Unfortunately, we just entered Act II and I don't play a role here. Lots of us are just watching now.
📍: PNW, US
💻: platforms, dashboards, productivity
📚: science, fantasy, sci-fi
And so I feel vindicated here, standing at the precipice of significant SWE job-loss, anxiety, and suffering, upon seeing how the general industry vibe has remained absolutely fixed on:
* Embracing change even if it ushers doom
* Not getting left behind
* Sticking with the crowd while believing that the crowd itself will be left behind
No, the SWEs not unionize.
They will drive each other, and the output of the industry, off a cliff before embracing either professionalism or the craft
We used to debate/discuss the "will software engineers ever unionize?" topic and my thoughts were always in line with:
* When you have an industry that promises to pay you what you're "worth", i.e. meritocracy
* And when you have so many people in the industry who desire to win PvP games and excel at personal accomplishments
* Then there's no general desire to work together, aka unionize, because that would mean "losing" the game of personal accomplishment in favor of sharing rewards
Starting to really get into Sumō.
I'd almost forgotten that we could watch well-organized, established, commentated, global sporting events *without* having to see Red Bull and Visa adverts plastered in the background
I know the car commercials say "our car is the safest... look at all of these safety features... your family is in good hands..." Ok, cool, got it.
But they *also* should say "however, if you drive incompetently, you will end up flipped over in the ditch speaking to law enforcement and your insurance company, while having people shout hey you can't park there as they drive by"
I lost a friend today and they don't know it yet.
They've become a mouthpiece for a dangerously incompetent government regime and are on video supporting said regime with their full-throated voice.
I don't think this ex-friend knows that they have split with reality. I don't think they know that they have caused damage. I'd *like* to think that they are just scared of losing their paycheck. Because they are paid to use their voice.
Regardless, this is the choice that they actively chose.
If I was the company that designs their own processors and I believed that the new processor cores were much faster than the old cores, I would not *rebrand* the names of the cores. No, I would just say "we made these cores even better!"
Because faster cores in newest-gen hardware is just awesome. It sells itself. It's what is expected.
But now, with the *rebrand*, if the new cores are not *absolutely stellar*, the rebrand just looks really dumb and disappointing.
I'm not celebrating the implosions, not at all.
But if you think to yourself "what kind of justice is there for large private monied parties, with no expertise and overflowing buckets of cash, who try to seize control of industries, pump up the hype, shortcut the product development, squeeze the artisans, and wring customers dry for profit... ?"
Well then I think having massive public implosions is actually kinda, well... nice! What else would you like to happen?
The gaming industry is simply the tech industry *without forced customers*.
Big money comes in to gaming and tries to dominate, makes ludicrously bad choices, hypes and floods the zone with PR, ignores feedback, stressed and burns our their staff, then goes on a media campaign to justify everything, and finally blames the customer.
Except the customer doesn't need to buy. And so they don't. And then the massive ($50m+) investment turn into a desperate fire sale.
And so, we get implosions
If you want to know why I don't panic about AI, about corporate overlords, about big money investments, and about everything getting gobbled up, or why I refuse to surrender to anxiety and fear about corporate consolidation and automation, this screenshot neatly captures my reasoning.
The story of Highguard is not some crazy outlier in the gaming landscape.
No, it's the quintessential corporate playbook for private investor money and leads to messy, delicious, supernovas of failure.
