If you didn’t have growth, you’d all be waiting for your promotion at the power plant when someone dies and frees up a position for you.
But that's the good kind of growth, you see?
I'm being sarcastic, of course. The ironic (and to me: annoying) thing about the really vocal moralists is that the concept of self-reflection seems to be entirely foreign to them. The problem is always with other people, and those other people just need to change, no matter at what cost.
E-mail reduced the amount of letters, but Amazon increased the amount of packages.
Over-the-air TV broadcasts consumed way less energy than FHD personalized YouTube streams.
Americans own more than 20 electronic products per household.
etc.
It's the exact opposite of dematerialization.
Edit: To clarify, I'm not at all against these things. On the contrary. My point is that among those people most vocal in demanding (sometimes radical) change from others, I frequently see a complete lack of self-reflection.
That's your assumption, and I believe it's pretty wrong. Advocating for changes that go against your own immediate self-interest isn't lack of self-reflection; if anything, it's often a signal of a correctly pointing moral compass.
No man is an island. Rare is the person whose friends and family work in the same booming industry as they do. Even if you benefit from exploiting other people, you might want to that exploitation to cease for the sake of your own life, or the society you live in.
> Advocating for changes that go against your own immediate self-interest isn't lack of self-reflection; if anything, it's often a signal of a correctly pointing moral compass.
People like to advocate for change a lot, and they often do so whilst working in the opposite direction of that change. I consider that hollow.
I already am.
I've been at my job for 13 and a half years, I"ve moved up exactly 0 times. Someone has to quit/retire, get fired or die to free up positions and even then you only have 2 jumps until you're manager, from there you only move up to senior manager and then you're into corporate level positions. My senior manager has been here for the better part of 30 years and probably has another 15-20 in her at which time she'll almost certainly be replaced by someone from another office in another state as her boss's position was when she retired a few years ago (her direct reports were just given to someone already in a similar position in another state).
I discussed in many threads closely or loosely related to this topic and many HNers don't share this idea.
You can be a dev in any kind of company and hold any type of beliefs. Outside of SV and a few other places being a dev isn't that crazy money/career growth wise.