jondlm

I really liked the article. Thanks for sharing!

Here's my alternate title: people are insane, software reveals it.

Insane feels too strong, though. I believe people make sense. We just have this crazy ability to fool ourselves by spinning stories. And many of the stories we continue to spin were handed to us without our awareness.

This gave me a hearty laugh!

I've been carrying one of his poems around in my pocket recently. I'll leave it here for y'all. Maybe it'll find someone else as it found me when I needed it most:

> To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

> To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

> and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

> and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

A couple weeks ago I went by myself for a hike through an old lava tunnel cave. I needed a flashlight because it was pitch black. I found a small nook in the wall about a mile in that I could wedge myself in to. I sat down, turned off my light, and let myself feel the enveloping darkness for a long time. I cried. The only sounds were of small droplets of cold water hitting the floor and my body. I let myself settle in to the sensation of being buried alone under the rock where liquid fire once reigned. I felt at peace. When I finally emerged from the cold tunnel a thrill ran through me as warm air gushed over my skin and the distant sun found me once again. I sat and fed the birds that visited me in the remote wilderness while I listened to the gentle whirl of wind in the trees.

Good article! I agree that curiosity is a wonderful place to land.

However, I think putting anger and curiosity on two levels can be a subtle trap. It can lead to diminishing the importance of anger. They’re all just emotions; just appearances in our minds. We don’t decide when they show up, but we do have the capacity for awareness.

In my experience I’ve found anger to be an immensely important emotion. It signals to me that something very important needs attention. And when entire populations are angry, that’s a really important signal. Granted, following the first thought that follows the anger tends to be unhelpful (it’s easy to villainize). But the initial signaling of importance should not be underplayed.

This is a follow up post to the last post I wrote about quitting Stripe a few years ago. I hope you enjoy!

Many thanks to fnordpiglet.

You're not wrong. I also think it's a trap to think they're in a fundamentally different category than we are. Yes, the blast radius of their harm can be enormous. _And_ they're humans like you and me. Likely hiding deep wounds of their own that are screaming for care-full attention.

> I think that CEOs of those companies are ethically challenged people, narcissists and sociopaths.

Likely true in many cases!

> there is no evil emerging in big systems

That's a very definitive statement!

What brings you to the conclusion that there aren't forces at play that we don't yet have a good name for or don't yet have the scientific means to study?

I did say "ostensibly" ;)

Agreed that power nearly always corrupts. It does so in often subtle and slow shifts. In general we have a paucity of leaders who wield their power on behalf of the oppressed.

The truth is that the "bad" leaders need powerful help. They need someone to come alongside them and love them into the light of the damage they've caused by drifting into complacency. And I'm not talking about "nice" love here, it might initially look more like shame.

This... this... this! This resonates soooo deeply with me.

The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. It's often impossible to look at individual people and say, "they're the cause of this damage." I believe that some form of evil (this word feel inadequate) emerges amidst these large systems that is incredibly hard to pinpoint. It's why dissension is so fucking critical. Tech companies continue to profit from the status quo and we need courageous people who disrupt that.

I loved this article. Thank you for sharing it.

I felt it put words to an experience I wrote about learning to "play" the piano: https://jondlm.github.io/website/blog/the_joy_of_discovery/

Cheers to all of you out there trying to slow down.

The topic of this article felt familiar to me. It's similar to ideas in IFS: internal family systems. IFS also uses control systems to describe our internal landscape.

If the concept of multiplicity (we humans being a system of smaller systems) resonates with you, consider reading No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz. I've personally found it immensely helpful.

Hey Noj! Thanks! I certainly am getting some good rest. Things aren't as bleak as they may appear from my article.

It wasn't.

It's the painful truth of how I felt. I'm not saying it's good. In fact, it's _very bad_.

Thank you for the kind comment :)

I completely agree. I didn't talk about it in the post but I have done a lot of therapy over the last couple years. I'm painfully aware of the ways I've projected my past pain onto my present.

My attempt with the article was to simply reflect how things have felt and leave analysis largely absent. I realize it's left folks with a lot of questions and rightly worried about me.

I'm in a much better place now.

Thank you for taking the time to write this comment.

Thank you for the kind words!

Thankfully I'm not ground down to a nub. I've found a lot of support over the last few years outside of work.

My boss shared first and was very much clear about it being optional.

People bring a lot of context into these conversations and make a lot of assumptions. There is a lot of nuance here and that's tough to sit with.

Your red flags are absolutely merited. I won't deny that.

Sorry to hear you've been burned by sharing.

That's rough. Sorry to hear you were pushed.

This is great. I absolutely agree that the best leaders gently invite and lead with appropriate vulnerability. They also don't mind if people say "no" either with words or body language.

I know I won't be able to convince everyone here, but I didn't feel pressured to share anything deeply personal. Some people on the team didn't. They weren't punished or looked down on. We were a tight-knit team before and after that event.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai -- it takes a little work to setup but it's well worth the effort. It's keyboard centric and auto lays out windows nicely.