To me it seems dangerous to go to the author's side of the split, if you work in tech: you won't be exposed, at all, to the web that most people experience. Which is bad for you, professionally speaking - it's bad to be completely in the dark about "the web" as most people experience it. It's bad if you work in a startup which is on that web. And it's bad if you're entrepreneurial and would like to make money off that same web: you literally don't know what most of your customer base is seeing. I would even go so far as to say it's not a viable strategy if you expect to be employed by tech cos. or startups. It would be like trying to get a job at Disney or Paramount, while saying "oh I don't watch tv or go to the movies."
I run Brave with privacy features on, on a Linux laptop, and I have not had any issues with employment, at both startups and very large tech companies. Facebook, for example, didn't care that I didn't use Facebook or have an Instagram account.
Often, the most useful perspective is not the one that regresses to the mean.
> Which is bad for you, professionally speaking - it's bad to be completely in the dark about "the web" as most people experience it.
Why? None of my professional work is related to the web at all. Why should I have to suffer the hell that is the modern web just because most people choose otherwise? Doing so wouldn't improve my work at all.
I am on the author’s side of the split and this is reflected in how I design websites. The website on my profile is a good example of this: no cookie banners, no newsletter prompt, no call to action. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s exactly what you came for.
To me, that’s a competitive advantage.
I am self-employed and make a good living from that website. The hardest part of my job is going against advertiser expectations. I control if, when and how I mention products, and that’s very unusual to some of them.
I agree. But considering it an other (probably less binary) way than the author, it means you have to intentionally undertake to understand an experience purely from your users' view, if you want to do your job well. I think it's more dangerous to have the misconception that you're keeping up with the broadening diversity of users. This, to me, is the beautiful part of the universal design philosophy being adopted by web development.
