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The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

chris-martin.org

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Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#221

Post by pixl97 »

ryandrake wrote: post #73
swatcoder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, we've reached the point where a generation of new adults take janky technology as normal, both as consumers and producers. Their entire life was in an environment where nothing was stable or cohesive or efficient and everything was either "free" or rented. They don't recognize what they're missing or why it might matter. So as consumers they don't know to care when you build better stuff, and as produc…

> Surely, there's plenty of opportunity for the rest of us to keep quietly rescuing these janky projects Once our generation (the rest of us) is in the ground, there will be nobody alive that even remembers that software can be made with high quality. Nobody who's ever seen really fast performing software, software that didn't crash unexpectedly, software that didn't eat your battery and storage space, software that…

>Once our generation (the rest of us) is in the ground, there will be nobody alive that even remembers that software can be made with high quality.

Please tell me, when was this mythical era? Most software has sucked and been balls forever. Windows, why is my screen blue? MacOS, why do I have a bomb icon? Linux/Unix, why don't I have desktop apps and why doesn't my sound card work?

Almost all corporate/sold software is laden with too many untested features, and always has been. Fast purpose built software is uncommon as your average user wants features.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#222

Post by pixl97 »

arnaudsm wrote: post #32
HKH2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear if you mean #1 in quality or popularity. I'll assume you mean the latter. Is Windows really that unstable?

I meant popularity. My brand new Win11 laptop freezes or crashes all the time. My relatives laptops too. It's slower every year, even on high-end hardware.

"New" Windows laptops have always crashed unless you carefully purchase your units carefully and generally remove any manufacture trash installed with them. Consumer laptops are especially bad. Meanwhile I've purchased and supported thousands of business grade laptops with a much lower rate of incidents, but they are typically more conservative with the cutting edge hardware and have better bios/uefi support.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#223

Post by tristor »

eej71 wrote: post #97
jglamine wrote: post #52

This essay is weird. The author lumps James Damore, rank-and-file software engineer, in with Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg. Damore hasn't updated his LinedIn since 2018 - he might not even work in tech anymore? It closes saying they need to stop reliving their glory days and be good fathers and not the town drunk. Those are serious accusations - being a bad father and a drunk. The author doesn't give any eviden…

The Free Press recently did an interview with him. https://www.thefp.com/p/google-memo-james-damore-vindication... Basically he has kept a very low profile.

I would love to read it but it's paywalled behind a subscription and they've been able to break the way archivers like archive.is strip paywalls.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#224

Post by tristor »

acdha wrote: post #138
jglamine wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's uncharitable. He was a regular SWE who got cancelled. Granted I have not followed him closely but I haven't seen him claim to be a genius or special. Sure he went to Harvard, maybe he had wealthy parents (IDK his background) but neither of those are crimes. I don't think he's the activist people make him out to be. He went on a few podcasts early on but has generally kept a low profile. I'm not under t…

> was a regular SWE who got cancelled. Granted I have not followed him closely but I haven't seen him claim to be a genius or special. He did more than that. It wasn’t that he had the opinion that women were innately less qualified but that he tried to repeatedly discuss that at work after being told not to. It wasn’t just that he was wrong about the biology (to be clear, he was[1]) but that he wanted to have a publi…

>He did more than that. It wasn’t that he had the opinion that women were innately less qualified

He never said that in his letter. The memo was published unredacted. You can definitely disagree with what he said and there are many reasons to do so, but you should at least reference his actual statements and arguments when doing that.

> but that he tried to repeatedly discuss that at work after being told not to.

That is also not true. My understanding is the memo was a report in response to a request from a committee he was part of and wasn't intended to be more widespread. It was leaked inside Google and then outside Google and then people demonized him and he got fired. That's pretty much the high-level set of events. He definitely did not write this after being explicitly told not to, especially "repeatedly" per basically every piece of evidence about the entire kerfuffle.

I'm not a Damore apologist either, but like the sibling it really pisses me off when I see someone just straight up strawmanning or lying about what someone else did to smear them. The man was already blackballed from the entire tech industry and had to leave the country after being fired, mostly for saying factually true statements that are controversial because of the color he (and others) added to them. Isn't that enough? Do you have to lie about what he said, when it was published publicly and anyone can read it for themselves?

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#225

Post by dtnewman »

chiffre01 wrote: post #152
dtnewman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that their empires are now all they'll ever be Eh, Mark Zuckerberg is 40. Facebook is planting seeds in some pretty ambitious places (VR/AR + AI). To put that into perspective, Elon Musk is 53 now, but he was ~40 when the Falcon 9 first launched for SpaceX and the Model S was released at Tesla. In June 2012, when the S was released, Tesla was worth about 0.7% of what it is now. Elon Musk was certainly rich…

I put Facebook in the same category as Google. They have all of these flashy projects, but at the end of the day they never get beyond serving advertisements. It's their core competency and always will be.

- Amazon made AWS - Microsoft went from Operating Systems to a cloud company - Even Google has Waymo, which might develop into a large company by itself - Apple was founded in 1976. They really weren't the powerhouse that they are until the iPhone came out. - Netflix went from mailing DVDs to streaming

Of course most pivots don't work and there's selection bias here. BUT, it's not unheard of for business models to change. And it certainly helps that Zuck is the original founder and has controlling shares.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#226

Post by dzink »

layer8 wrote: post #196
dzink wrote: post #91

Some potential causes of the scarcity of breakthroughs in the last 10 years: 1. "What got you here won't get you there." The problems that need solved today might require a different mindset/level of experience and that may not be in people with enough time or circumstances to build, or enough likeness to the old model be funded by VCs. 2. Distractions galore - Social media and trillions poured into the distraction e…

Good points, but what happened to 5 and 6?

A test of who is paying attention :) and #2

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#227

Post by yowlingcat »

You can make a critique of the flimsier parts of anti-DEI fashions with substance but I don't think this is one of them. There are so many questionable assumptions and strawmen layered into the end conclusion that it's hard to tell whether the objection is with morality or taste.

For example:

- Responsible people have responsibilities -- what is this tautology supposed to mean? That they can no longer value vitality or views on what style of life makes it worth living?

- The internet is no longer the world's great frontier -- according to whom? It is certainly the case that the old frontiers of the internet have either imploded or been thoroughly domesticated, but the internet is now thousands or millions of times larger than in its early days, so it's hard to say that frontiers (plural) are gone rather than one is simply not trying hard enough to find them.

- Chance is a great factor in success - a belief to be sure but not an observation; chance is often a factor in success, but it's not often a factor in downward mobility (which is extraordinarily common across the classes). It's easy to blame chance for negative outcomes, but it's hard to fully test and regularly exercise (or gradually expand) the limits of what is in one's control.

- Long gone are the days of the solo "great mover" - how does this couch with solopreneurs vibe coding their way with gen AI to large independent businesses and lean organizations that have very quickly built the highest revenue/employee at the highest growth rates in history? If anything, individuals are inordinately empowered with tools today that didn't actually exist in usable form 3-6 months ago nevermind a year ago.

For a piece of writing that talks so confidently about how stuck in the past others are, it's hard not to question whether the author themself is stuck in the past in some way.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#228

Post by toomuchtodo »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #195
steveBK123 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah an unsurprisingly large percent of self-styled.. self-made billionaires certainly came from close to or actual millionaire backgrounds. I suppose it shouldn't be terribly surprising as being successful requires hard work & a good idea. But it REALLY REALLY HELPS to also have a risk appetite, capital, and connections.. which are what coming from even moderate wealth provides.

>it REALLY REALLY HELPS to also have a risk appetite, capital, and connections.. which are what coming from even moderate wealth provides. I graduated in 2008, and I watched classmates make the 'insane' decision to risk it all and go off and try to found startups. Inevitably, some failed, but to my shock it wasn't the end of the world for them? In one case the 'bank of mom and dad' paid rent until they got back on th…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076

"Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#229

Post by 9rx »

quadhome wrote: post #142

Rich men age into conservatism. Tale as old as time.

The opposite is taking place with a couple of notable old rich men in particular, though. They aren't hesitant of change at all. They want to see everything change and are doing all they can to see that change happens. It is the rest of the world that has become conservative in light of their actions, praying they will stop.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#230

Post by chneu »

jimmydddd wrote: post #215
mandevil wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest thing is about "Amazon was started in a garage" is that Jeff Bezos had worked at hedge fund D.E. Shaw (founded in 1989) from 1990-1994 (that's where he met MacKenzie, she was an admin staff, he was a finance guy). So he had hedge fund money already before he founded Amazon.

Unpopular take. While I agree with the sentiment, I still think it took some fortitude to walk away from the golden handcuffs of a successful finance career to do an Internet startup at that time. Bezos said he ran the idea past his boss at the time, and the boss said something like "that's a good idea, but not for someone who already has a great job like you." So I do applaud him for that. Bloomberg made a similar t…

Nonsense. He had comfort and security to fall back on. His family was also loaded.

He wasn't walking away from anything. He would have been fine if it didn't work.

The reality is he had a safety net to fall back on. 99% of people do not.

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