The tech industry did this to themselves by giving everything away for free for a decade.
I always thought it was suspicious that all these tech companies survived for decades without being profitable. Now that ZIRP is over and they have to actually be profitable, it all makes sense.
Turned off, yes. ...but at the same time, I am violently against greed and psychologically manipulative processes to acquire wealth. YT is insidiously screwing with peoples minds for profit. They can Fuck Off.
Hard disk storage isn't getting cheaper at the same pace as earlier(before the Thailand floods 10 to 15 years ago IIRC). Bandwidth is also expensive, especially across the world. Microsoft threw in the towel in a related space(live streaming) with Mixer. Twitch wasn't really profitable for a long time IIRC, if it now is(even after adding a lot of unskippable ads and adblocker blocking). Kick is bankrolled by online casino gambling profits and is probably a huge money sink.
If something was feasible, surely the people who hang out on HN would be all over it trying to build something. Even if something does get built, it will go the same route eventually.
Am I the only one that is a little turned off by how everything nice on Earth needs to be monetized to death? It's not like Youtube isn't profitable already.
I don't think its a good argument to say "because x is profitable they should not do y". Sure I can dream of a world where actors do not try to extract profit where possible but its not realstic.
State funded services. By now it's clear that platforms like YouTube and Twitter are integral parts of our lives, even used by institutions to release official statements and by media to publish news.
Why then should we leave such important services in the hands of a handful of investors who's only interest is increasing the profit margins?
Some countries/cities manage to have excellent public transportation infrastructure. Why shouldn't they be able to build an excellent public digital infrastructure?
> Incentives matter, if you want good products you need to incentivize making them.
Speaking about incentives, for-profit products have the worst ones. Would you rather use a twitter-like product built by people earning the more time you spend on it, or by people who keep their jobs if they manage to achieve a positive societal effect?
No, I don't think incentives are the issue here.
One issue is probably the slowness of public institutions in embracing change, which is also a good thing in some cases, but doesn't help when the goal is to build new tech products that enable societal change. It seems that private initiative works best when it's about inventing stuff, but not when it's time to implement it in a society. Although that could be changed, if governments weren't so hellbent on delegating so much to private initiative.
Yes, and those costs are covered already. We're talking about squeezing additional profits out of the product in order to make the shareholders happier.
Kind of a non-sequitor, but there is one specific tool that has helped me break out of my smartphone addiction: books! The process is simple:
1. Leave phone somewhere not in my pocket and not within reach
2. Always have a book handy in my free time.
At least in my case, reaching for and reading my phone happens pre-cognition. It's completely automatic. I've found that I enjoy reading just as much, but unless I plan for it I don't have a book in reach. So the solution has been pretty simple: keep a book in reach!
I agree with this take, but I’d say that #1 matters the most by far, and the importance of #2 is correlated with how competitive the field is.
For example, there is (currently) so much demand for programmers that IMO you really don’t need to be naturally gifted in order to have a very strong career.
However, want to be a professional violinist? That’s a different story.
I like and agree with the take that OP should look for opportunities that put them in a flow state. I'll give an example from my own experience.
I'm not a naturally great programmer. I mean, I'm not bad - I get the job done. But I know that there are plenty of folks out there for which it comes much more easily.
However - programming very consistently puts me into a flow state. My workdays pass quickly (in a good way), and for the most part I enjoy what I do. As a result I've found myself learning and growing at a consistent rate over the years.
Am I going to be the best programmer in the world? Absolutely not. But I found a career that I enjoy on a day to day basis, and I can well provide for my family.
I think a lot of people, including myself, waste way too much time trying to find the magic spot in the ven diagram between their genetic ability and a career in which they will end up a virtuoso rockstar. For most people, I think this is a waste of time. The key thing is: I don't think you have to be great at something in order for it to be a good conduit for focus.
Try things, if you stumble on something that engages your focus and passes the time, do that thing more. Especially if it pays.
I think these sorts of posts give people a warped view of interviewing for SWE positions. Most companies don't ask whiteboarding questions of the difficulty discussed here. If you want to work at one of the biggest corporations in the world, thats one thing - but there are plenty of good jobs out there for people like you and me who don't want to put in this sort of time commitment to interviewing.
I appreciate Newports work on productivity and think there is a ton of insight here. But I often find myself wondering - what are we optimizing for when we talk about career success?
I understand that these principles can benefit people in figuring out their direction, they have certainly helped me, but I'm often let down that "purpose" is treated as an afterthought. At the end of the day you are going to die one day, large or small, don't you want to feel that you had a positive impact on the world? Shouldn't that be a defining metric of career success?
