4 ms·

I am baffled why you are inserting good and evil into this. He just seems to want to work at companies that value craft and attention to detail. It just like th

I am baffled why you are inserting good and evil into this. He just seems to want to work at companies that value craft and attention to detail. It just like the jobs quote about the back of the furniture also being attractive.

cj 11mo ago
Ironically, I could see the author's logic being used as a justifcation to build more "evil" features: > Talk to me like I’m used to. Be familiar, be approachable. I want to feel like you care about helping me. Not “me” as in “all the prospective 99,99,999 users”, but “me” specifically. Users shouldn’t feel like they’ve been dropped into a cookie cutter template - a cold, hard reminder that this is clunky, soulless machinery removed from their world. In other words, the author wants a personalized experience. A personalized news feed. An experience that is tailored to them. (Isn't that what everyone is complaining ruined Facebook, insta, youtube, etc?) I don't think that's what the author actually wants. I think it's just poor framing / unclear writing. If the idea is "I want to work at a company that cares about its craft" -- the example they picked to illustrate that point is just odd. Whether or not a company uses a combined singular/plural form like "Uploading File(s)" is not a very good indicator of whether that company values its craft, IMO.
- John23832 11mo ago
  Personalization != using appropriate common language to express what is happening to the user.
commandlinefan 11mo ago
I was honestly expecting the link to be somebody's quixotic rant about software that does "good" in the world rather than serves ads and I was pleasantly surprised to see something I can actually relate to.
- ctxc 11mo ago
  Haha trust me, I have thoughts on that too!
hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
Ironically, your comment probably exemplifies the “Californian Ideology” the parent comment is criticizing. “Why would you consider good or evil when talking about how you want to spend the overwhelming majority of your productive life”.
- bobxmax 11mo ago
  [dead]
- CalRobert 11mo ago
  I miss when Californian ideology was of the “information wants to be free” and “connecting the people of the world will end tyranny” variety :-( . Something really changed after the first dotcom bubble. Maybe it was my own youthful naïveté (as someone living in Sacramento desperately wishing I lived in that much cooler city to the west). Maybe it was the last drops of that wave Hunter S Thompson talked about breaking.
  - jordanb 11mo ago
    "Information wants to be free" was always a pretty marginal part of the California Ideology[0]. The main difference between now and thirty years ago, is that now they're only "anti-statist" when the state tries to control them personally. They're pro-state when it's being inflicted on their perceived enemies or underlings. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    What happened: the ideology came into contact with the broader world of unscrupulous actors and human weakness. We really do have access to all the world's information to a first degree. We also have access to all the world's propaganda, advertising, trolling, and algorithmic optimization of content.
- canes123456 11mo ago
  Who is saying not consider doing good? Can’t there be more than one thing you consider? Do you going into this rant when a coworker asks about vacation days too?
abathologist 11mo ago
Right? Why would anyone muddy work with morality in this day and age? Morality is so 2010s.
freejazz 11mo ago
It's true for some that morality is not an issue at all.
elliotto 11mo ago
The title of the post is 'the kind of company I want to be a part of'. This presents a more abstract philosophical question of what one should do and how one should be. I clicked the article expecting a piece about social utility, intellectual stimulation, or the role of firms in an increasingly complex moral environment. Instead the author posited a point about pluralizing nouns. This is the Californian ideology - do not engage with fucking anything at all, because we're all getting rich off pluralizing nouns.
- paulddraper 11mo ago
  You are able to read a lot more into this than I am.

cj 11mo ago

Ironically, I could see the author's logic being used as a justifcation to build more "evil" features: > Talk to me like I’m used to. Be familiar, be approachable. I want to feel like you care about helping me. Not “me” as in “all the prospective 99,99,999 users”, but “me” specifically. Users shouldn’t feel like they’ve been dropped into a cookie cutter template - a cold, hard reminder that this is clunky, soulless machinery removed from their world. In other words, the author wants a personalized experience. A personalized news feed. An experience that is tailored to them. (Isn't that what everyone is complaining ruined Facebook, insta, youtube, etc?) I don't think that's what the author actually wants. I think it's just poor framing / unclear writing. If the idea is "I want to work at a company that cares about its craft" -- the example they picked to illustrate that point is just odd. Whether or not a company uses a combined singular/plural form like "Uploading File(s)" is not a very good indicator of whether that company values its craft, IMO.

John23832 11mo ago
Personalization != using appropriate common language to express what is happening to the user.

commandlinefan 11mo ago

I was honestly expecting the link to be somebody's quixotic rant about software that does "good" in the world rather than serves ads and I was pleasantly surprised to see something I can actually relate to.

ctxc 11mo ago
Haha trust me, I have thoughts on that too!

hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago

Ironically, your comment probably exemplifies the “Californian Ideology” the parent comment is criticizing. “Why would you consider good or evil when talking about how you want to spend the overwhelming majority of your productive life”.

bobxmax 11mo ago
[dead]
CalRobert 11mo ago
I miss when Californian ideology was of the “information wants to be free” and “connecting the people of the world will end tyranny” variety :-( . Something really changed after the first dotcom bubble. Maybe it was my own youthful naïveté (as someone living in Sacramento desperately wishing I lived in that much cooler city to the west). Maybe it was the last drops of that wave Hunter S Thompson talked about breaking.
- jordanb 11mo ago
  "Information wants to be free" was always a pretty marginal part of the California Ideology[0]. The main difference between now and thirty years ago, is that now they're only "anti-statist" when the state tries to control them personally. They're pro-state when it's being inflicted on their perceived enemies or underlings. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  What happened: the ideology came into contact with the broader world of unscrupulous actors and human weakness. We really do have access to all the world's information to a first degree. We also have access to all the world's propaganda, advertising, trolling, and algorithmic optimization of content.
canes123456 11mo ago
Who is saying not consider doing good? Can’t there be more than one thing you consider? Do you going into this rant when a coworker asks about vacation days too?

abathologist 11mo ago

Right? Why would anyone muddy work with morality in this day and age? Morality is so 2010s.

freejazz 11mo ago

It's true for some that morality is not an issue at all.

elliotto 11mo ago

The title of the post is 'the kind of company I want to be a part of'. This presents a more abstract philosophical question of what one should do and how one should be. I clicked the article expecting a piece about social utility, intellectual stimulation, or the role of firms in an increasingly complex moral environment. Instead the author posited a point about pluralizing nouns. This is the Californian ideology - do not engage with fucking anything at all, because we're all getting rich off pluralizing nouns.

paulddraper 11mo ago
You are able to read a lot more into this than I am.