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Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#31

Post by EliRivers »

treerock wrote: post #12
swiley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that pre 20th century companies just existed as a legal and organizational convenience in order to help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit.

I'm curious. I've read a few (mostly fictional) accounts of early companies, and the drive for profit seemed stronger (if anything) than it is now.

Companies began as a means to have an endeavour progress while the people involved changed [0]. The nature of the endeavour could be profit, but by no means had to be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#History

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#32

Post by kopo »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #3

For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the end they will do everything for money.

I think the quote goes recognition and praise trumps sex and money.

Guys join the army for what? Loose their lives for what?

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#33

Post by fsloth »

For the over the decade I've been a software engineer I've always strived to work in products with a value proposition for the end user that I can understand.

I can't understand how anyone could work without this understanding and not get their soul crushed. Maybe I'm just sensitive or underpaid.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#34

Post by monsieurbanana »

Wintamute wrote: post #17
artellectual wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has been the answer for last era. I think that’s why tech workers are starting to ask what we’re building it for. Because we’re here at this point because building “for money” is no longer good enough. Because what’s the point of having money when we’re cancer ridden and polluting our planet, and despite living in a rich planet people are starving, and the very resources that feed us are being destroyed. What’s…

For money is good enough for me. You probably doubt me, but I'm not callous, mercenary or indifferent to the experiences of others - I'm just buying into a system that is objectively working. Spend some time clicking through https://ourworldindata.org/ ... we're not doing as badly as you seem to suggest.

Yeah, mankind is in overall in the best shape it's ever been, and the numbers reflect that across many metrics.

But what about climat change? We've improved so much across so many areas, surely that'll offset a few more degrees across the globe? It's just one metric among so many where we're doing great.

What if it doesn't? How will we cope in 50 years with hundreds of millions of landless refugees? Right now we can't. Are we doing so great that in 50 years we will?

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#35

Post by adventured »

treerock wrote: post #12
swiley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that pre 20th century companies just existed as a legal and organizational convenience in order to help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit.

I'm curious. I've read a few (mostly fictional) accounts of early companies, and the drive for profit seemed stronger (if anything) than it is now.

I've read just about every non-fiction account I can get my hands on about business in the ~1850-1930 era. The drive for profit during the industrial revolution, was radically stronger than it is today. The giants of industry back then openly lusted after success, it was culturally acceptable to behave that way (right up to the point where you were dominant, then the people turned against you). They made no apologies for the all-out pursuit of profit back then. Rockefeller dressed it up slightly, by proclaiming that god wanted him to be rich, that to be wealthy was glorious. The so called robber barons lived in openly ostentatious ways that today's rich in the US would mostly never dream of; today most of them go out of their way to pretend they're not so rich and to hide it. Open shows of wealth today are considered closer to vulgarity, crude, disgusting, etc. Back then, it was far less widely believed that wealth was stolen from 'the people'; today, it's widely believed that the rich are all thieves in some considerable manner. There was no welfare state at all, income taxes were extremely low or non-existent, so the accumulation of wealth happened far faster. Companies often paid extremely high dividends 10 to 20 times higher than is normal today.

Tactics, when it came to dealing with competition, were far beyond anything you see today. There were few regulations in the US, so companies were free to devise all manners of schemes to best their competitors. The treatment of labor in the pursuit of profit, was similarly far more brutal (there's really no comparison, Amazon's warehouse workers are treated like kings compared to sweatshop workers back then).

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#36

Post by netcan »

At least to some extent, this is a "Hegelian pendulum."

In the beginning there where black suited corporate drones. They coded black and white "calculation solutions" for the enterprising enterprise.

Then came colour. Gates wanted cheap computers on every desk. Jobs wanted colour computers for every artist. Mission. Meaning. This worked better, especially if you needed employees to invent things. Can't invent the iPhone wearing a suit writing business requiremnt compendiums.

Startups hired world changers and made a customer and emloyee happiness index. Google wrote "Don't be evil" on a chalkboard. Gmail was better than outlook. All was good.

Then some tension surfaced. Advertisers thought they would be happier tracking users. Users thought this was creepy. Making generals happy did not make employees happy. Someone erased "don't be evil" from the blackboard.

Back to square one.

Google (and "SV") have spent 2 decades telling everyone about their open and selfless ideologies. People bought it. They went to work for Google instead of a bank. Now, they use euphemisms and secrecy to avoid saying stuff that sounds bad.

Btw... It's interesting how iconic "don't be evil" was as a slogan. They couldn't live up to it, but that doesn't mean it didn't impact.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#37

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Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#38

Post by abledon »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #3

For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the end they will do everything for money.

The point of business should be for the betterment of humanity, not money

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#39

Post by roenxi »

swiley wrote: post #5
pleasecalllater wrote: post #3

For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the end they will do everything for money.

I was under the impression that pre 20th century companies just existed as a legal and organizational convenience in order to help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit.

If anyone knows what I'm trying to say and can put it in clearer words that'd be lovely, I think I'm missing an important linking idea here. Anyway...

Imagine there are two paths from A to B (the left and right path). 100 people walk from A to B. Half take the left and half the right, and none of them have any information not in this paragraph.

There are wolves on the left path. Everyone who travels it gets eaten. Now, at B, we have 50 people. They all chose the right path voluntarily, they all made a choice. None of them knew about the wolves though. How do we catagorise this situation in term of having and not having made a "real" choice? I argue that in practice, whatever the people were thinking when they chose B was irrelevant, because they didn't know the thing that actually mattered and they didn't have a proxy variable for it.

With that setup, I'd argue companies that "help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit" are a lot like my right path, in that the people may not have been focused on maximising profits, but if they didn't achieve them they wouldn't have lasted long. By evolution, there will be a decided drift towards companies maximising profits even if all the individuals actually making the choices think they are doing something real (or I suppose, the converse where they think that their job is meaningless).

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#40

Post by abledon »

kopo wrote: post #32
pleasecalllater wrote: post #3

For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the end they will do everything for money.

I think the quote goes recognition and praise trumps sex and money. Guys join the army for what? Loose their lives for what?

They join the army to protect their nation and the privileges we have. So your family can have dinner at night without worrying about people from a neighboring land busting in and stealing your property , kidnapping murdeing raping family etc

They are people who are signing up for a job whose work benefits are medium probability of making their spouses widows and single parents overnight

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