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> keeping some strange company

Actually, that's this community. I do understand. Money is the only metric that matters, here, as it's really an entrepreneur forum. Everyone wants to be rich, and they aren't particularly tolerant of anything that might interfere with that.

But I'm not going anywhere. It's actually fun, here. I learn new stuff, all the time.

HN is not really a community.

I believe that it is. In my opinion and experience, any group of humans, interacting, on a regular basis, in a common venue, becomes a community.

I guess that it is a matter of definition.

I treat it as if it were a community, and that I am a member of that community, with rights and Responsibilities, thereof.

I know that lots of folks like to treat Internet (and, in some cases, IRL) communities as public toilets, but I'm not one of them. I feel that it is a privilege to hang out here, and don't want to piss in the punch bowl, so I'm rather careful about my interactions here.

I do find it a bit distressing, to see folks behaving like trolls, here. A lot of pretty heavy-duty folks participate on HN, but I guess the casual nature of the interactions, encourages folks to lose touch with that.

I think that it is really cool, that I could post a comment, and have an OG respond. I suspect that won't happen, too often, if I'm screeching and flinging poo.

Just like in-person communities, you'll have general consensus on some ideas and fierce disagreement in others. You'll have people who are kind and those who are hateful.

You can identify that there may be a trend within a community without declaring that everyone in the community thinks the exact same way. And you could also be wrong about that trend because the majority is silent on the issue and you bump up against the vocal minority.

Perhaps you can elaborate on what a community is, and how HN differs from one.

The topical interests, general characteristics, experiences and opinions of HN members are too diverse to qualify as a community, IMO. There may be subsets that could qualify as a community, and if you only look at certain kinds/topics of submissions it might feel like one, but they are mixed within a larger heterogeneous crowd here.

Thanks, that clarifies a lot.

I feel that a community can def be heterogenous AF. I participate in exactly that type of (IRL) community, and it is worldwide.

It does require some common focus, and common agreement that the community is important.

I do believe that we have those, here. The "common focus" may not be immediately apparent, but I think everyone here shares a desire to be involved in technology; which can mean a few things, but I'll lay odds that we could find a definition that everyone could agree on.

It is possible. I guarantee it.

> Money is the only metric that matters, here

Says who? Did I agree to that when I subscribed?

> Everyone wants to be rich,

Everyone? Like me too? Tell me more about that.

You in an earlier comment said that people believe that you are "a stuck-up prig". Are you sure it is due to your moral stance, and not because you are judgemental, and abrasive about it?

Perhaps if you would be less set in your mind about how you think everyone is you wouldn't come through as "a stuck-up prig". Maybe we would even find common grounds between us.

> Money is the only metric that matters, here, as it's really an entrepreneur forum. Everyone wants to be rich

This place is surprisingly mixed in that regard given its origin; a significant number of comments I see about Apple, about OpenAI, about Paul Graham, are essentially anti-capitalist.

The vibe I get seems predominately hacker-vibe rather than entrepreneur-vibe.

That said, I'm also well aware of the "orange site bad" meme, so this vibe I get may be biased by which links' I find interesting enough to look at the discussions of.

Yeah, it was a snarky comment, and not my proudest moment, but it does apply to a significant number of folks. I tend to enjoy the contributions from folks that don't have that priority.

The demoralizing part, is folks that are getting screwed by The Big Dogs, and totally reflect the behavior; even though TBD think of them as "subhuman."

I've left two companies over ethical concerns, but it's not as easy for most people implied here. Losing income can be challenging, especially if the industry is in a downturn.

Generally when people talk about leaving a company, they mean to go to another company.

I don’t think most people expect you to quit on the spot and walk straight into unemployment.

Sometimes the alternative to unemployment is far less attractive (exuberant burnout or total time sink preventing a meaningful job search).

Out of curiosity, did you leave those companies because the company's core business was unethical (or veered that direction over time), because leadership was generally unethical, or because specific incidents that forced your hand?

At a previous job I saw unethical choices made by my boss, but the company as a whole wasn't doing anything wrong. One of my coworkers was asked to do something unethical and he refused, but he wasn't punished and wasn't forced to choose between his ethics and the job.

Every time I had to leave for ethical reasons it was a leadership thing, mostly relating to how they treated other employees.

For instance, I joined a company that advertised itself as being fairly ethical (they even had a "no selling to military" type policy). However, after joining it was apparent that this wasn't the case. They really pushed transparent salaries, but then paid me way more than anyone else. There was a lot of sexism as well: despite one of my colleagues being just as skilled as I am, this colleague was given all the crap work because leadership didn't think they were as capable as I was. There was a lot of other stuff as well, but that's the big summary. I left after nine months.

The other company was similar, but it wasn't nearly as obvious at first. Over time it became very apparent that the founders cared more about boosting their own perception in the industry than they did the actual startup, and they also allowed the women in the company to be treated poorly. This company doesn't exist anymore.

I should mention that these were all startups I worked at, and I was always fairly highly positioned in the company. This meant I generally reported directly to the founders themselves. If it was something like a middle management issue I'd have tried to escalate it up to resolve it before just leaving, but if that doesn't work I'm financially stable enough to just leave.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to me.

In startups like that, company culture and the founders' behavior is nearly one-in-the-same.

That's sad you had to deal with that kind of stuff. Even in the bad jobs I've had, the bad bosses treated the employees equally poorly.

Well it's weird for me, because I was one of the people being treated better (I'm a guy). I just don't want to work with assholes, so when I see people being assholes to other people and leadership doesn't take it seriously then I leave.

> One example that comes to mind is the security person who wanted our logins to expire so frequently that we had to log in multiple times per day. He insisted that anything less was below his personal standards for security and it would violate his personal integrity to allow it. Of course everybody loathed him, but not because they lacked personal integrity or ethics.

Speaking as a "security person", I passionately despise people like this because they make my life so much more difficult by poisoning the well. There are times in security where you need to drop the hammer, but it's precisely because of these situations that you need to build up the overall good will with your team of working with them. When you tell your team "this needs to be done immediately, and it's blocking", you need to have built up enough trust that they realize you're not throwing yet another TPS report at them, this time it's actually serious, and they do it immediately, as opposed to fighting/escalating.

And yes, like the original poster, most of them think they're the main character in an suspense-thriller where they're The Only Thing Saving Humanity From Itself, when really they're the stuck-up side relief character in someone else's romcom, at best.

> And yes, like the original poster, most of them think they're the main character in an suspense-thriller where they're The Only Thing Saving Humanity From Itself, when really they're the stuck-up side relief character in someone else's romcom, at best.

That's an interesting read of what I posted.

Glad to have been of service!

> In my experience, the average person I’ve worked with also believes in personality integrity and is guided by a sense of ethics.

Individual aspirations are not enough, if your org doesn't shape itself in a way to prevent bad outcomes, bad outcomes will happen.