Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Tbh kind of love this language

all these nouns are beside the point if there are no activations

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/06/netflix-tests-a-programmed-linear-tv-and-movie-channel-in-france/

motherfuckers reinvented TNT

went on hackernews for the first time in ages, was quickly pissed off by the prominence of paul graham's latest essay there. it's so stupid and glib: http://paulgraham.com/ace.html

why are techbros all so pathetically fucking lacking of basic notions of social class and surplus value/labor?

One of my wife’s family is a pretty successful Bay Area programmer who has worked for a few tech giants. Totally good guy, btw. But once we were talking about some social policy question and he said something that stuck out in my head: “It depends what you want to optimize for.” I think that aside from the fact that Americans in general aren’t taught to develop class consciousness (in fact they are taught not to), a lot of tech guys just tend to conceive of everything in the same sort of problem solving mode that they use in coding.

fair enough. i'd be lying if i said i didn't know at least one techbro who is a dedicated volunteer/activist for democratic socialist causes. you're right that US educational culture is the prevalent influence.

engineer's disease is a really shameful part of tech culture, but that's another rant.

i just needed to vent a little because that essay is vile and ignorance of basic facts about how the world works is no excuse for it. fuck paul graham.

Programmers are the dumbest fuckin people

yea... information/computer sciences are incredible fields of study but their professional culture is godawful on so, so many levels

i dread going back to it. maybe i'll get to stay unemployed forever, fingers crossed

Suggest working for a university or municipality or something. Less money but more human people

yea. maybe i'll work in IT in another industry or go back to teaching :)

I will never click on a Paul Graham essay

had enough after the “why wouldn’t you want to start out with a completely homogenous workspace” and “people should speak ‘unaccented’ english if they want to be successful”

But once we were talking about some social policy question and he said something that stuck out in my head: “It depends what you want to optimize for.” I think that aside from the fact that Americans in general aren’t taught to develop class consciousness

The thing is, lefty people whose day job is in quantitative fields also talk like this, they just recognize that maintenance of existing class hierarchy is one of the things a system might be optimizing for

I talk like this. Mostly it’s awful but I do think “local minimum” is a useful metaphor for a lot of stuff and I wish more people understood it.

pic.twitter.com/VB6gEqdscd

— Conservatives Getting Owned (@cons_owned) December 6, 2020

this is the CEO of Salesforce yeah? This happened a year ago at least, yeah?

nothing wrong with replaying the hits

oh, I thought that maybe either a second Silicon Valley billionaire did the same thing, or the Salesforce CEO donated another $30 million because homelessness required further study

Give me $30 million, I’ll tell you to build homes and put people in them for free

For $30 million I will actually have some homes built and put people in them for free and maybe only keep a $100k for myself

https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2020/12/04/tony-hsiehs-american-tragedy-the-self-destructive-last-months-of-the-zappos-visionary/?sh=70ed75ec4f22

The Jewel letter stands out less than the bit about him buying friends to hang out with in Utah.

He was a local kid who made his fortune selling banner ads (remember those?) and during the first dotcom boom he opened an asian-fusion restaurant called Venture Frogs in the AMC1000 bldg on Van Ness that had dishes named after dotcom 1.0 companies. His mom ran the restaurant. As you can imagine, it didn't last very long.

omg I remember Venture Frogs!!!

I think at the time I was working a lot at the Cathedral Hill Hotel nearby (R.I.P. Cath Hill where we could smoke right outside the office because it was 10 feet away from the parking garage)

somehow i missed that the zappos guy was in park city. maybe i subliminally knew but filtered it out like i do anything else rich-person-related.

Do you remember 20 Tank Brewery, across from Slim's?

In like the 1999-2000 era, they had a DotCom night... present a business card from a dotcom, get a discount.
Teacher? Firefighter? Healthcare worker? Yeah no, sorry, the discount is for dotcom workers only.

Fortunately the place is gone.

Yes! I hated that place. There was also that weird multilevel bldg on the corner of Folsom & 11th that changed hands many times during that era. I remembered it mostly as a precursor to Chipotle (overpriced fast casual) but it was so many things in such a short period of time.

The Paradise Lounge? I think.

Across 11th street from there. It was a brick facade that had kind of a multilevel tower with many landings serviced by a rickety spiral stair case made of iron.

Ok, either I'm remember it wrong or it looks totally different now?

https://goo.gl/maps/5nAm2uys9eSGJZJU8

Yeah, the old Brewery Bldg with the alley behind it.

Decent Thai restaurant on that corner now.

Hsieh was in my college class and we were in the same major and I don't remember him because I decided very early on that practically everyone in my major was a diseased cock and actively avoided studying with anyone who wasn't one of my roommates.

(Just one of multiple ways in which I proactively shot myself in the foot re: becoming a billionaire, really)

lol at this thread becoming douchey San Francisco circa 2000 and college assholes that if we had less self-respect and consorted with we would be rich by now -- I approve!

also - DJP, didn't you say years ago that you had hung out with one of my former college roommates? The guy with the same name as the dude who invented Capitalism?

Yes! I lived with him for a year.

Instead of the current tech journalism model whereby people who could never land tech jobs and possess no skills whatsoever opine and militate furiously about it, imagine we had the sportscaster model whereby former great technologists comment on developments in real time.

— Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) December 22, 2020

Instead of the current tech journalism model whereby people who could never land tech jobs and possess no skills whatsoever opine and militate furiously about it, imagine we had the sportscaster model whereby former great technologists comment on developments in real time.

— Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) December 22, 2020

lol what a garbage take, as if the “tech press” isn’t knob-slobbery enough as it is

Who told this guy he could tweet words like “militate”

Programmers, as I’ve often said, are just so fucking dumb

is that even a word?

I know a thing or two about being in proximity to hyper-rich tech assholes who might have hypothetically made me richer by association if I could continue to put up with their antics, but honestly I can run that simulation in my head as many different ways as I want and it never seems worth it

I knew one person who worked briefly for Facebook.

They quit after three months and became a yoga instructor. Said it was the worst experience of their whole life.

Now they work in "wellness."

That’s the only way to trade down from working for Facebook.

They're actually a very kind and generous person, we've known each other for more than 20 years. Let's just say I was a little hedgy when they told me they were going to work for Facebook...and sure enough, the next time I saw them, they were like, "you were right. i just got a vitamin b12 shot and feel high as hell"

there are so many douchier tech companies than Facebook ...

facebook has so many employees that most are probably just people doing a job!

I’ve known a few at fb, one who was kind of a jerk in our youth but was probably fine as a manager (I think he was integrating payments into messenger). Another guy from my youth left google and started the pin things you’re interested in company

I think the ills are in the things that become mundane, like the slow creep (probably on interesting projects) into controlling all local business web presence, or a universal disinterest inside the company into constructive community building over that based on
engagement alone

i know people who've been at facebook for a while who are ... fine. it has a *relatively* benign internal culture compared to uber or tesla or tbh a lot of other tech companies. but i think anyone who *joins* facebook in 2020, knowing what we know, is a terrible person.