Posted by frays 1 day ago
These frontier AI companies are labor market nuclear weapons. What kind of fucking mission statement is going to inspire people when they're responsible for 50% unemployment?
Would "Anthropic new hires worried CEO only cares about money" be considered newsworthy?
They would know better than us.
Aren't new hires actually expected to need the money more than people who are already rich?
I feel we’re in a timeline in Silicon Valley where there’s little idealism. Employees seek money, and who can blame them when a two-bedroom apartment can easily rent for $4000/mo or more, and when a house is easily $2 million? Leaders seek not only money, but power, and their desires for power have been more blatant in the past year.
Where are the Steve Wozniak and Gary Kildall figures of Silicon Valley these days?
If I could pay bills with happyness and contributions to society through working for a cause, I would, but that's not reality.
Also businesses seem to think we should be Undyingly Loyal to them without any reciprocity. It's wild.
Hewlett-Packard under its founders believed in loyalty, and even had a philosophy dubbed The HP Way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_HP_Way) that seem like an interesting cross between some of the positive aspects of working for a Japanese company (loyalty, sense of care by the company) and the positives of working in Silicon Valley (flexible work hours, profit sharing), plus some other ideas (Friday afternoons devoted to personal projects).
This philosophy was not commonplace even in Silicon Valley at the time; the founders lamented “hire and fire” companies in Silicon Valley. Eventually HP abandoned the HP Way once HP started hiring outsiders as CEOs instead of hiring from within, beginning with Carly Fiorina.
You dont get to kill off coding skills and expertise then expect people to give a f*** about some vision. The vision is that the people you’re hiring now wont have a job in the future. Wtf do you think people are going to do while the clock is ticking?
The paycheck is the thank you for working for your vision. That’s the end of the agreement for any good worker who understands capitalism.