srswtf123

I hope you never are homeless, drug addicted, or mentally ill. I have been all of these things. I can tell you first-hand forcing people to comply makes things worse.

That you don't care about someone's wishes is deeply indicative of your own moral character -- or lack thereof. That we can't even agree to disagree turns my stomach a bit. I'm deeply disappointed, and you've made it very clear to me that I need to walk away from this "community".

So, my final thought will simply be this:

Silicon Valley and their enablers, through their arrogance, short sightedness, and dare I say.. general lack of humanity are creating a dystopian nightmare. In many places, that nightmare already exists in full force. That you don't or can't see it doesn't matter. It's well underway and it won't leave any of us untouched.

Well, certainly we can agree to disagree.

This is, in all honesty, a terrifying point of view.

Forcing people to take part in a society that has already rejected them and conform to someone else’s view of normal, healthy, stable, etc., that, to me, would be literal torture. I don’t consider it humane to torture people.

How do you feel about all the busywork jobs that enable so so much more squandering of human potential? Should all those folks be forced to live your version of their best life?

It most certainly is not difficult. The ethics of it are exceptionally straightforward.

Greed is at the root of your conundrum. Put that aside, and you'll see more clearly.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. We only get to choose between candidates who are corrupt in different ways. That isn't the fault of the people, it's the fault of the incumbent politicians who game the system to be most favorable to themselves.

If you want to blame us for something, blame us for enjoying the empty comforts of modern life over choosing civil war.

This feels like an attempt to normalize wage reduction & reduced benefits in exchange for working from home.

I call BS. No one should accept this.

I wonder how much has been spent over the years suppressing this?

Every corporation has secrets they’d like to hide. No one is beyond reproach.

I don’t think anyone is disputing that — but every thing Google is doing is the result of fallible humans acting in pursuit of profit.

It doesn’t matter who or when. What matters is that people put aside their ethics in pursuit of profits. I think that needs to end.

</soapbox>

Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right?

Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?

Ah yes, the legendary honesty, integrity, and forthrightness of Silicon Valley, and Corporate America in general.

My father, an ex-Navy man, pointedly asked me once: “why do you want your own country to lose?” I don’t! I want us to be honest in our success, not smug while saying “if it isn’t illegal it must be OK!”.

The solution to this could be teaching ethics at all levels of education.

Back in 2004, I had a phone screen with the folks at Time, Inc., for a systems admin position. Now, I'd been out of school for about 10 years at that point. The interviewer's first question was "what was your GPA in college?", and I was forced to confess I honestly didn't remember.

He stammered a bit, apologizing, and then hung up on me. I've always considered that dodging a bullet. It's a weird thing to ask someone with many years of professional experience. The only thing I could infer was that all of their staff were very young, and this was still relevant to them.

But then, every organization has it's quirks.

For what it’s worth, I made the same decision several years ago. I am 110% happier! I can look at myself in the mirror and feel good again.

For me it wasn’t just tech though; its all of corporate America. I just can’t take the lack of humanity, empathy, kindness. Nor can I take the useless work, endless, pointless posturing, forced “fun” activities, and the general dishonesty.

I weep for what we’ve done and the awful future that awaits. All this is probably histrionic too. But like you, I’d rather be able to look myself in the mirror, and get a good nights sleep.

I currently use 1blocker. I also run a local pihole on my network for dns blocklists and rarely is my phone away from wifi. Seems ok.

So what you’re saying is: it’s reasonable to dehumanize blue collar workers because they might be lazy?

This reason is why I personally would like separate app stores. I'd _really_ like to see an iOS app store, curated by the FOSS community, focused on privacy and productivity -- actual productivity, not mind-numbing dopamine fix loops!

Running a local "pihole" equivalent might be possible then; really the sky is the limit if we regain control of our devices.

If you’re putting things in binders, print out the full headers of the emails. Maybe even the raw mail; though I admit html mail makes that very unpleasant.

This feels like a solid tip, thank you. One question: can you specify separate payments methods per child account? It would be useful to have, for instance a personal Amex & corp Amex setup on the parent, and only the corp Amex available to the child.

You might try actually talking honestly with some women about this some time.

Every woman I know has a story to tell. Nearly all of them would make you weep.

We could do so much better, but then people like yourself just straight up don’t believe it.

The last company I worked at renamed every department in this fashion.

Sales? SalesOps. HR? PeopleOps.

I worked ... in operations. We didn't get a shiny new name. But then, we actually did WORK, which had to continue at the datacenters -- not just get drunk on Zoom, like "PeopleOps" did.

This is basically what I do too:

Tmux, vim, and some tmux-fu to enable copy-on-select with the mouse.

The question I’ve been asking myself since skimming through the report earlier is this: Why should I take Facebook at their word for anything?

If the data is publicly available, then it can be verified. But until then, I don’t believe Facebook have the credibility to be taken seriously.

> As dysfunctional as this team is, quitting would feel like letting them down

Do you think your FAANG employer would have a second thought about letting YOU down? Doubtful.

The first rule of survival is to take care of yourself so you can help others. In this case, self-care likely means leaving the job.

What would you advise a friend to do in this situation? Are you, as a person, willing to care for yourself the way you might care for a friend?

> I feel like I've made a terrible decision and don't know what to do next.

My advice is straightforward. First, stay in the position until an adequate amount of time has passed so it won't raise eyebrows on your resume. Second, begin looking for other work doing what you want to do, using this job as a stepping stone.

You took a chance, it didn't work out as expected. That's life. Move on to the next thing!

It's been painfully obvious that money laundering is one of the primary activities of the CIA. Doing illegal things to get money to do more illegal things is the name of the game.

It's a sign of decay.

I've been thinking along these lines myself lately, and I can't help but think about something I'd read from a tweet, which I'll paraphrase (at much greater length):

In business, its very hard to hire an employee over the age of 65. Retirement age exists, in part, because we recognize that there's an actual cognitive decline that takes place in aging humans. So you find a dearth of elderly people in the workforce, as one might expect.

However, this simply doesn't apply to politics. Far too many of our elected officials in the US are over the retirement age, and some percentage of them must be experiencing the difficulties that come with aging. Yet, here they are, attempting to address some of the hardest problems humanity has faced, while simultaneously showing visible signs of decline in public. This isn't a party issue -- both parties have this problem for certain.

Is it any wonder then that the "solutions" they come up with aren't adequately thought through? Or that their plans are so easily guided by lobbyists, moneyed interested, and so on?

This isn't a conspiracy; its just life. At some point, many of us will take on parental roles with our own parents. We do this to care for our families, and because it's necessary; it's very human thing. But we can't seem to implement this for our government, a place where it is sorely needed. We must break the back of our gerontocracy if we're going to survive the coming climate catastrophe. At this point, "necessary" doesn't adequately communicate the urgency of our situation.

The retirement age should be enforced for all publicly-held offices.

IANAL, but I don't believe that the fiduciary duty a corporation has to its shareholders allows it to ignore its civic duty to follow the law.

Then again, rarely is lawbreaking by corporations adequately prosecuted. Even more rare are actual guilty verdicts resulting in actual punishment. Of course, "Don't be evil" isn't a law, and I'm not claiming Google is breaking any.

So while I think I may be technically correct, reality certainly does seem to favor your statement. This seems like a fairly sad state of affairs.

Is it like this everywhere capitalism is practiced? I'd think a visiting extraterrestrial scholar might be able to weigh in.

I wish they’d start switching back to “Don’t Be Evil”.

But hey, shareholder value, right? Waaay more important.

This is an ad, meant to convince you to buy more stuff, its ok everyone is doing it now!!

I call BS. Consumer culture is a cancer; best to excise it.

Apparently we no longer trust each other not to lie?

Honestly I feel this applies so much more widely; it’s frightening to think on too long.

His great hair won’t make up for the gross overreach they’ve made.

Maybe they should try and Think Different(TM)?