[tracerbulletx]

That's bs. There are whole industries that exist 100% because of regulatory capture and systems of control they've set up to protect themselves and are a million times more worthless. Tech is a shining star of people getting paid a lot to just try to figure out new ways of doing things and throwing off more value than any where else in the economy on an off day, and the industry was 1000 times better even with the wastefulness before than it will be if it becomes just some shit corporate world like old style companies.

[jart]

It's worth mentioning that tech didn't just invent better products. Tech also figured out a way to give them away for free. Tech also figured out how to ensure people of all classes and backgrounds got equal access to superior products for free. Tech furthermore figured out how to ensure it wasn't just the American classes that got free stuff, but that the free better products could be enjoyed by people from all nations.

[eldavido]

So I think it's worth discussing this a bit.

Maybe there was a time when this wasn't true. I spent a lot of the 2010s working in San Francisco tech jobs. It was quite enjoyable and I just got back from a guy's wedding who I worked with closely 2012-2015. Three different startups, one mine, other two as an employee. All three crashed and burned.

I think there are three possibilities.

One is that tech is somehow different/exceptional and bound to stay that way forever. I doubt it.

The second is that we were always lying to ourselves, it was always just "a job", but we were all young, stupid, and naive. This feels too cynical.

The third, which I feel is most accurate these days, is that tech was different, but now is a more mature industry, and is, as you put it "just some shit corporate world". Maybe there was a time when it was genuinely true that people got "unlimited vacation", that "titles don't matter" and that the CEO ate with the hoi polloi. But I think those days have passed. Everything's different now. The people coming into this industry today are 4.0 GPA high school kids, not misfits tinkering with computers in their basement. Competitive parents no longer feel they have to justify why their kid is going into tech rather than law, finance, or medicine. Salaries have increased 3-5x (!!). Tech influences elections, mints billionaires, and controls many facets of American life.

The problem is that the attitudes haven't kept up. These days, Google, facebook, etc are just standard American megacorps. They are some of the most valuable companies in the world with huge lobbying budgets, and tremendous pressure to deliver shareholder value.

The simple fact is that margins always get compressed as industries mature. Google has been under greater and greater margin pressure over the last decade as Apple demands higher payments to be their default search engine, OpenAI starts to steal share, and more people head directly to Amazon for search results. Google of course is going to blame the pandemic for this, but the actual issue is long-term erosion of margin. It's hard to see how any of this is going to reverse course over time.

[tracerbulletx]

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I hope my comment wasn't too inflammatory. I just have a strong visceral reaction that something important and beautiful is lost if the west coast computer company that works hard, plays hard, treats their employees like professionals that can act independently and cares a lot about research and craft even at the expense of some reasonable amount of efficiency turns into mostly just a bunch of IBMs or Oracles.

[jart]

Don't doubt yourself Atreyu. Most news sites aren't aligned with the best interests the tech industry. Tech is a whipping boy that eats its own tail. I must admit I blinked for a few seconds after reading your comment since it's not everyday I get to read an opinion that's firmly pro-tech on the Internet.

[philwelch]

For various reasons that are beside the point right now, most companies will degrade over time into a boring standard corporation. What was different about tech was that there were so many young companies that simply hadn't had the time to degrade. Whenever a company got old and shitty enough, it died and got replaced with newer companies.

For whatever reason that stopped happening. Google was founded in 1998 and went IPO in 2004. Facebook was founded in 2004 and had a billion MAU by 2012. It's 2024; we should have had an equally big success by now.