Just curious. A lot has changed between 2009 and 2019. I still love design and engineering to solve valuable problems in day-to-day life and society at large. I am also aware of the public sentiment/resentment towards the industry as a whole. There is much to be said and to discuss. I would love to hear what you think and feel, what you are doing with your time and skills.
Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#2Nope. My conscience is clean. I don't work for a company with a spy/sell data business model.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#3When I am in the office I constantly hear my inner voice whispering into my ear - b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t.
P.S. http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/I...
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#4Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.
Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.
-- John Maynard Keynes [0]
My personal conspiracy theory is that the age of abundance has already come but we just don't know what to do with it other than keep working our BS jobs.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#5I admit that some companies are better than other about being mission-driven, and concerned about their impact on society. But I'm not sure we can generalize about the tech industry as a whole on that level, even if the general public does exactly that.
Working in this industry, in particular if you are not in SV, you see the variety of people, purposes, and goals that comprise tech companies.
As far as what I do personally, I've focused my career in the public sector since 2012, writing software that saves money for school districts. I watch the pricing models that our sales team comes up with to be aware whether they cross the line where our fees are greater than the cost savings, and therefore would cut into student funding. My side projects focus on building tools to help the creative efforts of my children. In short, I try to avoid work that is purely money-driven.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#6Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well. The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, wh…
We have lots of abundance. The problem is that the future is, as they say, not so equally distributed.
It's hard to solve things like poverty when a tiny minority is hoarding most of the increase in wealth, and in fact often profits or draws political power from maintaining inequality in its various forms.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#7Yeah 100%. I'm in my second job out of school working at a big bank in tech. It's mindnumbingly uninteresting to me. And I also don't think it does anything to help society. Though sometimes the technical problems fit the bill of being interesting, it doesn't come close to filling the gap.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#8Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well. The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, wh…
We live in an abundance of want, we work to fulfil these pointless desires, but our basic needs (shelter, water, food) we keep limited in order to control people. Our basic needs come from the land which has not increased, genetic modification promises abundance of food but in reality has only been used to copyright and control food production.
> The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance.
Do dogs think of their masters in this way? We know what happens to dogs that don't want to live out of their masters hand, they are put down. Will the same thing happen to humans without masters?
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#9Nope. My conscience is clean. I don't work for a company with a spy/sell data business model.
We might have to expand our perspective a little more than just "I dont spy/sell-data at work, so Im cool."
Does your company have other subsidiaries that do this work? Does your employer contract out for/to-do this erosion of freedom and human dignity?
If not, that's awesome.
But lets be honest here - if your company is declaring neutrality while the world drowns in bull...spit, they're not helping. If you all sell routers, you're probably selling routers to the abusers, as one example. In this, your router code (hypothetical of course) would assist that doubleclick datafarm.
Unless you're at a firm that is actively making privacy-by-default routers, webbrowsers, hosting services, what-have-you? You're still feeding the madness on a less direct, more systemic manner.
Since I doubt your company's leadership would pass up facebook money? Nobody at all can seriously claim neutrality.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel any cognitive dissonance working in tech at all?
#10> I am also aware of the public sentiment/resentment towards the industry as a whole.
Can you or anyone else elaborate on this? I'm really not aware of this negative sentiment.