True, it's the reason why most items aren't recycled. By far most items are buried or burnt rather than recycled. Our economic system is setup to minimize the manufacturing costs without considering disposal cost unless it's mandated. I don't think recycling will every be a real thing unless disposal costs become part of the overall price of manufacturing an item. Something that's mostly impossible unless it's mandated and people decide that trash is unacceptable or at least needs to be greatly minimized. Thinking about it, maybe at some point disposal cost will become so expensive that people won't buy new items unless sellers pay for trashing them.
I wrote a script that set an X countdown time to shutdown. The script gave a warning at five minutes and 1 minute until shutdown. Once I set it I could not stop it. It would load automatically at boot time. It worked rather well until I decided to stop using it. I don't have a solution for giving up. :)
Yeah I don't think any tool can fully solve this – it's ultimately a willpower thing.
the tool's job is to add friction, not to be unbreakable. Even if you bypass it sometimes, if it stops you from staying up late a few more times per month, that's a win
Intereting that Taipei 101 is used. The 101 is reminiscent of an introductory college course. So Taipei 101 is just the beginning. There should be more challenging climbs to come in the future.
A new definition of object oriented software should be around the corner. Imagine having a few thousand objects that fit together but need AI tweeking for the system to work. Imagine people puting the blocks in place and have LLMs glue them together. We will have bug free software in no time. We will go from script type code to full custom OSes in days. It's bound to happen.
Computer Science education has always seem like a luxury to me. You go to college and get a very high view of the computer field but never enough to be able to get a job without additional training. That has changed CS graduates will have enough know how to be useful out of college. Their role now is to figure out how to turn spects into a usable system using AI.
My question now is: given that that there are only a limited number of types of system, why not have templates for the know how for most of these system? LLM can just fill in the blanks and have a working system in no time for most of the use cases.
The only thing I can think of that will happen is that we will have new creative systems for use cases we have never even thought about. I doubt AI will take over. Human creativity has no bounds so we will see an explosion of new ideas that only humans can solve not a capitulation to AI.
I'm tired of this naive view that college is for training people for jobs.
College is for growing individuals that can handle the complexities required in a field. That is the real value.
You don't do CS or SE because you have to get out of college with knowledge of the latest hype, but you get out of college armed with the tools that make you able to learn and handle any of the that latest hype for decades to come.
This field especially moves way too fast for anything to be actual by the time you graduate. That's why you focus on the fundamentals and problem solving and in some exams here and there you get some touch of different fields (data, machine learning, etc).
Keep in mind the idea that "Some people are profoundly broken." There are those you can help. There are also those who you will never be able to help. Know your limit. Know when to say enough and let them live with their choices. You can't fix everyone even if you wish you could.
Being familiar with tech is important, but being a 'tech head' is not. A CEO needs to be familiar with the product, marketing, sales, HR, and all the other parts of a company. If you are highly focused on one aspect, it can be disastrous for the business. Your job is to get the right people in the right positions and use their knowledge to make the right decisions. A CEO's superpower is making the right choice with the information available, which means you must get the right information from your staff.
I can see a tech head being very important at a technology-based startup. However, once you have a product you can sell to investors or users, you need to let go and determine how to survive and thrive as a company. Tech is just one more thing you need to know as a CEO, but it is by no means the most important.
Yes! All startups are created to solve a problem, regardless of the tools used. Apps are simply tools to solve human problems. Because humans will always have challenges to address, software will remain a vital tool. While AI makes writing software much easier. It's likely to lead to an explosion of new apps. Only those that fill a genuine need will survive. Your job is to identify these new problems and determine which apps to build.
Simple apps are a thing of the past. If an LLM can generate an app in a few sittings, it isn't a saleable product. However, people will still pay for a fully engineered application that solves a complex problem that AI cannot easily replicate.
Regarding copies, there is always room for more than one solution to the same need. Your challenge is to figure out how to stand out. A fundamental business hurdle, that has existed since the beginning.
Here's an idea that always bear's fruit. We humans love to do things as easy as possible. Write something that saves energy, time and is simple then people will pay for it.
And most of the time that problem is “the founders don’t have as much money as they want”.
> Apps are simply tools to solve human problems. Because humans will always have challenges to address, software will remain a vital tool.
You make it sound like it’s something noble, but let’s not pretend most software companies these days don’t have “make me rich” as the top goal. Effectively everything VC backed (yes, including by Y Combinator) falls in that category. That’s why pivots are a thing. Most founders these days don’t give a shit about what they’re building or customers, they only care about the payoff.
This seems like a very jaded comment, and if it’s because you got burned in a startup, then you have my sympathy and I’m sorry for debating. Just know that not everyone is running on nothing but greed. You might be confusing VCs with startup founders a bit. VCs are definitely profit motivated, by design. It’s going too far, and incorrect IMO, to suggest even VCs, or anyone involved, doesn’t care about building solutions or care about customers. All founders I’ve ever met care about what they make, and most VCs care about it somewhat but also care that the founders care strongly; they don’t often fund founders who don’t care.
So can you source any of your claims of “most”? I just looked it up, and the majority of software startups are self-funded or angel/seed-funded, not VC funded. Founders that don’t care about product or customers enough tend to fail. Founders that only care about the payoff don’t tend to self-fund their startup.
That said, everyone and all companies have financial incentives. There’s nothing unique or new about software startup founders there. The entire economy runs on profit motive. And I’ve seen a lot more people who don’t care about customers or product working in large companies making a nice easy salary working 9 to 5 (or less)!
My personal sampling of founders vs company workers is that founders are, by far, the ones who care more deeply about building something new and delighting customers and growing a sustainable business, care enough to start working nights and weekends, go years with crappy pay or no pay, to do every job in the company from engineering to design to marketing to support to filing taxes. Some people certainly are at least partially motivated to accept these sacrifices for the chance at a payoff, but lots of founders would prefer a lifestyle company where they get to keep building and don’t have the insane pressures and politics of a unicorn company.
Pivots are a thing because good product ideas often are not good business ideas. Startups that fail to pivot are the ones that die, and if your startup dies you don’t get to care about what you’re building or about customers at all. If you want companies to care about product and customers and not profit, then you should embrace sustainable economics, and that means making things people will pay for, and when they’re not paying, making something else.
You’re arguing something different than @latexr did, and picking a VC as your example makes sense here but fails to counter the fact that most startups aren’t VC funded. Still, you’re also like GP confusing VC motivation with founder motivation. It’s possible for founders to care deeply about the problems they’re solving, and for the company’s primary goal to be an exit, at the same time. Both can be true, contrary to what GP claimed.
There are an infinitesimal number of tech based startups that are “lifestyle companies” that were bootstrapped and use revenues to grow without taking investor money.
There are even fewer that are “successful” - ie where everyone involved wouldn’t be better off just working as a LOB CRUD developer.
The goal of the founders don’t matter even if they do “care” about the customer. The customer is at the whim of the strategies of the investors of the company and if an acquired, the customer will probably get an email about “our amazing journey” when the company is shut down
These smaller companies are doing well, they just aren’t incentivised to tell you about it. The VC backed companies are, either targeting you as a consumer or an investor and n an eventual IPO.
You’re not debating me, you’re contradicting @latexr.
> infinitesimal
You invented a narrow niche to knock down there, but as I said, I actually looked it up and the majority of startup companies that form are seed or self funded, not VC funded. I was responding to @latexr’s claims that “most” founders don’t care about product at all, which I believe is just false. You’re arguing with me about something else, and I don’t know what your point is yet. Mine is that caring about customers and caring about money aren’t exclusive things, a successful business must do both.
> Every company “cares about their customers” to the point where that’s how they make their money.
And if they don’t make money, they fail and lose the opportunity to care about customers. It’s a boring tautology to say that companies care about money. The point is that @latexr is wrong about assuming that caring about money means they don’t care about product or customers.
It’s not at all a tautology. A company that cares about its customers can balance its need to make money and leave money on the table because it’s not in the best interest of the customers.
Agreed, that’s what I’ve been saying from the top. Again, you’re disagreeing with @latexr, and agreeing with me.
The tautology is that all companies care about money. Companies care about money by definition. Many companies and many people in companies also care about customers and product quality. However, there is an absolute limit to how much money a company can leave on the table, regardless of what the customer wants, and serving the customer’s best interest becomes a ‘bad decision’ and threatens the ability for the company to do anything for the customer the moment it’s unprofitable, as soon as costs exceed income. This effectively means that at some level, companies must prioritize profit over service, otherwise service will cease to exist. The balance must lean in favor of the company on average over time.
That's a cynical take, but a more positive interpretation is that pivots are needed if your company isn't actually solving a problem. Otherwise people would pay for it, and the founders would be getting rich. So you need to pivot until you actually create a solution to a problem that people will pay for.
One that you apparently agree with, given the rest of your comment.
> you need to pivot until you actually create a solution to a problem that people will pay for.
In other words: You don’t care about the problem, you care about the profit from selling a solution.
If a startup is “created to solve a problem” and then pivots to solve a different problem because the first one wasn’t profitable, that means profit was the priority, not solving the problem.
There is a chasm of difference between “I care about this problem and want to solve it, but I also need to think how to make it sustainable” and “I don’t really care what I’m tackling, as long as I make bank”.
I would expect it to be obvious that caring about making money above fixing a problem means the problem won’t be solved that well compared to the alternative.
Are you really going to claim you never encountered a startup that is obviously shitting on customers and degrading the experience to make a buck? Do you honestly believe all startups are created to solve a problem (the original claim I responded to) and none are created with the intent of being the next “unicorn” to make the founders rich? If that is the case, search the term “enshittification”. Surely you’ll have encountered it by now. Pick whatever example helps you understand the point.
I don't see how its "obvious" at all. I think most problems wouldn't be solved at all with this view because most problems aren't something people care about. Money gives people the incentive to solve every problem possible. Someone who "cares" is free to solve it even better and make even more money.
This is to some extent a false dichotomy. Generally speaking, products that prioritize fixing a problem “above” making money do not exist. There are no alternatives. Businesses can’t sustain that. Sometimes it happens for a short while, and eventually they reduce the level of service, or charge more money, or die.
I don’t know why you’re picking on startups. Big companies are where you see enshittification the most, and it’s because economies of scale require them to cut costs. Startups can often use VC fuel to offer delightful and unprofitably superior solutions to problems. That goes away after startups graduate to being real companies.
Read the thread. I’m not “picking on startups”, the conversation is about startups. Yes, Big companies do it too, that’s just not what this particular conversation is about.
I see, so no comment at all on the fact that caring about products and customers requires making money?
I have read the thread, thank you, and you certainly have been talking about startups and founders as if these issues are unique to them. It’s not just ‘yeah yeah big companies too’… if you actually care about and study enshittification at all, it is, by and large, entirely coming from big companies, and it isn’t new to software, it has always been happening. The only thing new is a cute term for it that got popular recently. Old business terms that mean the same thing include: loss leader, hook product, bait and switch, and plain old “promotion”. Regardless of what the topic here is, it doesn’t make sense to harp on startups over quality going down. For that to happen, it had to be higher at some point, and that point is: startups. VC funding might lead to some quality decline, but all companies trim and get worse as they grow, and always have. Startup is the phase when companies provide the highest level of product or service.
This is why I like using mathematical or algorithmic approaches to solve difficult problems. Writing programs that use statistics, mathematics, optimization, analytical geometry, etc guarantee a certain level of security from the swarms of CRUD merchants flooding the market.
These startups were not created to solve a problem, some didn’t even have a technical person. These startups were created to be VC bait and hopefully sell out to the bigger fool
The best thing to do is to be prepare to switch your career at some point. The tech industry is notoriously ageist so don't expect to retire working in the same type of job you have now.
I am 51. I got my first job in BigTech at 46. When I got Amazoned in 2023, within the first two weeks I had three offers.
I was out looking again in 2024, I responded to a recruiter and had a job offer within two weeks.
I am still an IC and half my job as a staff consultant is pushing out code onto AWS, the other half is leading projects, supporting sales, talking to customers.
You are the exception not the rule. Go to any tech shop and you the will see that the majority are in their 20's and 30's and mid 40's. Sure there are a few that are older but they are the minority by far.
There's a survivor bias, you see the older techs that are employed and people think "oh, there's no problem." But people don't take into account all the other techs that could not continue their career because they could not get a job as they got older.
There's also a large number of folks moving to management as they age. Yes, the tech industry tends to skew young for engineering, but management doesn't. There's also a relatively decent chunk of people retiring in their early 50s (I plan to). There's also a decent number of them leaving to create their own companies, or to join friends at their early stage startups.
I don't think it makes sense to say they're the exception. I'm also mid-40s and have no issues finding employment. Most of my friends are mid 40s/50s and also have no issues. The vast majority of them have switched into management, though. Myself and the other older engineers I know are staff+, though, which helps a lot. I can't imagine being this age as a senior engineer trying to fight an army of equally qualified people in their 20s (who are also having issues finding employment right now).
The HN bubble is real. Most developers are boring old enterprise developers who toil away at writing LOB apps spending their entire career in corp dev if they don’t move onto management.
They live in second tier cities and retire at the same time everyone else retires.
If you are 40 years old and still competing with 20 something’s based on your ability to reverse a b tree on the whiteboard, you have made some poor life choices.
Pick a place you want to work at and get any job you qualify to do and once there work your way into the job you want. 2 advantages, you get a paycheck and you prove that you are a good employee. Plus you can continue your search too.We are at a strange time in tech. Companies are being very cautious about who they hire and even if they want to hire anyone at all.
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