It used to be that everyone would dream of making a startup that big tech would acquihire. Now everyone seems to believe the ultimate goal of a tech job is to land at a FAANG, and just stay there for life?
It’s so tame, so complicit. Hackerdom is now mostly about obscene levels of money and status?
This really goes to show how pathetic the tech industry has been for the past ~2 decades. People don't aspire to build the next Google, just to get a job with Google. That's like saying the Matrix inspired you to land a job where you get your own cubicle.
When I was a kid dreaming of the future, I never thought that "success" meant being acquihired by a tech giant. That seems stupid, why wouldn't I just apply like a normal person? Building something like eBay or YouTube and turning it into a massive success to rival the giants was the dream. All you needed was a keyboard and luck.
I don't know if I'm alone in that, or if this is a generational thing? I'm currently under 30, so if it is, then it's probably a relatively recent phenomenon. I guess programmers born in the mid 00s probably grew up in a world already dominated by the same few tech giants, and missed the part where they were growing and fighting for dominance.
Of course, I would say that's probably the most reasonable dream to have considering the circumstances. If you do manage to build an innovative and sustainable business, it's unlikely you'll survive once the tech giants attack you with anticompetitive tactics that they know they can get away with.
...that doesn't make it any less lame though.
I think the core of it is that I internalized a (supposedly) fundamental hacker aesthetic of autonomy, and it seems the culture traded that away for a needy, zero sum, external-validation-needing void.
Now we're told that we really should be working on our brands, amassing our GitHub stars, and other bullshit that is wholly orthogonal to actually building cool stuff. Cause who wants to do that when the rewards are uncertain? Follower counts are what really matters, this is the attention economy, and you can't be left behind!
Things felt nicer when we were all still just building.
Tech boomed because: the economy was "good" (people could afford to go after creative and speculative pursuits) and there was technology that hadn't been utilized in creative ways yet (computers, phones, the internet, GPUs, etc.). This allowed "hackers"/"geeks"/"creatives"/"entrepreneurs" to work on stuff that most likely wouldn't make any money, but would be more interesting and fulfilling than doing a job or going after a career.
Then once the money started coming in, and others started hitting home-runs, the "sociopaths"/"prestige hounds"/"MBAs"/"money lovers" came in to formalize and formulize, so the gravy train would be more sustainable and predictable -- and that they could get theirs.
Now we're here. Something cool is no longer cool.
In another vein, what is there left to do? The economy needs to improve and there needs to be new -- actually ground-breaking and revolutionary -- technology brought to the world, so others may use it in novel and creative ways. Then we repeat the cycle.
LLMs seem to be the only contender for "ground-breaking" tech right now. Otherwise, I can't think of anything else.
In that vein, CRISPR, and how it enables individuals to pursue genetic modification and xenobiology/botany, is one that's being utilized right now to make a lot of very cool stuff (one that comes to mind is the S. Mutans strain that doesn't produce lactic acid). But it's still a very involved and very chaotic process that doesn't allow innovations to rocket off.
I think the most world changing tech of the last 20 years is the smartphone.
All of those come together to make a powerful, easy to use, portable computer that enables its user to do so many things in so many places there were not possible before.
Prior to that the dream was to just make a successful business. Consider Sun Microsystems.
But let's be real and invoke NoTrueScotsman: "hackers" are supposed to be more like Bill Joy at UCB than Bill Joy at Sun.
I doubt Bill Joy was thinking about business and financial success while hacking on BSD at UCB. Hacking was the end, not a means to an end.
"Hackerdom" whatever that means is separate from "working for a living".
At some point the term “hacker” was co-opted to mean anyone writing code. These Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs aren’t really “hackers”: they’re businessmen with some software engineering skills. But that doesn’t sound nearly as edgy or cool as calling yourself a hacker.
Originally hackers were the people actually creating new innovations, typically with no financial gain desired either criminal or legitimate. People at places like MIT or Stanford in the 1970s and the like.
> It’s so tame, so complicit. Hackerdom is now mostly about obscene levels of money and status?
The goal of many who make a startup that big tech would acquihire _is_ about achieving obscene levels of money and status. If they're acquihiring you then by definition you no longer have full say about what the business does. If it really was about making something, the best something you can, then you would resist being acquihired.
You move to get acquihired to get paid.
Or do people not think about it that much?
Or you can just go there directly without the suffering.
Given the choice, it’s not unrational to skip a few years of uncertain payoff.
It has to be sarcasm.