Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016)

newyorker.com

27 pointsrmason14 comments

We've totally altered our information environment in something like 30 years. Less than an average lifespan. On the back of that anyone remotely competent and well wishing in technology was immediately supplanted by those who worship venal money-grubbing.

Title should be Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016), at the time:

flagged (85 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055427

(49 points, 16 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057589

I went in ready to laugh at this article because it's The New Yorker casting stones about empathy vacuum, but it was actually good. Dunno if I buy the connection to Donald Trump's 2016 win, but it's refreshing to hear this explanation instead of stuff like "Facebook helped him win," the author was really empathetic.

It always bugs me when “Silicon Valley” is written about as some kind of monolith.

Do all the sincere, hard-working, risk-taking startups deserve to be painted by the same brush as Facebook?

Yes actually, cause those startups are trying to either become a large company or be bought by one. And talent moves decently well between the two kinds of companies.

This reminds me of when someone outside California asks what city someone is from and they say Palo Alto or Sunnyvale. No, that's SF.

The issue I’m referring to isn’t large companies VS small companies. I don’t think large companies are inherently bad.

I am referring to the societal harm that’s done by companies (that’s also what the article is referring to). Why is the company that’s trying to improve efficiency in the building industry being lumped together with Facebook?

I see, same though. They're the same talent pool and investors, that's why they go to such efforts to be colocated. I'm part of it too.

> Globalization is a proxy for technology-powered capitalism, which tends to reward fewer and fewer members of society.

This is just false. The growth of income inequality does not diminish the clear global trend of increased median income and consumption.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=l...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com