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0 pointspdimitar5d ago0 comments

You seem to think I disagree with you on the theory about how should things be.

I don't disagree. I really want that reality to materialize. It does not. We have people in very high positions who very carefully make sure it never happens. They have connections, money, resources, obedient and scary enforcers -- they have everything.

While I have you here, I want to make a comparison. There are/were dozens of thousands of devs who commanded $400K for at least 5 years, some for 10+ in FAANG companies, just resting and vesting. They are the ones who should try and sacrifice something to try to better the world. Not me in Eastern Europe who get passed over on the final phases of interviews whose phases I _all_ aced (and got told so in very clear terms) because I said that no, 6200 EUR is not enough for a senior and that I'll start from 7500 at least. Not me who is still renting in this 40s because he was a young overconfident doofus who never learned any money and financial advice (and nobody told him he should; on the contrary, everyone was very happy to exploit me and keep me blind of my own interest) and is now finally working hard to his own ends only -- in a period he should be resting and thinking about the later parts of his life! -- and because he's mostly operating in the EU market, notorious for barely any investment climate and conservative compensations, and definitely not me who has seen first-hand what happens to people rocking the boat.

My disagreement with you is that you invoke some mythical "we the humanity" entity which to me is a cheap way to avoid your own personal responsibility. I don't belong in that "we" group. The FAANG or any privileged engineers are there -- not me. Have you ever commanded FAANG salaries for at least 3 years? If so, and you have not changed anything, then you are directly responsible that the system is not better. Not me. The three total times in my life when I actually managed to gather money to rest for 6-10 months, I used them to just rest from all the crap that happened to me and just recovered physically and mentally. What for? Just to get back into the meat grinder.

What you say is generally valid but you get lost in the bigger picture whereas the everyday fight to change the system is on the ground -- this must not and should not be handwaved away with ideals but with CONCRETE measures, step by step: "allocate 1000 EUR from your next salary and invest them in exactly this and that place" or "use law 1234 and regulation 5678 to get some of your taxes back" or "insist for this contract clause so you are eligible for at least 6 months of severance if you get fired early" etc.

Tell me what power do I have as a contractor. No employment rights. No medical / dental. No severance. I can get fired tomorrow and I have no time to catch my breath. I have to start interviewing tomorrow. Better hope I get the best sleep in the last 5 years tonight! Or else it's not happening.

Executives / people in power just use the "boil the frog" tactic i.e. they tighten the grip 1cm per year until one day, as you said, it's you who is on the chopping block and you are just left confused about WTF went wrong. We are seeing it everywhere, you and I, otherwise we wouldn't discuss this at length here.

> The machine is us. If we don't like how it works... Time for change.

OK, shall I send you my account number so you can support me for 12 months full until I find a job where I feel I can in fact change the world for the better? Disclaimer: it might take 60 months as well. Make your difference in the world! Do concrete measures! Or hell, do it for somebody else -- help them achieve their full potential and recruit them to help the world with you.

Virtue signalling, man. An empty one, too. This is what you're doing. Wishing a theoretical reality into existence so far has not worked for any living human as far as I am aware.

> I got a lot of days left, and I don't intend to leave the world working like it is, because it is not working for the vast majority of us.

Again, that is very obviously true. But it's only theoretical. Everyone is too afraid to not lose their stable income -- and I feel for them. Do you?

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salawat4d ago

Well congratulations my friend, do you thing me some FAANG-er? No. I've undersold myself my entire damn life out of some misguided notion that supporting someone else's mission required sacrifice on my part because it was at least a step in a direction, if even not mine. Furthermore, I've only taken jobs that at least at first glance made it passed a non-trivial list of ethical filters, leading to a boring, but functional infra behind, but also a bunch of leaving places because I inevitably found that what once passed the ethical filter no longer does, and it has cost me just about everything I hold dear. I'm at best, right now, less than a few months from starvation my man. Not even actual food. Medical treatment. Know what that gives me? Clarity. When you're a dead man walking, in a system you're dependent on, and you see it flying off the rails; you start really questioning the "I believes" and getting down to "the how does". This system, if left alone, and as is, is Fucked. Capital F. No golden handcuffs here. Just a dude standing on two feet, watching the flywheel spinning and starting to fly apart.

And the fun bit is this. We're the ones who have kept it going. If we keep doing that without forcing a confrontation with the dynamics... Already dead, remember? So. There's one meaningful choice left. Start fighting for change, or go down like a lamb to slaughter maybe a little bit later, but get slaughtered just the same. I get you're in the EU. I get shit is largely happening over here in the States. Why do you think I'm a nuisance here in a Silicon Valley incubator's little club house of conniving ne'er-do-wells where everyone comes to swap ideas and get-rich-quick schemes? If I'm going to go down, it will not be comfortable for anyone, because I'm done seeing the world as anything but what it is, and if the only reason I am on this planet is to have conversations like these we're having today, that is exactly what I will do until my fingers, my mouth, my brain, my eyes, and my feet stop working. I can't even give myself the cold comfort of being a starving artist. They at least occasionally bring joy. I can bring only discomfort, and galvanization to change, even though I have a non-zero of ever seeing it.

>OK, shall I send you my account number so you can support me for 12 months full until I find a job where I feel I can in fact change the world for the better? Disclaimer: it might take 60 months as well. Make your difference in the world! Do concrete measures! Or hell, do it for somebody else -- help them achieve their full potential and recruit them to help the world with you.

My friend, I've already done that. Multiple times. I've helped raise children that were not my own. I've stepped in where no one else would. I've moved families back together across continents. I've taken on burdens that others may then run. Now, in a situation I need help, I have pauce hope for another like me to come around and do the same thing for me, but you know what? That's fine. I at least know I'm where I'm at because of my own hand. No one asked me to make those sacrifices. I just did. It's who I am. I give a shit about the welfare of other people, well in excess of my own. Maybe too late in life, have I come to truly internalize, that I should have been much more ruthless with the System than I have been. If it's willing to do harmful things to me, it'll damn well do it to people who can't stand for themselves. The important thing though, is if I can do these things, so can everyone else. We can break this goddamn cycle, but you have to want to, and be unafraid of the consequences. Our ancestors did it before, we can do it again. And in the end, it at least means something, even if I don't get to see it.

Even if that means I have to sound like an old fart for the rest of the time I have on Earth; I have to make sure at no point I slack off in reminding people your personal choices matter. The systems around you emergently form out of not only what you do, but what you choose not to do, and your life really only starts, once you accept that death is coming regardless, and stop running from it, pick up the billy club, turn around, and start saying "No more. This shit ends with me."

You hear not a comfortable man sitting in an office chair. You hear a man, being harried by a System toward the waiting abyss, who is refusing to go down quietly, or with a whimper. I have nothing left than word of the Void which we all are being inexorably pushed, and exhortations that if we're going to end up there anyway, it might as well be from fighting to give those we leave behind a better chance. Something many of us lacked the courtesy of.

I don't blame you. My intent is not to shame you. I only speak that which is the Truth, and the Truth, is often hard to hear. Fight well, friend, in whatever way you can. I know I will be.

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