

Technology is run by the wrong people - jdumblauskas
https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/technology-is-run-by-the-wrong-people/

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Absentinsomniac
I've read criticisms of silicone-valley culture before, but this one takes it
much further. I think there are some very valid points in this, but I also
think it's wishful thinking to hope that folks in charge will eventually
become purely driven by fixing broad problems in society and not getting rich
quick, or status, or being in charge, or what have you. The struggle between
2nd and 3rd "estate" (i think that was the term) people was interesting,
conceptually.

I've always wanted to do a serious study of leadership in a given industry and
quantify something like this. Like quantify actual individual leaders and do
analysis and things.

~~~
angersock
I'd wager most "leaders" as you rise in a company are less and less about
making any useful decisions and more and more about just giving a figurehead
to help the underlings monkeybrains organize themselves.

One of the things I hate (hate _hate_ ) about my current company is the amount
of ego-stroking and special-snowflake-celebration the founders/execs get.

The problem with this essay (good as it is) is that it neglects the fact that
the only way the 2nd/3rd estates will ever succeed in purging the 1st is by
refusing to work with them. Unfortunately, they can dangle some _very_ shiny
things in front of engineers to convince them to defect.

~~~
michaelochurch
If technology is going to outgrow the existing manchild oligarchy, it has to
leave Silicon Valley. It's impossible (for a critical mass of people, if not
necessarily the individual) to be anything but The Man's bitch in a place
where starter apartments top $3,500 per month and houses cost over $1 million.

Silicon Valley's a joke at this point. So where will the technologist's
positive-sum impulse reconstitute itself? I have no fucking idea. It could be
in Seattle, it could be in the Upper Midwest, and it could be in another part
of the world. And who will fund the new way of doing things, one which will be
more profitable (in the long term) and much more socially responsible, but
less controllable by the people holding the pursestrings? Again, I honestly
don't know.

~~~
varelse
If Seattle implements rent control, it will be the mother of all property
investment opportunities as it turns into SF 2.0 over the next decade. Long-
term renters will dance in the streets alongside property owners and everyone
else will be priced out forever.

[http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Rent-control-proposed-
for...](http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Rent-control-proposed-for-Seattles-
affordable-housing-crisis-317743161.html)

Even Paul Krugman thinks rent control is bollocks. Of course, people only
listen to economists when they agree with them, but I digress.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-
rent-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-
affair.html)

Sorry for hijacking the topic a bit, but I don't think it will be Seattle. And
it's already too late for it to be Boston. I'd love for it to be Portland, but
Portland's politics make that impractical. You need a hard to copy magical mix
of social liberalism mixed with a healthy subpopulation of corporate whoredom
to recreate Silicon Valley IMO.

