lmao, just saw this. Imagine defending a guy's tech literacy by pointing out that he wrote a basic threaded social website over 16 years ago that since has only seen minor tweaks to the CSS, and no added features, largely because it was developed using a variant of Lisp that went unmaintained in 2018.
Tech literacy is a moving target. If someone's skills and knowledge from 2007 haven't improved in 2023, then those out-of-date skills don't count towards literacy.
Given that his own website has remained misconfigured for years now, I think it's safe to say that PG didn't write HN website single-handedly, and certainly isn't responsible for maintaining it. It sounds like, as a billionaire, he just paid other people to do things for him. Anyone with money has that power, it's not that impressive.
Yeah, I know that this is YC site, that YC is very successful, and that PG was a founder. But I'm not a chump. I don't judge a billionaire with the circular logic most people in this forum employ, where being a billionaire is the default proof that a person is competent. I look at who that person is, what they say, and how they interact with technology as an individual. When I look at PG, I see a guy who knows a lot about finance and business administration, who has made a lot of money investing in tech, but I also see someone who is deeply disconnected from the real world, a person who follows capitalism as if it were a religion, and a person who, despite past talents, has not kept up to date with technology, and who outwardly demonstrates that incompetence in the things he says and writes, and how he personally interacts with technology.
Also, as someone who works in cybersecurity engineering, I know that when trying to figure out who your highest-risk users are, you just need to look at their worst behaviors. If PG's self-branded website is going to throw a huge red flag in my browser, then that website function as a huge red flag about PG. It it says "I couldn't figure out how to install a certificate, and I don't understand how important this is for security and trust in the tech world". Come to think of it, it's almost always the guys at the top of the hierarchy who end up at the top of my at-risk list, because they're the same guys who click through all the Phishing test emails I send them.
Is that the kind of guy I want to be listening to for inspiration? Absolutely not. I learned long ago that Capitalism is not a meritocracy, and that while you can benefit from kissing the asses of those at the top, you lose the plot if you try to emulate them, because most engineers are smarter than the Peter Principle men who hoisted each other to the top of the pyramid.
CEOs should admire engineers, engineers should not admire CEOs. If you want to be a CEO, stop coding, maybe get an MBA, and start your own company. If you want to make great tech, interact with C-Suite folks a little as you can, and focus on making good tech.
But once you start trying to be inspired by the C-Suite folks, you're going to end up adopting their values, and anyone who has worked at any tech company will tell you that their values are garbage.
