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Comment by rbtprograms | Hacker News Reader

the tech industry and its insistence upon framing everything around "improving lives" is extremely grating. this guy feels unfulfilled and like he hasn't improved anyones life so he tries to make a browser?

i really wish people like this would just come out and say "yea i am successful and i am going to keep pushing because i think i can do better." is that really so bad?

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There's a failure mode I see pretty often here:

1. My culture tells me that success and fulfillment comes from doing X.

2. Get really good at X.

3. Still feel unhappy and unfulfilled.

4. Do not reflect on why that didn't leave me fulfilled. Do not critique my culture.

5. "Maybe if I get really good at X. I'll just X better than anyone has ever X'd before. That'll do it."

I have certainly fallen into this trap many times. I am problably currently occupying it on multiple axes. But I've at least learned to escape it in at least a couple of ways.

I’m way more cynical than that. Him framing the narrative that yeah what I did before was nothing compared to what I will do next is going to get investors and that is what separates him from the other millions of developers out there; his sales skills.

I get you. Personally, I made a deliberate choice this year to try to give more benefit of the doubt and charitable interpretations to narratives I see online.

I think one of the key problems facing our culture is mistrust, and the only way I know to remedy that at the individual level is to just... trust more. I accept that sometimes I'll get burned. I'd rather have that happen than to contribute to a society where everyone is untrustworthy because they know they are not being trusted anyway.

I don't want people to feel that they may as well do the crime if they're gonna do the time (be mistrusted) anyway.

I agree mostly and it will probably lead to a more happier life. But the incentives amongst interviewers and the ones that are interviewed are too aligned in these cases. You can trust the government because you have little choice, but most media is different, the authenticity just isn’t there nor is the necessity. I had big hopes when wordpress became popular and people started to write small blog posts about their experiences and thoughts. Medium seems to be damaging this though. I’ll stop rambling now.

I considered this as well, although from my view I think it just shows how uncreative a lot of people in tech are. this type of messaging clearly works, or we wouldn't see it constantly.

Even if it is true OP feels unfulfilled, they are trying to rationalise what their difference is. I celebrate this. It is absolutely better than to make people question whether or not their social contribution is worthy.

Software does change lives, and building the social awareness of this implication is important. Chastising those who mention social implications in their software pitches doesn't help to make consideration of social impact a normal part of software development.

oh please, so now every time someone claims they want to "change lives" we must heap praise on them just in case someone at some point will actually want to do it?

does software change peoples lives? absolutely. should we be encouraging people to participate and build software that can legitimately achieve this? absolutely. is there a pervasiveness in tech to constantly frame, no matter what technology is being worked on, in the light of "changing lives"? in my opinion, yes. I see it constantly in the tech industry, and at this point it is essentially a marketing gimmick. im saying I find it irritating that the tech industry is unable to market themselves and their technologies without this blanket statement.

It's not like that. There is more than two options than heap on criticism or heap on praise.

Try looking at it the other way around. Every time someone claims they want to "change lives" we don't need to heap on criticism.

Is there an industry, any industry, that does not aim to "improve lives" (even if they do not state it explicitly)?

edit: Just to extend this thought, I see statements about "improving lives" as laziness or lack of clarity about the value they bring to users. If all you can say about your note-taking app is that it "improves lives", you need to dig deeper to explain how it improves things.

I think there are some, like top athletes that want to break records. They are extremely competitive but they don't pretend to be improving lives. Some of them do use the attention they receive to improve lives.

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