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vxnul

1 karma · joined February 10, 2022

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vxnul··on Is success tied to having rich parents?
Absolutely, as an orphan with many different ideas and no safety net I was frequently put in places where I should have been a co-founder since I was technical and the idea was mine, but basically until I was 29 I had no leverage because I had to have income (and health insurance, I was born with a couple heart defects.)

It sucks, and I'm sorry that you had this experience. That's basically how it works. The people who get the good jobs are the people who don't need jobs at all. The people who need jobs get the lousy ones that lead nowhere but more lousy jobs, and it is this way because the owning class can threaten us with starvation and homelessness into taking whatever terms they offer.

What is truly weird is that, if you advocate (I don't, and I'm not) for tearing down the capital-owning class using indiscriminate and total violence--and, just to be clear, I consider "indiscriminate, total violence" a terrible outcome, almost as bad as letting the bourgeoisie continue to win--you'll probably end up in jail, even in the US where they claim to love "freedom of speech"... but, at the same time, rich people can use survival pressures (threat of starvation, homelessness, and criminal medical negligence) and that's just taken as how the world works. To advocate for a final revolution against the bourgeoisie that might take 100,000 lives is a crime; to advocate (or even lobby!) against "socialized medicine" and kill far more people is legal.

It's weird how certain types of violence fade into the background while others are considered severe and deviant, to the point of receiving international scorn and attention. Worker-initiated worksite violence is a bad thing, no doubt--I am staunchy against it, since other workers, often innocents, are invariably the victims--but compared to the millions that have been killed by the US health insurance system, it's not newsworthy at all. It's just the Right is very skilled at using criminal anecdata to convince people the world that the poor are far more dangerous (and the rich, less so) than they actually are.

vxnul··on I love you, Hacker News, but you’re toxic
"Bro" is a strange word, because it has gone through quite a bit of semantic shift. It used to refer to a certain type of entitled, right-wing young male associated with some college fraternities (not all frats are like that, but a lot of them are) and tech-company management. Now, "bro" has just become a synonym for "man" and doesn't really have the sting it used to have.
vxnul··on I love you, Hacker News, but you’re toxic
Hacker News is less toxic than one might expect it to be, given the widespread historical association of Y Combinator with DVFs (a Bay Area acronym meaning "Domestic Violence Founder", referring to the high rate of DV issues involving startup founders). YC has cleaned up its image of late, and I think SamA really did want to make it better, but it's still YC and capitalism is still capitalism.

You'd think that a website supporting an organization so dedicated to capitalism would be filled entirely with toxic personalities, but in reality, it's only about 50% toxic. The other half are genuinely interesting people who actually want to make the world a better place (although, if they do what capitalism wants them to do, they will fail in doing so).

vxnul··on Google Search Is Dying
I come from the 2040s. Don't come here. In the parlance of your time, it fucking blows.

Google is still around. It is a third-rate search engine but a first-rate reputation engine. Boomers (we still call them that, even though they haven't been actual Baby Boomers for a long time) still use it to vet people before making hiring decisions.

For $159 per month (everything is on a subscription model) you can get the "personalized reputation" treatment by Google, so that when said Boomers are deciding whether to hire you, they see the unreliable material you paid for them to see--rather than, as under the old system, the unreliable material that emerged organically. It's a steep fee (these are the deflationary "new dollars") but it's a small price to be able to get a job and not be picked up by one of the "sweepers" and put into one of the performance improvement camps.

I wish I had overthrown capitalism in the 2020s when it was still possible.

vxnul··on Tell HN: "Upload your resume and then type it out” is hurting your company
Disabled people tend to get fired preemptively, regardless of performance, when their disability is discovered. It's illegal but it happens all over the place: bosses see everyone with a medical problem as a potentially unrealiable time bomb. So they tend to have a lot of involuntary "job hopping". And, not surprisingly, it takes them longer to find new jobs after getting fucked over.

This can be concealed to some extent if people only put the years of employment on their resume. Which is why the resume portals ask for months. It's a way of figuring out if someone has a history of getting flagged for depression, anxiety, or long COVID and then PIP'd over it.

vxnul··on Tell HN: "Upload your resume and then type it out” is hurting your company
This is often an intentional design.

A lot of HR people and bosses are evil and want to know not just where you worked and about how long, but what months you were there. Why? Because it's a way to figure out if you're disabled. A resume shows what the candidate wants them to know, but these portals are a way to ask the questions they want to know without revealing (as would occur in personal interactions) the degree to which they want to know.

Also, to a large degree these horrible job portals are a way of filtering out the "prima donnas" who balk at being treated poorly or having to do something mindless and unpleasant.

The hostile design is kinda the point, because it's capitalism after all.