The whole industry is like a fashion show and has been for a long time. This is just exceptionally stupid compared to moderately stupid things before. I see it ore that everyone's wearing pink feathered chicken suits because it's in fashion. If you don't wear a pink feathered chicken suit then you're a luddite scumbag who doesn't deserve the respect of your peers.
However some of us still have enough self-respect not to be seen dead in a pink feathered chicken suit. I mean I'm still pissed off at half the other stuff we do in the industry. I haven't even really looked at the chicken suits yet.
If you work in a tech company with >5k employees it's extremely likely it's been forced down on you to wear the pink feathered chicken suit, and told to not complain about the pink feathered chicken suit because it is the inevitable future, and no one will be wearing anything that doesn't look like it ever again. Also, we are watching every straggler not in a pink feathered chicken suit, put yours on or leave the building.
> People can't just leave Wednesday and be in a new job with the same or better pay next Monday.
They don't have to leave, they can refuse to comply with unreasonable requests which are likely to cause harm by jeopardizing the security of user data.
Maybe your position is too precarious to risk getting fired, but if your job is asking you to do something unethical then you should be doing everything you can to get yourself out of that situation, either by supporting unionization or by being willing to take a manageable pay cut to find a new job as soon as possible.
If you're a software developer then you can almost certainly afford at least a moderate pay cut for upholding ethical conduct. The vast majority can even if we don't want to, but these situations are where we find out if our ethics are for sale or not.
> Maybe your position is too precarious to risk getting fired
You mean yours isn't? Or even that of at least 95% of all devs worldwide? I can definitely say "no" to my CEO if he wants something too big that would take too much time and energy for questionable business results -- I am even expected to ground him. But if my colleagues hand me a ticket, I cannot just refuse without repercussions. I'll not get fired on the spot, that much is certain. But if it happens 2-3 times they'll start looking for a replacement. Same will happen if I outright tell my CEO I can't do something due to ethical concerns. That's how it is almost everywhere I looked and asked (and have very rarely worked with US companies).
> If you're a software developer then you can almost certainly afford at least a moderate pay cut
I can't even afford a 10% pay cut. I want to live in your world.
The thing you two are missing is "solidarity" and our industry sucks at it. In fact, it's been relied upon and conditioned into most IT/tech types we're "special" somehow in a way blue collar workers aren't. We aren't and the same dynamics apply. If everyone stops asking the boss how high to jump, and refuses to jump, only then will you see a meaningful reining in of behavior in executives. That action potential has to start somewhere, and as the current generation of alleged adults in the room, we're it. Our juniors need an example set or the cycle repeats. It isn't empty idealism. It's hard effing pragmatism at it's most brutal. If we don't change, nothing can change. Therefore, we must change.
Yes I am missing it, as in, I know it's theoretically possible but I've never once seen it. It seems to be a fantasy.
> It isn't empty idealism.
It is if it's never happening. Pragmatism it would be if it was already an established practice.
I like my dragons purple btw.
> If we don't change, nothing can change. Therefore, we must change.
Obviously. But that "if" is trying to lift an impossible amount of weight is what I am saying. It's one of those powerless "oh, if only!" cries that we the people are prone to.
You think execs don't know that? You think politicians don't know that? You know, there's a reason why in primary education we covered the Gilded Age, the Robber Barons, The Labor Movement, all that jazz. "We the People" aren't passive. When we get poked hard enough, often enough to be roused, it scares the bajeezus out of anyone trying to "drive" or "manage" the system.
You ever been hushed by a higher up in a company for talking about compensation? Did you point to the sign required by law as a reminder you have Rights? When times get like this, you have to dredge up the things you've put away because everything was going so good.
Now, it isn't, and your neck is on the block. You will die. You will be offered up for slaughter at the first inconvenience. This is unavoidable. The calculus of business is not something that the ones executing business are going to change voluntarily. They have to be forced to change by the environment. You are the agent that makes up the environment. So your choice is, walk into the inevitable like livestock to the slaughter, or work with your fellow man and take a few chunks of the machine with you. The first step to collective action is accepting you might not ever get to see the shade of the tree you're planting. Once you accept that; the course is clear. It's not empty ideals anymore. It's action. Your action, because you matter, everyone else matters, and it's the right thing to do, and if what's going on is someone else's idea of right, you ain't selling everyone else into it, because that, (what's going on) is wrong.
Ever heard of a Judas goat? Same thing. Herd follows it calmly. Manager's and execs are 100% aware of the dynamic and on guard. The only counterbalance against the dismissal reflex is making it too costly to dismiss all the individual actors at once. We're in the machine. The machine is us. If we don't like how it works... Time for change. I got a lot of days left, and I don't intend to leave the world working like it is, because it is not working for the vast majority of us.
So in conclusion, do what you want. I'm not here to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But I see a fairer, more equitable world where we aren't subjugated by wannabe despots at the top of corporate hierarchies, but partners in making, delivering, and consuming goods and services, to the mutual benefit of all. Not just a lucky few. We were there once, and we can be there again; but we have to accept the way isn't making it possible for a privileged few to set the terms of exchange unilaterally. There has to be good faith. In the abcense there of, there will be conflict. They want things to just work and make them money. We want to eat, and be able to live reasonably well on a living wage without having to lock horns with and wrestle for every damn crumb against a capital wielding class more interested in extraction than being benefactors and stewards of a meta-stable system that serves everybody.
You seem to think I disagree with you on the theory about how should things be.
I don't disagree. I really want that reality to materialize. It does not. We have people in very high positions who very carefully make sure it never happens. They have connections, money, resources, obedient and scary enforcers -- they have everything.
While I have you here, I want to make a comparison. There are/were dozens of thousands of devs who commanded $400K for at least 5 years, some for 10+ in FAANG companies, just resting and vesting. They are the ones who should try and sacrifice something to try to better the world. Not me in Eastern Europe who get passed over on the final phases of interviews whose phases I _all_ aced (and got told so in very clear terms) because I said that no, 6200 EUR is not enough for a senior and that I'll start from 7500 at least. Not me who is still renting in this 40s because he was a young overconfident doofus who never learned any money and financial advice (and nobody told him he should; on the contrary, everyone was very happy to exploit me and keep me blind of my own interest) and is now finally working hard to his own ends only -- in a period he should be resting and thinking about the later parts of his life! -- and because he's mostly operating in the EU market, notorious for barely any investment climate and conservative compensations, and definitely not me who has seen first-hand what happens to people rocking the boat.
My disagreement with you is that you invoke some mythical "we the humanity" entity which to me is a cheap way to avoid your own personal responsibility. I don't belong in that "we" group. The FAANG or any privileged engineers are there -- not me. Have you ever commanded FAANG salaries for at least 3 years? If so, and you have not changed anything, then you are directly responsible that the system is not better. Not me. The three total times in my life when I actually managed to gather money to rest for 6-10 months, I used them to just rest from all the crap that happened to me and just recovered physically and mentally. What for? Just to get back into the meat grinder.
What you say is generally valid but you get lost in the bigger picture whereas the everyday fight to change the system is on the ground -- this must not and should not be handwaved away with ideals but with CONCRETE measures, step by step: "allocate 1000 EUR from your next salary and invest them in exactly this and that place" or "use law 1234 and regulation 5678 to get some of your taxes back" or "insist for this contract clause so you are eligible for at least 6 months of severance if you get fired early" etc.
Tell me what power do I have as a contractor. No employment rights. No medical / dental. No severance. I can get fired tomorrow and I have no time to catch my breath. I have to start interviewing tomorrow. Better hope I get the best sleep in the last 5 years tonight! Or else it's not happening.
Executives / people in power just use the "boil the frog" tactic i.e. they tighten the grip 1cm per year until one day, as you said, it's you who is on the chopping block and you are just left confused about WTF went wrong. We are seeing it everywhere, you and I, otherwise we wouldn't discuss this at length here.
> The machine is us. If we don't like how it works... Time for change.
OK, shall I send you my account number so you can support me for 12 months full until I find a job where I feel I can in fact change the world for the better? Disclaimer: it might take 60 months as well. Make your difference in the world! Do concrete measures! Or hell, do it for somebody else -- help them achieve their full potential and recruit them to help the world with you.
Virtue signalling, man. An empty one, too. This is what you're doing. Wishing a theoretical reality into existence so far has not worked for any living human as far as I am aware.
> I got a lot of days left, and I don't intend to leave the world working like it is, because it is not working for the vast majority of us.
Again, that is very obviously true. But it's only theoretical. Everyone is too afraid to not lose their stable income -- and I feel for them. Do you?
Well congratulations my friend, do you thing me some FAANG-er? No. I've undersold myself my entire damn life out of some misguided notion that supporting someone else's mission required sacrifice on my part because it was at least a step in a direction, if even not mine. Furthermore, I've only taken jobs that at least at first glance made it passed a non-trivial list of ethical filters, leading to a boring, but functional infra behind, but also a bunch of leaving places because I inevitably found that what once passed the ethical filter no longer does, and it has cost me just about everything I hold dear. I'm at best, right now, less than a few months from starvation my man. Not even actual food. Medical treatment. Know what that gives me? Clarity. When you're a dead man walking, in a system you're dependent on, and you see it flying off the rails; you start really questioning the "I believes" and getting down to "the how does". This system, if left alone, and as is, is Fucked. Capital F. No golden handcuffs here. Just a dude standing on two feet, watching the flywheel spinning and starting to fly apart.
And the fun bit is this. We're the ones who have kept it going. If we keep doing that without forcing a confrontation with the dynamics... Already dead, remember? So. There's one meaningful choice left. Start fighting for change, or go down like a lamb to slaughter maybe a little bit later, but get slaughtered just the same. I get you're in the EU. I get shit is largely happening over here in the States. Why do you think I'm a nuisance here in a Silicon Valley incubator's little club house of conniving ne'er-do-wells where everyone comes to swap ideas and get-rich-quick schemes? If I'm going to go down, it will not be comfortable for anyone, because I'm done seeing the world as anything but what it is, and if the only reason I am on this planet is to have conversations like these we're having today, that is exactly what I will do until my fingers, my mouth, my brain, my eyes, and my feet stop working. I can't even give myself the cold comfort of being a starving artist. They at least occasionally bring joy. I can bring only discomfort, and galvanization to change, even though I have a non-zero of ever seeing it.
>OK, shall I send you my account number so you can support me for 12 months full until I find a job where I feel I can in fact change the world for the better? Disclaimer: it might take 60 months as well. Make your difference in the world! Do concrete measures! Or hell, do it for somebody else -- help them achieve their full potential and recruit them to help the world with you.
My friend, I've already done that. Multiple times. I've helped raise children that were not my own. I've stepped in where no one else would. I've moved families back together across continents. I've taken on burdens that others may then run. Now, in a situation I need help, I have pauce hope for another like me to come around and do the same thing for me, but you know what? That's fine. I at least know I'm where I'm at because of my own hand. No one asked me to make those sacrifices. I just did. It's who I am. I give a shit about the welfare of other people, well in excess of my own. Maybe too late in life, have I come to truly internalize, that I should have been much more ruthless with the System than I have been. If it's willing to do harmful things to me, it'll damn well do it to people who can't stand for themselves. The important thing though, is if I can do these things, so can everyone else. We can break this goddamn cycle, but you have to want to, and be unafraid of the consequences. Our ancestors did it before, we can do it again. And in the end, it at least means something, even if I don't get to see it.
Even if that means I have to sound like an old fart for the rest of the time I have on Earth; I have to make sure at no point I slack off in reminding people your personal choices matter. The systems around you emergently form out of not only what you do, but what you choose not to do, and your life really only starts, once you accept that death is coming regardless, and stop running from it, pick up the billy club, turn around, and start saying "No more. This shit ends with me."
You hear not a comfortable man sitting in an office chair. You hear a man, being harried by a System toward the waiting abyss, who is refusing to go down quietly, or with a whimper. I have nothing left than word of the Void which we all are being inexorably pushed, and exhortations that if we're going to end up there anyway, it might as well be from fighting to give those we leave behind a better chance. Something many of us lacked the courtesy of.
I don't blame you. My intent is not to shame you. I only speak that which is the Truth, and the Truth, is often hard to hear. Fight well, friend, in whatever way you can. I know I will be.
Enough people could say no and take a stance if there was collective solidarity in the tech industry. Unfortunately we don't have that, tech workers are in the vast majority skeptical of or anti anything resembling unionised work. The bosses won on that front, and now they can dictate freely that you must wear the pink feathered chicken suit.
People, in general, want to keep their jobs, saying no is an option when you don't care what happens with it or have the backing of the collective to walk out together.
my assessment of the situation: "we've spent so much money on AI's promise to give us 5x, 10x returns, that now we have to earn it back by foisting the burden on developers to make up the gains by working harder, at least enough to recoup the exec's decision to pour money into the boondoggle".
"Hey developers, we spent $x million on Claude, who promised 7x returns, so YOU better make it 7x more efficient so we don't look bad".
yea the real frightening thing about this is, if there is a clear failure to get roi on this stuff, the top-level people will be very reticent to walk it all back and admit it was a royal fuckup
Force is seeping in. Managements are expecting that LLM-driven prouctivity-enhancers will be deployed and give broad-based boosts. More are each week. Supposedly cheaper than people. Those that aren't yet might be soon.
When your performance review includes facility with and productivity with LLM tools, you are being forced.
This is a "monopolized sector." They absolutely forced it on you. In most cases, sure, not directly, but their influence is the only driving force. Absent this no one would have jumped on this flimsy bandwagon.
Nuking Gaza is an abhorrent position but I don't think there will be any reform out there until there is a decisive win and if I have to pick a side it's not the Palestinians. If the Palestinians win it'll embolden other states or factions to have another go at the six-day war again and possibly prop up break-away action against other factions' host countries. There needs to be a complete and utter defeat that results in an enlightenment process. The strategy and military approach Hamas uses for example cannot be seen to win.
You have to look at the bigger picture. If they lose it's going to be a problem for all of us. Thus I have to support them.
And no I'm not a Trump supporter or Jewish or Israeli. The current operation in Iran is a fuck up. The whole thing that lead to 10-7 was a fuck up. It should have been dealt with years ago, preferably through diplomacy and threat of a strong hand rather than actually having to bomb the place.
There's no righteous side at all in this conflict.
Same thought in reverse. If oppressive regimes see that intentionally backing a population into a corner ultimately lets them get away with genocide on the global stage then presumably more of them will attempt it in the future.
Is the Gaza War a genocide? Two key features of the mortality data are consistent with that charge: first, unusually high mortality among women and children; second, the sudden and dramatic fall in life expectancy. In these respects, the war resembles the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides more closely than any other recent conflict involving the US or Israel.
> You have to look at the bigger picture. If they lose it's going to be a problem for all of us. Thus I have to support them. And no I'm not a Trump supporter or Jewish or Israeli.
Presently, some pro-war Israelis are beginning to wonder if the costs from these wars will be worth the guarantees it won't bring:
But the simplest is to examine what the goals of the war were, and whether they were achieved. In the first week, in October 2023, the cabinet defined the goals of the war as follows: destroying the military and governmental infrastructure of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip; returning the hostages, both alive and dead; removing the threat of terrorism from the Gaza Strip and preventing its return; and creating conditions for long-term security.
Later, a guarantee of the safe return of residents of the south and north to their homes was also added. The return of the kidnapped can be marked with "half a V" — the kidnapped were indeed returned, after going through hellish torment for weeks, months, and years until their return, and after some of them were murdered in captivity.
But what about the other goals of the war? Even "half a V" will not fit. It is too early to talk about the last goal, creating conditions for long-term security, but it is already easy to see that Hamas has not been destroyed, neither as a military organization nor as a civilian infrastructure, and the threat of terrorism from the Gaza Strip has not been removed.
In recent weeks, reports have been coming in that rockets are being produced there again and tunnels are being dug. And some residents of the north have indeed returned to their homes — certainly not all of them — but in no way can this be called a safe return. Certainly not now. Hezbollah has not been overthrown either, far from it. And the north, the encirclement and the fallout zones from the previous war with Iran are still far from being restored, and from security. Does anyone feel safe now?
And what is the real situation on the Iranian front? Have we achieved the goals of the wars there? The government has never published defined war goals, neither in the previous round nor in the current one. Judging by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's victory speech after the last time we eliminated the Iranians, in June, the goals were to eliminate the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat — for generations.
The very existence of the second Iran war in less than a year is evidence of a thousand witnesses that these goals were not achieved. If overthrowing the regime was an official goal, it has not been achieved so far either.
In other words, hundreds of billions, and hundreds of billions more on the way, did not buy the security we tried to achieve with them.
The general numbness in which we are currently immersed — for perfectly understandable reasons — is dangerous in all sorts of ways, and it is also dangerous when it comes to the cost of war. The numbers are so large that it is difficult to grasp them, so we don't try. They pass us by. We have no way of grasping 352 billion, and another 350 billion, so come on, another 100-50 here or there, what does it matter? What does it matter at all, and what does it matter to us in our daily lives. Just let us sleep.
This is the insight that most people need but will never have, empathy for other living things seems to be greatly lacking amongst the general population.
I don't think that's a fair framing of the problem because it focuses on empathy towards the animals while forgetting the empathy towards the humans.
Going vegan is not a zero-cost choice. It can be difficult, expensive, and in some cases even impossible due to health issues. Some users here complain about the meat subsidies without acknowledging that meat is pretty great when you're in the bottom of the economic pyramid and need food that's cheap, quick, and will provide a fair nutritional value.
I don't think you can live in a modern city without supporting some type of cruelty, as most phones and clothes alone would already be a no-go. It's not that people don't have empathy, but rather that there's only so much one can do in a day and one has to pick their battles. If you want to dedicate extra time and energy into animal well-being that's great, but let's not point the finger at those who lack those extra resources as if it were an individual moral failing.
You make a valid point, but my comment wasn't about resources, it was about empathy. Factory farming isn't sustained by poverty, it's sustained by indifference. The majority of people who could easily choose alternatives simply don't think about it.
I grew up in a poor household and we were vegetarian, because we saw animals as living things with feelings, not commodities whose pain and suffering is meaningless.
I agree you can't live without some level of cruelty, but you can certainly live without contributing to one of its most obvious forms.
Empathy for other living things isn't a fair framing for the problem? what?? Eating less meat being difficult, expensive, or complicated do to health issues are excuses. Most people don't even try to consume less animal products.
The riches of capitalism is built off of the suffering of humans, that doesn't mean it isn't important to try to minimize the suffering of other animals that literally have no ability to escape their circumstances.
Yeah no. I want entirely offline stuff that runs within equipment I completely control going forwards.
One thing this whole current shit show says is geopolitics are too unstable to put your data into any system or legal jurisdiction you don’t directly control.
I would unhumorously vote "humans", myself, but even without that, Trump is high on the list. Demagoguery without let or hindrance, addressing a demographic without shame (and now we're back to humans).
I found the best thing to do was to ignore the interrupts and carry on until they kick you on the street. Then watch from a safe distance as all the stuff you were holding together shits the bed.
Definitely one approach to the circumstances. I tried some variation of this and it blew up in my face (as I expected ).
Towards the end of my time there, a “fixer” was brought in to shore up the team that I was working on. The “fixer” also became my manager when they were brought on.
The “fixer” proceeded to fire 70+% of the team over the course of 6-8 months and install a bunch of yes people, in addition to wasting about $2,000,000 on a subscription to rebuild our core product with a framework product no one on the team knew. I was told to deploy said framework product on top of Kubernetes (which not a single person on my team had any experience with) while delivering on other in-flight projects. I ignored the whole thing.
I ended up deciding I was done with Tesla and went into a regularly scheduled 1:1 with my manager (the “fixer”) with a written two-weeks notice in hand, only to be fired (with 6-weeks severance, thankfully) before I was able to say anything about giving notice.
Out of curiosity, it sounds like you're the kind of person that could easily find another job. Why slog it out until the end rather than quit/find a better gig? Genuinely interested because every time I've ended up with a manager like that my mental health has suffered so now I generally start planning my exit as soon as I'm stuck with a bad manager.
Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job.
I have been in such a situation before, and while I was not able to coast along until the company went under, the time delta between me getting fired and the company going under was measured in weeks.
In hindsight I'd probably not do it again, it was hugely mentally taxing, and knowingly performing work in such a way that it provides negative value to the company (remember, the goal is to make it go under) is in my experience actually harder than just doing a good job... Especially if being covert is a goal.
I've seen it, but I think it's got some places that it would benefit from more clarity. Can we put together a committee to improve and protect our processes from it? We could call it a task force if that's easier to sell to management.
I did not know the existence of this manual. It was a very interesting read! Especially after page 28 (General Interference with Organizations and Production).
> Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job.
What...? In what way is it anything other than highly unethical to sabotage someone you have a contract with, because you disagree with them?
Plenty of historical examples of work environments where sabotage would have been the most ethical thing to do (and often you will only know in hindsight). But yeah in most circumstances a simple disagreement doesn’t warrant the psychological cost of such sabotage.
Your opinion of the situation is not enough to justify this course of action in 99.99% of cases and the residual 0.01% should not be enough to fuel your ego to do anything other than quit decently, and look for an employer that is more aligned with whatever your ideals are.
I repeat the insane statement that we are arguing over here: "Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job."
This says: ANY company you work for and disagree with over anything: Don't quit! Sabotage [maybe people are confused about what "do a bad job" means, and that this usually leads to other people getting hurt in some way, directly or indirectly, unless your job is entirely inconsequential]. And that's supposed to be ethically optimal.
There's a _big_ continuum between disagreeing over something and an ethical hard line, it feels like a slippery slope to interpete a suggested approach for one end of that line as advocacy for applying that same approach to the other end.
Imagine I am working for a company and I discover they are engaged in capturing and transporting human slaves. Furthermore, the government where they operate in fully aware and supportive of their actions so denouncing them publicly is unlikely to help. This is a real situation that has happened to real people at points in history in my own country.
I believe that one ethical response would be to violate my contract with the company by assisting slaves to escape and even providing them with passage to other places where slavery is illegal.
Now, if you agree with the ethics of the example I gave then you agree in principle that this can be ethical behavior and what remains to be debated is whether xAI's criminal behavior and support from the government rise to this same level. I know many who think that badly aligned AI could lead to the extinction of the human race, so the potential harm is certainly there (at least some believe it is), and I think the government support is strong enough that denouncing xAI for unethical behavior wouldn't cause the government to stop them.
a) I understand the very few and specific examples, that would justify and require disobedience. In those cases just doing a "bad job" seems super lame and inconsequential. I would ask more of anyone, including myself.
b) all other examples, the category that parent opened so broadly, are simply completely silly, is what I take offensive with. If you think simply disagreeing with anyone you have entered a contract with is cause for sabotaging them, and painting that as ethically superior, then, I repeat: what the fuck?
c) If you suspect criminal behavior then alarm the authorities or the press. What are you going to do on the inside? What vigilante spy story are we telling ourselves here?
Some people in this thread seem to come from a place of morality where some “higher truth” exists outside of the sphere of the individual to guide one’s actions, and yet others even seem to weakly disguise their own ethics and beliefs behind a framework of alleged “rationality”, as if there was mathematical precision behind what is the “right” action and which is clearly wrong — and anybody that just doesn’t get it must be either an idiot or clinically insane. By which I completely dismiss not only opinion but also individual circumstances.
In reality, which actions a person considers ethical and in coherence with their own values is highly individual. I can be friends or colleague with somebody who has a different set of ethics and circumstances than me. If I were to turn this into a conflict that needs resolution each time it shows, I would set myself up for eternal (life long) war with my social environment. Some will certainly enjoy that, and get a sense of purpose and orientation from it! I prefer not to, and I can find totally valid and consistent arguments for each side. No need to agree to reach understanding, and respect our differences.
Typically, people value belonging over morality: they adapt to whatever morality guarantees their own survival. The need to belong is a fundamental need; we are social animals not made to survive on our own.
The moment I am puzzled about another persons reasoning I can ask and if they are willing they will teach me why their actions make sense to them. If I come from a place of curiosity and sincere interest, people will be happy to help me get over my confusion. If I approach that conversation from some higher ground, as some kind of missionary, I might succeed sometimes, but fail most times, as I would pose a threat to their coherence, which they will remove one way or another.
Ah, but if there’s no higher truth, then you also can’t say that it’s wrong to sabotage your employer because of an ethical disagreement (or rather, you can say it, but it’s just your personal opinion). By condemning this course of action, the OP presupposes some sort of objective ethical standard.
"Don't struggle only within the ground rules that the people you're struggling against have laid down." -- Malcolm X
"If you're unhappy with your job you don't strike. You just go in there every day, and do it really half-assed. That's the American way. -- Homer Simpson
"To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral." -- Abbie Hoffman
Some might consider it unethical but others might also consider it immoral to not do what you're describing.
I guess you're fortunate enough to have only worked at places where your moral framework matched up with their business practices and treatment of the staff.
That isn't the case for most people. Most people are put into situations at one time or another where the people they're working for don't value them as equals, where the people they work for casually violate reasonable laws like product safety or enivronmental standards laws and what's worse these people will suffer no consequences for doing so.
No White Knight in shining armour is going to come from the government to shut them down. No lightning from heaven will strike them down. No financial penalty to dissuade them from further defection from society and the common man in the game that is life.
So what do you do? Do you do nothing? Just put your nose to the grindstone and keep working for the man? Do you quit, only to end up penniless and jobless, with poor prospects of an alternative, and even if you found one maybe it's 'meet the new boss same as the old boss'?
Nah, you come into work every day and you subtly fuck it up. You subtly fuck it up and you take whatever value you can extract.
Assume you work for e.g., a cigarette company. A company responsible for many deaths by unethically adding highly addictive substances. By sabotaging the company you are making this world a better place. Ethically it's the right thing to do.
Or, assume you're hired by the Nazi to work in concentration camps. Ethically it's the right thing to do to sabotage their gas chambers.
Why would you start to work for elon musk if you consider yourself a decent person, but him unworkable for? Have you not heard of elon musk beforehand...? Did you let yourself be employed with the specific goal of sabotaging the work, in what must be the least effective (but certainly very lucrative) coup possible?
What is it? Am I to believe this person is a chaotic mastermind? Or a selfish idiot? Or non-existant?
His reputation did not start out in the current state; if it had, I suspect he would never have been able to hold the importance/monetary power that he currently holds.
Changing one's mind about him can take a while.
With the benefit of hindsight, it certainly took me longer than I am happy with to change my mind about him; to be specific, I should have more radically changed my opinion of his personality when he libelled that cave expert in response to being told a submarine wasn't going to help, I should have recognised that only someone with a very fragile ego would react that way, that it wasn't just a blip on his record but something deeper.
Even ethically, this is only true if you think the ethics of the place are so bad that sabotage is warranted. That's not every place that you have ethical problems with.
To do that (and hide it), you have to become a dishonest person yourself. That is ethically destructive to you. So the threshold for doing this should be pretty high.
Yeah, I could see this being true if there was really _nothing else_ I could possibly be doing with my time that is worthy. But there are a lot of worthy things I could be doing with my time.
Ethically perhaps but financially and mentally its surely better to start looking for a new role (at a different company) that is more in alignment with you, no?
Ethically, if you extend this reasoning, are we not obligated to find a position in the most morally repulsive organization we are aware of, and then coast?
I really wouldn’t want to be in this position. But it feels very motivating. It would sooth some difficult memories.
I can see myself putting in a lot of hours.
The willingness to be fired, in both good and bad situations, can be mentally freeing and an operational/political advantage. Many of us fail to push as hard as we optimally could, when we have too much on the line.
IMO, this is a good question and deserves a solid answer, so I’ll do my best.
Setting aside the “fixer” for the time being, I really enjoyed the work I did at Tesla. Tesla was the first company that gave me very high levels of autonomy to just own projects and deliver. It also pushed me to take on projects that I had previously wanted to do that I hadn’t been given a chance to work on before.
(Side note: At that point in time in my career, my thinking was that I needed to earn opportunities to work on projects at work to build skills that would enhance my career. I didn’t see the value in working on projects outside of work to build skills because I didn’t think those side-project skills would be valued by other companies the same as “day job” experience. I’ve since learned this isn’t true when it’s done right.)
I spent a lot of time at Tesla delivering value for a bunch of people who desperately needed it at the time, and the thanks I received from them was genuine. It felt very good to help others at Tesla out in a meaningful way, so I kept chugging along to the best of my abilities. Life was throwing lemons at me in my personal dealings, and Tesla was helping me make lemonade from a career standpoint. Besides, all the long work hours were a good distraction from the home life stuff.
In a lot of ways, it was a very fulfilling environment to work in, but it wasn’t for the faint of heart. People often quit within a month or two because the environment was too fast paced with too many projects under tight deadlines and projects quickly followed one after another. An environment like Tesla just doesn’t let up, so one has to figure out how to manage the stress without much support from others. Oftentimes, if you do need to let up at Tesla (or introduce friction in any sort of seemingly non-constructive way), that’s the cue you aren’t working out for the company anymore and it’s time to find someone to replace you.
Coming back around to the original question of why I stuck it out until the end. Just before the “fixer” was brought in, I was “soft promoted” by a director (no title change, but was given direct reports and a pay bump, the title change was suppose to come a couple of months later as the soft-promotion happened just before an annual review cycle). The director who soft-promoted me was someone who I got along with well and it seemed like things were going in the right direction in my career at that point. The director was in charge of a couple of projects that went sideways in a very visible way, and Elon basically fired the director after the second project went south, which is why the “fixer” was brought in.
When the “fixer” first took over things, it seemed like I was going to continue on the path that the director had originally laid out for me. The “fixer” said I was going to get more headcount and work on bigger projects, but this never materialized.
I really didn’t like working for the “fixer” after a while. IMO, it was clear they didn’t know what they were doing, they weren’t willing to listen to feedback, and I spent a lot of time trying to provide guidance to the “fixer”, but it wasn’t seen as helpful and I felt like I was spinning gears. My mental health did start to suffer as I got more burned out towards the end of my tenure there.
Eventually, I was tasked with hiring someone to be my manager and I saw the writing on the wall (sort of). I started to look for a new job just in case. At one point, I thought bringing in someone between myself and the “fixer” would be a good thing. I didn’t realize I was actually finding my replacement. Two days after my replacement was hired, I was let go (this was the 1:1 meeting where I was going to turn in my notice, but HR served me papers instead).
To your original point, if I was in a similar situation now, I would be planning my exit immediately instead of trying to make the best of a bad situation, but I had to learn that lesson the hard way.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how the "fixer", who sounds rather ineffective as an executive, came into this position, in what sounds like overall a rather effective organization.
I've been personally thinking quite a bit about what makes organizations work or not work recently, and your story is quite interesting to me as a glimpse into a kind of organization that I've never seen from the inside myself.
This is a good question, and it felt like nepotism. I do want to point out that this is all somewhat hazy memories from years ago when all of this happened, so take everything with a grain of salt (as usual). Also, a lot of this is going to sound like nepotism, which is most likely was, but this is hearsay from other people.
My understanding of how the "fixer" came into there position is a somewhat circuitous route. From my understanding (I didn't hear any of this directly from the "fixer" themselves, but other people who spent far more time with the "fixer" than myself), the "fixer" had spent about a decade out of the workforce prior to joining Tesla. My understanding is that they were raising kids while also dealing with aging parents. We'll just call this time the "fixer"'s work hiatus.
Prior to the hiatus, the "fixer" had moved into a small-team managerial role at a large, name-brand tech company during the late 90s/early 2000s. At the end of the hiatus, they leveraged some connections and somehow attained a director position at Tesla managing a team of about 30-40 people straight out of the hiatus.
From my understanding, the first team the "fixer" managed at Tesla didn't like working for them and after about 18 months, the team basically forced the "fixer" out. I'm not exactly sure what the team was doing to push the person out, but from what I heard, work basically ground to a halt for the entire team where they refused to work for the "fixer".
This was around the same time that the two projects went sideways that I mentioned, so the director I reported to was on the outs and the director's manager (a VP) was looking for someone who could step into the role. The VP somehow connected with the "fixer" and they worked out a deal where the "fixer" would lead the team on a 3-month probation period while the VP continued to look for someone to come into the position, while also giving the "fixer" a chance to earn the role.
(Side note: One other bit of context I want to provide is that the team I was on was about 50-60 or so people at this time right before the "fixer" came on. The "fixer" also did not have any sort of technical background and this team consisted of probably ~90% software professionals in some capacity. A lot of the conversations were very technical in nature, and the "fixer" did A LOT of delegating and "just tell me what decision you'd make and we'll do that" leadership.)
During this probation period, I thought the "fixer" actually did a good job getting a lay of the land, the social dynamics at play, and helped work out some inefficiencies. However, a lot of this improvement was done by bringing in consultants to do the deep dive, discover problems, and provide guidance to the "fixer" on how to address the problems.
Once the probation period was over, the consultants left and the "fixer" was in charge. Pretty quickly, the firings began and over the course of the next 5-6 months, more than 70% of the team under the "fixer" was replaced. At the same time, the team I was working for merged with another team, and the team size under the "fixer" shot up to about 100-120 people post-merge (I forget the exact number). The "fixer" also hired quite a few more people thinking more people get the same projects done faster.
To say the least, it was a pretty chaotic time because the entire team was under a lot of pressure with in-flight projects, not knowing if they were going to randomly be fired or not, new people to mentor/gel with, and lots of random projects being thrown at us.
About 6 months after I left, the "fixer" was fired and someone else who had extensive experience was brought in to right the ship. Per my understanding with people who were still working there about a year after the "fixer" left, the new person was very successful and had done a good job leading the team. Also, the person who I found to be my replacement stayed nearly 7 years at Tesla, so I guess I did a good job with that one.
In my case at a different firm, I happily gave notice than to put up with the "fixer", who had been hired by the other "fixer", both of which were mostly only good at shitting all over the place and driving most of the technical organization out of the company. I got the feeling that was the whole point, so I resigned instead of waiting for my eventual layoff.
As someone who now lives and works in Denmark: it's sad that so many of us have been conditioned to think 6 weeks severance is generous.
Here, labor unions are quite widespread, and very effective at negotiating reasonably but firmly. As a result, I can depend on 3 months severance _guaranteed under law_ after 6 months at a job. (After 3 years, it goes up to 4 months, and then from there up to a max of 6 months.)
It puts the responsibility for risk of instability, errors in planning hiring / capacity, etc. firmly where it belongs: with the employer.
(And no, the economic sky is not falling here as a result. Quite the opposite.)
Welcome to our cozy little country; I hope you're settling in well.
Just out of curiosity: Assuming you're a SW engineer, did you join IDA or Prosa or did you decide to not join an union? I'd like to gathers some more datapoints to help other engineers moving to Denmark make an informed decision.
Becaues they were ~first to market - and honestly, as a tesla driver for the last 6 years - It's the best car I ever owned (including Toyota, Mazda, and domestics).
6 years ago, for the effective price of a Honda Accord, I was able to get a car with excellent AWD for NorEast winters, perfect weight distribution (previously drove a Miata for comparison), could beat ~95% 'super cars' in a straight line, and it got 140MPG.
6 years ago. And I've had 0 maintenance outside of tire / air filter changes since. There was nothing anything remotely like it on the market, and it still holds up today. That's incredibly compelling.
Then PedoDiver, and it's been downhill from there... I'll likely get an R3X when it comes out.
For a year when we were doing the digital nomad thing, my wife and I didn’t own a car and we rented plenty of EVs. Tesla was by far our least favorite. Not having CarPlay alone is dealbreaker
As an anecdote, the two I've had are fairly reliable. The older one did have more issues (4+ in warranty?, 3 out of warranty), but they've all been small/manageable so far.
CR notes, though, that Tesla has improved, with its latest models demonstrating "better-than-average reliability." It’s now in the top 10 of the publication’s new car predictability rankings—just avoid those older models.
That said, it's not all bad news for Tesla on the reliability front. According to Consumer Reports, Tesla ranks ninth in new-car reliability with a predicted reliability of 50. That's just behind Buick (51) and Acura (54), but ahead of Kia (49) and Ford (48), as well as luxury rivals like Audi (44), Volvo (42), and Cadillac (41).
You were so blinded by Elon Derangement Syndrome that you didn't even bother reading your own source.
Not sure which car you compare it to specifically from those manufacturers, but teslas seem much more expensive where I live than most models of those. Comparing it to corresponding BMW would be a more appropriate comparison.
Then comparison of quality of manufacturing and driving experience would end up in very different way (as driver of even older bmw 5 series teslas I've been to feel very cheap, and driving enjoyment goes way further than straight line performance and there teslas just don't deliver).
I agree the pedodirver should have been an eye opener for everybody. People are who they are and they don't change. Circumstances change and thus corresponding reactions, but thats about it.
This is the archetype I have seen for most fans of Tesla and people who think they make good cars. They assume a $50,000 car (their current Tesla) should compare with a $20,000 car (their previous Honda/Mazda). The Tesla market is also the market with BMWs and Porsches, and dollar for dollar you get a lot more from a BMW than a Tesla.
I compare my $41.5k Model Y with a Rav4/Highlander.
The Rav4 costs the same, but has far worse performance, technology, and ongoing maintenance costs.
The Highlander is slightly better, but costs $10k to $20k more, and still has far worse performance, technology, and ongoing maintenance costs.
Plus, I avoided spending hours at a dealership, and I must know at least a couple dozen Tesla owners that report no issues in the previous 5 to 10 years.
I thought I would miss Carplay, but it’s a non issue. Toyota wanted $15 to $25 per month for remote start, I pay Tesla $0 per month for remote start and remote climate control.
I bought my LR Model 3 in 2020 for ~42,000, ~15k cheaper than a v6 3 Series at the time. A v6 5 series is another significant jump up in price/market.
> Not sure which car you compare it to specifically from those manufacturers
My comparison at the time was a Honda Civic, BMW 3 Series, and that was kind of it.
I generally consider the Model 3 interior roughly middle between the Honda and the BMW, while having worlds better tech, twice the hp, and - Electric (when they were still rare).
There really was nothing like it at any price point at the time, and i still consider it a great car (though of course not perfect).
They must have outcompeted Musk at intelligence and/or insanity with their dedication into maximizing production volume of liquid fueled rocket engines.
Tom Mueller was a VP of propulsion at TRW Inc., which, among numerous other things you know from textbooks, made the Apollo LM descent engine, as well as early Space Shuttle TDRS data relay system sats. Calling Mueller a guy interested with engines having issues with his bosses is like referring to Craig Federighi as a guy interested in designing his own laptop.
I guess now that everyone knows about Elon, and Elon himself probably becoming more paranoid from both age and after SpaceX years and exposure to Twitter infoflood without adequate mental immunity, on top of most people who'd be in position to meet him not being as smart and quietly lunatic as literal Old Space trained rocket scientists, the scheme of temporarily impinging ideas upon Musk so to securely attaching the funding for your own thing do not work so well anymore.
To me it was more like watching an old lady watering IE toolbars at a Mcdonald's. Nobody knows what's the deal with her never cancelling any InstallShields, oh wait, here comes another WinRAR installer... aaand a reboot.
Tesla won because Elon is a great seller, the product is mediocre at best but I’ve heard many times from friends that it was the same quality as a Mercedes Benz, so the reality distortion field is very real.
And Americans in general don’t want electric cars for some reason. I’m happily driving my Buzz and charging on my solar panels instead of paying 5 bucks a gallon on diesel. The propaganda here is strong and people buy it.
I think you are simplifying a little. Musk had the courage to go against the big manufacturers and build the charger network which at the same a lot of smart people would never work. Same with SpaceX. They did something most people thought could never work.
I don't like Musk politically but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that he transformed 2 industries by sheer willpower and stubbornness.
> I don't like Musk politically but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that he transformed 2 industries by sheer willpower and stubbornness.
If you talk to anyone who worked there, they will tell you that he had little to do with the innovation at any of his companies. His lieutenants and the people that worked for them had all the innovative ideas, and for the most part tried to either avoid Elon's ideas or convince him that their ideas were his so he would push them.
But push them he did until the industry had to get on board. I think people underestimate the impact of a pro-change company culture, even if it does run on a cult of personality that is much less pleasant up close than in the occasional earnings call.
Yes, Original Musk was a good innovator. Alas, his brain has rotted - maybe not in IQ, but in execution and quality as he fossilized into a narcissist.
Teslas have a lot of flaws, but there is just now starting to be real competition. There was nothing like the model 3 in 2019. Tesla did well because they were first to market with a disruptive product people wanted, and because Elon sold it well. Both.
There was lots of competition in 2019: Volkswagen ID.3, Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-PACE, Polestar 1, etc., as well as lower-end entries like Hyundai Kona, Kia Niro, and so on. Depends on exactly what you think Tesla is competing against.
- All of the other options made a painful trade off on cost or range or something else. Tesla was the only one that had both range and was (to some degree) affordable without being compromised in some way.
I'm not a Tesla fanboy, last year was the first time I bought one (new Model Y), but it is by far the best car I've ever owned, and the FSD blew my mind with how much better it was than I expected.
My wife hates Elon, and has a new hybrid Mitsubishi, but she still drives my Model Y all the time because it's just so much better to drive.
Same experience here. Had a 2018 P100D. Absolutely the worst car I’ve ever had. Terribly put together. Awful interface. And so utterly fucking distracting it was a liability.
Got rid of it after it stomped the brakes on an empty road and had a battery issue that took weeks to fix.
I don’t own a car now and don’t want one. I’d probably buy a Polestar next time if I had to get one.
I concur. We were in the market for a new car. I went to Audi to test drive their A4; and it was OK. The sales guy sat in the passenger seat, yakking away.
Next we went to the Tesla showroom. The sales guy just entered some address and told me to press the gas pedal and it would go by itself. Full FSD. And no sales guy in the car. That just blew me away.
I did a research project of cars that actually have decent auto lane following distance keeping cruise control for my 1hr highway commute, and tried out a few in a rental cars (hyundai and kia) and a tesla model y and tesla really is the best that is out there unless you want to potentially spend a lot more to get something that comes close. A friend of mine has done many long cross country road trips no problem with just autopilot.
GM Supercruise and Ford Bluecruise are the current competition it seems, with BMW, subaru and mercedes being behind those 2. I haven't driven with them although to personally compare yet.
Even though the interior is a bit lower quality, there isn't very much quite like it on the market. It also fits an almost 7 ft surfboard inside comfortably, is a nice car to sleep in for car camping and you can get a model Y for less than $20k used now.
I’ve tried Ford and comparing it as competition is being generous. It does lane keeping and adaptive cruise control but you can’t just punch in an address and have it take you there.
I can't find one at the moment, but I recall seeing several interviews where people claim that SpaceX is structured with "handlers" or "stage managers" to keep Elon away from where the real work was being done. SpaceX has had Elon the longest, since the beginning, so they're just the most experienced with it. Though, now that people have discussed that publicly, I wonder if Elon ever caught on...
It always seems to be companies that Musk has more impulsive interactions with that seem to end up actioning both the good and the bad ideas. Twitter and Tesla being examples of this. It seems like SpaceXs longer term goals has worked out well for them.
To be considered successful, most companies need to sell more of their existing products and/or introduce new products. Tesla is doing neither – they have reduced the number of models they sell and are also selling their existing models in lower numbers.
I mean it's really TBD on what happens with Cybercab. The X and S models were always low-volume, and it makes perfect sense to move on from those models.
Flat revenue for the last few years while in a market that’s otherwise growing. I don’t know if just maintaining while your competitors grow counts as “falling apart” but it isn’t good.
I would think because the original founders spent a lot of time planning, researching, and designing combined with decent timing of Musk jumping in with money. Why else would Musk have bought them in the first place if they didn't have incredibly impressive ideas and engineering to sell? When the roadster originally came out, it was expensive, but also had a near 300 mile range which nobody else even came close to offering and boasted very impressive engineering and crash safety. And im sure a lot of that work was put into atleast the next 2 models released.
Of course the quality has fallen faster than the price over time, but initial impressions still hold on for a long time in general.
I think SpaceX's success is mostly down to throwing money at the problem. The US had tons of graduated aerospace engineers with limited places to go, and places they could go directly in aerospace fields were already committing their funding to established programs. SpaceX startup would of been a dream job for the top aerospace engineers because it was all fresh ground but with a far larger budget than 99.9% of startup aerospace companies. They weren't offered to build one piece of a rocket that may or may not get sold to NASA or someone 15 years down the line, they were offered to work on and put their mark on a completely new rocket design that was going to at the least be test launched. And im sure their early successes helped boost recruitment even further, combined with government contract to keep the money flowing.
We probably don't see many rising EV companies in the US because you need an ass-ton of capital to start an automotive company, and most people holding enough capital to do so know that try to sell cheap consumer cars that most people want is not really the highest margin business. Selling a few hundred or even a few thousand cars still leaves you with a mountain of capital requirements in front of you that your margins are going to have a really hard time climbing. And if you don't climb fast enough, good luck fighting established auto makers and their lawyers with every cent tied up into trying to scale and engineer.
> I think SpaceX's success is mostly down to throwing money at the problem
I'm not sure this holds true. SpaceX accomplished more with very little compared to the entire NASA budget, Boeing, etc.
I think it's much more to do with mission alignment. Run fast and lean, and approach the problem in a non-risk-adverse manner. Fail fast and often and iterate quickly.
Sure, it takes a lot of capital - but that is only a portion of the story. Look at Blue Origin/etc. in comparison.
The whole industry is like a fashion show and has been for a long time. This is just exceptionally stupid compared to moderately stupid things before. I see it ore that everyone's wearing pink feathered chicken suits because it's in fashion. If you don't wear a pink feathered chicken suit then you're a luddite scumbag who doesn't deserve the respect of your peers.
However some of us still have enough self-respect not to be seen dead in a pink feathered chicken suit. I mean I'm still pissed off at half the other stuff we do in the industry. I haven't even really looked at the chicken suits yet.