Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016)
newyorker.com26 points by rmason a day ago
26 points by rmason a day ago
We've totally altered our information environment in something like 30 years. Less than an average lifespan. On the back of that anyone remotely competent and well wishing in technology was immediately supplanted by those who worship venal money-grubbing.
Title should be Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016), at the time:
flagged (85 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055427
(49 points, 16 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057589
I went in ready to laugh at this article because it's The New Yorker casting stones about empathy vacuum, but it was actually good. Dunno if I buy the connection to Donald Trump's 2016 win, but it's refreshing to hear this explanation instead of stuff like "Facebook helped him win," the author was really empathetic.
It always bugs me when “Silicon Valley” is written about as some kind of monolith.
Do all the sincere, hard-working, risk-taking startups deserve to be painted by the same brush as Facebook?
Yes actually, cause those startups are trying to either become a large company or be bought by one. And talent moves decently well between the two kinds of companies.
This reminds me of when someone outside California asks what city someone is from and they say Palo Alto or Sunnyvale. No, that's SF.
The issue I’m referring to isn’t large companies VS small companies. I don’t think large companies are inherently bad.
I am referring to the societal harm that’s done by companies (that’s also what the article is referring to). Why is the company that’s trying to improve efficiency in the building industry being lumped together with Facebook?
I see, same though. They're the same talent pool and investors, that's why they go to such efforts to be colocated. I'm part of it too.
> Globalization is a proxy for technology-powered capitalism, which tends to reward fewer and fewer members of society.
This is just false. The growth of income inequality does not diminish the clear global trend of increased median income and consumption.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=l...
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Well that’s a sour take. There’s plenty of journalists that are vital to you as a citizen, that helped create the societal contract that we enjoy today. There also happen to be a lot of journalists that shill for political or monetary gain. Journalism (the act of gathering, verifying and distributing information) is extremely vital to a functioning democracy.
I don't have a shred of empathy for software engineers at risk to AI
Same old technological advancement they championed coming for them.
Too bad for them they had too little vision and skill for engineering which led them to erroneous conclusion hardware would never evolve to be self-configuring even though its a long sought goal of hardware engineering
I mean this is the US, where it could be argued the lack of social safety net means none of us really have empathy for our neighbors. Same as I am not out there feeding homeless, if you end up living in your car, oh well.
I'm fine with "live by the sword, die by the sword" for software engineering. SWEs who insisted on using outdated tooling have been getting replaced for decades. If I get replaced, it's my fault. Not speaking for truckers or other professions, just my own.
I am one of those engineers. And when the AI comes for my job I will just get another.