4 ms·

Perennial HN trope: all bad tech evolutions are management's fault. Engineers are flawless paragons of technical purity.

antonvs 5mo ago
Remind me who makes the final decisions in these scenarios. Also, how do boots taste?
matheusmoreira 5mo ago
Hard to blame the engineer when the engineer gets fired for not implementing management's whims. As much as I'd like to hold people accountable and say they should just accept getting fired instead of compromising the ideals, the truth is I've got a family now and if they paid me enough I'd do the same.
- lkjdsklf 5mo ago
  The torment nexus was built by engineers. Not management. It couldn't exist without engineers.
  - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
    And engineers couldn't get rich themselves without the billionaires shelling out for them to build their torment nexuses. I want to get rich too. I want to live a good life, and provide for my family. I don't want to just survive. So I can't say I don't empathize.
    - deaux 5mo ago
      That's fine, just know that you permanently forfeit any right to complain about others doing things for personal gain that indirectly harm yourself. > I want to live a good life, and provide for my family. This is a lie you're telling yourself, you can do both just fine without building the torment nexus. Billions of people do so indeed. > I want to get rich too. You should've stopped here, but then it became too much so you had to resort to appending that nonsense. It's pure greed at the cost of everyone else, that's all. Simple lack of morals, impaired empathy and remorse.
      - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        > you can do both just fine without building the torment nexus Doubt. You don't become truly wealthy without doing what sociopathic CEOs do on a daily basis. Society actively rewards that stuff, and it's only getting worse with time. > Simple lack of morals, impaired empathy and remorse. Sounds like a winning strategy to me. That's the exact sort of person this world rewards. Things are not looking good out there. Billions of people get by without compromising? Billions of people live in poverty too. Not something I'm looking forward to dealing with, should the great AI replacement ever come knocking on my door.
        golf_mike 5mo ago
        And your reasoning is exactly what makes it a winning strategy. "If other people do it, then why not me?" That makes it that they are no longer other people, you yourself are a part of that group now. One could argue that it is an even worse position. It literally makes you an enabler of the problem you see in the world, while at the same time you acknowledge it as an even existential problem. When we are with billions, we cannot all be 'truly' wealthy in a material sense and by definition your wealth will come at the expense of others. Your reasoning makes me sad as instead of questioning what constitutes true wealth, it seems you are guided by an exclusively materialistic view of it and join the destructive behaviour you see around you out of fear of not having enough.
        bdangubic 5mo ago
        > Your reasoning makes me sad as instead of questioning what constitutes true wealth, it seems you are guided by an exclusively materialistic view of it and join the destructive behaviour you see around you out of fear of not having enough. unfortunately that is the state of our society right now and it is hard to see this changing.
        matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        > If other people do it, then why not me? Yeah. At some point you get tired of paying the costs that others sociopathically push onto you and start trying to take at least some of the value for yourself instead. If society has a problem with that, then maybe it should start demonstrating it by making examples out of all those sociopaths instead of turning the other way and quietly profiting from it while the nobodies seethe impotently about things they have no power to change. > Your reasoning makes me sad as instead of questioning what constitutes true wealth, it seems you are guided by an exclusively materialistic view of it and join the destructive behaviour you see around you out of fear of not having enough. I'm a free software developer. I quite literally give it all away. I'm also a doctor in a 3rd world country. I work hard to help people for wages that would make 300k+/year 1st world doctors cry themselves to sleep. I was actually fine taking the moral high road... Until a couple years ago. What changed? I got married. Got people depending on me now. So my patience and empathy for people who are not literally paying my bills is indeed starting to wear a bit thin. Sad? No one's sadder about it than me. This existential realization gave me actual diagnosed depression. I literally go to therapy because of this shit. That sort of cold sociopathy is simply not the way I was raised. The problem is my mind cannot deal with this corrupt world by idealizing it. For my own psychological and financial well being, I cannot continue to entertain ideas of what the world could be, if only people were good. I must interpret the world based on what's real.
    - SturgeonsLaw 5mo ago
      Which would be fine if the only two choices were build the torment nexus or starve. But it's not the only source of income out there.
      - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        Yeah, maybe you won't "starve"... But will you live? Or will you merely survive? If that? It's not looking too good out there. We've got trillionaires bragging to people's faces about how they're all going to be replaced by their AIs. It got to the point someone threw a molotov into one CEO's home. Source of income? The promise of AI is to literally make all humans economically redundant. In a capitalist world, what is the point of keeping economically useless people alive? People who do nothing but cost society money? Why not turn them all into soylent instead? If we don't create a post-scarcity society now, I'm not sure we ever will. Choices aren't looking too good out there.
  - tehjoker 5mo ago
    Right, workers build the world. We should run it. Actually. Why does management get to tell us what to do without elections?
    - kaashif 5mo ago
      Workers are necessary but not sufficient for most businesses. You also need capital. This can be provided by the workers and is for many worker owners businesses, but when the business is very capital intensive that's just not feasible. Are workers going to be able to fund Apple's factories or ExxonMobil's oil exploration? No, so they're not in charge. You absolutely can start a worker owned business right now, or go work for one.
      - tehjoker 5mo ago
        Of course. That is why state guided worker coops are a good idea. Or state incentives to provide loans at good interest rates to worker coops. The state provides capital, the workers operate the business, make management decisions, and have democratic input like the public does. You might say, that kind of system isn't a perfect solution, but currently we have a dictatorship of wealthy individuals and businesses who are wholly unaccountable.
  - PunchyHamster 5mo ago
    Only because murdering your project manager for terrible ideas is illegal
  - aleph_minus_one 5mo ago
    > The torment nexus was built by engineers. Not management. Before the more recent wave of successful tech startups (say, from 2010 on), a very large amount of programmers were incredibly sensitive to anything related to topics like (posisbility of) surveillance, privacy, authorities (including government), centralized infrastructures, DRM etc. In my feeling, the only reason why this mindset shifted is because from this wave on, in the USA, programmers were showered in money. The interesting question rather is: now that tech companies want to become more frugal with respect to paying programmers, will the mindset among programmers shift back or not?
    - morpheos137 5mo ago
      The interesting thing is despite all that money the basic functionality of tech except for llms has hardly changed for at least a decade if not more. The reason llms are showered with money is everything else is stagnant.
  - wiseowise 5mo ago
    Nuclear bomb was built by scientists and they weren't the one that fired it, what's your point?
    - allarm 5mo ago
      Their point, however, is perfectly clear - it’s practically obvious. No one forced them at gunpoint (unlike those scientists, figuratively speaking). Why are you pretending not to understand?
      - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        > No one forced them at gunpoint Of course not. Modern weapons are far more sophisticated. Society does not need to point guns at people to drive behavior anymore, it is sufficient to deploy simple economics. People feel the sting of the economic lash just the same as the literal instrument.
        allarm 5mo ago
        Yeah sure :) People working in one of the most privileged professions on Earth are bound hand and foot with golden shackles and are forced - literally forced - to continue spreading evil throughout the world in order to keep their salaries of several hundred thousand dollars. The horror!
        matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        Yes? Refuse, and you lose all of those privileges. The golden shackles go away and are replaced with the rusty shackles of poverty. Feeling the pressure yet? The richer you are, the more you've got to lose. Easy to be a radical when you've got nothing. Nowhere you can go but up. If you're privileged, there's a long way to fall.
        allarm 5mo ago
        That's pathetic. It's not all or nothing situation, not even close.
- bdangubic 5mo ago
  that defense did not work at nuremberg trial
  - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
    Only because the Nazis lost and the people they genocided judged them for it. Do you think the trillionaires are losing? Do you think you're likely to end up on the judge's bench?
    - bdangubic 5mo ago
      sure did not look in 1942 like nazis were losing either. doesn’t look like in 2026 but time is a bitch and nazis eventually meet their fate
      - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        Then make the bet. If you think the trillionaires will fall, then stand against them. Don't take their money and wait for their inevitable fall when the working class gets organized and starts eating the rich. Hope you have an answer for their AI powered automated kill bots. Man made horrors, entirely within the realm of our comprehension.
        bdangubic 5mo ago
        > Then make the bet. why do I need to make a bet? you mean to make money off this? I have more than I can spend in 4 lifetimes. also personally, betting is a telltale sign of a lack of intelligence so I would never make myself stoop that level where I "bet" on shit, one of the stupidest things humans do > If you think the trillionaires will fall, then stand against them I stand against them and would even if I didn't think they will fail. > Don't take their money and wait for their inevitable fall I don't take their money, don't do now and never have and never will. I would not work for a company Tesla or Meta if they offered me 7-digit salary. > Hope you have an answer for their AI powered automated kill bots. I personally don't but if there comes a time my assistance is needed to fight them I will gladly volunteer to help
jazzypants 5mo ago
Of course there are shitty engineers, but they aren't allowed to do anything without shitty management.
uncircle 5mo ago
Found the project manager

antonvs 5mo ago

Remind me who makes the final decisions in these scenarios. Also, how do boots taste?

matheusmoreira 5mo ago

Hard to blame the engineer when the engineer gets fired for not implementing management's whims. As much as I'd like to hold people accountable and say they should just accept getting fired instead of compromising the ideals, the truth is I've got a family now and if they paid me enough I'd do the same.

lkjdsklf 5mo ago
The torment nexus was built by engineers. Not management. It couldn't exist without engineers.
- matheusmoreira 5mo ago
  And engineers couldn't get rich themselves without the billionaires shelling out for them to build their torment nexuses. I want to get rich too. I want to live a good life, and provide for my family. I don't want to just survive. So I can't say I don't empathize.
  - deaux 5mo ago
    That's fine, just know that you permanently forfeit any right to complain about others doing things for personal gain that indirectly harm yourself. > I want to live a good life, and provide for my family. This is a lie you're telling yourself, you can do both just fine without building the torment nexus. Billions of people do so indeed. > I want to get rich too. You should've stopped here, but then it became too much so you had to resort to appending that nonsense. It's pure greed at the cost of everyone else, that's all. Simple lack of morals, impaired empathy and remorse.
    - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
      > you can do both just fine without building the torment nexus Doubt. You don't become truly wealthy without doing what sociopathic CEOs do on a daily basis. Society actively rewards that stuff, and it's only getting worse with time. > Simple lack of morals, impaired empathy and remorse. Sounds like a winning strategy to me. That's the exact sort of person this world rewards. Things are not looking good out there. Billions of people get by without compromising? Billions of people live in poverty too. Not something I'm looking forward to dealing with, should the great AI replacement ever come knocking on my door.
      - golf_mike 5mo ago
        And your reasoning is exactly what makes it a winning strategy. "If other people do it, then why not me?" That makes it that they are no longer other people, you yourself are a part of that group now. One could argue that it is an even worse position. It literally makes you an enabler of the problem you see in the world, while at the same time you acknowledge it as an even existential problem. When we are with billions, we cannot all be 'truly' wealthy in a material sense and by definition your wealth will come at the expense of others. Your reasoning makes me sad as instead of questioning what constitutes true wealth, it seems you are guided by an exclusively materialistic view of it and join the destructive behaviour you see around you out of fear of not having enough.
        bdangubic 5mo ago
        > Your reasoning makes me sad as instead of questioning what constitutes true wealth, it seems you are guided by an exclusively materialistic view of it and join the destructive behaviour you see around you out of fear of not having enough. unfortunately that is the state of our society right now and it is hard to see this changing.
        matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        > If other people do it, then why not me? Yeah. At some point you get tired of paying the costs that others sociopathically push onto you and start trying to take at least some of the value for yourself instead. If society has a problem with that, then maybe it should start demonstrating it by making examples out of all those sociopaths instead of turning the other way and quietly profiting from it while the nobodies seethe impotently about things they have no power to change. > Your reasoning makes me sad as instead of questioning what constitutes true wealth, it seems you are guided by an exclusively materialistic view of it and join the destructive behaviour you see around you out of fear of not having enough. I'm a free software developer. I quite literally give it all away. I'm also a doctor in a 3rd world country. I work hard to help people for wages that would make 300k+/year 1st world doctors cry themselves to sleep. I was actually fine taking the moral high road... Until a couple years ago. What changed? I got married. Got people depending on me now. So my patience and empathy for people who are not literally paying my bills is indeed starting to wear a bit thin. Sad? No one's sadder about it than me. This existential realization gave me actual diagnosed depression. I literally go to therapy because of this shit. That sort of cold sociopathy is simply not the way I was raised. The problem is my mind cannot deal with this corrupt world by idealizing it. For my own psychological and financial well being, I cannot continue to entertain ideas of what the world could be, if only people were good. I must interpret the world based on what's real.
  - SturgeonsLaw 5mo ago
    Which would be fine if the only two choices were build the torment nexus or starve. But it's not the only source of income out there.
    - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
      Yeah, maybe you won't "starve"... But will you live? Or will you merely survive? If that? It's not looking too good out there. We've got trillionaires bragging to people's faces about how they're all going to be replaced by their AIs. It got to the point someone threw a molotov into one CEO's home. Source of income? The promise of AI is to literally make all humans economically redundant. In a capitalist world, what is the point of keeping economically useless people alive? People who do nothing but cost society money? Why not turn them all into soylent instead? If we don't create a post-scarcity society now, I'm not sure we ever will. Choices aren't looking too good out there.
- tehjoker 5mo ago
  Right, workers build the world. We should run it. Actually. Why does management get to tell us what to do without elections?
  - kaashif 5mo ago
    Workers are necessary but not sufficient for most businesses. You also need capital. This can be provided by the workers and is for many worker owners businesses, but when the business is very capital intensive that's just not feasible. Are workers going to be able to fund Apple's factories or ExxonMobil's oil exploration? No, so they're not in charge. You absolutely can start a worker owned business right now, or go work for one.
    - tehjoker 5mo ago
      Of course. That is why state guided worker coops are a good idea. Or state incentives to provide loans at good interest rates to worker coops. The state provides capital, the workers operate the business, make management decisions, and have democratic input like the public does. You might say, that kind of system isn't a perfect solution, but currently we have a dictatorship of wealthy individuals and businesses who are wholly unaccountable.
- PunchyHamster 5mo ago
  Only because murdering your project manager for terrible ideas is illegal
- aleph_minus_one 5mo ago
  > The torment nexus was built by engineers. Not management. Before the more recent wave of successful tech startups (say, from 2010 on), a very large amount of programmers were incredibly sensitive to anything related to topics like (posisbility of) surveillance, privacy, authorities (including government), centralized infrastructures, DRM etc. In my feeling, the only reason why this mindset shifted is because from this wave on, in the USA, programmers were showered in money. The interesting question rather is: now that tech companies want to become more frugal with respect to paying programmers, will the mindset among programmers shift back or not?
  - morpheos137 5mo ago
    The interesting thing is despite all that money the basic functionality of tech except for llms has hardly changed for at least a decade if not more. The reason llms are showered with money is everything else is stagnant.
- wiseowise 5mo ago
  Nuclear bomb was built by scientists and they weren't the one that fired it, what's your point?
  - allarm 5mo ago
    Their point, however, is perfectly clear - it’s practically obvious. No one forced them at gunpoint (unlike those scientists, figuratively speaking). Why are you pretending not to understand?
    - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
      > No one forced them at gunpoint Of course not. Modern weapons are far more sophisticated. Society does not need to point guns at people to drive behavior anymore, it is sufficient to deploy simple economics. People feel the sting of the economic lash just the same as the literal instrument.
      - allarm 5mo ago
        Yeah sure :) People working in one of the most privileged professions on Earth are bound hand and foot with golden shackles and are forced - literally forced - to continue spreading evil throughout the world in order to keep their salaries of several hundred thousand dollars. The horror!
        matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        Yes? Refuse, and you lose all of those privileges. The golden shackles go away and are replaced with the rusty shackles of poverty. Feeling the pressure yet? The richer you are, the more you've got to lose. Easy to be a radical when you've got nothing. Nowhere you can go but up. If you're privileged, there's a long way to fall.
        allarm 5mo ago
        That's pathetic. It's not all or nothing situation, not even close.
bdangubic 5mo ago
that defense did not work at nuremberg trial
- matheusmoreira 5mo ago
  Only because the Nazis lost and the people they genocided judged them for it. Do you think the trillionaires are losing? Do you think you're likely to end up on the judge's bench?
  - bdangubic 5mo ago
    sure did not look in 1942 like nazis were losing either. doesn’t look like in 2026 but time is a bitch and nazis eventually meet their fate
    - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
      Then make the bet. If you think the trillionaires will fall, then stand against them. Don't take their money and wait for their inevitable fall when the working class gets organized and starts eating the rich. Hope you have an answer for their AI powered automated kill bots. Man made horrors, entirely within the realm of our comprehension.
      - bdangubic 5mo ago
        > Then make the bet. why do I need to make a bet? you mean to make money off this? I have more than I can spend in 4 lifetimes. also personally, betting is a telltale sign of a lack of intelligence so I would never make myself stoop that level where I "bet" on shit, one of the stupidest things humans do > If you think the trillionaires will fall, then stand against them I stand against them and would even if I didn't think they will fail. > Don't take their money and wait for their inevitable fall I don't take their money, don't do now and never have and never will. I would not work for a company Tesla or Meta if they offered me 7-digit salary. > Hope you have an answer for their AI powered automated kill bots. I personally don't but if there comes a time my assistance is needed to fight them I will gladly volunteer to help

jazzypants 5mo ago

Of course there are shitty engineers, but they aren't allowed to do anything without shitty management.

uncircle 5mo ago

Found the project manager