The dude also dumped his long time girlfriend right after coming into a large chunk of money (and thinks she cares enough to read his blog!), and truly thinks he was going to "save our government". Also, the mountain climbing (IYKYK).
He sounds pretty full of himself and seems to struggle making personal connections with people. Being the founder of a startup gave people a reason to care about him, and now that he's lost that along everyone around him. He beat the game and now the characters in the story have nothing left to say to him.
The guy should put down the physics book and go learn to be a person that others enjoy being around. Go get a job waiting tables and hang out with coworkers after work, learn to surf, etc.
100% this! Calling one's colleague an NPC is not only demeaning but also shows a lack of awareness and empathy. Does the author even understand that by his logic, he is a NPC in his colleague's world?
You are misinterpreting. He’s talking about how at big companies, you always have people who don’t seem to bring any actual value. They're in every meeting, but don't say anything, don't set any direction, don't produce any documents or any code, don't exhibit any sense of urgency or even involvement, and don't contribute in any noticeable way. "NPCs." They are completely passive as far as you can tell -- or worse, they actively slow others down when they happen to be on some critical approval path.
I'm sure they are lovely people outside work, and loving parents and good citizens. But when the rest of us are busting our butts to get work done, they're unfortunately useless.
The guy who started a video conferencing app called Loom (2 years after Zoom came out) then miraculously sold it for almost a billion dollars has no business calling anyone an "NPC".
I goes to show that being 2nd to market or even 4th or 5th isn't a big barrier. Competitors have the advantage of an existing market, whereas the innovator has to explain to the customer what their product is.
It’s a very easy trap to think that all of these idiots aren’t doing anything. However, the more you talk to them, the more you realize that not only are they doing something, they’re definitely not idiots, and many of them are doing the best they can with what they’ve been given.
You get some leeches in there. You get some jerks. They’re the exception, not the rule, even in ur big globocorps.
They're still people. Just because the company doesn't motivate them or they have a bad manager or are on a bad team or a million other reasons they don't feel empowered to "participate" (specious since clearly they're employed) doesn't mean you can act like they're soulless bots ffs.
This whole mindset has got to go. You and OP going around like this, it's gross for the world and it's a bad look on you.
What matters is relative to one's perspective. Nothing objectively matters.
Nobody's saying everyone is of equal value, they're saying that reducing your perception of somebody into a 2-dimensional caricature because you don't perceive value in them is the type of disgusting mental habit of somebody who either has no real friends or soon will have none.
Have you ever said about someone, "that guy's an asshole"?
If so, you reduced them into a caricature, and you should have instead said "that guy behaved in the manner of an asshole, though I trust that he is otherwise a fully-actualized individual with a life of his own, and with factors outside my visibility that impact his decisions and behaviors."
Was this intended to be a "gotcha"? I might be giving people more credit than they deserve but I'm pretty sure most people don't relegate folks to "simply an asshole and nothing more". It's just a quick way to say "that guy was being an asshole just then."
Also, it's not apples and oranges comparing a spoken remark in the heat of the moment to a thoughtful, written out blog post.
>and don't contribute in any noticeable way.
>They are completely passive as far as you can tell
Fundamental attribution error strikes again?
Reminds me of the apocryphal/anecdotal tale of the management conultant who wanted to fire a "secretary" who he could only find taking coffee breaks and long lunches with lots of different people, only to be told (or finding out after the firing) that the person in question was critical to inter-team dynamics and functioning.
More generally, if you cultivate yourself you will get more pleasure from your activities. If you take time to learn an instrument, or listen to classical, or gardening (you can grow exotic plants for example), learn a new language, or anything else. The more you put into refining your appreciation and knowledge, the more value you can get back from your activities. It's a self cultivation problem.
Calling people NPCs is one of my biggest pet peeves and a dead giveaway that someone is a soulless narcissist. It is dehumanizing in the extreme, the same way Nazis characterized Jews as rats in propaganda. When people say eat the rich… this is who they mean
>a dead giveaway that someone is a soulless narcissist
You're engaging in the exact same behavior, are you not? NPC and soulless are the same fundamental concept, that there is a certain threshold of humanity people can fall below to be considered lesser. They're soulless, they're NPCs, they're untermenschen... whatever the word for it, there are "dead giveaways" that a person can lack that hidden quality that separates man from animal. I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but from a certain reading, it seems like what you're saying isn't really all that far off from "calls people NPCs = is the real NPC".
I often see people decry specific terminology associated with dehumanizing beliefs without refuting the actual premise behind them.
Disagree. NPC carries a connotation that you are not even real. You do not have free will. You are there purely to serve their whims. You are an ephemeral nothing that does not exist when they look away. It is exactly what Andrew Tate preaches with his whole “matrix” schtick. It is the mindset billionaires use to excuse their bottomless greed.
Soulless was just a heavy handing way of saying it demonstrates a disturbing lack of empathy. Whether or not souls exist is debatable in the first place, so no I wouldn’t equate it with calling someone subhuman.
Yep. I don't understand why the technological community accepts essentially sociopathic tendencies as long as your idea (regardless of what that idea is) is rewarded by the capital system. It's pathetic.
NPCs don’t actually exist outside of video games, those are real human beings.
Not sure what to do with all that wealth? Try asking one of those NPCs… spend a day with each one of them, learn what being human actually is