[pj_mukh]

"This is actually how the world works"

The level to which our algorithmic feeds have made us so confidently wrong about things is so deeply problematic. Tech's original sin keeps biting us back. This rampant cynicism and nihilism borne from constant bombardment of headlines has us acting like we know the personal stories of all leadership all around the world, and it's deeply damaging to our trust in the system.

Plenty of Ivy League leaders quietly working away at their job, doing the best they can with great results and no one to write about them and you'll never hear about it anywhere. This is obvious to anyone on a second thought, but the first reactionary thought is what's acted on...always.

[mikert89]

my comments are from living in nyc for 15 years, alot of lived experience and meeting people behind closed doors

[quacked]

I was part of a company that was doing 10s of M in revenue, a few hundred employees, and had the technical prowess and IP to become a multi billion unicorn but the blue blood CEO was so clueless that he lost literally his entire technical core staff to incredible mismanagement. My favorite memory of him, and this sounds like a fake anecdote, is that on a big emergency call where he was pulling a huge amount of engineers and project managers off an account that was on fire to help with an account that was even more on fire (thus depriving the original account of labor and guaranteeing it would be in the same state in a few weeks), he spent 5 minutes talking about the chartered fishing trip he was on in Canada and then asked the audience if anyone and any plans for the weekend. Someone spoke up and said "yeah, I'll be working."

[enoint]

Sure, but his equity award deadline had passed, thus the fishing trip. And if things go well with Everett on the trip, the new funding would mean he can ditch those risky accounts.

[mikert89]

best comment on this thread

[tclancy]

But have you been inside the old money, prep school world? It is absolutely about connections and getting into the system for the most part. The meritocracy bootstrap stuff is life coaching fluff to keep us in the middle grinding.

[mikert89]

I've long thought the bootstrap stuff was a partial scam. There is so much information inside people's heads about how to successfully start a business. In some industries, with the right contacts, they can tell you exactly what to build, how to price it, how to do go to market.

Meanwhile, you could spend years grinding for nothing without the above information

[e_i_pi_2]

I'd argue that the "rampant cynicism and nihilism" and more a result of the environment than algorithms manipulating people, the content is also made by other people, and it just serves up what people want. Your feed is often just a reflection of what you're feeling since everyone has their own feed instead of the reddit or HN approach with a shared feed. Also the phrase is that a few bad apples spoil the batch, nobody cares about the rest of the batch until you can get rid of the bad ones

I'm much more a descriptivist than prescriptivist so if there's a pattern among people I'm inclined to think it's a true issue instead of people just thinking "wrong" en-masse

[pj_mukh]

"Your feed is often just a reflection of what you're feeling"

No it is not. The feed is optimized for what will increase the intensity of feelings, and bad feelings are more easily optimized than good. Meta (patient zero for this nonsense) has pretty much said so, multiple times.

" more a result of the environment than algorithms"

What environment? People are sitting on their algorithms for 100x more time than any physical environment.

[johnnyanmac]

>What environment

The one seeing themselves or co-workers laid off while companies report record earnings.

The ones seeing a CEO tank a company then move on to the next company next week with a huge pay package.

The one seeing their little sibling or kid graduate with honors and multiple internships, and having the complete inability to get a job in their field.

Do I need to explain more? Media reflects reality at the end of the day. You acn talk about doomscrolling, but part of it only works because exaggeration always starts by exploiting some truth you've seen first hand.

[mikert89]

i dont think hating on ivy league types is that common, and 90% of people have no real life experience with this kind of thing, or are even aware of how corporate hiring/funding works at the higher level.