would demand being allowed to call you a bigoted moron because anything else would be altering reality as I see it.
- zellyn 2y ago
  The HR threats are execrable, but an old school hacker would be happy to call you whatever you want, man, woman, demonking42, 0x10c, …
- prawn 2y ago
  If you have the time, this long personal story by Lynn Conway about her life might show another relevant perspective. https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html
  - wastle 2y ago
    This is also worth reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170124 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170124 In summary, Conway and others conducted a years-long campaign of harassment against psychology professor J. Michael Bailey. This included several attempts to get him fired from his job, a series of vexatious complaints to his licensing board, and - most infamously of all - posting photos online of his children suggesting that he had raped them and asking if his young daughter was "a cock-starved exhibitionist". It was highly vindictive, highly unhinged behavior. They disagreed with his published work and rather than attempt to refute it, attacked him personally and extensively.
wat10000 2y ago
I feel like the way you describe it came from the people who came of age in the 70s and made so much of what we now see as “hacker culture.” Now, the leadership is mostly people who came of age a couple of decades later, and got sandwiched between the elders’ ancient wisdom and a newly democratizing toxic online culture. Some found the right path, many hung out with (or were) the sort of people who pretend to pretend to have heinous opinions on 4chan and are finally feeling comfortable enough to drop the facade.
echelon 2y ago
> When I entered this industry it [... didn't] care about titles or clothes or what your genitals are. Are we experiencing the same industry? Because as an LGBT person, I have experienced a tech industry so drunk and fixated on identity that it can't shut up about it. It's patronizing, insulting, and divisive.
- pests 2y ago
  I got online in about 98 and had many many friends in online games or on AIM / AOL and it took until many years, maybe even a decade, after FB for me to even discover what some of these people looked like. The standard "ASL?" and just chatting about life was what happened, so I agree with the comment you replying to.
  - echelon 2y ago
    Corporate isn't an AOL chatroom. I remember those childhood days, and you're right. But the corporate environment I worked in was nothing like that. From about 2014 or so, identity was front and center. This post [1] mentions a couple of the most salient anecdotes about my experience, but I've got so many more. I was told I couldn't hire or refer white people on numerous occasions, certain groups (mostly the "WomEng" group) were given nice lunches and off sites and I had to take their oncall or interviews, I was told to cover for the work of underperforming engineers for well over a year before anything was done about it (a couple of non-special friends were simply let go), we all had to sit and watch other engineers get awards for their race (exactly what it sounds like), we had our walls painted with caricatures of our special identity groups. Every bit of it felt like an HR gimmick. And that's barely scratching the surface. It was one of the weirdest things I've experienced. And it carried on for years. I tried to participate. I was an early proponent of this stuff. But when it started turning into favoritism, inauthentic gestures, and began feeling more like policing than something uplifting, it demoralized me and made me feel shitty. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42687151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42687151
- archagon 2y ago
  2014 is way past the "hackers, nonconformists, weirdos, nerds, people who don't care about titles or clothes or what your genitals are" period of the industry. I entered the industry in 2011 and it was already bland, corporate, and hyper-capitalist by that point. My sense is that the term is alluding to the late 90's or even earlier.
throwaway292939 2y ago
[flagged]
iaseiadit 2y ago
What “fascism” are we talking about here? A company pulling tampons from men’s rooms? Companies scaling down DEI departments that advocated (probably illegally) in favor of gender and race-based discrimination? Or are you speaking more broadly about the U.S.? Is it fascist to revert to a sane border policy that’s aligned with what most U.S. citizens and legal immigrants want? Or an executive branch that’s actually run by a democratically-elected individual, instead a non-elected shadow government that governed on behalf of a dementia-afflicted president whose condition was hidden from the American public for years? The same government that censored the media? Or the tech companies that willingly obliged with the government censorship? The same tech companies that fired employees for expressing opinions that differed from those held by the liberal establishment? Sorry, I’m getting very confused if we’re turning into the fascism or finally turning away from it.
- codesnik 2y ago
  we've seen newly government getting from shadow to the front row on the inauguration. No need to hide anymore.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- _yb2s 2y ago
  It is fascism to create a false narrative that all of our problems are caused by people with a different skin color, country of origin, gender identity, etc., and that it justifies setting up an authoritarian government that unjustly persecutes those groups and anyone that disagrees or tries to stop them.
  - iaseiadit 2y ago
    Immigrants are welcome in America, but we do not have an open border. We have an immigration process that must be followed, just like every other country on Earth. Violating the immigration process is breaking the law. Enforcing our laws is not “unjustly persecuting” people. If you can’t be intellectually honest and distinguish between illegal and legal immigration, or the fact that the U.S. does not have an open border and US citizens overwhelmingly do not want an open border with the rest of the world, there’s no basis for a conversation.
_yb2s 2y ago
That hacker spirit is alive and well, and will be long after the fascists for one simple reason: The same open minded creative attitude that fully and warmly welcomes people who are different, is also what makes us better able to solve science and tech problems in a creative way. The fascists need the hackers, but we don’t need them. Authoritarianism is fundamentally culturally incompatible with innovation. Nazi cryptography was broken by an eccentric gay man, and so on- thousands of such examples.
- gunian 2y ago
  operation paperclip would beg to differ WW2 ended because of sheer numbers
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    > operation paperclip would beg to differ Operation paperclip? A huge number of scientists and engineers unable to accomplish much under an authoritarian regime, but then driving massive innovation and discovery when freed from it, is exactly my point. Even when employing brilliant creative people authoritarians will always setup a work culture and organization fundamentally incompatible with innovation where traits like creativity and honesty are seen as threats, and aggressively punished. Even in the USA, you can see the effects of this- highly innovative research programs from Skunkworks to DARPA always have a radically anti-authoritarian work culture.
    - gunian 2y ago
      They did accomplish a lot you just don't hear about it because history is written by the victor. Think about the numbers it took to defeat them: USSR, USA, British Empire, French Empire, and China. The reason the scientists were gobbled up by the US and USSR is precisely because of the knowledge they developed during and why everyone else was hanged. One can argue a lot of the advancements made until the era of computers was made because of that horrible war Not pro authoritarian regimes but logically if your life depended on creating something 9/10 you will
ilikehurdles 2y ago
how did free speech become fascist? even in this ludicrous essay, which claims meta announced it will "increase the hate speech people like me receive". no, it announced reduced filtering of content. what is more conformist than forcing people to adopt your speech and view points under threat? what you don't realize is the hackers and nonconformists _are_ taking the tech back, they're taking it back from this oppressive bureaucratic regime that stifles creativity and forces everyone to tiptoe within its absurd religion of rules and newspeak. they're taking it back from dei consultants and hr departments. make it about merit and hacking, not about dogmatic adherence to a (fundamentally incorrect and bad imo) social cause.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by jhp123 2y ago

cmos 2y ago

It's time for tech to go back to its roots and starve the kings and 'noblemen' of our talent. Stop working for billionaires.

neom 2y ago
Remains to be seen, but attention_is_all_you_need.pdf might put a kink in your plan.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

aclimatt 2y ago

Amazing what a little (a lot of) money and power can do to a culture. Some of our worst traits come out when we're all of a sudden in charge.

itsoktocry 2y ago

[flagged]

enragedcacti 2y ago
So a person you knew personally for years asked for your respect and understanding of an extremely difficult and personal decision, and you thought "Wow, I didn't care about this 5 minutes ago but now I've decided to get really bitter and vindictive about it"
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  Can you read? I don't care what my coworkers wear or who they screw. Not my business. When it bleeds over into forcing me to alter reality, yes, I have an issue.
  - enragedcacti 2y ago
    Saying "she" != altering reality because no one is litigating what you believe, just that you treat someone's genuinely held identity with a modicum of deference. Otherwise if I were your coworker I would demand being allowed to call you a bigoted moron because anything else would be altering reality as I see it.
zellyn 2y ago
The HR threats are execrable, but an old school hacker would be happy to call you whatever you want, man, woman, demonking42, 0x10c, …
prawn 2y ago
If you have the time, this long personal story by Lynn Conway about her life might show another relevant perspective. https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html
- wastle 2y ago
  This is also worth reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170124 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170124 In summary, Conway and others conducted a years-long campaign of harassment against psychology professor J. Michael Bailey. This included several attempts to get him fired from his job, a series of vexatious complaints to his licensing board, and - most infamously of all - posting photos online of his children suggesting that he had raped them and asking if his young daughter was "a cock-starved exhibitionist". It was highly vindictive, highly unhinged behavior. They disagreed with his published work and rather than attempt to refute it, attacked him personally and extensively.

wat10000 2y ago

I feel like the way you describe it came from the people who came of age in the 70s and made so much of what we now see as “hacker culture.” Now, the leadership is mostly people who came of age a couple of decades later, and got sandwiched between the elders’ ancient wisdom and a newly democratizing toxic online culture. Some found the right path, many hung out with (or were) the sort of people who pretend to pretend to have heinous opinions on 4chan and are finally feeling comfortable enough to drop the facade.

echelon 2y ago

> When I entered this industry it [... didn't] care about titles or clothes or what your genitals are. Are we experiencing the same industry? Because as an LGBT person, I have experienced a tech industry so drunk and fixated on identity that it can't shut up about it. It's patronizing, insulting, and divisive.

pests 2y ago
I got online in about 98 and had many many friends in online games or on AIM / AOL and it took until many years, maybe even a decade, after FB for me to even discover what some of these people looked like. The standard "ASL?" and just chatting about life was what happened, so I agree with the comment you replying to.
- echelon 2y ago
  Corporate isn't an AOL chatroom. I remember those childhood days, and you're right. But the corporate environment I worked in was nothing like that. From about 2014 or so, identity was front and center. This post [1] mentions a couple of the most salient anecdotes about my experience, but I've got so many more. I was told I couldn't hire or refer white people on numerous occasions, certain groups (mostly the "WomEng" group) were given nice lunches and off sites and I had to take their oncall or interviews, I was told to cover for the work of underperforming engineers for well over a year before anything was done about it (a couple of non-special friends were simply let go), we all had to sit and watch other engineers get awards for their race (exactly what it sounds like), we had our walls painted with caricatures of our special identity groups. Every bit of it felt like an HR gimmick. And that's barely scratching the surface. It was one of the weirdest things I've experienced. And it carried on for years. I tried to participate. I was an early proponent of this stuff. But when it started turning into favoritism, inauthentic gestures, and began feeling more like policing than something uplifting, it demoralized me and made me feel shitty. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42687151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42687151
archagon 2y ago
2014 is way past the "hackers, nonconformists, weirdos, nerds, people who don't care about titles or clothes or what your genitals are" period of the industry. I entered the industry in 2011 and it was already bland, corporate, and hyper-capitalist by that point. My sense is that the term is alluding to the late 90's or even earlier.

throwaway292939 2y ago

[flagged]

iaseiadit 2y ago

What “fascism” are we talking about here? A company pulling tampons from men’s rooms? Companies scaling down DEI departments that advocated (probably illegally) in favor of gender and race-based discrimination? Or are you speaking more broadly about the U.S.? Is it fascist to revert to a sane border policy that’s aligned with what most U.S. citizens and legal immigrants want? Or an executive branch that’s actually run by a democratically-elected individual, instead a non-elected shadow government that governed on behalf of a dementia-afflicted president whose condition was hidden from the American public for years? The same government that censored the media? Or the tech companies that willingly obliged with the government censorship? The same tech companies that fired employees for expressing opinions that differed from those held by the liberal establishment? Sorry, I’m getting very confused if we’re turning into the fascism or finally turning away from it.

codesnik 2y ago
we've seen newly government getting from shadow to the front row on the inauguration. No need to hide anymore.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
_yb2s 2y ago
It is fascism to create a false narrative that all of our problems are caused by people with a different skin color, country of origin, gender identity, etc., and that it justifies setting up an authoritarian government that unjustly persecutes those groups and anyone that disagrees or tries to stop them.
- iaseiadit 2y ago
  Immigrants are welcome in America, but we do not have an open border. We have an immigration process that must be followed, just like every other country on Earth. Violating the immigration process is breaking the law. Enforcing our laws is not “unjustly persecuting” people. If you can’t be intellectually honest and distinguish between illegal and legal immigration, or the fact that the U.S. does not have an open border and US citizens overwhelmingly do not want an open border with the rest of the world, there’s no basis for a conversation.

_yb2s 2y ago

That hacker spirit is alive and well, and will be long after the fascists for one simple reason: The same open minded creative attitude that fully and warmly welcomes people who are different, is also what makes us better able to solve science and tech problems in a creative way. The fascists need the hackers, but we don’t need them. Authoritarianism is fundamentally culturally incompatible with innovation. Nazi cryptography was broken by an eccentric gay man, and so on- thousands of such examples.

gunian 2y ago
operation paperclip would beg to differ WW2 ended because of sheer numbers
- _yb2s 2y ago
  > operation paperclip would beg to differ Operation paperclip? A huge number of scientists and engineers unable to accomplish much under an authoritarian regime, but then driving massive innovation and discovery when freed from it, is exactly my point. Even when employing brilliant creative people authoritarians will always setup a work culture and organization fundamentally incompatible with innovation where traits like creativity and honesty are seen as threats, and aggressively punished. Even in the USA, you can see the effects of this- highly innovative research programs from Skunkworks to DARPA always have a radically anti-authoritarian work culture.
  - gunian 2y ago
    They did accomplish a lot you just don't hear about it because history is written by the victor. Think about the numbers it took to defeat them: USSR, USA, British Empire, French Empire, and China. The reason the scientists were gobbled up by the US and USSR is precisely because of the knowledge they developed during and why everyone else was hanged. One can argue a lot of the advancements made until the era of computers was made because of that horrible war Not pro authoritarian regimes but logically if your life depended on creating something 9/10 you will

ilikehurdles 2y ago

how did free speech become fascist? even in this ludicrous essay, which claims meta announced it will "increase the hate speech people like me receive". no, it announced reduced filtering of content. what is more conformist than forcing people to adopt your speech and view points under threat? what you don't realize is the hackers and nonconformists _are_ taking the tech back, they're taking it back from this oppressive bureaucratic regime that stifles creativity and forces everyone to tiptoe within its absurd religion of rules and newspeak. they're taking it back from dei consultants and hr departments. make it about merit and hacking, not about dogmatic adherence to a (fundamentally incorrect and bad imo) social cause.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]