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We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

entrepreneur.com

11–20 of 23 posts

Re: We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

#12
Relevant to this conversation

>So, I ask, why, exactly, is Cognition worth $10 billion? And why did it have to raise $300 million after raising “hundreds of millions” according to Bloomberg in March? Where is the money going? It doesn’t seem to have great revenue, Carl Brown of the Internet of Bugs revealed it faked the demo of “Devin the AI powered software developer” last year, and Devin doesn’t even rank on SWE-benchmark, the industry standard for model efficacy at coding tasks.

[1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/

Re: We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

#13
I will not forget Argo AI trying to convince me that if I stayed with the company for four years, by then my equity would be worth an estimated $700,000. I made it just over a year in stressful, high-pressure environment, with a toxic manager; I knew it was time for my weekly one-on-one because my heart rate monitor would start giving me warnings. He loved to humiliate individual employees in our scrum team meetings; at one point I called him out on it and demanded that he apologize for his unprofessional bullying. He actually did, but our working relationship was never good after that.

Anyway, my enormous efforts and long hours got me a "meets expectations" review. The company imploded just after I completed that first year, and so my equity was worth nothing. Good times!

Re: We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

#15
post #8

Ever since the recent AI fad, more and more of these types of people have come out of the woodwork. Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use…

This is so much better than a decade ago! No underhanded "we're a family" - the company says "you will work 60 hours a week and take a big risk" and employees can say yes or no.

Re: We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

#17
post #8

Ever since the recent AI fad, more and more of these types of people have come out of the woodwork. Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use…

The depressing reality is none of these people actually believe in their vaunted missions or purposes or whatever nonsense they spout to justify the exploitation of their employees, they believe in money, and are willing to say and do absolutely anything to get it.

Re: We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

#18
post #8

Ever since the recent AI fad, more and more of these types of people have come out of the woodwork. Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use…

I think it is more of a function of the new political reality. Companies see a rare opportunity to roll back hard won worker rights and they are going for it.

Re: We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

#19
post #17
post #8

Ever since the recent AI fad, more and more of these types of people have come out of the woodwork. Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use…

The depressing reality is none of these people actually believe in their vaunted missions or purposes or whatever nonsense they spout to justify the exploitation of their employees, they believe in money, and are willing to say and do absolutely anything to get it.

I'm not so sure about that, at least not for all of them. Same with cryptocurrencies: there seem to be plenty of folks who really seem to believe all the nonsense. I'm not entirely sure what's worse: the true believers who think they're on a mission from God, or the cynical nihilists who view the world as their person wankdoll to use and abuse.

Of course, with the promise of "we're going to improve the world, and oh yeah, you're going to be rich while improving the world" there's a huge amount of incentive to rationalise anything. Mix with plenty of FOMO and you've got a recipe for some pretty crazy stuff.

Re: We Don't Believe in Work-Life Balance

#20
Oh ffs, these guys again?! See "Devin demo". It's very disappointing this person continues to be given a platform to spout heinous bullshit.

FWIW, I don't believe in work/life balance over short intervals as I feel intensity beats consistency, BUT work/life balance over long (months) intervals is absolutely critical to being a healthy decent human.

One also must consider timing wrt perceived opportunity costs. It's fine for folks with real skin in the game to make these sorts of decisions for themselves, but it's amoral to force them upon others who are playing the same game for vastly different stakes.

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