> For instance, you might think that big tech engineers are being deliberately demoralized as part of an anti-labor strategy to prevent them from unionizing, which is nuts. Tech companies are simply not set up to engage in these kind of conspiracies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

A very good piece. Balance always. Ultimately, everything is politics, and always will be - that's reality; it's always people. Pick your poison, idealism or cynicism; in any organization you'll have to deal with the people. That's the balance. It's not easy.

They should at least understand why they are getting paid and basic business logic instead of thinking they are above it because they are 10x or whatever. You are a cost center unless you are making that line go up.

If we're doing cynicism - even if you write lovingly hand crafted free range OSS code - EvilCorp can still come along and use it as part of the EvilCorp backend.

Your just working for them for free rather than getting paid.

I appreciate that the author looks specifically at what elements of a given viewpoint are idealistic vs cynical.

Idealism about one’s own behavior vs idealism about others’ behavior is an interesting tension to explore further.

We're all just trying to do a good job. I think it's very rare for someone to be earnestly malicious attempting to block the company from doing well.

I would have rather read an article about the best ways to create positive change in a capitalist system, a critique of socialism, Marxism, or anarchism, even if it was filled with words i didn't understand, than an article arguing about individual intent, and ignoring systemic design.

> There are very few problems that you can solve entirely on your own. Software engineers encounter more of these problems than average, because the nature of software means that a single engineer can have huge leverage by sitting down and making a single code change. But in order to make changes to large products - for instance, to make it possible for GitHub’s 150M users to use LaTeX in markdown - you need to coordinate with many other people at the company, which means you need to be involved in politics.

Maybe, just maybe, when any single individual is unable to propose a product improvement due to the requirement of ass-kissing and favor-dealings involved... the company is too big and should (be) split up.

Corporate inertia is what is killing many a Western company against the competition from China.

plain and minimally styled UI is going to make a huge comeback in 2026. i think people are tired of all the maximalism in web dev

It always sounds so ridiculous to me when people working for Meta, Microsoft or Google talk about idealism, or solving good problems, or really any kind of values. The likes of you have very much sold your soul to the devil in exchange for a lot of money. Any kind of idealism you may hold is nothing but a carefully crafted illusion to keep you from thinking too hard about what you are a part of, what are you are doing. If it hasn’t made click after big tech fell on their knees in front of Trump, there’s nothing left to say anymore.

So in a sense, Goedecke is right: Be a little cynical. Don’t bother with a veneer of the greater good or some other bullshit. Enjoy your paychecks while it lasts.