The Copenhagen Catalog: Principles for a new direction in tech | Hacker News Reader

The Copenhagen Catalog: Principles for a new direction in tech

copenhagencatalog.org

82 pointsdoener17 comments

"Principle: a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning."

These aren't 150 "principles" - more like "150 feel-good marketing statements". Or perhaps I should say, "virtue-signalling statements"

Taking just one example : "Make business human to human instead of b2b or b2c - let's build companies that have humans at the core"

Consumers are human, and businesses are made up of humans, so what exactly is this saying? It seems like "humanity" and "humans" are bing used as a synonym for "good", which makes the whole thing trivial.

If we were serious about something like this, we would try and find 1, 3 or 5 "principles" out of the 150, then we would actually be doing some real thinking in terms of what things mean, relative importance etc

That was my feeling as well. There may be some gems in there but so much of it comes with such political overtones that it's hard to read without becoming increasingly cynical.

Humans are also consumers. Modern businesses think about people as consumers first and human second. This paves the way to many perversions, such as, huge industries bases on exploiting human weaknesses (e.g. addiction based online gaming) . This is enabled morally by marginalizing the concept of a human to consumer first. In this moral outlook, as long as you get costumers to buy your product, everything is AOK morally. Being human oriented means you don't create a product that which manipulate humans into self or social harm even if it'll turn a profit.

The problem with generic principles like that is that they'll be used against you by anyone who doesn't share your opinions on what "manipulate" or "social harm" mean. You'll be harangued for being an hypocrite and going against your own principles, despite never having intended the principle to be applied that way.

Concur. I got a very 'Upworthy' or 'TED Talk' itch reading this.

I don't think it's an agenda to sign up to, but worth a read and reminder from time to time.

The most problematic issue with these statements is that they miss the underlying reality of what makes up the bulk of the difficult decisions:

You want to reduce CO2? Buy an electric car, to start. Wait, almost nobody wants to pay $20K more for their car (!), and would rather just drive a gas engine? Whoops! Nobody wants to pay for double for electricity? We can also reduce C02 substantially with Nuclear. Whoops, to spooky!

And the ultimate: I detest Facebook, but it's the only channel that comes even close to giving my businesses the ability to target as I need to. And it's not invasive: just basic demographics! It's surprisingly inefficient to do elsewhere. So as much as I hate Facebook as a product, it's the 'only game in town'.

The equilibrium of all of these dilemmas is why we are where we are - there are very few easy hanging fruit that we can just go and fix.

> Consumers are human, and businesses are made up of humans, so what exactly is this saying?

True, corporations are made of humans, and therefore corporate goals are axiomatically aligned with human goals right? Like when nestle started indirectly increasing child mortality in Africa to peddle baby formula, that must have been because they put humans first right?

It’s not as difficult to understand as you try to make it sound. The principle is simple: In cases where there is a disconnect between what is good for humans vs what is good for corporations, side with the humans.

Nestle's goals were aligned with their own (or some of their own) humans, not all humans. There's the rub, and that's why it seems vapid, the moment you dig into the detail there's nothing behind it and somehow it still manages to ignore the reality - businesses are already human to human with humans at the core.

I don't disapprove, though it does seem a bit out of touch. Maybe developers aren't the most thoughtful people, but the state of things isn't without reason. If you moved to another city, you are paying a lot of rent, you work as a contractor (or other "flexible" employment), you have student loans, potentially a mortgage, you don't know how long you have this career and there isn't any employee organization to back you up then "values" doesn't come first. You should change the way investors, schools, companies and societies work.

I mean investors, schools, companies, and societies are all made up of people. It isn't only aimed at developers.

That said, even with those factors, many employees in tech today 100% have ways they can influence the way companies interact with these values, even in small ways. More nuanced yes but I don't think its fair to say it's out of touch. Especially if this hits its goal and is displayed in many places, social pressures can help at both the developer and company level.

With compilers come responsibilities. And sometimes a usable debugger.

Many of these resonate with me, but I feel 150 is too many. I try to live by the following:

1. A corporation must equally serve the three groups that come together to make it possible: investors, customers and employees. Losing the long term goodwill of customers and employees for quarterly (or even annual) targets is ultimately unprofitable.

2. Technology is not an end in itself. Focus on solving problems. Don't use machine learning where a spreadsheet would suffice. Don't use Redux, GraphQL etc., unless you have the particular problem they try to solve. Don't cram blockchain into everything.

3. Don't use technology to solve human problems. Use it to make the solution easier. If your team is unhappy, talk to them. Don't create apps to manage their sentiment. But do create an app that helps them express themselves to you easier.

4. Question the prevailing view, especially if it's super-popular: "Fail fast", "Move fast, break things", "Fake it till you make it", "Premature optimization is the root of all evil", "Man days estimates are anti-agile", "Relational DBs constrain your ability to develop quickly" etc.

Neat point: "the three groups that come together to make it possible: investors, customers and employees."

But - there are two more entities in direct relationship: suppliers, debtor; and more importantly many externalities, like non-participants, non-customers, the environment etc..

I don't think it's practical to promote this 'arbitrary equality' ideology on everything because it has a 'good sensibility'.

A 'corporation' is just a group of people doing stuff. They can do whatever they want: make profits, not, have fun, make stuff, provide some service, or not. It's entirely up to them how to determine the 'balance' between the various actors.

As for many of the remaining points in the article, I suggest people can do whatever they want as well, so long as they trying to be good people. "Move fast and break things" is a perfectly suitable approach in some situations, though obviously not always.

I think you're missing my point. The reason for (1) is the idea that "maximizing shareholder value" is the only goal of a corporation. There are two other stakeholders in a corporation who get shortchanged because of this principle. Of course, suppliers are there, but consider that we are their customers (we being the corporation under consideration).

Also note that this is what I follow personally and it's based on fifteen years of experience working for many companies. I would hardly call that arbitrary, and certainly not arbitrary in quotation marks. Whether that's right for an entire industry, is an open question.

I did see your point, I'm trying to get you to consider what those '3 parties' actually are, and that there are actually other participants as you would like to define it.

"There are two other stakeholders in a corporation who get shortchanged because of this principle."

There is at least one other obvious group: suppliers.

There is a buyer/supplier relationship equilibrium on both sides not just one side - is my point.

For example, if you 'contract' for a company, well - you're not an 'employee, shareholder or customer'. But you are 'part of that equation' as a supplier, as important as customers.

The other major party that's missing is the lender - this is very much like the 'investor relationship' and so they can't be left out. Remember that financiers who provide debt to a company have senior rights to assets, above and beyond the investors. They can also have special covenants that give them incredibly control. Those financiers can even be individuals (i.e. many 'bondholders' are individuals).

They are not investors.

So you talk about 'investors getting the advantage' ... that's actually not quite true - many cases it's not the investors, it's the lenders/bond holders who are making bank.

Lastly are the externalities. While a company has 'responsibility' towards it's employees and customers, it absolutely has a relationship with every entity that it doe any kind of business with - and those parties matter.

The 'economy' is basically a big web of those entities: buyers, suppliers, investors, lenders, workers, externalized entities (+government +NGOs).

This one of the few that resonated with me: #readpoetry

  It is difficult
  to get the news from poems
    yet men die       
  miserably every day
      
  for lack
  of what is found there.

Well, it's good marketing, maybe, but this is an assertion made without evidence, and the author may have been biased.

“Principles” should be worded to be clear and unambiguous. The items listed here can be interpreted to mean something, but different people will interpret them to mean different things. They are more like koans. Useful to ponder, but not for people to agree to and think they’ve agreed to the same thing.

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