831–840 of 1001 posts
interesting to see this leaked a few weeks after the valve one ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274 ), albeit unrelated. if an actual one, to me it is another interesting perspective inside the minds of a privately-owned, internet-based party that hold a significant mind-share in its domain.
There are lot of comments here disliking MrBeast and what not, but some of the advice can definitely apply to all organizations. > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUB…
>I see it all the time in large organizations, where different teams forget what the goal of the company is and instead get hyperfocused on their teams KPI's to the detriment of the company as a whole. I thought it was well understood that this kind of misalignment is the cost of someone afraid to admit outloud what the goal is. Mr. Beast, like Hollywood production companies before him, can say "don't forget, your jo…
This feels to me like an intentionally hostile reading of the content. I think all of us have had the experience of working with a co-worker who is either brilliant but extremely prone to going down rabbit holes, or a co-worker who seems to have a completely different idea of what we’re doing than everyone else. “Make the best YouTube videos possible, not the highest quality” is the same sentiment behind “eventually you have to actually ship your software”. It’s the same sentiment behind the derision in the term “architecture astronaut”. It’s the same sentiment behind the “worse is better” axiom. It’s the same sentiment behind “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. In other words you need to know what it is that pays your bills and be laser focused on delivering that. A YouTube channel isn’t the place to make art house silent films. A community theater production isn’t the place to practice your improv comedy skills. If your company sells a database, it’s not the place to be writing memory safe shells in rust to replace bash, no matter how annoying maintaining your startup bash scripts are.
It's interesting to see the discussion from two different angles—there's a lot of support for the type of A/B/C delineation in parts of this thread, and some people who decry it in other parts. I was on the set for one of the productions, and I'll just say at the time I thought the experience was a one-off for one of the bigger productions they've put on. Since reading other people's stories, it seems more a case whe…
MrBeast has given up his life for his youtube channel (he writes exactly this in the doc) - and he is looking for other people willing to give up theirs for his channel
His employees are probably payed well, but obviously don't make as much as he. So I guess asking them to give up their lives for less compensation is to say their lives are or less value...
I've always wanted to be able to tell people they're the bottleneck. I've had talks with management about this. "We need to tell people bluntly so they understand the impact they're having."
Nope, it could hurt a relationship and relationship is more important than delivering.
I don't want to be an ass, but I do love this approach by Mr. Beast.
I don't have the energy for an intellectual debate, but personally, I have the sense that Youtube is net bad for the world and the monetization of Youtube has incentivized and amplified mediocrity, stupidity, and social decay. I don't follow or watch Mr Beast videos, but from what I've seen, they are largely driven by a money fetish and as far as "creativity", it feels on par with the more boring "What would you rath…
> I have the sense that Youtube is net bad for the world and the monetization of Youtube has incentivized and amplified mediocrity, stupidity, and social decay. Interesting that you say this regarding YouTube. I've been saying this regarding Twitter for awhile even though I consume quite a bit of YouTube content. However, I've curated my YouTube feed to be almost entirely stuff that is interesting, educational, and t…
Those creators are still making orders of magnitude less money than people who make zero content attention grabbing controversy meme slop videos.
I don't have the energy for an intellectual debate, but personally, I have the sense that Youtube is net bad for the world and the monetization of Youtube has incentivized and amplified mediocrity, stupidity, and social decay. I don't follow or watch Mr Beast videos, but from what I've seen, they are largely driven by a money fetish and as far as "creativity", it feels on par with the more boring "What would you rath…
I am with you. YouTube does not offer math lectures about volume calculation. It advertises some fast food alike junk about insane things. And the 8 years old boys watch cartoons about chopped heads and how the dog plays with these heads. Afterwards I was happy, that I am luddite and YouTube is blocked at home and kids don’t have smartphones.
oh really did you try searching because I found one in about two seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1qXIkr05tk
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am with you. YouTube does not offer math lectures about volume calculation. It advertises some fast food alike junk about insane things. And the 8 years old boys watch cartoons about chopped heads and how the dog plays with these heads. Afterwards I was happy, that I am luddite and YouTube is blocked at home and kids don’t have smartphones.
"YouTube does not offer math lectures about volume calculation." oh really did you try searching because I found one in about two seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1qXIkr05tk
What Donaldson has done is effectively hack the Youtube algorithm, and as a hobby content creator for the last 10 years or so, I find it has been absolutely destructive to the "content" world. He's absolutely right - you're not trying to make the best content, or the best video, or whatever - you're trying to make the best YOUTUBE video, implicitly admitting what youtube floats to the top of recommendation algorithms is NOT any of those things. It's hyper optimized to be as addictive and as least satiating mentally as possible, it's entertainment junk food. At least old-school reality TV had semi interesting people on it.
It's just very saddening for me to watch the "beastification" of youtube and the overall creator space. I make content because I like making it. I make the content I would like to watch. It's secondary to me whether anyone else enjoys it, and that kind of creative spirit is absolutely gone on the web, and I completely believe content quality has suffered from it. To some degree the audience is the problem for demanding it, as sibling comments have pointed out, but I think this is blaming the victim a bit. Youtube also pushes these addicting videos out to people and highly incentivizes it. It'd be like handing out cigarettes at the hospital and blaming the subset of people that get addicted. Sure, it's their fault, but the hospital probably shouldn't be doing that in the first place.
There are lot of comments here disliking MrBeast and what not, but some of the advice can definitely apply to all organizations. > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUB…
> Lawyers finding problems and trying to stop things from happening instead of finding solutions. Security blocking things and not suggesting alternatives. IT blocking this or that instead of trying solve problems, etc. I think these are clear signs of a dysfunctional organization. I want to associate that with company size (larger -> more bureaucratic, counter-mission nonsense), but I've also seen large companies th…
Now that said they should still try to advance the mission within that framework, and not be lazy.
I can't be the only person disturbed by the penetration of terms like "obsession" into nominally professional culture. You should not be asking your employees to qualify for DSM symptoms just to not get fired (with severance, lol, that is genuinely a step up from nothing even if it's clearly meant to soften the psychological shock of reading about A- B- and C- employees).
"Obsession" predates the DSM and psychiatry as a profession.