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Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

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Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#231

Post by matheusmoreira »

sumtechguy wrote: post #224
matheusmoreira wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Why would anyone do things that reduce their own leverage? Assuming rewards proportional to the value of one's work is magical thinking. "If I save a company $100,000, they will give me a significant portion of it." No such deal exists! They're just as likely to give us raises and bonuses as they are to pocket the profits for themselves and assign us even more work.

I have a nice coffee mug that I got for the end of a multi million dollar deal. I dont drink coffee. They would not have got that deal done without me. As I was one of two people on the planet who knew how that code worked and the other dude left years earlier. They then wondered why my productivity jumped off a cliff.

I'm so sorry. You deserved so much better than that.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#232

Post by matheusmoreira »

wutbrodo wrote: post #222
matheusmoreira wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Why would anyone do things that reduce their own leverage? Assuming rewards proportional to the value of one's work is magical thinking. "If I save a company $100,000, they will give me a significant portion of it." No such deal exists! They're just as likely to give us raises and bonuses as they are to pocket the profits for themselves and assign us even more work.

I have been thinking this for the last decade of reading this perspective on HN, but it's worth saying: if this is true, it's at best a dramatically bimodal situation. The incredibly-slack labor market this describes wasn't reflective of my experience or that of anybody I knew as of ten years ago. After a decade of tightening in that market, this is even less true. As I said, it's likely bimodal: certain geographies/…

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying this isn't your experience?

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#233

Post by mathgladiator »

dawnerd wrote: post #84

I mentioned something we built at work and got the typical HN nitpick about it and decided to never bring anything else up again. If something is open source and you don’t like just move along.

The excess of negativity is a problem, and I think it has to due with intelligence in this field developing WAY before emotional maturity.

My opinion is that negativity should be proportional to the stakes.

You try to sell me an expensive product via cold call, then sure be negative.

You try to give me a neat idea for free shared on a website for sharing, then maybe we should all be appreciative of the sharing.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#234

Post by [deleted] »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #170
literallyWTF wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what? What makes you think the leaders/rulers of our society will then somehow “pay us back”? You’ll just end up broke and without a job.

2/3 of all jobs are widely accepted to add no value to society[1] 2/3 of all consumption is accepted to add no incremental happiness[2] 2/3 of all CO2 emissions can be eliminated through careful lifestyle management and community design.[3] These quantities do not seem coincidental and they point to a better way of doing things. You're not wrong, there's no incentive currently to 'pay us back'. But collectively we ar…

[deleted]

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#235

Post by wing-_-nuts »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #194
literallyWTF wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave it to HN to argue that getting rid of jobs will reduce the carbon footprint of corporations. I mean you’re not wrong, once we purge a large chunk of the population, since ya know, they’ll have no way to provide for themselves, we will have a much greener planet.

Are you for paying people to do work that doesn't add value and consuming crap that doesn't make us happy? Because I said nothing about 'purging' or any solutions at all for that matter. I just pointed out that these three problems are in an important way just one problem. I'd actually seriously like to know, do you want people to have to do work that doesn't add value?

I think what he's saying is that we will probably never build safety nets strong enough to provide for those who had their jobs automated away. They will be condemned to a miserable life of poverty, provided with just enough to keep them from rioting on the streets.

Source: I used to be on SSI disability. This is income for those that are so disabled they are never expected to be capable of working. The average SSI payment is something like $585 / mo. Well below the poverty line and any dignified existence. If this is how we treat our most vulnerable, how will we treat those who have simply been automated out of a job?

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#237

Post by mindcrime »

wffurr wrote: post #92
mindcrime wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't understand this sentiment at all. I have no idea what any of what you're posting has to do with "well intentions" or "money mak[ing] people do anything". Pretty sure they're saying that the YT developers would break their cool hack if they knew about it, because they want to keep their jobs (eg, getting paid, or "making money"). Sounds like the OP wants to view all developers as adhering to some Platonic ideal…

That's... incredibly naive. And I don't think YouTube dislikes are a clear-cut case of "bad thing done for money". It can easily be argued either way. It's also naive to think that YouTube developers don't already know about said hacks / workarounds.

That's... incredibly naive.

Naive, or just abstract? I think most of us can agree that at some level of abstraction we would prefer that people put ideals and principles over banal concerns like money. It simply happens to be the case that, as of today, we don't live in a world that makes it easy to live that way.

Let's also not get too caught up in this Youtube thing. If I'm interpreting this correctly, that was just an example of a more general idea, not the sole topic of discussion.

It's also naive to think that YouTube developers don't already know about said hacks / workarounds.

Sure, but that doesn't mean they're going to prioritize dealing with it, unless somebody calls attention to it by, for example, posting about it on HN. I think the OP has a valid point that sometimes people have some $THING they might sorta want to talk about, but ultimately decide not to post here, because undue attention could be detrimental to $THING.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#238

Post by popcube »

wccrawford wrote: post #211
willcipriano wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I have is how did incentives get so misaligned that this person feels that doubling the productivity of all their peers is unlikely to be worth the effort of presenting a tool.

It's simple: What's the company's response to the tool? Is it a percentage of the money saved? Absolutely not. Is it a raise? Unlikely. Is it a pat on the back? Maybe. Is it more work, and a lot of pain supporting the tool in ways it was never meant to be used? Absolutely. And it'll also mean a larger workload and more stress now that the company knows how much easier the job is now. With that outlook, why would they…

and maybe let colleagues get fired because they do not need anymore worker...

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#239

Post by unclebucknasty »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #166
Hekioi wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to do bullshit work just to be entertained. I want a society were no one needs to work and we only reach it when the amount of people we need is getting so much less that our society needs to rethink this "work". Without a job? My work ethic is to work in a way that I'm not needed. And still I'm needed but instead of doing the same old shit everyday I can innovate because I don't need to fix old shitty w…

You're actually right. The goal is to automate all work to the point there is no need for an economy. In a post-scarcity society there is no need to economize. However, it's a mistake to believe the rich and powerful will allow such a society to exist since they'd be powerless in it. They will impose artificial scarcity on it in order to maintain the existence of capitalism and their fortunes. Just look at how copyri…

>it's a mistake to believe the rich and powerful will allow such a society to exist since they'd be powerless in it.

I'm having trouble imagining how such a transition would even look. I mean, do we still have some sort of recognition of property rights for existing property? If not, then how are the currently owned resources "freed"?

If so, then the wealthy would still be wealthy and there'd still be "classes". So, I'm not sure they'd mind so much, but for consideration of their offspring (which I don't discount).

In either case, how do we go about allocating future resources?

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#240

Post by davehcker »

Sorry to read about such experiences people might have had, but I actually have had the exact opposite experience. I made few submissions/comments about 'dev' things, and because of the support of the HNers, I felt really good and was even more excited to work on them.

First was a firefox plugin, and the first plugin I ever wrote. It basically bans some results from google. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295989

Second is my current moonshot I'm working on where I was expecting a lot of criticisms and negative comments, especially from programmers/devs in the AI space (Fully AI driven indoor farm, kind of deep mind for agriculture and understanding plants better than any human). But the largely positive feedback of the community was really energizing and uplifting.

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