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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Although this is an extreme example, I sympathize and often have feelings like this. But it's not about the amount of work; it's about the constant internal struggle. Let me explain.

I have never had a problem about the volume or difficulty of work in any job I've ever had. In fact, some of my favorite memories of work have been sprints to finish something, whether in software, retail/distribution, or food service. I take great pride in delivering, sometimes with compromised quality, but always on time and budget. I imagine many here feel the same way.

My internal struggle is the constant questioning of whether or not I should even put up with illogical bullshit. I have no doubt that hard work, long hours, complex work, and difficult customers are occasionally part of my world. But every day, in my morning exercise when I would prefer focusing on the work of the day, I always find my mind drifting into anger over unnecessary bullshit like:

  - working for unethical people
  - watching others line their pockets while I work
  - choosing what's best for the company vs. the customer
  - busting my ass while others sit and watch
  - endless meetings about nothing
  - watching great stuff I built being scrapped by idiots
  - watching horrible decisions made by those for their own benefit
  - witnessing the functional taking back seat to the political
  - dealing with managers who don't understand technology (and don't care to learn)
  - dealing with people who don't understand the business/industry and (don't care to learn)
  - horrible working conditions for workers while managers get luxury
  - constant work-prevention structure imposed by people who have never accomplished anything

Some days I'm on top of the world, rejoicing when something I built provides great value to others. Other days, I feel like I'm digging holes on the beach only to see them filled up by the overnight tide of idiotic others.

My struggle continues. I only hope I have the foresight to take intervention before I ever become like OP.

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When you work in a company you don't own, there are a lot of things you will encounter that not under your control (1). Personally, I find the Stoics' attitude very helpful when dealing with that fact. They advocate distinguishing between what is in our control and what isn't, suggesting to focus on acting honorably oneself, but always with reservation, i.e. aware that others can always stop us from reaching our goals but never invalidate our sincere efforts.

Talking of morning exercises, Marcus Aurelius used to remind himself in the morning that he would be around exactly the kind of people you describe, but that they did not have the power to make him crazy if he is aware of their inevitability: http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.2.two.html (BTW: I only used this source because it seems to be public domain and available online, if you want to read translations of ancient texts, invest in a modern one that is more convenient to read.)

(1) Of course, if you start your own company, you will be dealing with things you can't control as well.

Edit: Replaced asterisks that made the text italics.

> (1) Of course, if you start your own company, you will be dealing with things you can't control as well.

You are technically correct.

When you run your own company, the things that are "out of your control" don't feel that way, because at the end of the day, you decide how you want to act on them.

If a customer insists on butting his head in malevolent ways into a user experience I've created for their product because they think they know better, I have a few options. Of its an especially unruly customer, I have two: fire them or work with them. I will, in my mind, piece together the pros and cons of both, and will come to what I believe is the best decision. You are still deciding your fate and can live with the consequences because they're per your terms.

This is why, if I had a small team working on projects, every big decision would require unanimous vote. It's easy for someone to whine about having to work on something they don't believe in, but when you make them part of that decision process, and they consider the factors thoughtfully (like an owner), you give them that peace of mind of knowing they decided their own fate. They tend to come to the same conclusions you do, but aren't bothered by it because they're not doing it "only because you said so."

> Of its an especially unruly customer, I have two: fire them or work with them.

Employees have this freedom with their employers too, but not many realize it or are cowed by their personal circumstance. To compound this, one of the functions of (bad) management has been to keep them in the dark about their options outside of the company in case they get fed up with being shit on all the time.

At a much higher cost. A company with a dozen customers can drop the worst of them without taking a major hit. An employee with one employer has to risk everything. Especially since companies are often communities, so community membership is at risk too.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I work at one of the top cancer research labs in the world, and you'd be surprised how dysfunctional our organization has become. It's perfectly described by what edw519 has outlined.

Seeing millions of dollars poured in projects that go nowhere since they are executed by incompetent workers lead by machiavellian managers is horribly depressing.

I feel that a startup setting would be incredibly more efficient to do what we do. But of course it'd be difficult to fund it, unless it's operated as a charity or it's backed up by the gov't.

In the meanwhile I'm acting as a stoic and enjoying some tiny victories.

Leak details. If nothing else, more light on the area would make it harder to screw around.

Thanks. Care to elaborate on this?

It's difficult to leak details and make an impact. Academia is really screwed up. 90% of what gets published is a blatant lie, but nobody seems to care. Most researchers live in a distorted reality.

Well, I dunno what the best details would be... Whatever would make it easier for other teams to get funding instead of this organization, and thus is a proper incentive to behave.

Maybe bring up valid issues in email and once they go nowhere, make the emails public. You could potentially redact names, which would make it harder for them to attack you later...

Considering the goal is just to shape them up, perhaps you could fake or anonymously threaten a leak. Or for instance spread a rumor that you're being audited for this stuff. And if you see anyone shred anything, collect the pieces.

Or find a donor and don't "leak" anything specifically but get them calling for an audit.

With more specifics and an idea of how bad things are, we might be able to find something that would work.

I realize leaking is dangerous and burdensome for those who have to do it.

constant work-prevention structure imposed by people who have never accomplished anything

I think this comment distills the essence of the problem the which gives people so much trouble. If your perspective is that of a maker/hacker then good work (which should be rewarded) is to make great things, things please people and improve their lives, and perhaps profit the company. If your goal is maximising profit for the company, sometimes good ideas will need to be canned or replaced by bad ones the customer wants, sometimes work will need to be stopped after much effort was put in, sometimes politics will override technical considerations. If your goal is maximising profit for the individual at minimal cost, you want others to do the work while you get the rewards, and neither the business nor other workers, nor their pet projects, are your concern - more fool them if they take the company propaganda as truth, believe they are living in a meritocracy, and don't realise the realities of workplace politics. From the perpective of a manager who has climbed the greasy pole to luxury while workers suffer horrible working conditions, who is the idiot?

I would argue that classifying people as idiots is not useful and obscures the real differences in outlook which produce this sort of friction. There are many other perspectives to work (not tied to specific roles like manager or programmer I hasten to add), and holding them does not make people idiots, in fact many others might view someone slaving away for a company in the misapprehension that they are improving the world as an idiot; both would be wrong. The best way to deal with this IMHO is to recognise that workplaces have a culture, which contains and controls many different aspirations, and if you find this culture toxic, you should change job if at all possible - it is very hard to change a company culture or the perspectives of other workers on their work. Also, work should not be your only passion if you want to remain sane.

Agree with what you said. But please don't make it sound like an axis with two extremes: "the maker/hacker" and "the profit maximizer". There's a third sweet spot, the "making your client happy" spot, sometimes at the expense of your hacker spirit and sometimes at the expense of a little more short term profit ("ripping them off"). The people who find this 3rd mode of thinking, who believe in "making stuff that helps others make stuff" make the company work and stay afloat and keep it a warm and nourishing environment for both themselves and the "pure hackers" and the "profit psychos".

Agree with what you said. But please don't make it sound like an axis with two extremes

Absolutely, those are caricatures which would not fully apply to any person or any role - real successful companies probably have a balance of different types in them across a broad spectrum of attitudes to work, profit versus excellence, etc....

You are talking to grey-area after all.

Wow... This situation must be more common than I thought.

I've had a few jobs in my lifetime that left me with the feelings you posted here... The beatings will continue until morale improves.

These points: - working for unethical people - busting my ass while others sit and watch - watching horrible decisions made by those for their own benefit

were ultimately the biggest reasons I've left jobs.

In one place I worked, we created software for the financial industry and sold it in regions, like such-and-such county or city. Then our office setup one of our systems and competed under the table with the regional customers around us.

Scummy. Ultimately, I left over this issue and it is still my favorite job I've had or will ever have. All because one guy got greedy.

Yes. The feeling is so common, it even has a name:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

I don't use or recommend Microsoft tools because of this. They are good, technically speaking, but they will always be scummy.

Otherwise, if I am ever successful, Microsoft will clone my business. I think it has happened to almost all their partners.

Unless they are bought by Microsoft, like the Sysinternals guys. That's the only good exit.

Same could be said for Google.

Ed, 110%. It's almost never about the effort involved -- at least, not on a short-term basis. It's about the context.

I think the circumstances and frustration go beyond the description in this Dilbert cartoon, but it has never left my mind since I saw it:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-06-02/

Excerpt: "Wow! They're both better than my current job!"

"I have never had a problem about the volume or difficulty of work in any job I've ever had. In fact, some of my favorite memories of work have been sprints to finish something, whether in software, retail/distribution, or food service."

I'm sure if I put you on a 120 hour week for a few months you'd change your opinion about that, even if you were to ship something at the end of it.

I don't think it's a good idea nor particularly ethical given the situation under discussion to boast about how you've never had a problem with overwork.

120-hour week for a few months? Shipped at the end of it?

Is that a real project you worked on?

If so, and if it happened a couple years ago in Colorado -- I was one of your coworkers.

And I left just a couple weeks after the rest of you guys.

That was some crazy shit but in the end we did ship. And on time, even.

But I can't even pass that freeway exit any more without feeling a sense of dread.

Haha no thank Science just a theoretical situation, my word I feel for you man - that sounds horrific. I don't think I'd be able to cope. Games industry?

The point is that edw's comment on hours sits ill-at-ease with the rest of his post. As if overwork isn't a MAJOR factor in burnout.

I don't disagree with his other points, rather we mustn't pretend like working ludicrous hours isn't bad for you.

120-hours for multiple weeks? Is that even possible? Why would anyone without substantial ownership stake even do that?

Who said there wasn't substantial skin in the game?

And actually I remember it as 110 hour weeks (though it's possible that I was the slacker of the bunch).

Yeah, we had something like 3 months of working 15 to 18 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Totally possible.

Totally stupid.

Ah ok, that changes the tradeoff a bit. Your response was in a thread talking about lack of ownership so I had assumed that was your case as well.

Nah - just saw a mention of a death-march that so closely matched my most horrendous war story that I thought it must have been made by someone who had been in the trenches with me.

Is that legal?!

Is it legal to work long hours?

I guess.

I live in the US, where what is or is not legal plays second fiddle to what is or is not good for shareholders.

Anything after 40 hours per week is considered overtime in the states, apparently. I don't know if there's an actual maximum number of hours you can legally work.

I've heard that working hours for truckers is very strict in Europe but not as strict in north america. I wonder how that relates across other industries. For truckers it's mostly for physical safety, but cognitive stress can be just as dangerous.

I have only 1.5 years of work experience as software engineer. Maybe I am wrong, but aren't most of these quirks just a part of working with others? Regardless you are working for yourself, a company or organization, you have to deal with people. And people can be unethical, apathetic, incompetent, rigid, inexperienced, inappropriate. And when your company become large, it will have processes to limit your reign of power for good of the company. Every person I've worked with (mostly software guys) think they are better than others, and suffered. To me, it's more of an inability to work with others and handling situations and problems.

You learn well, grasshopper.

Indeed, whatever your occupation you will balance imperfect choices of what you will do, who you will work with, and the outcome of your efforts. Humility and acceptance of your limits go far in preserving sanity, whether you lead a multibillion dollar corporation, write software with a team, or sweep the floors alone after hours. You don't have total control, but that doesn't mean you don't have some control; do what you can (sometimes that means doing your job well, and sometimes that means leaving your job for another).

That's why I adore small startups where you can grow with others while being pushed to innovate. And people you work with likely to have the same mentality. The fact that the limited resource presents such challenge it's actually exhilarating! Well, my current job though hits almost all items on that list. It sounds depressing, but it has been a great learning experience! I like challenges and I don't believe in complaints, always make the best of the current situation. (really, I'm just squeezing every bit of learning opportunities out of it... big organizations got huge resources. Ha! =D)

>watching horrible decisions made by those for their own benefit

Always consider you have imperfect information before coming to this verdict.

As developer sometimes we think we know whats going on but really don't.

As a new startup founder I find myself making tons of what I would previously classify as horrible decisions just because I have much more information about what is going on.

The decisions you make change once you have to consider cash, timelines, resource availability and potential sales.

I think this point sums up (most of) the rest of your list quite nicely:

"watching horrible decisions made by [others] for their own benefit"

I think the answer lies in how you direct that feeling - either as hate for your job; or to drive a passion to control your own destiny by getting out and doing something yourself.

>I think the answer lies in how you direct that feeling - either as hate for your job; or to drive a passion to control your own destiny by getting out and doing something yourself.

It's not that simple. Seriously, people who work for me fight with me about exactly the same things I fought with my boss about back when I was really frustrated by working for other people. Working for yourself does not save you from dealing with these problems. It makes you see these problems from another angle, sure, but that doesn't always help.

there are so many compromises you have to make when you own the company, too. I mean, it's different, in that you own it, and ultimately, you have lines you won't cross even if it destroys the company; but god damn it's harder when you can't just walk. (I mean, some people feel like they can't walk away from their jobs. I /never/ felt that way until I had my own company, with customers and contracts. Right now? I can't walk, not without corporate and personal bankruptcy. There's no serious debt, but leases act exactly like debt when you stop paying them; I'm on the hook for leases that total well north of a third of a million in datacenter space alone... of course, that's payable over the next five years or so.) But yeah. I remember when I could decide I was tired of my job, and just go get another one. That was nice.

I mean, I talk a lot about the waste that salespeople are; the value subtracted by this negotiation process... that was actually a large part of the reason I went into business myself. It was clearly an irrational reason, as where I stand now, I spend a lot of time playing emotional games to see who gets the surplus value out of a deal, as the asking prices are set for companies that have margins at least an order of magnitude better than mine. And I still think it's a waste... but I'm doing it anyhow, because otherwise I can't afford jack. I mean, seriously, it is not unusual for the final price to be 20% of the asking price. what the hell?

The real problem is that negotiation is supposed to find the things that are important to me that are not important to you, and vis-a-vis. You want to work out a deal where both parties benefit maximally, by changing the deal. (this, actually, I think is why small businesses can often compete with businesses that are much larger with giant economies of scale. I can negotiate (in the positive way) with an employee "I can't give you as much as that other company, but I can let you set your own hours and work from home." - or if the employee wants something else, I can change my company around to accommodate that in ways a large company could not.)

Problem is? that is /hard/ - the people negotiating, first, have to understand the product, and generally speaking, salesmen selling technical stuff do not. Then, they have to have the authority to change the deal in non-standard ways (which I understand is hard because it means that five years from now, you've gotta keep supporting that one-off configuration. I'm moving co-lo, and all the one-off deals I made are now coming back to bite me in the ass. And I'm small enough that it can still all mostly be in my head.) It's way easier to make the "what you get" standard, then just figure out what the surplus value is in dollars, and play emotional games to see who gets the lions share of that surplus value.

Worse, now /you/ are the guy that's gotta kill the project that your employee worked so hard on, because /you/ planned poorly. I mean, at least you can honestly take responsibility for it and apologize, but meh. Now you are the one taking advantage of that hard worker who never really gets all that much extra money. (not having a lot of money is a good excuse here, and yeah, a lot of people want recognition as much as they want money... but even that is hard to do correctly.) Now /you/ are the guy that has to put the kibosh on a promising new hire because your supplier decided to increase prices, or your revenue took a dive.

It's easy to say 'I can do better' - actually doing better? harder than it looks. A lot harder, certainly, than just switching jobs.

I too, struggle with a lot of this. I've seen people who just "sit back" when they are dissatisfied with the stuff that frustrates them at work.

Problem with me is, I'm unable to do that. I DO enjoy the work I do, I DO recognize the value that I am bringing to the company/others, and I AM frustrated at people who insist on a work-prevention structure, but I just cannot bring myself to push things off my own plate.

I see the people who stand around talking about useless miscellaneous happenings while everyone else is sitting/working. I see the people who (even in non-managerial roles), take the fruits of my effort, and wave it high in the air "oh look, I'm such a genius! Look at what I did!". I see those same people treat me like crap simply because I'm actually doing work and not talking about how I lost $500 playing online poker yesterday, or how his iPhone app made 5 bucks this month. I'm see those same people make racist or sexist remarks as a joke, 5 feet away from the subjects of their jokes. I'm not the "in" crowd, I'm just there to produce results and value so they can show it off, get promoted, and look back down on me and sneer.

I also see that one other programmer on the other corner, working just like me, and being treated no differently.

I'm a very patient and calm person, but seeing how much anger I have pent up, I can only extend a little of my remaining empathy and sense that, that one other programmer feels very much the same.

I definitely sympathize. It feels that the world is accelerating toward the end of some century-long slide from value creation to value capture, where fortunes aren't so much built as they are acquired or harvested from the people who build them.

Is this not common in other industries too? Not just software? The frustration level is probably higher in creative/logical work (software, advertising etc) but I'd guess the situation is probably worse in other industries.

Is there any solution to this?

Have you sought out a mental health professional? In my experience, most incidents like the one linked have little to do with the amount of work or the politics involved, and everything to do with an untreated emotional condition. A lot of your writing above rings true in the same fashion. Please be careful.

Yes, being annoyed by unethical people is a mental condition.

... What, do you consider "being so annoyed by unethical people that you get committed to a mental institution" normal and OK?

There're lots of people who feel like you do.

This was essentially the reason is started my own businesses, or co-founded businesses. I was sick of all of the above. Then, eventually I got sick of the whole money grabbing nature the software business. It was just all about making someone else rich quick.

I was going to quit the software business entirely, but a chance meeting led to finding someone who actually cared and wanted to make a difference, as well as being positioned to do so. And we ended up starting Akvo.org, and now all is a hell of a lot better.

Bullseye.

I think I've learned to work through this brand of bullshit without being consumed by it, but I've earned myself a pair of golden shackles in the process.

My recent focus has been devising an escape route. I believe it starts with recognizing what's really important in life and learning to want less. I'm not sure where it ends, but it's hard to imagine escaping most of the bullshit while working for anyone else.

If I weren't in a different profession, I'd say we must work for the same company.

You have fought the hydra bravely, and I commend you for that. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back.

What do you suppose we do?

For the long-term, here's the financial structure for the solution that I see: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais-macle... . Essentially, I think VC-istan and MegaCorps are both dead ends when it comes to genuine technical excellence (which weird people like us care about). I think it's time to have a serious conversation about financing a fleet of mid-growth K-strategist startups instead of these red-ocean, r-strategist, get-big-or-die marketing gambits.

Here's an insane thought that I had that just might work. Find a Midwestern city that has $25 million to blow on becoming a top technology hub and set up an Autonomy Fund. (I'll do the "grunt work" of screening for talent; if this idea has legs I'd drop everything to implement it.) 100 top-notch programmers, $125k per year (out of which their resource/AWS costs come, so no one's living high on the hog), and 2 years. First, these companies are designed to become profitable, not to exit, so compensation is profit-sharing, not the joke equity offered by VC-istan. The city that funds this takes a 37.5% profit-share of whatever they build (it's valuating their work at $333k per year, which is lower than a VC valuation, but the terms are better.) If it works, then add time to the schedule (i.e. more years of life and more startups) and possibly more engineers. This is like Y Combinator, but without the feeder-into-VC dynamic; it's to build real businesses that generating lasting value both to a geographical area and to technology itself.

I seriously think that Autonomy Funds are going to be big in the next 10 years-- VC-istan is essentially a shitty implementation of an Autonomy Fund, except with selection based on connections rather than technical ability-- but there are some obvious problems (moral hazard, principal-agent issues) that need to be solved.

>> First, these companies are designed to become profitable, not to exit, so compensation is profit-sharing, not the joke equity offered by VC-istan

That really, really resonated! Now for a counterpoint. When I read that remark, I recalled reading a recent interview of Groupon's COO and I quote this para:

In 2007, he started Global Scholar to “help teachers give differentiated education to kids using technology. It was a fantastic experience. I raised $50 (INR 2,698.63) million in the toughest economy since the Depression. In 30 months, I gave four times returns to my investors and then sold the company in 2010-11.” On why he did so, he quips, “The moment you start a company, it is for sale… at the right price. You can’t have emotions…” (emphasis mine)

Now tell me, just how exactly are you even going to combat deeply entrenched mindsets like those, which also happen foster the usual confirmation and survivor bias dreams in most, if not all aspiring "wantapreneurs"?

Michael, I really commend your insight into the problem, but "you have an uphill struggle ahead of you" might be the understatement of the year.

EDIT: formatting and word rearrangements and deleted some line that might be misconstrued!

EDIT 2: Sigh. I really wish, that when people downvote something they don't agree with, they take a moment to tell why.

I don't think selling a company is a bad thing. I think building a company with the idea in mind that one must sell (because one's backers will flip out if there isn't a sale) is bad.

It sounds like a lot of what bothers you about VC startups is that they've become a way for megacorps to outsource risky marketing experiments (aka "convex work") and buy the winners while discarding the losers. But through the usual avenues of corruption it's become a rigged game where the sociopaths inside the megacorps are working with their sociopath friends in the VCs and actually picking winners instead of only buying truly viable startups.

So they're closing the circle and turning it into a revolving door for an incestuous aristocracy where the amount of value you capture is a function of who you know and who owes you a favor instead of being a function of how much value you actually create.

How do you stop any market from getting taken over by psychopaths who want to turn it into an incest-fest? This is also a problem in every other industry ever, and also in government. Is there a such thing as a corruption-repellent, paychopath-kryptonite system, and if so, what is it?

"How do you stop any market from getting taken over by psychopaths who want to turn it into an incest-fest?"

I suggest replacing these useless leeches with open source software.

I believe that most administrative tasks in large organizations are by now routine. For instance, there is absolutely zero invention in the insurance case processing industry : get claimee's documents, validate them and check contract's term. The only thing managers do is add useless overhead that justifies their presence and aimlessly complexify software that could be written once for the next 50 years at least.

With good open-source case management software, any organization can use it readily; no need for clueless suits to come in and pretend they analyze it because they can't; no need for them to demand costly and dangerous changes without any justification (other than the inept rules they created in the first place).

There is no need for the bums any more : just use free software that will readily organize your service.

Is there a such thing as a corruption-repellent, paychopath-kryptonite system, and if so, what is it?

I doubt it. I think we have to just keep reinventing. There's no system we can set up and have it run on its own.

I like the way the Scandinavians think: they hybridize between the socialist welfare state and a capitalistic market for innovation in a way we could stand to learn from.

I don't think there's a set-and-forget model solution.

But that's not what the US Constitution is, either. It was a legal framework and social contract that set up an elaborate system of checks and balances to prevent psychopaths from amassing too much political power. The democracy still running on that framework is a living, evolving thing, that has struggled to adapt with changing times, but it's done a pretty good job of keeping the psychos out of supreme ruling power (or at least keeping any one particular psycho from holding onto it very long) since 1787.

Meanwhile in the corporate world, we don't have that. Most private organizations are not even remotely democratic in nature. I think that's the core essence of what needs to change. And I think that's sort of what you're getting at by advocating open allocation and profit sharing.

Either that, or we need to at least strengthen the welfare state enough to decouple employment from basic livelihood, so that business failure doesn't impose the risk of homelessness/starvation, and most people aren't compelled to become MacLeod Losers, selling all their economic upside risk off in exchange for stable shelter, food, and medical care.

> Is there a such thing as a corruption-repellent, paychopath-kryptonite system, and if so, what is it?

Yes. Make the goal of your organisation a social good, and not making money.

Won't work. To play devil's advocate: 'let's see if we can make some money alongside the social good; maybe getting a bit grey.' Then: 'It's only a "stated goal" to make social good, but this is an organization, organizations are made to wield power and make money, so let's make money!'

>> I don't think selling a company is a bad thing.

Neither do I see it as an inherently bad thing. There are valid and compelling reason to sell a company. E.g., There might be no "family successors". Your heart may no longer be in it. You might want to do other things. You might feel that someone else might take it to the next level better than yourself at the helm.... etc., etc..

>> building a company with the idea in mind that one must sell [........] is bad

And that's exactly what was being implied here.... "The moment you start a company, it is for sale… at the right price". And I have a problem with that one too!

When I saw this story, my first thought was to go to the comments and do a ctrl-F "michaelochurch". Was not disappointed. I think this story is essentially the Clueless -> Loser transition in Gervais principle terminology.

That might be his future, but Clueless -> Loser is "going completely sane".

Technocrats are Clueless who go the other way and turn into "Sociopath with a heart of gold" types. We actually believe that there's something worth fighting for. Since we tend to disadvantage our own employability and, therefore, our incomes, I believe this puts us into the "insane" category.

We are here to use technology and rationality to do what our Boomer forebears never did (they came too soon, and had a lack of insight into the real problem) which is end industrial authoritarianism. The '60s radicals are back, 45 years later, but we sling code and like markets (in a left-libertarian, hybridize-the-welfare-state-and-market-economy, sort of way).

So, you define technocrats as white-hat sociopaths, basically. But don't you think that almost every sociopath sees himself or herself as being white-hat? You've built this narrative about a cosmic struggle between good vs. evil, but do you think anyone self-identifies as being evil?

I think your chaotic/lawful dichotomy is very real, but the good/evil dichotomy is really a matter of perspective, I don't think it exists in a concrete sense. Selfish/generous might be a closer representation of reality. What most of us perceive as "evil" is really just a person wielding power over others for selfish means.

There's a growing contingent of people using technology for generous rather than selfish means (yeah that's what "open source" is) and their philosophy is extending into social activism, but the industrial authoritarians have a big head start on us. They've been using technology as an expedient to their selfish purposes for a very long time already. (What's worse than being a MacLeodian Loser? Not even being one anymore because your former employer figured out how to make a machine do your job and had no reason to keep paying you. That describes 11 million Americans.)

I've always found it funny that generosity and sharing are "radical" and "activist" while greed and selfishness, even to the extreme, are now considered normal.

>> Technocrats are Clueless who go the other way and turn into "Sociopath with a heart of gold" types. We actually believe that there's something worth fighting for.

Thanks! So there's hope for me. Let me know when you are ready with the offices. I might pack my bags and book that ticket to join you. I hope the pay's sufficient ;-)

I completely agree. If you look at the foundation of (in our case) America, it is comprised of a lot of hard work by small businesses and families. They don't dream of "making it big" but they're realistic, offer a product or service that is useful to the community, and try to serve it whole-souled.

I like the idea; however, don't like the relocation. Not that I have anything against a Midwestern town but artificially designating a city to build a "tech hub" has rarely work. Many places have tried but failed. I don't see how it would be different this time. You will get more takers and talents if location is not an issue.

Location is only an issue if we focus on local govts.

Who else do you see investing in an Autonomy Fund? Once the concept is proven, everyone will want in (and then there will be saturation + a bunch of crappy ones that don't vet and underperform) but I think the first ones are going to be very hard sells. My thought was that local governments' desires to build tech hubs might be used to justify the first Autonomy Fund.

The Fed can invest. Federal government has a lot of development grants. The Fed had the stimulus money ready to spend. Lots of them probably had gone to the banks or infrastructure projects to hire bodies off the street but 25M is a rounding error in the scheme of things. It's time for the Fed to invest in hi-tech.

I submit Fargo, ND for your consideration. We have oil money, cheap cost of living, and a decent tech community.

I second this notion.

I have several friends who have stayed there after graduating from NDSU to work as developers and engineers. If you make $50K/year you can easily live high on the hog. It also continues to keep a "small town" feel even though its grown a ton over the past ten years.

I would say SD would be friendlier. They actively advertise in the Minneapolis area boasting of their business friendly government. They'd completely go for something like this, but then, nobody'd want to live anywhere in SD. Ever.

Do you think that:

(a) Fargo's local government would be supportive of a technology Autonomy Fund, and...

(b) it would be possible to get a critical mass of engineers to live there?

Also, what's the gender balance? I'm married so I don't care, but I think we'd have the best odds in a town where it's at least 53:47 women.

How about Las Vegas? I've never been there but:

1) Cheap airfare, international destination

2) A Party Town, probably helps the gender balance in one aspect, people would like to visit you.

3) No Income Tax

4) Still close to the SF Bay Area

5) Never cold, barely rains (good or bad depending on your preferences)

6) Really cheap real estate. Buy a townhouse for under $100k!

7) Many tech conventions are hosted there

8) Driving from one corner to another takes only 30 minutes according to google maps.

Here's where I'm attempting to continue the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5578195

If we could set up Autonomy Funds we could reshape this industry.

RE: (b)

For myself? Not a chance in hell. Sorry, I lived in Grand Forks for several years, and between the wind, extreme temperature differences, and flooding, you'd not be able to get me to live there. Sure, you could eventually offer enough money, but it wouldn't fit in this plan.

a) There might already be something like that. A local guy sold Great Plains to MS years ago for over a billion dollars, and has done a lot to renovate the downtown area and has a local venture fund.

b) impossible

This discussion is shaping up in the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5578195 . Also, I've been discussing it with other people for the past 48 hours. Austin is getting a lot of recommendation. I feel like #4-10 tech hubs are probably better targets than nonentities, but we'll see.

As I think about it, I don't want the governments footing the bill. I'd prefer to have at least 50% private investment (1:! matching?) as long as it's willing to stay passive enough not to interfere with engineer autonomy. Furthermore, over the long term, I'd want the ability of engineers to buy into the fund.

If you're interested in this discussion (autonomy funds) I started it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5578195

Not to derail the thread, but nation-states are about as obsolete as operating systems.

So by obsolete you mean "not trendy to think about but still the single largest contributing factor to every aspect of day to day experience"?

Not quite every aspect, but the lion's share, yes. Precisely so.

Interesting topic. There were early operating systems that served as an infrastructure for user's programs, they trusted the user, etc.., as nation-states basically trust their citizens to trust the government. But then too much malicious os simply unsafe software got written (as developmen became easier; life of citizen demanded much less care for the state) and the OS began morphing into restrictive and oppressive systems like OSX and Win8. As these restrictions inflicted real inconveniences on the well-behaved individuals, and voilà, the government's no longer trusted and has to be fought with.

AFAIK, in software world the way to deal with this situation is to build a new level of infrastructure abstraction to deal with oppressive OSes (ie webapps) and let the old system slowly die out because its services aren't really needed.

Wonder what will become the political analog of the Web.

Oh wait, the Web will itself evolve to become oppressive, no new analogs needed.

Hegel would be happy, now that's dialectics in action.

Wait, web-apps didn't evolve to get past "oppressive" operating systems. They evolved because centralized IT departments and centralized application deployment were easier than providing adequate deployment support and keeping data closed for desktop applications. They're technologically inferior in almost every other way.

This is so true. The country I live in has about the same number of inhabitants as NYC. Today I read an article in a business magazine local to this country saying something like "we [as a country] need to be able to compete with the world".

I mean, if we're supposed to compete with the bio mass of India or China, we're gonna have a bad time...

I live in a country with a similarly small population and much smaller land-area.

Just because nation-states aren't the forefront of the most interesting stuff going on in the world today doesn't mean they don't perform a necessary function. The psychological problem with a functioning, well-done nation-state is that it fades into the background, and people just suddenly act surprised when they wake up one day after voting for neoliberals and find they've lost their rent subsidies, their child allowance, and half the coverage on their health insurance.

not to derail your derailing, but "nation state" has a specific definition that I think is different than what you are referring to. China, India and the US are not nation states. Neither is Belgium. Japan is the largest.

> The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity. The term "nation state" implies that the two geographically coincide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

No, I'm referring to nation-states in specific. If you asked me for three major examples of why multinational empire-states are a Bad Idea, I would point to China, India, and the United States.

Though their are arguments to be made that China is a Han nation-state that simply forces everyone else to go along with what the ruling clique of Han want.

Don't worry, once I win the lottery, I shall create a paradise for workers.

Until then, hold your breath.

Unfortunately, after seeing Ed's previous breakdown on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361056), I have to see comments like this in a new light.

-1547. How in the name of a million fucks is that a breakdown? That sounds like a breakthrough. He's being honest about his atypical and unfortunate trajectory. I wish more people had the fucking cojones to be that way about their setbacks and rejections.

Silicon Valley's tolerance of failure is paper-thin and a "heads, I win; tails, you lose" mentality. It means, "it's morally okay for me to fail you". It justifies fast firing and VC caprice, but if you actually fail, you're every bit as ostracized like PNG garbage as in any other society.

On edw519's so-called "breakdown": The guy's been handed a shit sandwich by life-- when your IQ passes 150, conflicts with authority are inevitable; it comes to you looking for fights, and if you don't see it that way, then your IQ is not over 150 and probably not even 140 because every genuine 150+ I have ever met has experienced that-- and he keeps working his ass off and doing the right thing. Balls of Steel. You know how fucking hard it is to keep working your ass off when every signal coming your way is negative? How fucking brutal it can be to keep believing in yourself in a world where people avoid the sick, unlucky, or unpopular with no concern as to whether it's their fault?

I have a lot of respect for winter travelers like 'edw519 and Abraham Lincoln. Summer traveling is nice, but you only get a sense of the real landscape if you go when the trees are bare.

The beginning was good, but when you claimed that smart people are certain to not get along with authority you went way out on an unsupported limb. I personally think passion and drive correlate to conflict a lot stronger than intelligence does; plenty of smart people know how to choose their battles and bite their tongues, and the suggestion that if they do they must not be super smart is just outrageous.

Around 130, you start to question and dislike authority, but you can still hold back.

At 150, authority comes to you looking for fights (even if you don't do anything to it) because you make it insecure about its inherent illegitimacy and moral emptiness.

Actual 150s are pretty rare: about 43 per 100,000 people. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.333+sigma

I'm interested to know whether this IQ conflict theory is actually based on something or whether it's coming from your posterior.

Experience and observation. Don't discount them. The first person to say the sky was blue was going out on a limb, too. What if everyone else saw an orange sky?

I'm not discounting them; I'm also not just nodding vacantly. But comparing your observations to widely-accepted facts like the color of the sky doesn't exactly scream rationality.

Your assertion is that people with high IQ (which we're taking your word for, as well as the accuracy of the tests that we're assuming they took and shared the results with you) actually had the government after them in numerous enough occasions to be statistically significant. We're further assuming that you're right in that this is generalizable beyond your sample set (which is how big?), and then that there's no sample bias going on that would make your observations irrelevant to most populations.

I don't see any reason to believe that what you've seen can actually be called representative. No, just because there isn't a study behind it doesn't mean it isn't true. But that also means you have no grounds beyond "experience and observation" to make your statement, and when you're giving basically no useful data on how you reached your conclusion, no rational person would call this a useful or valid generalization. A hypothesis worthy of testing, perhaps. But that's all it is.

actually had the government after them in numerous enough occasions to be statistically significant.

The government? No, that's not what I'm talking about when I talk about authority. I'm talking about managerial authority.

That's why we were talking past each other.

The first person to say the sky was blue was going out on a limb, too. What if everyone else saw an orange sky?

Then the sky colour would be called "orange" and the blue-seer would be lying or misrepresenting the facts due to miscommunication, sickness (hallucinations), disease (colour blindness), drug use, etc.

how many observations of a 43/100000 phenomena would you need to obtain enough cases to falsify such a theory?

Incompetent authority may come looking for fights. Any competent authority figure is going to hire the smartest people possible.

I have a high IQ and have never had regular "fights" with competent authority figures (management, government officials / LE, etc). I'm also very libertarian and don't like working for others but when I do I don't have problems.

I also have good social skills so that probably plays a part too.

If you are sufficiently smart and capable of putting your knowledge of psychology to practice, you can usually work with the authorities to get what you want. If you get into trouble, your smartness or ability to act smart based on your knowledge isn't sufficiently broad enough. 'IQ' alone isn't enough information.

Bullshit.

One skill that is NOT correlated with IQ is the ability to reflect honestly on your own motivations. (If anything, the smarter people are, the better they get at rationalising.) So here's a mirror:

- you have a problem with authority

- you have a high IQ

- you have a deep-seated need to feel that you're better than other people.

You are totally right...

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