JPMar 18
a theory on the total demobilization of programmers (in aggregate, not you specifically) as a class:
- comfortable life (salary, benefits, retirement plan)
- never protested or resisted anything / did but it didn't seem to do much
- never organized their workplace / community
- computers are a solace from messy real world stuff
- suddenly computers are subject to this new political economy
- feel totally helpless and concede to what's happening right now as inevitable
Show threadJPMar 18
one of the first steps here is realizing all the ways in which you are, dramatically, an outlier from the rest of society, yet your essential class position is the same: you will never be closer to musk zuck bezos altman etc than the people who stock your groceries, deliver your mail, teach your children, etc. who would you rather make your stand with? do you want to be part of humanity or whatever disgustingly evil mirage the tech guys are trying to make? what are your actual fucking values?
Show threadhextheplanetMar 18

@jplebreton yeah agree with all of this. I think there's a bit of self-trickery which accepts as given that any lower salary would be an insurmountable hardship. have heard a lot of rationalization around "just trying to feed my family" to justify working for big tech companies that they themselves thought were immoral.

probably the same for finance etc. I know it touches on cost of living Discourse, but in these cases the output was often like, "so I can buy a second house next year" or "do this for 5 years then retire". hard to get someone to sacrifice for others when they've compartmentalized that much

Show threadJP
@hex and everyone around them in that environment is either doing same (modeling how to get ever better at it) or they're fully bought in to the evil mission and every interaction with them drags the overton window rightward. these environments really can become deeply morally numb/sick places where the worst shit in the world gradually becomes reasonable to someone for no better reason than cushy salary + fancy cafeteria food + the feeling of doing something "important" / "smart".
Mar 18 at 10:17pmTusky
Show threadhextheplanetMar 18
@jplebreton yep. it's absolutely the opposite incentive-wise, but always, infinite respect for anyone who lost their job taking a stand and staff engineers have to earn it in my book