Hacker News Reader

Comment by PasserBy2022 | Hacker News Reader

PasserBy2022

"leapfrog for the masses"

Is this how googlers refer to results of their work and people respectively?

>I would caution against trying to paint "developers at Google" using broad strokes.

There's a lot of irony in saying that about "developers at Google" and then immediately turning around and classifying everyone else as "the masses". Talk about broad strokes!

That’s not a derogatory term.

That wasn't the implication. The issue is an hypocritical assertion. If treating a large group as a unified actor is improper, then giving another group another label and doing the same thing...because it's that group is in a different classification, is also improper. The fact these views live in the same comment, is ironic.

> I would caution against trying to paint "developers at Google" using broad stroke

> a leapfrog for the masses

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600789

> If treating a large group as a unified actor is improper, then giving another group another label and doing the same thing...because it's that group is in a different classification, is also improper.

I think this is the logical leap that people aren't understanding. Generalizing means assuming things about individuals based on their group membership: OP wasn't saying it's a moral failing, but that it leads to inaccurate assumptions when applied to the heterogenous group in question.

What's the analogy to using the term "the masses"?

> OP wasn't saying it's a moral failing

The morality and intent is irrelevant to my core assertion. A criticism of contravariance (if that makes it clearer) followed by a usage of it is unexpected hypocrisy, which is ironic.

Beyond the literal fact that "everyone" is undeniably a giant mass of people, I suspect this term was intended to mean "to consumers", particularly given that the following example calls out enterprises.

Developing for a small but demanding set of enterprise customers with concrete (but sometimes arcane) requirements is a very different problem from developing for consumer markets.

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure I see any connection between generalizing about every member of a group, and using the term masses.

It's an overzealous interpretation of a common manner of speech. Muckrakers...

Is "the masses" offensive?

For someone who doesn't want to be painted in broad strokes, it seems like a very broad brush to paint non-Googlers with.

I read the masses as anyone but he development team. Who's to say that the masses doesn't mean Googlers? It wasn't categorising anyone aside from being "everyone else" as I read it

Who said that Googlers are not part of those "masses"? Surely they enjoy products from their company as anybody else?

And then, of course, nobody said you're part of those masses anyway. Maybe you're not. Do you enjoy Google product X as other hundreds of million do? Then you're part of the mass that enjoys it. Otherwise you are part of the mass that doesn't.

'The masses' refers to the lower classes (look at any dictionary and how the word has historically been used - 'opiate of the masses', 'the unwashed masses'). It would not typically be correct to say that a Googler is part of the lower classer. 'The masses' is definitely not the same as 'everyone'.

In your negative case you're using modifier words to change the meaning of "masses". Besides, why be part of the PC police??

Saying unwashed before most words standing in for people would likely not be a nice thing to say. So of course unwashed masses isn’t a good phrase. Nor is “unwashed people”

Another way of putting it: words have connotations as well as meanings.

People do sometimes seem to forget this! - so it's good to have a reminder.

Well put

I'm so fucking sick of people being offended by everything

I'm so tired of people being sick of people being offended by everything.

And I feel sick...probably because of something I ate.

It's a phrase that tends to be used by people who consider themselves superior to 'the masses'. The phrase refers specifically to the lower-classes or those outside of elite circles[1]. Combined with Google's reputation of quiet arrogance[2], it's a phrase that I would have avoided.

[1] Pick a dictionary and you will find references to lower-classes, the not-elite or the common people. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20masses https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masses#English https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/masses

[2] Put in to words nicely here https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-gr..., but you can feel it in many of Google's products where they make all the major decisions because they don't believe users are as capable of making good decisions as Googlers.

You should probably chill with that. It's used by all sorts of people and does not reflect their feelings towards "the masses"

No, but some people are sensitive. I suspect most Google developers consider themselves part of "the masses"

I’m not sure that’s true

When human beings are part of an association that is verifiably elite, it is quite common for them to have elitist attitudes.

Elite in compensation, true.

But is the average Googler contributing more to humanity than the average teacher? I'm not so sure.

Average seems like a weird measurement. Some Forbes article claims by 2030 the world needs 68 million teachers (I had trouble finding how many currently exist). So, the scale of numbers of teachers and number of engineers is hardly one to one.

Maybe you could say : is the average engineer contributing more to humanity than 1,000 teachers? Or you could go by pay: is the average engineer contributing more than 10 teachers? (guessing on numbers of course)

One to one ratio though? I'd argue: yeah probably. It's indirect effects, but Android/Chromebook/Google Docs... These all have brought computing technology and the internet into the hands of children around the world. Internet access is clearly one of the great opportunities for education. It might be hard to measure, but it clearly has an outsized effect.

From the 2018 shareholder's letter, Google created $335 billion in economic activity in 2018.[0] From the 2019 Q2 financial results, Google has 107,646 employees. By raw division the average Google employee creates $3,112,052 in economic global activity each year.

[0] https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2018/ [1] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2019Q2_alphabet_earnings...

Sure but most of that "economic activity" is essentially spam, so I'm not sure it's a net positive...

I know a nurse, occasionally she brings people back to life, it is just a part of her job - is she contributing to humanity more or less then an average Googler?

One reason you're not sure is that it's impossible to measure, and therefore to know. It's even impossible to know what the question really means.

Which elite verifier verified that?

Maybe "it's natural" would have been more accurate than "it's quite common"; I was trying to word it to avoid it being read as claiming Google broadly is elitist.

But, no, I can't cite a study, it's a pattern I've observed at range of places.

There are over 100,000 googlers, so both "yes" and "no" are likely valid answers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com