This Is Why Everyone In the Tech Industry Is So Angry
The Tech Philosophers Have Disappeared, Now We’re Left with Activists Screaming At Capitalists
Quick question. And think about your honest answer please.
How are you?
Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Do you wake up each morning excited about the possibilities that are laid out in front of you?
OK. Now I’m gonna hazard a guess.
No. You’re not happy.
How do I know this? Well, I believe there’s a small percentage of you that are manufacturing positive energy to be able to string today’s numbers into tomorrow. You folks keep fighting that good fight. Another small percentage of you are so jaded that you’re likely not reading this anyway because you’re too busy community organizing on Slack. Same. Godspeed.
But most of you, the overwhelming majority of people in the tech industry, are just disappointed and frustrated and well, just plan angry at how things are working out.
It’s hard to put your finger on exactly why, but I think I figured it out. It’s a philosophical problem.
I’m gonna go experimental and a touch satirical. And I’m gonna dive deep. Lock in and let’s have fun.
What If It Was Possible To Have Anything You Wanted?
Yeah, that’s a navel–gazey question. Some might say it’s highly philosophical. It’s cool. I’m the last of the tech philosophers.
On a philosophical level, that question is exactly what’s wrong with a lot of the tech industry right now — and in an even greater sense, what’s wrong with a lot of the world, but that’s outside my domain of expertise. Let’s just focus on the tech industry.
Across the tech industry, we’re being compelled to stop thinking — to stop thinking about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what impact the things we’re doing today will have on tomorrow.
OK, before I explain, let me implore you to not read that statement through the eyes of a capitalist or an activist. The former will tell me to quit my whining, the latter will invite me to their anti-capitalism-even-though-this-is-where-we-get-our-paycheck rally in the breakroom.
And please understand that I’m both a capitalist and an activist. I’m talking about the kind of capitalist that ruins it for the rest of us and the kind of activist that annoys the rest of us activists.
I mean, think about this in the tech world, philosophically, through the AI prism. The class of folks building and selling the AI models are depending on another class of folks — the rest of us — to eventually just interface with an input device — a phone, a laptop, a screen, or a speaker — and have that device use their platform and what’s left of the internet to give us exactly what we want.
The thing is — man — and this is three decades of tech and business experience speaking, we don’t f***ing know what we want.
So the counter to that is, “Well, you don’t understand. AI on top of today’s tech infrastructure can do anything, so you can have anything you want.”
But since most people still get lost when presented with a Cheesecake Factory menu of unlimited options, they almost always default to “more money” — like the Canadians who went on strike in South Park.
The capitalists are more than happy to facilitate this request. The activists get furious when the capitalists fleece the masses to fatten their own wallets.
What the philosopher realizes is that the problem lies within that paradox. The only reason people default to wanting more money is because they think it will make them more happy and more satisfied. This almost never happens, not in a vacuum.
Money is a by-product of success, not a marker for it.
I know. I say that and everyone agrees with me and then they go right back to measuring success using money. Let’s dive a little deeper.
The Deep Depression
A favorite story of mine comes from a friend who is super rich, and who attended a weekend thing for the super rich, and one night around the campfire when everyone was safely within the circle of trust, they each of them, to a person, lamented how much better their life would be if they only had a little bit more money.
Put much more eloquently, in the words of the modern philosopher, Biggie Smalls, “Mo Money Mo Problems.” Again, something everyone sings along with but doesn’t really believe. Even the dudes with all the money.
The capitalist answer is to scoff. The activist answer is to ignore capitalism completely until the power gets shut off.
The philosophers get ignored or fired, they go through a deep depression, and then they get started on the second phase of their careers.
I had a good run. Hope this writing thing works out!
The Customers and the Leaders
Now, let me put all this philosophical navel-gazing into useful business and technical terms.
Almost every customer and every business founder enters the arena of commerce with a healthy balance between capitalist and activist.
Or, to quote the great philosopher Rodney Dangerfield, “Look out for number one, and try not to step in number two.”
Yeah. It’s a terrible line and it doesn’t really work but whatever. I love that line. And I need to balance this heady shit.
We’ve lost the philosophical understanding of the customer relationship. The customer has been reduced to a number that we feed numbers to in order to generate more numbers so they can give us more numbers.
We’ve told the founders and the leaders that they need to hit their numbers or they’ll have to reduce their numbers while still producing the same or better numbers.
Again, I beg you. Take that through the eyes of a philosopher. Not the capitalist who would shrug wondering where the problem with those statements lies. Not the activist who would shrug because that’s the exact definition of business, like from the stone age.
Did Fred Flintstone have a 401K?
It’s Time To Start Making Better Choices
Look, I can’t fix this for everyone. I can only shout at clouds and not be truly appreciated until I’m long dead.
I do have an answer for you, and like the answers from most philosophers, it’s not one people will like, because it’s vague while also being kinda spot on and unflinching.
Make more balanced choices.
There’s nothing broken in the tech industry that can’t be fixed. There’s nothing inherently wrong with tech and AI and everything that comes with it. But if we keep waiting for leadership to mandate the solution or the customer to finally choose Chicken Marsala — wait, you had 30 pages of options and you went with Chicken Marsala?
What I’m saying is this isn’t going to get better until we all start making individual choices to stop feeding the argument. The capitalists are gonna keep chasing money, the activists are going to keep chasing awareness.
They will both feel awesome about what they accomplished today.
You. Don’t stop thinking philosophically about what you want, what you’re creating, what you’re building, and what impact it will have.
If you want more advice that isn’t advice, peppered with jokes that aren’t jokes, please join my email list.
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