[api]

On a side note... I find it kind of amazing how pollyanna many techies' view is of their own industry. The fact is that the tech industry is often surprisingly sleazy and includes quite a few very shady characters. Some of the sketchiest people I've ever met have been businesspeople involved in tech, and when I was in college I had friends who were into drug trafficking and thus had a little bit of indirect contact with that scene. Let me put it this way... I met people heavily involved in drugs who I'd trust with my kids before I'd trust many of the tech businesspeople I've met. We're talking major fucking sleaze here, hard-core reptilian sociopaths.

[michaelochurch]

Many tech businessmen aren't nerds. They're in the game to take advantage of nerds' poor social skills, inability to organize or negotiate for their own interests, and willingness to overwork themselves due to a lack of long-term, strategic thinking.

Also, tech has the Damaso Effect. The best of our world answer to the worst of theirs, because we've been colonized by the MBA culture, and most colonial soldiers and officers are people who failed in their own countries. The good businessmen stay in New York and start hedge funds. The leftovers in their set are the ones who end up in VC or as VC-funded founders-- and they're bitter about it, too.

Much of the tension in tech comes from the fact that tech's best end up, due to the extreme power of the VCs and moneymen, answering to the rejects of the business world-- the ones who weren't able to get themselves into hedge funds.

[api]

"The best of our world answer to the worst of theirs, because we've been colonized by the MBA culture, and most colonial soldiers and officers are people who failed in their own countries."

Thank you. This is why I love Hacker News. :) That is remarkably clear and concise and from my experience absolutely true. In one of my worst examples of a total sleazenugget from high-tech, it is literally true. I know for a fact that the guy tried and failed to become a high-finance type and was indeed incredibly bitter about it, so he entered high-tech and tried to hustle nerds (like me) out of technologies he could (fail to) flip.

[seivan]

I've been in this.