aphyrThe future of everything is lies, I guess: Work
https://aphyr.com/posts/418-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-work
Thank you for this aphyr.
My one ask is people seem to put “CEOs” on a pedestal any time things come up, like they’re an alien life form and oh no they’re going to do something terrible. There are good company executives and shitty ones. You should try to start a company and see if you can be one of the better ones.
Class warfare generalizations have become the safe outlet for internet rage because going after CEOs and billionaires is most “punching up” construction that is generally relatable.
An unintended side effect that I’ve noticed is that it normalizes bad behavior of CEOs for those who invest a lot of “CEOs bad” grist (Reddit, Threads, even Hacker News). When someone, usually early career, takes a job with a bad CEO after years of reading “CEOs bad” content online, they can go into a learned helplessness mode because they think the behavior they’re seeing is normal. They don’t believe changing jobs would help because they’ve learned from social media to believe that their CEO’s bad behavior is actually normal.
This has becoming a frequent topic when in a rotational mentorship program where I volunteer: Early career folk join some toxic startup and stay because the internet told them all CEOs are like this. We have to shake them free from those ideas and get them to realize that there are good and bad companies out there and they have options.
>Class warfare generalizations have become the safe outlet for internet rage because going after CEOs and billionaires is most “punching up” construction that is generally relatable.
Mainly because "CEOs and billionaires" have fucked us over time and again, with their with their lobbying and bribing, with their power grabs, with their consolidation of news, entertainment, streaming, and social media properties, with their participation in the millitary industrial complex, with their censorship and partisanship, and with their rent seeking and worsening of their products...
The downvotes in absence of any reply suggest there's a group of individuals who think your position is so correct it's functionally unassailable but are offended you said it out loud.
> Early career folk join some toxic startup and stay because the internet told them all CEOs are like this.
I literally did this 12 years ago based on this reasoning, its good you're trying to counter that with the next generation.
With that said, I do wish there was more discourse around systemic issues rather than the usual finger-pointing towards rival social groups. Unfortunately I feel like our language gets in the way, systems issues are more abstract, but "bad people" are more visceral and easy to talk about.
When companies do something terrible (and they do, all the time) who are you going to blame for it? It's not at all surprising that CEOs have earned the reputation they have.
cheers. I think you're doing a good job and ruffling some feathers here! Your content has been great.
I highly recommend reading Marx. Your content has related Marxist topics like the 'Fetishism of Commodities' (Software as Witchcraft) and the Labor Theory of Value.
> people seem to put “CEOs” on a pedestal any time things come up, like they’re an alien life form
Might I suggest a viewing of the 2025 film "Bugonia"?
>My
And who are you? An account created for one post? There is a pattern of green account with usernames vaguely related to the subject matter of their comments.