I respect Moxie a lot and it greatly diminishes my opinion of him that he agreed to be part of this. I hope he got paid a lot for this, and that he’s plowing the money back into something worthwhile.
What the fuck happened to nerds
11–20 of 118 posts
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#12100% agreed. I saw it somewhere else that the tech industry has burned all the transformative good will it had earned over the years and is now seen as the key villain in joblessness, societal discord and loneliness. What the fuck did happen? Edit: this isn't just an old man thing, this is the new generation saying this
To be terse but generalizing a bit, technologists used to want to solve problems and make things easier. At some point, under the influence of MBAs it became how do we make loads of money leveraging technology’s network effects?
At least in the US, most tech leaders and middle managers never did an MBA. Most are engineers who climbed the ladder into management.
Edit: Can't reply
> “Making money off of shareware” is no longer enough
Based on this I am guessing you are at least 10-15 years older than me and probably grew up in the 1980s and experienced the 1990s internet
> how do we make this company into an investment multiplier
> It’s a different mentality. It about unicorns or bust now
This is how startup funding has been since the beginning. You sure as hell weren't raising from Bessemer or Sequoia in the 2000s without also being able to answer whether you had a path to successful monetization.
Why would anyone give you their money if you cannot justify how you would make them more money?
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#13It's a shift in mindset and feels a bit "man yells at clouds". I think this really underestimates how jarring Jobs and his peers were to the older generation of techies who themselves were jarring to the even older ones (eg. remember all the hate Jobs and Gates would receive from Stallman types?). I also think OP fails to understand how much more competitive tech culture is now. Visit and talk with undergrads at a to…
> Honestly, I like it. It reminds me of the culture I'd find amongst my Chinese peers in the 2000s and 2010s when they built China.
I dont like it. It might have built china but this isnt what built modern america. I dont think this focus on personal achievement, rather than slowing down and doing societal good is conducive to creating new technologies. Its hard to monetize new technologies, so if your in it to make the number go up, then youll just copy and optimize what already exists. You need to want to help people to make new things
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#14Oh that's easy... "money".
When it was just about the "love of technology" and the building of the skills involved, things were different...
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#15I think the comments that the tech industry was always a bit terrifying and this piece can both be accurate. It is the case that the public perception has changed significantly due to lighting trust on fire and that the trust might not have been that deserved in the first place.
The asset liquidation analogy is perfect. For about the past ten year, I think the Cambridge Analytica hearings are a good turning point, tech has realized that their warm and fuzzy persona is no longer valuable cultivating and so there’s been a very rapid burn down of that persona into the hyper capitalist power hungry one we have today. It has always been the case that money and power were motivating factors but until that was laid fully bare there was value in pretending like it wasn’t the only factor.
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#16Oh that's easy... "money". When it was just about the "love of technology" and the building of the skills involved, things were different...
Exactly, not just money for founders but money for engineers themselves. The same thing that attracted these personalities to other fields in the past (sales, business, etc.) which made the most money now attract them to tech.
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#17100% agreed. I saw it somewhere else that the tech industry has burned all the transformative good will it had earned over the years and is now seen as the key villain in joblessness, societal discord and loneliness. What the fuck did happen? Edit: this isn't just an old man thing, this is the new generation saying this
Technologists don't control technology, and many technologists foolishly think that staying out of politics is some kind of virtue, just like how people scientists should only science. Then we find that scientists don't control science anymore.
Politics is about the negotiation of control.
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#18Money and power corrupts, that’s what you need to know.
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#19Oh that's easy... "money". When it was just about the "love of technology" and the building of the skills involved, things were different...
Yup. Once something starts making money the tourists come in and ruin everything.
Re: What the fuck happened to nerds
#20I have an imperfect "canary in the coalmine" test for whether/where the principled/idealist nerds have the power vs the mercenary/cynical nerds have the power:
Advertisers vs Ad Blockers - as long as the Ad Blockers are blocking the vast majority of junk, I feel like team principles is winning. Like they have more nerd power to outsmart the lesser nerds working on team mercenary.
But there are places like Facebook where that is not the case. And even in Youtube, team mercenaries has recently won some territory from team principles.