Comment by ditonal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ditonal | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a startup that pitched themselves as "social good" working for a "double bottom line" (profit and social good). Then I worked at Google which recruited on the catch phrase of "do cool things that matter." Both of these companies are motivated entirely by profit, there are absolutely zero ethical qualms beyond making a buck. The "social good" and "cool things that matter" exist for PR and recruiting purposes, that's it. And once they've recruited people, those people are far too terrified to lose their prestigious and well-compenstaed careers to rock the boat.

mchurch's quote that "Silicon Valley is just Wall St for people who can't get up early" has always made me laugh. But I've also always said that, at least the guys at Goldman are authentic, they know and we know that they are motivated almost entirely by money, and they don't pretend otherwise. It really rubs me the wrong way that both Google the company and the "Googlers" that make up its workforce to this day want to maintain this image that somehow they are good people trying to "make the world a better place when" it's abundantly clear that the overriding concern is the value of the sacred GSU (Google restricted stock unit). I totally agree with the NYTimes that if anything, the HBO show is not nearly harsh enough.

I don’t think that’s entirely fair. There are certainly a large number of people in Silicon Valley and San Francisco who are passionate about building technology and products. I can’t imagine nearly as many are as passionate about trading derivatives or whatever.

On the one hand, attempts to do social good frequently are not especially profitable.

On the other, a well paying job so you can feed yourself etc is a social good.

We all need food, clothing and shelter. The best way to get that is a job. Jobs at Google tend to pay well.

I can't understand if this is meant to be satirical or not

Why would it be satire?

I'm famously poor.

That reasoning seems to justify pretty much any business model even if it hurts more people than it helps with a salary.

Nah. It just admits that employees often feel like pawns in a system where there are no good answers, even if the founders believe in the mission.

It also affirms that adequate earned income is a healthy, positive thing.

We do this weird thing where feeding others as an act of charity is clearly a good thing, but somehow feeding ourselves is not.

I think there are problems with that idea.

I meant sarcastic not satirical sorry :)

:)

It's all good. But I happen to be very serious about the importance of an earned income as a social good. I think we need more of that.

Cheers.

This first line here had promise, but it needed to go further. Being rich on its own isn't a social good, but you're right that it can be a good place to start:

https://www.effectivealtruism.org/

I was homeless for years. What I most needed was an earned income to help resolve my problems, but no one took that seriously. They saw me as a charity case who had nothing of value to offer and whom it would be cruel to expect work from. But, no, people were not throwing scads of money at me sufficient to resolve my problems out of compassion.

It's always odd to me how people think it's only a social good if you are feeding and clothing someone else, not yourself.

Totally, that these people have jobs and pay tax is great.

Not being on the street just isn't really enough to write off all other ethical considerations though. Some might wish to set a slightly higher bar than that for people who are being compensated as well as people in software are in 2019 (I say this as someone working in software in 2019).

I'm not writing off all other ethical considerations.

If you don't mind, I'd like to get your perspective on some aspects of homelessness. With the right systems in place, we can virtually eliminate homelessness, but it needs to work for, well, the homeless, not some company preaching "social good."

You say that what you needed most was finding an earned income. Based off this statement, I have a few questions:

- Some cities are going into homeless camps and handing out housing vouchers. Their argument is that once you get people off the streets and into a domicile, many issues tend to resolve themselves, allowing the formerly-homeless to work toward stability. If you were given the opportunity to receive a housing voucher, would it have helped you get to where you are today?

- To my knowledge, one hurdle the homeless must overcome when finding a job is what address to put down on a job application. Did this hurdle pose a challenge for you when trying to find a job? (An idea I just came up with: providing the homeless with a free P.O. box to allow them to still receive mail. Perhaps this program or one like it exists, but I've never heard of it before.)

- Many homeless live in cities where the job market is highly competitive. Imagine an employer provided short-term housing for the homeless but was not located in a city. (Example scenario: a factory in rural America.) Do you see any potential in this program?

Thank you!

> It's always odd to me how people think it's only a social good if you are feeding and clothing someone else, not yourself.

These people seem to have never learned some pretty ancient wisdom. One phrasing of it goes, "give a man a fish; feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish; feed him for a lifetime." Skills (however simple or complex) pay the bills.

If you were given the opportunity to receive a housing voucher, would it have helped you get to where you are today?

I doubt it.

I was offered housing on more than one occasion. Sometimes, it was a friend sincerely trying to help but it was very far away (thousands of miles) and substandard. I have health issues. I need my housing to not be making me sicker than I already am.

Sometimes, it was in exchange for sleeping with them. This was a non starter for various reasons.

A home is more than a roof over your head. It means you belong, you have some kind of security and so forth. Some homeless people float from dive hotel to dive hotel and are not literally out in the street. It's still a huge hardship to live that way.

I have researched housing policy and homelessness. We have some serious housing supply issues. I'm trying to figure out how to write about that on a blog called Project: SRO. It's so far got an About page.

I'm not up for trying to outline our complicated housing supply issues in an HN post. I think I need an entire website for that and I'm struggling with where to start that explanation.

Re addresses. I always (technically) had a mailing address while homeless and usually had access to mail service. I would like to see more mailing address services for the homeless, plus more free phones and some kind of storage locker service. People sometimes have job interviews and don't know where to stash their backpack.

I provide various informational resources in the form of a group of websites. This includes talking about making money online.

A lot of homeless people have personal handicaps and a regular job may be a poor fit. I began doing freelance work while homeless as one piece of the puzzle for resolving my own issues. I think that's a better option for some people.

It can only be as harsh as SV's "Overton window" allows.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair

> Bill Gates was the world’s greatest philanthropist, and you’d have been laughed out of town for suggesting — as presidential candidates and billionaires themselves now routinely do — that people as rich as him should not even be allowed to exist.

I've been doing that on this board for over 8 years and have been down-voted out of town almost every time.

There is a big difference between people trying to do good, fucking up, and getting trapped by their fuckups and people who only care about themselves.

It's easy to confuse the two groups and think a distinction doesn't exist.

It's not at all complicated to get smart idealistic people who fuck up whether in Wall St or SV, to doubt themselves, get defensive and then cynical. There are lots of idealists who have turned cynical over their careers. And it's very beneficial for all kinds of parties, to strip that idealism away and just harvest the smarts using guilt and shame, fear and doubt.

And it works very well on those who aren't clear about their Values and Needs, or those who don't have experience with failure.

Yet even after all that, you will find two different groups. Why? Because there will always be idealists who don't turn cynics, even after fucking up.

There is nothing straight forward about recovering from fuckups. For some it takes time to see their mistakes. Some are able to openly process or talk about their mistakes (which society loves to then exploit or pass judgement on). And others get highly defensive and come across or get painted as oblivious to their mistakes. These different routes add to the impression of hypocrisy (that everyone likes to take a dig at and laugh about).

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