I remember when I was growing up, tech industry has so many people that were admirable, and you wanted to aspire to be in life. Bill Gates, founders of Google Larry Page, Sergey brin, Steve Jobs (wasn’t perfect but on a surface level, he was still at least a pretty decent guy), basically everyone involved in gaming from Xbox to PlayStation and so on, Tom from MySpace… So many admirable people who were actually really great…
Now, people are just trash. Look at Mark Zuckerberg who leads Facebook. Dude is a lizard man, anytime you think he has shown some character growth he does something truly horrible and illegal that he should be thrown in prison for. For example, he’s been buying up properties in Hawaii and basically stealing them from the locals. He’s basically committing human rights violations by violating the culture of Hawaiian natives and their land deeds that are passed down from generation to generation. He has been systematically stealing them and building a wall on Hawaii, basically a f*cking colonizer. That’s what the guy is. I thought he was a good upstanding person until I learned all these things about him
Current CEO of Google is peak dirtbag. Dude has no interest in the company or it’s success at all, his only concern is patting his pockets while he is there as CEO, and appeasing the shareholders. He has zero interest in helping or making anyone’s life pleasant at the company. Truly a dirtbag in every way.
Current CEO of Home Depot, which I now consider a tech company because they have moved out of retail and into the online space and they are rapidly restructuring their entire business around online sales, that dude is a total piece of work conservative racist. I remember working for this company, This dude’s entire focus is eliminating as many people as feasibly possible from working in the store, making their life living heck, does not see people as human beings at all. Just wants to eliminate anyone and everyone they possibly can, think they are a slave labor force
Elon musk, we all know about him, don’t need to really say much. Every time you think he’s doing something good for society, he proves you wrong And does the worst thing he can possibly do in that situation. It’s like he’s specifically trying to make the world the worst place possible everyday
Like, damn. What the heck happened to the world? You know? I thought the tech industry was supposed to be filled with these brilliant genius people who are really good for the world…
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Gates was always a dirtbag.
He is one of the main reasons proprietary software is so prevalent and predatory nowadays.
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fundraisers and charitable programs
I’m pretty sure most of that is tax-deductible.
Gates has good PR.
Fundraisers and charities, when you have a lot money, are rarely acts of charity. They tend to be PR campaigns and power plays.
Honestly, even when the acts have good intentions, they are often quite damaging. The involvement of the wealthy in charity is very similar to their involvement in politics. Their wealth buys influence and gives them a disproportionate say that allows them to ignore and overrule the will of the people and sometimes even reality.
For example, look into the impact of Bill Gates’s “acts of charity” in the education space. He poured money into charter programs that negatively impacted public education. Later studies showed that his programs were not particularly effective.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that a very rich person is convinced by some charlatan that they found the a means to produce free energy. The wealthy person throws tons of money at the idea. How many talented people will be taken from other legit programs because the paycheck at Bullshit Energy Nonprofit is better? These rich people are successful and think they know bestr. Their money ensures they get treated like experts because money makes things happen whether or not those things are helpful.
He was instrument in keeping the covid vaccine he promoted private. He wants to solve the world’s problems, but he also wants to own the solution and profit from it. Problem is, that model will always favor the rich.
Yep, also basically stole from the UK taxpayer by convincing Oxford University to not open source their publicly funded vaccine and instead sell the rights to AstraZenica.
All sorts of countries could have produced this vaccine themselves until Bill Gates got involved.
Dude was friends with Epstein after his first conviction for pedophilia. Had sleepovers at his mansions and shit.
Philanthropy is PR for billionaires. If we taxed them, we would have a social safety net and no need for their pet projects.
But but… trickle down…
Donations and fundraisers are tax deductible, it doesn’t actually cost the rich anything to donate to them
That’s not how tax deductions work.
Gates is a dirtbag though.
That’s a fair question.
I think there’s many different - and valid - answers to this, depending on how you look at the question.
I guess you could say that society had a stronger immune system back then to eliminate these bad cells. These days, they run way too freely. It’s bad, and i’m not sure whether we need a structural reform or whether we can wriggle through this one.
you either die a hero or live long enough to see your self become a villain
Their job is to maximize shareholder profit. That is their only and one true job as CEOs. If you want a CEO that is not evil, look for companies that are not public even though they could be.
Years ago, I was hanging out with a manager of finance and asking a few basic questions about finance. After a little while, i guess she got tired of the conversation because she handed me her old finance textbook.
Anyway, I was mostly interested in the foundational ideas of finance, not the details, so I went away and started reading the introduction. It turns out that the introduction was very short, no more than two pages. It was extremely well-written, simple, and to the point.
The foundational idea of modern finance, according to this standard textbook, is very simple and highly reductionist: the one and only goal of finance is to maximize shareholder value, and share prices are the ultimate way that goal is measured. I’ve never seen a whole discipline reduced to such stark and prosaic terms with absolutely no attempt to articulate ethics or justify it in relation to some wider public good.
bill gates was like, one of the worst of the worst. Dude literally broke the law, and then settled to avoid paying for acquiring fees.
They have never been good.
Dude literally broke the law, and then settled to avoid paying for acquiring fees.
That sounds really tame compared to nowadays.
Pretty sure that is a chapter in a Donald Trump book
it’s tame, except we’re talking like, literally stealing a piece of software or it’s design blatantly, settling, and then acquiring the rights in the settlement for much cheaper than they would at market rates.
It’s not his problem that they settled for so little though.
he shouldn’t have broken the law in the first place, but that’s not the problem of the small business.
I mean there are literally three options here, purchase it from the business legally. Which costs shit tons of money, or steal it. And then deal with it after the fact, which is what they did, and it saved MS lots of money, while probably fucking yeeting the small business.
Well duh. I’m just saying it’s really tame compared to nowadays.
Also I personally don’t really care too much about copyright.
copyright isn’t generally a huge deal, until you’re a company trying to sell things for money, although even there copyright probably isn’t super relevant. It depends on what specifically it is, because you can’t exactly implement a copyrighted “mechanism” however you can patent them.
It’s probably pretty similar to a lot of modern day shenanigans, the difference being that it’s mostly VC funding pushing for the market share rather than stealing shit.
Was going to say this.
Convicted monopolist. Slimy and dishonest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE
His direct influence is in numerous places in the Horrorween Documents.
Screw that guy.
yeah, it’s basically this kind of shit from every wealthy business man. Even the fabled Rockefeller was hated for the same reasons, dude controlled 80% of global/american oil refining and people still hated him, even though his product was the market leader.
I think that is lack of competition regulation.
yeah, it’s pretty common for any super aggressive business sector, they just completely vore the entire market sector in hopes of gaining total control, shits weird.
Monopoly is a super profitable and comfortable position, but it’s when capitalism fails.
…wish I hadn’t looked up vore…
yeah, that’s a monopoly position for you, also the vore part is… weirdly accurate.
It was a lot easier to pretend to be a good person when every moral failure you make wasn’t broadcast around the world the moment it was discovered. Case and point, look into Bill Gates more. He wasn’t always a respectful guy, got caught up in the whole “filthy communists” schtick when the government was investigating his company, advocates for more restrictive control of aid distribution favoring manufacturers more than those he’s trying to help, conflicts of interest in his charity, opposing twitters ban of Trump after the insurrection, etc.
Sadly, in this world you accomplish nothing for being nice and considerate. If you want to leave an impact (anything - a new invention, a new product, a new idea, anything with impact to contemporary culture) you have to bully yourself to the top, including stealing ideas and screwing people over, as well as to exploit people. All “great” people who accomplished something did that: Gates (Microsoft), Jobs (Apple), Musk (Tesla, Twitter), Bezos (Amazon), Thiel (PayPal, Palantir), Zuckerberg (Meta), Huffman (Reddit), as well as many politicans. It’s a personality treat.
Here is a video that explains the issue, albeit it focuses on designers:
“I thought the tech industry was supposed to be filled with these brilliant genius people who are really good for the world…”
They are but as usual it’s the WORKERS who are the good brilliant people, not the ownership class and 3 letter executive dirt bags. They’re the same in EVERY industry. Owner/CEO ONLY cares about profit profit profit, fuck everyone and everything else.
Workers, they’re a mixed bag as there are so many different people, but in the tech space they’re generally intelligent “good” people.
Idk, given how many evil mobile games and dark patterns there are, there are plenty of “bad” people, or at least people who won’t push back against bad decisions from management.
Nobody is going to “push back” very hard against the people who control their food, shelter, and other basic human needs. If they had that level of comfort, they wouldn’t be working there in the first place.
Yup, it’s very much like the prisoner’s dilemma. If everyone in tech refused to do this nonsense, we wouldn’t have dark patterns and whatnot and stakeholders would find another way. But if enough people are willing to do this nonsense, the “good” people end up worse off.
The workers also just care for profits. Nobody is working for free. Everyone needs to pay their bills. Companies will stop making profits when workers dispense with their wages, but I bet that’s not gonna happen.
Technically workers do not care about profits, they care about wages. The average worker doesn’t benefit from profit because they represent a fixed expense. The work they produce is worth more than their salary which is how a company produces profit. As long as a company breaks even and the salary is enough to meet one’s needs a worker does just fine. However a worker’s job could easily be axed in the name of profit because they are what is being profited off of, not the entitled beneficiary of the business as a whole.
Profit it just the take home winnings of the investors or owners of the business and the few jobs at the top where compensation is based off of profit percentage or lavish bonuses for making the targets.
So many people don’t understand that profit comes after all expenses which includes labor. :/
Wages are also subject to change based on performance or company profits.
But what I mean is that the company and the worker have the same interests in some way. Everyone wants to make money to pay the bills. Companies are no charities and your work isn’t either. If you dislike your relationship with the company, you can just resign that relationship any time. But one thing will never change: the worker will only do the work required from him and the company will only pay the wage required from them. There is nothing evil about that. It’s human nature for the past 20.000 years.
If your wages are hourly or salary then they might be raised dependent on either a “performance” bonus which works as an incentive or by a fixed yearly raise but neither is tied to profit. It’s technically just engineering the workforce to give more output by dangling a carrot. The size of the carrot distribution is factored into the labor cost - it is distinctly not profit, it is operating budget which deducts from profit because it is counted as an expense.
Here is the thing about profit - it comes from saving money on labor, resource or overhead. Sometimes it’s a neutral or good thing when the profit comes from a source like a clever innovation that solves a problem or by fulfilling a highly desireable market demand… But a lot of the time that isn’t the case. Those profits can come from collaboration with competitors to pay labor less, finding cheaper materials that shunt the costs onto other people outside the business by means of pollution or utilizing exploitable workforces with less health or legal protections, outsourcing.
Yes people are motivated by money but why do people want money? In the case of your average worker the demands are quite small. Money equals security - a non toxic and comfortable place to sleep, food on the table, assured care for health when sick or old and creature comforts to create fulfilling free time. Profit oftentimes incentivizes removing these things from other people in service to an investor class. Creating protections against this is often the prerogative of government because government depends on the wealth of it’s people to perpetuate itself so it’s incentive is to protect the majority of people whom hold them accountable on the whole from becoming exploited into poverty, sickness and death because those things can be profitable. One can say “that’s just the way it is” only so long as once a large enough group of people see no value or security in living life they generally start banding together to become violent.
I remember when I was growing up,
You remember propaganda (when corporations do it, it’s called “Public Relations”).
That’s what you remember. Now, thanks to the internet democratizign information somewhat, they don’t just get to feed us their “public relations” anymore. Now people can counter that shit, and people see them for what they really are - parasites.
It’s capitalism, baby. Welcome to the real world.
Social media would be drowning in negative posts about Bill Gates if they were a thing in the 90s. The only difference, perhaps, is back then the industry was still at its early years, it was quickly evolving, so many brilliant people had a chance to achieve something too. Today, it’s huge corporations where each individual has virtually no impact.
Leaders in tech have to be good at raising money from rich investors, lenders, etc… Most of these people aren’t tech people. They’re hedge fund managers, bankers, or just people with lots of money. So consider the following 2 strategies:
Strategy A: Be realistic. Explain the positives and the negatives. The tech looks promising, but the future is uncertain. It’s a risky investment that could pay off massively, but it probably won’t. You the CEO know a lot about the topic, but you’re still just a guy, not a miracle worker.
Strategy B: Just focus on the plus side. It will succeed, and it’ll succeed way more than anyone expects. Not only that, you the CEO are an unstoppable hardworking galaxy brain genius who sleeps on the factory floor. They should be so lucky to get to invest in your company.
Which of these is more likely to work with investors who don’t know tech? And which is most likely to be the strategy chosen by leaders who are narcissistic and deceitful? The answer is the same.
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To get to the top you have to throw people under the bus.
The good ones retire or have important, but not the most profitable/public facing jobs.
The other Apple Steve, Steve Wozniak founded the EFF and was the tech guy at early Apple. Jobs was the business guy.
John Carmack is a controversial figure, but he’s actually the tech wiz kid the techbros dream they are. He seems to just be interested in pushing technology and had some choice words for Meta when he left. They should have let him have his axe to carry around.
founded the EFF
*helped found. He provided some initial funding and served on the board, but he wasn’t a founder.
In 1976, he co-founded Apple Computer with his early business partner Steve Jobs.
-Wikipedia
Woz was the (head) tech brains behind Apple. Jobs was just the asshole that made unreasonable demands of the techs, overpriced it & marketed it.
So Woz dev, Jobs PM… makes sense.
I think they were talking about the EFF, but the difference between “helped found” and “founded” isn’t important here. I’m just giving an example of a “Good One”.
Nothing happened. It was always like this. Geeks got unduly put on a pedestal. They got a reputation that was never earned. They’re not any different than your typical psychopath executive.
I grew up in a town where a lot of these types of guys have become multimillionaires since 2010s tech boom. One person manages some hundreds of millions of dollars AI investment portfolio. That was before the GPT explosion. I have no idea how big they are now but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s billions.
Growing up they were almost all psychopathic. Lying, cheating, backstabbing type of people. Nothing like the timid altruistic geek that pop culture proliferates. The more normal people did not go into tech. The actual timid types have had modest middle class careers in tech.
Success in business (profit) requires exploitation, which requires few or very select morals to reach the very top. Those people you describe sound a perfect fit!
This is okay but my post about AI is not? Same as reddit 😔.
