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Comment by smrtinsert | Hacker News Reader

100% agreed. I saw it somewhere else that the tech industry has burned all the transformative good will it had earned over the years and is now seen as the key villain in joblessness, societal discord and loneliness. What the fuck did happen? Edit: this isn't just an old man thing, this is the new generation saying this

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Technologists don't control technology, and many technologists foolishly think that staying out of politics is some kind of virtue, just like how people scientists should only science. Then we find that scientists don't control science anymore.

Politics is about the negotiation of control.

>_foolishly_ think that staying out of politics is some kind of virtue

Sounds like a very bold assertion to me.

To be terse but generalizing a bit, technologists used to want to solve problems and make things easier. At some point, under the influence of MBAs it became how do we make loads of money leveraging technology’s network effects?

Fucking MBAs

Most of the leaders of big tech are (former) engineers

At least in the US, most tech leaders and middle managers never did an MBA. Most are engineers who climbed the ladder into management.

Edit: Can't reply

> “Making money off of shareware” is no longer enough

Based on this I am guessing you are at least 10-15 years older than me and probably grew up in the 1980s and experienced the 1990s internet

> how do we make this company into an investment multiplier

> It’s a different mentality. It about unicorns or bust now

This is how startup funding has been since the beginning. You sure as hell weren't raising from Bessemer or Sequoia in the 2000s without also being able to answer whether you had a path to successful monetization.

Why would anyone give you their money if you cannot justify how you would make them more money?

Could be so but once their companies get on the path to getting listed they get advice from their banks or investors and either or both have one thing in mind: how do we make this company into an investment multiplier? Also often founders are paired with business types to make companies more viable.

“Making money off of shareware” is no longer enough (never mind that it’s a non-starter now that everything is needs to be saas these days.)

It’s a different mentality. It about unicorns or bust now.

Do you really think Zuckerberg is only evil because he's getting evil advice from his banks?

I’m pretty certain they are not a moderating force. I think the lead-up dot-com bubble its subsequent burst and the following hunt for unicorns was begot by a different breed of people than those pursuing the technology sector before them. After the Netscape IPO more people started going into CS as a way to get a foot in the door to massive riches rather than the pursuit of technology as a way to solve human problems. The Woz vs Zuck, for example.

> After the Netscape IPO...

The Netscape IPO happened 31 years ago. Over half of all Americans alive today were either in elementary school or not around yet.

It's the equivalent of someone in the 2000s trying to enforce standards and norms from the 1950s-60s.

The reality is, the tech industry has essentially always been like this, and any period in the 1980s or early 90s that y'all look back to just isn't actionable in 2026 and fails to understand how different Americans are today versus when you started in the tech industry.

I think that technologists are doing themselves a disservice by blaming the problems within their industry on MBAs. Many of the problems we see in the tech industry, and the reason why public opinion is not exactly positive, are primarily due to ideological factors. Whether you call it Californian ideology or whatever, many people in the tech industry think only in terms of efficiency and value. And if something isn’t efficient or doesn’t add value, it should be streamlined away and made obsolete, whether it be systems, processes, markets - or humans.

Yep. You can try blaming it on MBAs, but the people that did this (e.g. Ellison, Andreessen, Musk, Zuck, and so on) are not MBAs.

Who are the folks leading their finance organizations? Also who compose their boards of directors?

Also Google buying double click was an inflection point. Ads were kind of annoying up till then but they had not become the gross monstrosity that now exploits users and corrupts business.

Who cares? Do you think the CFO is secretly controlling the actions of Zuck/Musk/Ellison/etc.?

Sandberg built the company that polluted everything with this cynical influencer economy. Schmidt built the company that turned users into the product.

The MBAs exploited and greatly exacerbated the ideology factor by making ever increasing demands for monetary performance. In the beginning it's usually just about the tech, but soon it becomes how to make more and more money in any way possible with the tech because "the more money you have, the more tech you can buy or make".

Generally the MBAs and money have been in control since before the 1980s, maybe since 10 years ago in web tech. A difference in 2026 is the politicians allow them to do whatever they want.

> the transformative good will it had earned over the years

Had it? The last time I felt like it did was mid-00s with Google, but I was a teenager back then and it's easy to be naive when you're a teenager.

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