Many geeks are the embodiment of the "don't trust the government" / "don't trust corporations" counterculture, but when equity grants entered the equation, we architected much of the modern techno-surveillance state. Flock is an YC company. Probably a quarter of the people who frequent this site work at Meta or Google.

We're always eager to say how much we dislike it, but there's so little self-reflection in our community.

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leonidasrup 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Tech companies have been monetizing our privacy for a long time.

Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt in 2009:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_with_Google

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partloyaldemon 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

25% of hacker news readership works at meta or google? You mean 25% of meta and google reads Hn, no?

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pllbnk 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A regular person who happened to be smart (and possibly hardworking) has to choose between $100k regular software engineering job at a company with low social impact or $400k at a cream-of-the-crop company, which will further add on the specialist's value by the virtue of having this company's name on their CV. This is a life-changing amount of money which compounds over the years, where a person can genuinely start thinking about early retirement, especially if they don't like the corporate culture.

Why should society allow individuals have to make such difficult choices between being principled or rich? It's the government's job to control. And I don't mean salary control, but to understand why there are such differences and work to mitigate them.

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in_absentia 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Having principles is about making choices that are difficult, not about making choices that are easy. "I didn't really want to build a panopticon, why didn't the government stop me" is not a particularly sympathetic position to take (even if true).

	▲	iugtmkbdfil834 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think you are simplifying it a tad bit. Having principles means having principles. On principle, I don't allow some types of devices in my household. That decision is not difficult, but it is simple. The decision parent describes is not difficult in the sense an individual may easily arrive of what is 'right', but it is absolutely not simple to disentangle oneself.. especially once you do have some year history to back you. Parent was pointing to that. Your dismissal is easy, but it simply shows you never had to choose.

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1vuio0pswjnm7 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Many geeks are the embodiment of the "don't trust the government" / "don't trust corporations" counterculture, but when equity grants entered the equation, we architected much of the modern techno-surveillance state."

Is that really "embodiment"

Sounds like the opposite

People in the practice of abusing blind trust (the people generally are never seen; they fear being publicly named)

Did everyone read yesterday's Brian Cantrill anecdote

Corporations like Google and Meta, and most other so-called "tech" companies, _assume_ trust

Getting trust for free, never earned. "Don't trust corporations". Except for "Big Tech". WTF

"Don't trust the government" is laughable when the person works for a goverment contractor

No such thing as integrity in SillyCon Valley

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joquarky 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This accelerated with the crypto gold rush attracting all the brogrammers.

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esseph 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Probably a quarter of the people who frequent this site work at Meta or Google.

No, lol

That would make up between 0.3% and 0.5% of the global tech workforce, if you added all of their employees together.

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in_absentia 4 hours ago | parent [-]

HN is not a forum for the global IT workforce. It's a portal attached to a VC firm, populated to a large extent by people in the SF Bay Area who work in big tech or various VC-funded startups.

I've gotten some traffic from HN before and if I recall correctly, about 30% of it was from California, followed by Washington (Seattle) and then NY.

	▲	esseph an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> HN is not a forum for the global IT workforce. What things are intended to be and what they become are often vastly different things. There's huge amount of cross-pollination on HN, even from non-IT industry participants.

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moomoo11 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i mean do you want the honest answer? i’m not a white american guy so i can say it.

importing hordes of foreign tech workers or hiring asians broadly whose culture is very much the opposite of “don’t tread on me” led to much of this.

might not be comfortable to say but most of our tech companies are led by people who aren’t “Americana” (cultural)

and broadly speaking, there are very few people like me (i’m asian) that value the American way of independence at all cost and most are just strivers and consumerist

so the goal for most of them is to make 300k base and 300k stock per year. fuck the consequences.

the days of making tech for the love of the game are long gone.

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ultimafan 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Shame that people are down voting you, there's an uncomfortable truth to it I don't think people want to face.

Culture is defined by people not borders- simply crossing an arbitrary line doesn't change someone's beliefs and values.

The immigration boom especially on the West coast has vastly diluted assimilation into American culture- coming from an immigrant, who married into another family of immigrants- too many people move here and stick to their own cultural enclave, building a version of their home country in miniature instead of trying to integrate.

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soraki_soladead 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the problem isn't the workers. plenty of "white american guys" with a "don't tread on me" culture share this goal. scapegoating "hordes of foreign tech workers or hiring asians broadly" ignores that the SV culture rewards this.

> so the goal for most of them is to make 300k base and 300k stock per year. fuck the consequences.

"What could be more American than that?" — Wadsworth, Clue (1985)

	▲	equality_1138 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What could be more American than a foreign born mafia engaging in human trafficking?
	▲	moomoo11 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		someone has to turn the gears

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iugtmkbdfil834 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The fascinating part is that fuck the consequences was until more recently kinda penalized, but advent of tech overlords changed that calculus ( they even have their own saying to capture that 0.

	▲	moomoo11 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		yes and it wasn’t always that way. most of these trends of the “god like” founder are maybe from the past 30 years. and it reeks of extractive personalities that took over