Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | mattgreenrocks's commentslogin

Thank you. This thread is extremely unhinged. Maybe I’ve outgrown this place. :/

Sure. And they have to accept the consequences of considering that a need.

The purpose of a system is what it does. If the org truly cared about under-leveled employees, it would get fixed rapidly.

But they don’t.

I’ve seen enough people glossed over repeatedly and then when enough people leave and the org is in a less leveraged position, then the promos are no longer an issue. Such BS.


You have to realize that a company is always optimizing for efficiency and salaries are no different.

Giving out promotions when people are already working at the level they'd be promoted to is simply a waste of money.

This is the author's biggest mistake. If you voluntarily work on tasks above your pay grade you are signaling to the company that you don't need a promotion.


There isn't a single optimization. Define efficiency. Define over what time frame.

The problem the OP faced is that YouTube is optimizing under a short time frame and under the belief that employees are fungible. The latter being a common problem with big orgs, thinking there is no value to institutional knowledge. Yet in reality that is often extremely important


> You have to realize that a company is always optimizing for efficiency

Must be “efficiency” why my coworkers have constant coffee breaks to talk about kids/sport/travel while MRs are open without comments for weeks.


Why are people so determined to just shill for companies? Do you know how many people are unemployed for Christmas today, while you're out here tasting shoe leather for these organizations with more money than God?

They're not going to take pity on you, you know, no matter how much you grovel and beg.


The article is about the temptation to define yourself through your productivity. It isn’t anti-work.

With all due respect, this reads like you had an axe to grind about social media’s anti work slant and this just reminded you of that.


Many people are terrible judges of character. They either undervalue it, see it as weakness, or just aren’t able to discern the potential for malevolence.


The party line will be: “we always advised using it if it as long as it helps productivity.”

Pointing out that it wasn’t always that will make you seem “negative.”


You are right, perfect amount of false humility and balance. The wage suppression is an accidental biproduct and not the intent. Collateral damage if you will.


All ages benefit from time-limited exposure to social media. We have a term for it now: brainrot. Fully convinced it is the cigarettes of our generation: ubiquitous enough to be pervasive despite negative externalities.


I think it’s a mistake to put even teen social media use in the same category as screens for young kids, and I suspect most problems are from the latter.

3 things should be studied: screens for kids (regardless of app), short-form video for teens, and non-short-form peer-group social media (what teens had from 2008-2015 or so). I bet we’ll see very different impacts from each.


> I think it’s a mistake to put even teen social media use in the same category as screens for young kids

Dangerous for different reasons. Unregulated screen time for young kids teaches their brain to expect stimulation at all times, and will usually increase their discomfort when they don't have it.

We try really hard to limit screen time to a couple times a week for max 30-45 minutes. Nothing saddens me more than seeing a totally content kid in public being sat down and handed a screen as the default (because it's 'easier' for the parent), depriving them of enjoying the world. Also see a lot of young kids who will cry and cry until they get it.


In schools there should be a class about safe internet use and it should be mandatory to write an essay about the benefits children get personally from using social media as well as the downsides.


Saying this as a current high school student: there should be as few mandatory classes as possible. Your maths, sciences, and Englishes make sense. In Ontario, we also have to take French (bit more iffy, but I guess it's an official language), Civics (fluff), careers (more fluff), and technology and the skilled trades (I like technology, but still fluff). The more classes you stuff into school that don't relate to what a student wants to pursue, the more disengaged they become. Ironically, if this were a class, I, and most others would be on our phones for pretty much all of it.


It's funny how much you think you know better than adults when you're a teen (and even into your twenties, when your brain is still developing for half that time).

I never would have thought there was value in a lot of things I was forced to learn at that age. Even for the stuff that hasn't had practical application in my life (flying buttress, for example), I wouldn't retroactively reduce how much learning I was expected to complete.


I agree that I'm probably wrong, which is why I still go to school.


There has been for like 15 years. At least around here, well withouth the essay. I'm not sure what the essay would do, it would be written by a LLM anyway. Don't worry, LLM usage and risks is the next class we're beginning to teach as a society. Of course my own generation won't get that, so we're going to be fun "boomers" that way.


>All ages benefit from time-limited exposure to social media.

As compared to what? To no exposure? Or to unlimited exposure?


As opposed to unlimited exposure. There are also many adults that spend several hours per day on social media. It’s not good for society.


Unlimited.


I don't think this is what you really meant, but the way this is worded I strongly disagree. What you wrote implies everyone should be exposed to social media, just in a limited fashion. No exposure is still an option that would probably be ideal for most people.

I do strongly agree with the cigarette analogy though. I have actually said before that I think we would all be better off if social media use was both legally and socially treated like smoking. (Not to say I think we should be age gating websites because that opens a whole other can of worms, but it would probably be better for societal mental health if we did).


"brainrot" is not used that way

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brainrot

The best definition I see is

> the crippling addiction to low effort content

But also have seen it used plenty to refer to the low effort content itself

Brainrot is a small portion of social media


I have seen it used plenty by younger people even in a positive sense as a genre label for the aesthetics and humor of their generation.


Yep. Software construction was branded a team sport. Hence, social coding, tool quality being considered more important (good thing for sure), and, arguably, less emphasis on individual skill and agency.

This was in service of a time when tech was the great equalizer, powered by ZIRP. It also dovetailed perfectly with middle managers needing more reports in fast growing tech companies. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging back from the overly collective focus we had during the 2010s.


I would make the case as well that software underwent demographic shift as the demand skyrocketed and the barriers to entering the profession with languages and tooling dropped.

80's/90's dev teams were more weird nerds with very high dedication to their craft. Today devs are much more regular people, but there are a lot more of them.


Definitely. There’s pluses and minuses to that shift.


I’m sure it is. Though I can never tell if it is astroturfing or extremely weird AI maximalists just reminding us that they’re in a cult.


Yup. The big AI companies are scared to death of LLMs being seen as commodities. But in the long term, they are.

See also: the big deepseek smear campaign.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: