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Comment by duped | Hacker News Reader

To get the latest github status outages in real time

But more seriously, it's just a higher bar of contribution than other forums on the internet with more interesting articles and points of view.

> Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.

This attitude in tech is honestly exhausting. It reminds me of that fake Tech Crunch Disrupt scene in the first season of Silicon Valley. The sooner you kind of give up on this and have fun with the problems you have the easier it is to enjoy your work, imho.

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"Saving the world" was a marketing campaign to get employees. A lot of businesses have locked into that - lock step - for power. It was required to get employees away from the old dogs. Many of those larger companies from the 50s did NOT market a message of "making the world a better place" yet the world became a better place. Now companies are marketing that - and the world is becoming a lot worse.

I think the problem is that - at least in the United States - the social fabric is being burnt to a crisp because everyone cares only for their followers (which is another way of caring for their own image) - rather than do what is good and moral. If we cared more about our family, real friends and local communities, rather than superficial remote usernames, the social fabric would be fine. I do, unfortunately, think it is too late. I don't think we can re-train billions of people to go back. So now we have to go through. Good luck everyone.

While it's unreasonable to expect too much from tech, as some of the most privileged workers on the planet, we do actually have an obligation to pay attention to whether the mission statement of the place we work is net positive. Don't help build a corporate panopticon just because there's a big number.

Thank you for saying this.

Am I the only one cynical enough to think that all mission statements can be translated to: "make money" and they exist simply because everyone else does it?

If google had kept the same exact same mission statement from day one, would that mission statement actually have an impact on protentional employees? Or would the court of public opinion have more sway? I can say as an n=1 data point, mission statements mean nothing to me.

yes, but how you make money is important. If there's a clear way to make money in a way that's principled, and not just "we'll figure it out later". For example, as a consumer, I trust discord somewhat more than I trust facebook, since they've clearly had a revenue stream from the beginning that wasn't (just?) exploit their users. And biotech has the potential to be significantly better, since there's a clear product. And palantir is significantly worse in that they're explicitly working to build a police state.

I guess I'm saying it's important to think critically about the business case, and not just take founders at their word that they "won't be evil".

"Our no sql encrypted database will help save the world"

Isn't far from a lot of mission statements

This attitude in tech is honestly exhausting

that may be true for the wider tech community. but the FOSS community is still driven by idealism. and that's why i am here. hackernews has a wider topic range than places that focus on FOSS only and it has a significant (but not dominant) following among FOSS enthusiasts.

basically what used to be kuro5hin and what slashdot maybe still is.

I hang around a few FOSS communities, and the idealism is even more exhausting there. Most people just want to build and use cool or useful things - the zealotry over the FOS part of FOSS has a tendency to produce toxic communities imo.

Building cool and useful things is idealistic! Making things people can enjoy and sharing them with the world is wonderful and something not found in a lot of companies.

I think the zealotry is being protectionist trying to keep things fun and useful and not tainted by the need to extract a profit

seems more of a personal problem, if i may say so. i have absolutely no problem with the idealism in FOSS communities. for one because it's not fake. the people i know really believe in what they are doing and they honestly volunteer to make the world a better place.

if you don't see that then maybe you are not meeting the right people. those who do the work just get along fine. they are not bad-mouthing others for not doing it right.

and people who refuse to work with non-free software, that's their choice, that doesn't make them zealots. and i haven't seen any example of where that would make a community toxic.

that doesn't mean that there is no toxicity, i am sure there is. but not more than what you can find right here on hackernews.

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