eyajpng
something i dont think a lot of tech workers have figured out yet: the tech industry isn’t in the business of making tech products anymore. they’re a banking/advertising empire with tech as a front business.
Jan 4 at 3:14pmWeb
Show threadeyajpngJan 4

working at a FAANG company used to be this impressive thing because these companies were ostensibly doing all the most exciting innovation and hiring all the best software people to make it happen.

i dunno if that was ever actually true but it certainly hasn’t been true for years. these companies are not doing anything impressive or innovative in tech, they’re solely in the business of making money.

Show threadeyajpngJan 4
which is to say, my reaction to someone citing the chief engineer at google is not “wow what an impressive credential” but more along the lines of “wow that is probably someone who is pretty good at math and also has their head so far up their own ass it came out their mouth and then right back up their butt again”
Show threadeyajpngJan 4
what impressive engineering has google done recently? what is meant to impress me about being chief engineer there? we’ve all watched every product they make get worse at everything.
Show threadeyajpngJan 4
anyway i don’t actually care about tech, i just like ranting, so im gonna mute this thread lolz
Show threadstudio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 4
@jepyang Give me any chance to dunk on a FAANG and I'll take it
Show threadMatildaJan 4

@jepyang all tech companies stop being able to develop new products at some point.

The management and accounting prevent any actual R&D. There is a small period were they get by with a "skunkworks" approach but after quite a short period those products can't actually be adopted.

(this is one reason why I no longer work for my startup - I have "ideas", I don't deliver incremental updates and I'm generally a pain in the arse as well as not fitting in with the MBA brainworm havers)

Show threadMatildaJan 4

@jepyang I've seen it happen in loads of places - I also think google have been unable to deliver anything new for a very long time

Companies switch to buying stuff in order to innovate (look at Apple - very little of their new tech was developed in house and they are still quite good at at least _some_ innovation)

Eventually they lose the ability to even buy in tech and they just become sales aggregators (Native Instruments in music space great example of this)

Show threadMatildaJan 4
@jepyang (to be clear - I'm differentiating between "buy in and pretend we made it" and "we're now selling someone elses shite"
Show threadstudio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 4

@jepyang Google is still seen by a huge majority as having a corner on the "how to do SRE" market. Sure, there are enlightened orgs that understand the "Google SRE book" is how one very enormous FAANG is capable of doing it and this doesn't really apply to teams just starting to build a function.

But I see on job descriptions, at orgs multiple orders of magnitude smaller, that they "follow the Google model". Or even worse, at a lot of places the whole concept of "Google SRE" is a cargo-cult, people don't even try to make it apply to their own context, it's just some unwritten rule that we must bow unquestionably to the Religion of Google in order to be successful.

Show threadakahnJan 4
@jepyang I have a friend who is a kernel hacker specializing in networking. Sadly for him the employers who can pay you to do that are few, and huge, with the business practices that get you huge. He’s at Meta now but I don’t see him lasting there because it goes against his values…
Show threadJoe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉Jan 4
@jepyang if you want to be paid a lot to work on ways to inject more ads into eyeballs and extract more information about every user, they've got just the job for you.
Show threadMatildaJan 4

@jepyang it was only in recent years that I realised my tech startup (started in early 2000's) was actually a financial instrument.

I mean on what level: WTF - oh we'll give this tech person who knows fuck all about money some money to make me an investment instrument......oh, why is it all so complex?? ?

and on the other level - like if I'd known I'd have learned about financial instruments and built one of those instead...

wankers

Show threadMatildaJan 4

@jepyang I just want to build cool things!

(which is why my new project is music software. No investors , only aiming at bringing in sustainable income. Hopefully bringing myself a bit of freedom from employers and fingers crossed there isn't a global conflict _just yet_ anyway)

Show threadMatildaJan 4
@jepyang (that's not to say I'd be any good at building a financial instrument but at least it wouldn't be the unsellable pigs ear we ended up with! I mean it's quite a successful company - turns over $10m a year - but I've been trying to sell my shares and get out for fucking years and I'm not sure that's ever going to be possible because of the financial structure of the bloody thing :-( )
Show threadErosdiscordiaJan 4
@jepyang This is true. I wish more people realized it.

I've gone from wanting a tech job, to settling for being tech-adjacent, until some things change. Which I think they will...eventually.
Show threadStefan BohacekJan 4

@jepyang And military contractors!

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/thousands-contracts-highlight-quiet-ties-between-big-tech-u-s-n1233171

Thousands of contracts highlight quiet ties between Big Tech and U.S. military

The Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies have secured thousands of deals with Google, Amazon and other tech companies, new research shows.

NBC News
Show threadMatt FranzJan 4
@jepyang You forgot the weapons biz.
Show threadSylvainDeJan 6

@mdfranz @jepyang

The unpleasant stuff i the weapons biz is much different. the payment plans are often decided at the state level (so no bank of bombmanufacturer) and the produt may be crappy but the real owner may not be the seller (like when you "buy" a film or disc on iMusic or Google Play) nor the buyer but the state of the manufacturer ( try operating a F-35 if the pentagon doesn't want you to)

Show threadeobetJan 5
@jepyang heck, even coffee chains are banks these days… 😩