You're most likely to get credit by being unique and irreplaceable. In other words, if the work would not have happened without you. If someone else could have been easily hired to do the work you contributed, and if in that case the work would have been largely indistinguishable from the work you did, then you're essentially fungible.
IMO you still deserve credit. And in fact you still get credit. But that credit comes in the form of monetary reward and (hopefully) recognition from your team and peers, rather than in the form of fame.
All of which… seems sensible to me? Hard to imagine it working otherwise. Interestingly, the movie industry has normalized "end credits" which play after a movie ends, and which lists literally everyone involved, which is quite cool. But the effect is still the same, the people up top get 99.99% of the credit.
(Ofc the "system" is imperfect, and fame/credit can be gamed by good marketers. But it's also not a "system" that any one party invented, it's just sort of an organic economy of attention at work.)
I am not sure what you're trying to say here. I agree that the existing situation is the most likely one. So what? I am simply saying that even though it is the "obvious thing", it is unfair and unkind. Those two things are compatible, in fact they are the usual arrangement of things!
> Hard to imagine it working otherwise.
No it isn't! It's very easy to imagine crediting people in a different ratio than we happen to do now. You are seeing what it looks like - people mythologise their heroes, and then other people come in and say "they didn't do it all, you know". People are literally doing it, in front of you, in this thread. How can it be hard to imagine?
When I say "I can't imagine" or "it's hard to image" I don't mean that literally. Obviously in reality I can imagine and it's easy to imagine, as evidenced by my example of movie credits.
What I'm saying is that it's not realistic. Humans are wired to remember and share highly specific things, especially names. It's been like this since the dawn of time -- the Illiad is about Achilles, not all the nameless soldiers. So this seems to be the natural order of things, rather than something designed, or something easy to change. And it makes sense, because it's practical -- our memories are limited. You can put everyone's names in the credits, but that doesn't mean they'll be remembered and shared.
Yeah, let's also give credit to the building materials and mother nature. Let's give credit to the pedestrians who walked by the construction site every day and decided not to commit arson.
Brilliant logic. And no, the original comment wasnt' saying "give the engineers some credit", it was saying the engineers deserve the credit instead of Ive.
Which is idiotic and common of smug, self-important programmers.
Comments like yours that completely dismiss any questioning of established "legends" seems more despicable to me. Can't we have an open discussion and a range of opinions?
In between great architects and construction workers there are structural engineers who have to work out how to turn the pretty designs into actual, workable plans. Those are the guys who should get most of the credit.
I agree somewhat, you can feel the tension on HN with respect to labor vs capital. Which is funny because the entire premise of YC is to infuse capital and get a huge leverage over bootstrappers.
It's a pretty common turn of phrase on "lefty" (Western, English, very online, progressive) parts of the internet. I've always found it silly because it takes some pretty interesting nuanced problems (how do you give credit to folks who executed Ive's vision, many who probably boldly innovated to create what they did? How do you realistically situate Ive's flaws given his aura?) and wrings the nuance out of it by polarizing the readers (you're either with labor or you're with capital, pick your side of the picket line!)
But then these days lefty and righty parts of the Western English-language internet are all polarized and beating on common enemies is part of their conversational language. I think for a while HN was small enough that it resisted this polarization but at its current size there's no escaping it.
HN isn't special here. There's conflict between people whose job is to make something look pretty and people whose job is to make it work in every industry.
For Ive, it often was. Ever thinner MBPs? Why, if not for appearance given the weight didn't change. No ports on PRO computers? Why, if they didn't bother his aesthetic sensibilities. Charging your mouse disables its use because the ports on the bottom? Why if not to hide the port for looks? He spent most of his time at Apple trying to make things pretty. Your comment may be true for "design" in the abstract, but as someone who spent plenty of time studying design and architecture, let me assure you, many of the people I studied with who are now industry veterans never cared about much more than aesthetics, even in architecture where engineering and building science are major factors. Again, sure, theoretically true for "design" but hardly true for Ive.
Alternatively: Form follows function.
Or: Good design takes into account the medium.
Many forms of saying it or a very similar statement. If only these words transformed into something beneficial in the minds of flying air castle designers.
> I absolutely despise comments like these, and you only see them on HN.
Unfortunately the progressives have been pushing the downplaying of powerful people quite hard for a long time under the guise of equality, so it’s more widespread than just HN. Even more unfortunately, equality is also one of the main ideas of communism. It’s how the government can get rid of dissenters and thus move power to itself. That’s why Marc Andreessen in the Lex Fridman podcast talked about how the government told them that they could give up their startup because it was already decided which companies would be allowed to operate. That’s not capitalism. And Marc knows it that’s why he felt he had to speak up.
It's like saying great architects aren't great, it's the construction workers who should get the credit.