> ... but then Meta's lawyer tried to get the book suppressed and secured an injunction to prevent her from promoting it.
Sounds like the work of Barbra Streisand's PR firm LOL
Careless People
411–420 of 575 posts
Re: Careless People
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer science in high school. When getting to college and finding people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly excited to finally find such people, not scared away.
That’s not a common reaction with humans. When people are the best, there’s a huge serotonin rush. Like literally this is measurable in humans. Serotonin regulates dominance hierarchies and is associated with happiness. It’s so biological in nature that the same effect can be witnessed in lobsters. People or lobsters high in dominance have more serotonin and are generally happier. Your story is not only anomalous. Bu…
You sound like Jordan Peterson.
Re: Careless People
#413> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…
You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success. So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.
[dead]
Re: Careless People
#414> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…
John Major, who was prime minister of the UK in the 90s, has talked a bit about how isolated a position like that makes you, and how unprepared he was for it. Few of the normal pressures of life apply you in a position like that: you can't get fired (not really), you don't have to accept consequences (not really), and perhaps most importantly: you don't have anyone tell you "you idiot, that's fucking mental". No one that you can just dismiss anyway.
I can't find the interview right now, it was a while ago, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Major was a man in his 50s when he became PM. Zuck was in his early 20s. You have to wonder what that does to a person. People like Zuck are more or less like child actors that made it big: everyone bends over backwards to deepthroat them and they've got a view of the world that's just delusional. I'd feel sorry if it wasn't for the highly negative and caustic effects.
Re: Careless People
#415Don't mess with a Kiwi I guess :) That said FB sounds evil not careless.
Leave it to a Kiwi to be naive about someone's intentions. There's a reason New Zealand scores well on the corruption perception index. Emphasis on perception.
Re: Careless People
#416I’m only part of the way through the book, so have nothing to spoil here. But it’s entertaining. And shocking. The author will relate a scene that’s so absurd that you think “ah, this can’t be true, this is made up for dramatic effect, nobody would act like that” and then you Google it and you realize the absurd thing is totally true and was fully documented at the time. All the author is adding is a perspective from…
Did you find the author/narrator very unlikable?
[mild spoilers ahead]
I was tempted to stop reading after the shark attack story when she wakes up in the hospital and declares "I saved myself". Ugh. But I think it makes narrative sense: why would a good person stay at the company after all she has witnessed? It also makes the company leaders seem so much worse in comparison.
One more thing: Is it credible that she had such a high profile job for so long and still be worried about money?
Re: Careless People
#417I used the form on the author of the book's website a few weeks ago to invite her on our books podcast: https://sarahwynnwilliams.com She didn't respond, which is fair enough, it's probably not big enough to be interesting to her. But then I got auto-added to her PR mailing list. I didn't ask or consent to be on the PR mailing list (all the page says as of now is "To contact Sarah, please complete the form below"). S…
She certainly didn't code that contact form. Still an oversight from her, but...
But what? It’s her website and is ultimately responsible. “I didn’t code it” is not an excuse.
Re: Careless People
#418> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…
Deep-seated insecurity?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/elon-musk-almost-need...
Re: Careless People
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are some similar remarks on Bill Gates in another good memoir by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen [1]. Even on his school days, Gates was so sure he will not have a competition on Math, since he was the best at math at his school. When he went to Harvard, (which I somehow remember as Princeton(!) as pointed out by a commenter) and saw people better than him, he changed to applied math from Pure math. (Re…
Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer science in high school. When getting to college and finding people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly excited to finally find such people, not scared away.
In pure math at a school like Harvard, the standout kids like the ones in that quote are probably trying to become tenured math professors. There are very few such positions available. You can shoot for the stars, and if you succeed, make about the same as the average software engineer. More likely, get stuck a postdoc. So most students give up pure math at some point. If you realized you weren’t cut out for it in freshman year, you got a head start over the people who got a math phd before finding out the hard way.
This pressure didn’t exist in computer science because there were plenty of tech jobs for anyone competent (not sure if that’s still true in 2025). And you didn’t need to be a genius to build something cool.
Re: Careless People
#420here's a callous question: will it ever get to a tipping point where major businesses bail on react? is it already happening?
asking specifically because our backend is pretty much just esri and were heavily considering porting all of our web products to experience builder because of how robust it is these days. experience builder is on react, which sucks imo, but would be helpful to avoid getting the rug pulled on us