Note the subtle shift - in much of SV and the corporate world - from employees as high-return investments that we want to maximize, as human beings we believe in, as agents that would change the world and be the source of our future growth and success; to employees as costs we want to minimize, as a drag on this quarter's profits, as adversaries in a low-margin power struggle fought without any higher purpose or moral. Where will the world-changing, paradigm-disrupting ideas come from? Have we given up on that?
Remember game rooms, 20% personal projects, sushi, etc.? Maybe some of that is still there, but it is a product of an attitude of a former time.
Now in business and elsewhere there is the tidal wave of a new zeitgeist. Working together; believing in, having compassion for, and doing good for others are all outré, often depicted as humanly impossible and ridiculed. Corporate leaders are humans and are swept along too, perhaps more easily because it flatters and enhances their power (also, SV corporate leaders are perhaps more versed in the power of CPUs than the power of zeitgeist, which requires understanding Shakespeare (et al) not LLMs).
The good news in this story is that the corrupt and misguided are easy to compete with, just like then-newer SV companies ran circles around corrupt, miguided incumbants that didn't invest in the future. You just need the courage of your convictions. Believe that people can change the world, and (with lots and lots of work and risk) they will.
Most SDEs have grown up in a severe labor deficit. It's so interesting seeing the idealism smack in to reality.
1. Those "employee-appreciations" were a cost-saving measure to retain talent. 20% time towards projects that benefit the employer vs getting paid 20% more, or free food at an incremental cost of $100/mo/employee instead of paying $2000/mo/employee for equivalent comp-based retention.
2. We are no longer in a severe labor demand deficit. Quality of life will converge on the American norm - treating employees like disposable cogs, under layers of brutal middle-management politics.
3. "Believe that people can change the world", or caring for and investing in employees... Can you point to any industry that was sustainably disrupted by a company following such a mindset? The only examples that come to my mind are niche companies that market based on such an ethos, like Patagonia. Of course there are stable European companies, and US union shops, but those aren't disruptive. WeWork had that ethos for a little while I guess.
For 2: we still have a severe labor demand deficit. Software will continue to eat the world. What we are seeing here is corporation shortsightedness and greed.
You can make a killing in a quarter by firing all your workers. You won't be around for the next quarter.
A day of reckoning will come triggered by spectacular failures of big corporations that pawned their future + infusion of cash as the economy "recovers". At that point in time the pendulum will swing and hopefully people will not forget the absurd way they were treated.
Bingo. Cost-cutting only works in the short term, and by "working" I mean gaming the financial statements. Despite the oligarch's best efforts we still live in a fairly competitive market in therms of tech products. Competing means hiring people to make things.
I'm already seeing a significant uptick in demand for senior+ engineers. This is me talking to multiple companies and recruiters, headcounts are going up again and thankfully their for products that actually provide real value to customers. I haven't heard from a crypto/nft company (see: scam) in a looooong time.
> "Believe that people can change the world", or caring for and investing in employees... Can you point to any industry that was sustainably disrupted by a company following such a mindset?
The company with the largest market cap in the world, Apple. Steve Jobs believed in recruiting great people, and he entrusted in them and expected of them to create sustainably disruptive products. From Steve Wozniak all the way to Jony Ive. I don't know if I'd say Jobs was caring for all people working at Apple in my conception of things, but he did not look at the people working on an important Apple project as disposable cogs, and he didn't look at the products they were making as junk commodities to raise next quarter's revenue.
Whatever it boils down to, and whether it can continue creating things like the M2, there is a reason the company with the largest market cap in the world is Apple.
It’s interesting to me how important simply having that written down was to both the perception of the company from the outside and the products that it delivered. Since it was removed from writing both are similarly impacted negatively. Could it be a coincidence? Perhaps, but I suspect not.
Plenty of companies still have stuff like game rooms including meta. Band rooms too. It’s mostly Amazon that’s an absolutely awful, terrible, horrendous company.
As far as I can remember, Amazon never had perks for employees. Except for free coffee and tea in the kitchens. That's it.
I remember back in 2002 (?) when the 2-pizza team idea was introduced. My manager said he would find out how we could expense the pizza. It turns out that the pizza was merely theoretical: the team should be sized so that, if there were pizza, then 2 pizzas would be enough for the team. But that doesn't mean that pizza would ever be ordered or expensed.
Twitch did the free food and snacks thing. When acquired by Amazon, Twitch opened a Seattle office, on a floor of an existing Amazon building. We got to keep getting free food!
Every day around lunchtime, hungry Amazon workers from adjacent floors would quietly try to slip in to get a sandwich or a kebab or whatever, or would surreptitiously attempt to get a bag of chips.
Eventually the Twitch side started to complain: there was never enough food to go around at lunch time. If you were more than ten minutes late, all the food would be gone.
The Amazon management’s response? Lock off the Twitch floor so it required special badges for access. Let the Amazonians starve!
I remember the same thing with the door desks. I was impressed at the time (I was young): "Wow, this company not only uses Pine for email but they're smart enough to know that fancy desks aren't necessary." That was obviously a long time ago, but that attitude didn't last long, especially when I saw how absolutely venal the company was becoming.
I couldn't care less about those ridiculous perks; I can do all that on my own time. All I want is good work, good pay, good colleagues, and good management.
Office amenities were the carrot, attendance policies are the stick. Both are aimed at increasing the share of time employees spend at the office/thinking about work/immersed physically and socially in work-based networks. Employees who interpreted these amenities as a spirit of generosity that would just change with the times into a full remote culture were badly mistaken. If anything, it's the companies that never put any thought or care into their office environments, teambuilding, etc. who would be most amenable to going remote.
Microsoft, Facebook, google, Apple, Amazon etc are all hugely profitable companies. If anyone can afford to ride out wall streets short term thinking, it is them.
Wall Street this past year began crushing non-profitable companies.
i.e. people stopped buying shares in non-profitable companies..
would you want stock in non-profitable companies in your retirement account? I wouldn't
Based on overwhelming evidence. Based on people I know and interact with all the time; based on thousands of years of history, philosophy, stories, religion that embody it and talk about it.
Based on our reality: We were born into a world built by it, free and prosperous and safe far beyond any of our ancestors. Generations before us actually built that (and what are we building for the next?). Look what King and Einstein and Keynes (and Friedman) and Steinum and all those people built - none profiting much from it.
Do you really doubt that humans have better angels and worse - inside every one of us, and that we have a choice? It's hardly a novel idea, though I can see that it's outre, it's disruptive and outside the pale, in this (uber-reactionary?) moment. Otherwise, who would want to deny that reality?
Can you list a few reasoned out examples of this 'overwhelming evidence'?
From what I understand of modern biology even newborn babies are not entirely blank slates, there's some amount of genetic and epigenetic influence so that many 'choices' are not really up to the individual to decide.
And certainly by adulthood, which is the vast majority of passing HN readers, many many permanent life altering choices have occurred.
For a real world example, the children and grandchildren of those who suffered severe starvation in the Netherlands during WW2 have noticeably worse characteristics on average, in terms of a shorter lifespan, less healthy, etc.., compared to families that didn't undergo that. Even their personalities and behaviours, on average, were affected.
> From what I understand of modern biology even newborn babies are not entirely blank slates, there's some amount of genetic and epigenetic influence so that many 'choices' are not really up to the individual to decide. ...
I think you are taking the influences we all have - emotional, physical, environmental, etc. - to an extreme. It's not blank slate or automaton. People still make lots of choices, even if there are drives and other influences one way or the other. You don't have to do bad things, and you can choose to deal with your natural drives, emotions, etc. in many ways.
Okay, so then it should be easy to find and list out 'overwhelming evidence'?
The Dutch example suggests the opposite, that to noticeably move the needle for large groups of people like that, in a positive direction, would take many lifetimes to occur.
Even to get them back to the population average would likely take at least a half dozen generations.
Ah, I didn't realize this is some racial/ethnic superiority rationalization. IMHO such arguments are transparently an attempt to rationalize people's biases (and in the current rhetoric, they like to assert them as if they they have novel, insightful, intellectual ideas, instead of just espousing old reactionary oppression).
Life is too short for such diversions, and those things have cause far, far to much harm to too many people, in ways we know very well. In fact, I might assert that nothing has caused more harm to humanity: stop acting on racial/ethnic/nationalistic biases, and we'd have a far more peaceful, free, prosperous world.
Lots of people have that bias, everyone to some degree. Everyone has anger too, but we don't all punch or neighbors or believe we are self-righteous. You could change how you deal with your biases right now - you don't need generations, and don't accept that excuse for yourself. We have a choice; we can do so much more - right now.
Considering this is the third deflection in a row, I'm going to have to insist on solid proof of this 'overwhelming evidence' going forwards, instead of hand-waving and easily seen through innuendos.
Again, people love to say it, like it sounds smart. Humans are earnest and deceitful, to varying degrees at varying times. We do acheive earnest goods; we have human rights, for example, democracy, and lots of peace (but not enough). We have a choice, free will, the moral choice of thousands of years of (much) religion and philosophy.
I never have at any age, but I also grew up extremely poor and watched my mother take a company to court over wage theft and win. She, as a matter of course, always kept detailed records of time worked every single day. The court decided that level of record keeping over years was enough.
I may have some level of loyalty to those around me but even that comes with a healthy bit of cynicism.
Your question makes me realize there's some ambiguity regarding "believing" in a company.
There have been teams, especially small ones, where I trusted everyone on the team to act like a true friend, and to strive to do good things for the company.
I don't recall ever working for an organization where I 100% cared about their goals, or believed 100% in the righteousness of their goals, or where I was 100% sure they'd succeed.
Agreed. It's never 100%. Life is more complex and nuanced than that. Nobody - the other people or myself - is 100% caring, righteous, etc. Real, adult ove is caring for, believing in, and sometimes committing to the flawed creatures, even as we're flawed ourselves.
If those people care about those things (and aren't in a system that pressurises them not to or selects for people who do) then the "company" will also care about those things.
If the company is controlled by distant, diffuse, anonymous investors indirectly, they are much more likely to demand instant profits and encourage rich leadership to screw the workers. Wealth invariably (but not always) makes people less humane and more arrogant.
The solution to avoid this Kafkaesque trap multitudes are willing to saddle around their necks is worker-owned co-ops.
I don't know what is surprising, it's just capitalism being capitalism. There were game rooms because they thought it would be useful for making money, they don't have game room anymore because they think its' useful for making money now
Remember game rooms, 20% personal projects, sushi, etc.? Maybe some of that is still there, but it is a product of an attitude of a former time.
Now in business and elsewhere there is the tidal wave of a new zeitgeist. Working together; believing in, having compassion for, and doing good for others are all outré, often depicted as humanly impossible and ridiculed. Corporate leaders are humans and are swept along too, perhaps more easily because it flatters and enhances their power (also, SV corporate leaders are perhaps more versed in the power of CPUs than the power of zeitgeist, which requires understanding Shakespeare (et al) not LLMs).
The good news in this story is that the corrupt and misguided are easy to compete with, just like then-newer SV companies ran circles around corrupt, miguided incumbants that didn't invest in the future. You just need the courage of your convictions. Believe that people can change the world, and (with lots and lots of work and risk) they will.