531–540 of 799 posts
Reminds me of one of the more brilliant passages in Snow Crash , describing work in "Fed Land"... ''' Y.T's mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this m…
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how much have you been saving so far? I talk to a lot of people that saved 10M$ and still feel this is not even close to enough.
If $10M or, hell, even $2M doesn't seem close to enough then there is no amount to satiate one's thirst for more money.
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I guess from my perspective there are even more dire problems in the US that I'm surprised people accept. But it seems they don't know, or care, or know that they should care. Perhaps it's the lack of proper authoritarian regime in the US' past that drives this. I believe the temporal proximity of such makes people aware of, and angry against, the many traps that such systems leave in their "law", so you can be impri…
Most people need to work to support themselves so it's quite inconvenient to single-handedly solve all of the problems in the US. Suggesting people simply don't know or care is very naive.
However a thing that changed is impact: A handful coal workers could interrupt work in significant ways.
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Meta is straight evil. It undermines the institutions of democracy and it negatively impacts its users mental health, all in service of selling your data to advertisers so they can better goad unnecessary consumption. If I learn you work at Meta, I will judge you as at best lacking a moral compass and treat you appropriately. Apple has problems, but is a lot closer to morally neutral. Ditto for Netflix. Amazon has ho…
This is a pretty uncharitable perspective. Most folks I know working at Meta or Amazon aren’t morally bankrupt. They just have kids, debt, poor parents with health problems, etc. They work at Meta to support their loved ones. And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay and benefits. Blame the tech oligarchs, not the workers.
Absolute bullshit.
> And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay
Oh no! They might only have to make mid-six figures! Welp, better give some teenage girls depression. They really don't have a choice, do they?
Zero good people work at Meta.
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There is more to life than money. I've turned down FANG roles my entire career, especially Meta. There is lot of work out there.
Of course there is more to life than money, but people still need some base amount of money to live safely, especially if you have a family. If you are working in SV then your "big" salary does not go very far, I know lots of developers making $350K and have very little savings cushion, and these are not people just blowing money. Most big enterprises get really good at paying you just enough to live comfortably, but…
It's not a naive question. In fact, the question is mostly rhetorical. We know the answer is money.
> Of course there is more to life than money, but people still need some base amount of money to live safely, especially if you have a family.
Are you trying to tell me that this base amount of money equals a FB salary? Don't be ridiculous.
The very point of ethical behavior is that you stick to your principles even if it may cause you financial or otherwise disadvantage. Sure, many people prefer more money, but this doesn't make their decision ethical.
I have a serious question to anyone working at Meta and reading this: HOW can you still work at this company!? Why don't you quit this very toxic company, and start working at another place or even on your own? I genuinely don't understand... Let just Meta die!
I think this is a unrealistic point of view. If Meta really were as draconian and toxic as many people make it seem, most smart people would have left. Market is tough right now, but then there were other times when jobs were booming. And people still joined Meta. Money is one big aspect. I am not saying Meta is a paradise. I completely want Meta to face their reckoning for what they have done to the world, but paint…
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Weirder than having a character just named Y.T. ?
'Yours Truly' seems banal when the main character is Hiro Protagonist. Self-debasing levity is one of the many reasons Snow Crash (1992) is a great reaction to Neuromancer (1984).
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There are tons of good reasons to work for Meta. You can work on interesting projects, build your resume and network, work on interesting engineering problems, learn from other people, and of course, they pay very well. People do need to support their family, secure their retirement and so on... Is it perfect? certainly not. Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? how much are you willing to compromise give…
Putting Meta next to Netflix in terms of moral culpability is in my opinion laughable. I don't disagree that there are reasons people compromise on things like the morality of their employer - tale as old as society itself. I do disagree that many people like Meta's services - the only things I have seen people like about Meta is Facebook Marketplace (which is really just Craig's List or eBay if you are looking at te…
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Or, Anduril. All the techbros love them some Lord of the Rings.
> All the techbros love them some Lord of the Rings. While being completely oblivious to the literary themes. But as the meme goes, tech bro philosophy is just sophomore know-it-all-shallowly-ism. Because reading deeply would require spending more time, which is a well-known anti-pattern.
> I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
but overall Tolkien was against war, being a veteran of WWI himself, and the LOTR saga is about the heroism of the meek.
Peter Thiel clearly loves the sword for its sharpness, it drips from everything his companies do.