Don't Take the Black Pill [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#171

Post by goodpoint » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:34 AM UTC

dpark wrote: post #77

ianbutler wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is really entirely true. Everyone who isn't a FAANG or Frontier Lab seem to be absolutely starving for good talent. It's far more often that I hear "we interviewed someone we thought looked good and they couldn't even write a for loop, where are all the good engineers". I think you have far more leverage than you think in most places still.

> * Everyone who isn't a FAANG or Frontier Lab seem to be absolutely starving for good talent.* I think this is largely a pay gap problem. There’s a bit of prestige involved (why work for random corp’s dev dept when you could work at FAANG) but a huge part is that most those random corps are paying way less. The best talent generally goes where the money is.

It's not just pay gap. A lot of FAANGs treat employees as very disposable and fire people with an email, but at least provide learning opportunities, growth, have budget for projects... other companies can be much worse.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#172

Post by spacechild1 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:36 AM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #160

Lerc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This not a rare thing to express. There are a lot of people raised under conservative Christian environments who have spent a considerable amount of time recovering from this. It is not surprising that they feel the need to express something of the journey that has dominated much of their early life. Taylor Tomlinson puts much of this into her comedy. She often asks the audience to call out if they were similarly scr…

If I talked about how I needed to recover from being raised in a progressive environment, it would not be so well received in well-respected tech circles. There's an assymetry here no one wants to acknowledge.

I don't know anyone who had to "recover" from being raised by "progressive" parents. Is this actually a thing? What would there be to recover from exactly?

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#173

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:38 AM UTC

baranul wrote: post #121

enbugger wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think such comment are the exact reason why "the speaker" has quit HN. This is literally some AI transcription from the video + "I find this interesting". Why is this even in the top?

> why "the speaker" has quit HN Quitting HN[1] might have more to do with feeling he and Zig had already harvested the maximum benefit and marketing propaganda usage for elevating itself, including using it to thoroughly smear its C alternative language competitors. Thus, it came time to figuratively give HN the middle finger while on top (selling high before the stock may fall). Many might not have done a review of…

[deleted]

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#174

Post by wofo » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:39 AM UTC

mdgld wrote: post #107

wofo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the talk and was about to post a link to it in the $dayjob slack, but this threw me off as well. Still watched it to the end, and I still recommended it to a friend (along with the Youtube channel of the "Software should work" conf), but I'm saddened that the talk paints Christianity as something that is inflicted upon you and that you should strive to get rid of. It's clear that he had a bad experience, and…

You’re talking in general about your faith, when this presenter was talking about their specific experience of being raised by conservative Christian parents. I’m not even Christian, and it’s plain to me that there’s massive variation even within one denomination’s congregants, let alone a Baptist vs a Lutheran, for example. It seems like you extrapolated far beyond what he said.

> I’m not even Christian, and it’s plain to me that there’s massive variation even within one denomination’s congregants, let alone a Baptist vs a Lutheran

That's a fair point I agree with. Still, I've met many people who seemingly put all "flavors" of Christian faith in the same negative bucket (implicitly negating the diversity among Christians you call out in your comment). In light of that, my intention was to contribue to the conversation with the very same point you are making, backed by a data point from my own experience: that there are many Christian communities in which faith is practiced in a way that enriches your life, rather than shackling you to a cult.

> It seems like you extrapolated far beyond what he said.

Was it Andrew's intention to talk about Christianity in general? Now you mention it, he might indeed have been focusing only on people "raised by conservative Christian parents".

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#175

Post by goodpoint » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:42 AM UTC

leecommamichael wrote: post #28

> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this…

Religious trauma is documented in psychology. People suffer when they are indoctrinated by their parents.

> this just feels mean and divisive from the perspective of a conservative OR a Christian

If they feel offended maybe they should ask themselves some hard questions instead of demanding the speaker to hide his experience.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#176

Post by scott01 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:46 AM UTC

This is an amazing and inspiring talk. Humanising and empathetic, especially when compared to the vast majority of other related content.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#177

Post by scott01 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:47 AM UTC

smalltorch wrote: post #15

Generally agreed with most of the points. Building software that serves you only...and then sharing with others is like serving others. It's good stuff and we need more of it. I'm not sure how the deconversion of his faith needed to be conflated as related to the main ideas, especially when the next point was about weilding technology for good or evil in the next point as if these aren't pre-existing realities of our…

This was a prelude to his argument for needing a set of moral standards.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#178

Post by wofo » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:53 AM UTC

leecommamichael wrote: post #108

burner54828182 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think he’s trying to gain your approval, if that’s what you mean.

After reading some other comments on what I wrote, I guess I'm just surprised if/that he doesn't know this will offend people, and I see a simple way to make his point without doing so.

Thanks a lot for the effort you've been putting into your comments! It's not often you come across someone on the internet who wants to have a honest conversation and at the same time has empathy with the real-world people at the other end of the cable. Keep it up!

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#179

Post by AussieWog93 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:54 AM UTC

spudlyo wrote: post #19

So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark. Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such…

In defence of management, there is definitely a pattern of engineers (or employees in general, really) spending inordinate amounts on time doing something that they find personally gratifying but adds no real value to the product/business.

I've been guilty of this myself.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#180

Post by cambaceres » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 11:15 AM UTC

helloplanets wrote: post #33

In the same vein, Jonathan Blow's modestly named "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko Crazy how time flies, given that talk is seven years old at this point. But could've been given today, with the points being more relevant than ever.

This concept of knowledge degenerating between generations is relevant for software developmnent of today, since many junior developers have a hard time finding a job and if they do they just prompt the AI until they get a result.