This is spot on. As people, a sense of community is not something we usually associate with commerce, but these online platforms are _only_ instruments to get a return on someone's investment.
The fact that part of the journey involves mutually beneficial behaviours (like using VC money to acquire more users, build a better UX, and make the community larger) is just an accident, and the incentive to capitalise the whole shebang will always win out.
This sort of thing feels like The Price We Eventually Pay for a massive, free-to-use online community.
got a source for that company? Presumably it'll be semi-public knowledge. I'd be incredibly surprised if a business was already proficient enough to replace software teams. Call centre operatives or content-farmers maybe...
You're among the first people I've encountered with both experience in writing your own software and prompting an LLM to do it. I have a few questions for you (maybe the answers will make you feel better, or maybe they'll make you feel worse)
- when the code the model spat out was wrong, how did you fix it? Did you identify it was wrong before you ran it?
- what level of complexity was there in the code, in terms of "business logic" or complexity of the requirements you fed into it?
I ask these two questions because I am not sure an AI will get to the level of experience you have in the near future in _generating_ complex applications, let alone being able to reflect on why its own creations are wrong, fixing them, deploying some output, and then explaining the changes?
A human is going to be in the loop in these cases for a long time, and I'm assuming part or all of your decades of experience has been spent understanding quite how poor people are at explaining their requirements. What if you thought of generative AI as a tool you can learn to utilise to do your job more effectively?
All the recent furore about Twitter's monetisation and Reddit's API changes reminded me of this article from 1993. Clearly, only one guy's opinion but I think we've strayed pretty far from this vision of the internet, as a protocol and connective tissue for people.
I can't help but feel like the fact the internet began as (or grew into) something free, underground, experimental led us inexorably to this path: where we expect or demand that online products are free at the point of use, which means we become the product.
I don't know that a small, more decentralised, cottage-y internet would be Better. But it's interesting to think about.
I understand what you’re saying and I agree that dismissing it out of hand is obviously the wrong approach - but this does feel like it meets the bar to be a “conspiracy theory”, in that people theorise that the dominant answer for something is wrong, and the true answer is being covered up by powerful groups of people.
Galileo said "the earth is spherical and revolves around the sun, contrary to what's been taught (that the earth is the center of the heavens)". The powerful group called the Church said that's wrong and condemned him and shunned him.
A proper scientific discourse would be to be open to new theories, and let people who guess those theories come up with evidence.
Then again many people on Twitter who are convinced it's a lab leak that's been covered up just yell and scream as well ("It's China and they're cagey, they're hiding something, which mean the lab leak theory must be true!"), which is not how you prove a scientific theory...
This is cool, but I think you lost me when you said “it just works out of the box” about your OS. I mean, sure, but you’ve had to order a new screen, touchpad, battery and RAM. That’s a lot of boxes to work out of
To add on to this great and pragmatic reply about your job situation, I'd add this:
Even if things remain tough job-wise for the foreseeable future, are you able to derive self-worth from things in your life that aren't your occupation? It's a horrible situation and I wish you the best of luck - but perhaps you can take heart and hope in what else you have: your partner, do you have other things that can help construct (or reconstruct) how you see yourself? Jobs, as you've found out nastily, are transient and ultimately meaningless.
If I were in your position, I’d evaluate my relationship with “work”. Challenges you describe might be perennial wherever you go, so maybe the question is not “how can I be more fulfilled at work?” But rather “how can I maximise the fulfilment I get outside of work?”
You sound like you’re going to have to trade your labour for money (ie you don’t have enough to become independent yet) so if you accept that fact, perhaps you can find a non stressful job and discover meaning in the Real parts of your life. Good luck
