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Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#151

Post by saosebastiao »

Lately I've been experiencing some depression (under treatment), so maybe this is just the state of my mind right now, but is anyone else growing more and more cynical about the potential for changing the world, and adjusting their moral philosophy to compensate?

I could barely impact how my former employer ran the company, and even though I had the company's best interests at heart the whole time, I faced resistance the entire way. Political change is even more out of reach. I grow tired of obviously bad policy ideas being promoted because of political party consensus (on "both" sides). I am exhausted of the generational warfare that is causing newer generations to face an uphill battle for the rest of their lives, with higher health care costs, higher housing costs, higher environmental costs, higher education costs, and lower wages. I'm sick of inaction on important issues, misguided action on petty issues, and the nonexistent potential for small unpolitical changes that could have big impacts but won't ever see the time of day because the need for political posturing doesn't allow for it (like for example, a change to the metric system).

I feel trapped and helpless to change anything. And sometimes my feeling of helplessness has made it so I can no longer muster the effort to care for things that are so far beyond my control. I'm at the point on Maslow's Hierarchy where taking care of my family's survival is the only important thing anymore. I sometimes ponder whether I should just go out and get some kind of unethical job that pays a ton of money (and there is no shortage of those kinds of jobs for people of my talents) merely because it accomplishes that goal more efficiently. But then I feel bad about entertaining that thought. I don't really know what to do about it.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#152

Post by s73v3r_ »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #145
drb91 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decisions we make in life, and our difficulty making them, defines us. I can’t help you define your morality here.

You're still begging the question and acting like there is a fixed morality.

Nobody is begging any question. The answer is that it is for YOU to decide. I'm sorry if that's not a simple, yes/no answer for you, but the world isn't like that.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#153

Post by netcan »

bilbo0s wrote: post #109
mistrial9 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good try but.. the Google'rs originally wanted to "index the worlds information" .. very, very smart engineers are motivated by that alone. They were competitive and highly-achieving coders from Berkeley-Stanford-MIT-CalTech-thatOtherOneIForget in an elite team environment.. There were ten other well-funded companies trying to be search engines with lots of publicity.. Google outperformed them.. In hindsight, after t…

That techies were motivated by riches is not hindsight. Google, pre-ipo, sucked in so much intellectual capital that other startups, my own included, were having trouble getting access to the elite techies at prices we could afford. Their salaries were well above market, and their options were clearly going to be worth more than everyone else' at the time. And don't even get me started on Facebook. That one of facebo…

This isn't an all-in-one or all-out thing. Of course money was a consideration.

But, Google (and sv 2.0 generally) did both present and to an extent, live up to a certain ethic. Not perfectly, not without some hypocrisy but they did have an ethic. The sold it to their employees (and others).

Today, they have trouble living up to it. People got disillusioned or upset. That is what we're talking about it.

I agree that these people joined a company, not a monestary. But, 10 years ago working at Google was easier to be proud of, on an ethical/esthetic level.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#154

Post by Sahbak »

jimmy1 wrote: post #133

Unpopular opinion: this is why the "dudebros" and their like keep getting hired. They are more than happy to do their work, accept their salary, and move on, and not have to turn everything into "changing the world"

I don't see the connection between dudebros and working to get a salary and not much more.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#155

Post by ryandrake »

EdgarVerona wrote: post #140
lolive wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering abilities does not imply political awareness. Making things work is surprisingly hard and (imho) a soul crushing process. You need a specific kind of people's profile for that. From my experience, the presence of a political vision alongside the engineering skills is much lower than expected. When both are present, the political vision does not come from a kind of enlightenment in the engineer's inner sou…

Very true. It is also easy to be so wrapped up in the trappings of what you're doing and the pleasure/sense of duty/sense of fulfillment you're getting from the actual act of your work and the compensation around it that you stop thinking about the consequences of your actions. This sounds terrible, but it's really just a small variant on the banality of evil. Solving problems, working on tight deadlines, and getting…

When I went to undergrad in the mid 90s there was a single, optional “social and ethical issues in computing” class which was a total joke. Hopefully today the situation is better, but I suspect not, given the truckloads of new grads year after year, all prepared to not worry so much about the ethics of how their products are being used.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#156

Post by s73v3r_ »

ekianjo wrote: post #11
artellectual wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has been the answer for last era. I think that’s why tech workers are starting to ask what we’re building it for. Because we’re here at this point because building “for money” is no longer good enough. Because what’s the point of having money when we’re cancer ridden and polluting our planet, and despite living in a rich planet people are starving, and the very resources that feed us are being destroyed. What’s…

> despite living in a rich planet people are starving A overused rhetoric that does not hold much ground when you realize that poverty is decreasing fast everywhere around, and faster than we expected it to. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/World-...

Yes, poverty is decreasing. That doesn't change the fact that people are starving, even right here in the United States, the richest nation on earth.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#157

Post by jimktrains2 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #143
jimktrains2 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still begging the question. How does one choose between doing something supports a questionably moral company (and what isn't a company without any moral baggage?) and keeping your family fed and warm? > Just because a decision is hard doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to make the right [choice] I think this is telling: you believe there is a correct choice in all situations, from all points of view. I…

>>You're still begging the question. How does one choose between doing something supports a questionably moral company (and what isn't a company without any moral baggage?) and keeping your family fed and warm? It all comes down to a very simple (although fundamental) question about your morality and character: do you believe ends justify the means?

> It all comes down to a very simple (although fundamental) question about your morality and character: do you believe ends justify the means?

It's also a question of morality: I obviously don't believe that all morally distasteful things are equal. AdWords is significantly less disasteful than my family starving.

I would bet that most people, probably even including you, find driving much less distastful than going without or moving to an area with and using public transit, even though it's significantly more efficient. Since moving out on my own, I've purposely have always lived on good transit lines and fight for better transit.

I would bet that most people, probably even including you, are OK purchasing cheap, foreign made items without a thought to the working conditions and environmental conditions that purchase is helping to enforce. I specifically seek out items made in countries with environmental regulations at least as strong as the US'.

I would bet that most people, probably even including you, are OK purchasing food raised in unsustainable ways, or that is significantly out of season. I became vegetarian and strive to buy as much as I can from local farms.

These are much more important to me than if I install an AdWords script on a website that's trivially easy to block by the end user. Do I wish I could convince people to use less invasive forms of advertising? Yes. Have I been successful? Not really. Have I found anywhere to work that doesn't have the same practices? No.

Please don't play this game of "just because you do something I don't like I'm morally better than you" game. We're all flawed and not one of us is living up completely of our moral standards.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#158

Post by s73v3r_ »

closeparen wrote: post #137
wazoox wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way we measure a "decreasing poverty" is extremely laden politically (like most things that are supposedly "neutrally evaluated" are supposed to be, just because they're represented as spreadsheets of numbers). We consider that a villager living from subsistence farming and therefore having almost no use for money to be part of the very poor, less than 1$/day crowd. Take this same peasant and send it working for…

If subsistence farming is preferable to being a cog in a market economy, why aren’t people switching in the opposite direction?

Well, for one, that would require you to be able to have land to do so. I would be shocked if many of these people had an actual, freely available choice on the matter.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#159

Post by C1sc0cat »

mbesto wrote: post #103
ryandrake wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the techies going to work for google, it was never about not being evil. It was about getting rich. Most "techies going to work for google" or any other tech firm, are not going to get rich, in the Bill Gates or Larry Ellison sense. Sure, techies (currently) have a good shot at an above average lifestyle, but that's it. Working as third engineer from the left is not going to provide generational wealth for thei…

> Most "techies going to work for google" or any other tech firm, are not going to get rich, in the Bill Gates or Larry Ellison sense. I can't speak for the OP, but there is absolutely a sense of getting rich working early at a tech company. The market for startup options is a direct indication of this. Google and Facebook both made, what..1000 millionaires each when they IPO'd? Point is, yes if you get in early to a…

Even in smaller company's you can do that at one UK place I worked at one point everyone (approx. 50-55) was $millionare.

That's 5% of your 1000 right there and I know peope who have made $200,000 effectively tax free on a single 5 year UK sharesave

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#160

Post by mempko »

saosebastiao wrote: post #151

Lately I've been experiencing some depression (under treatment), so maybe this is just the state of my mind right now, but is anyone else growing more and more cynical about the potential for changing the world, and adjusting their moral philosophy to compensate? I could barely impact how my former employer ran the company, and even though I had the company's best interests at heart the whole time, I faced resistance…

Where the world needs changing is it's suicidal path towards extreme climate change.
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