The sad part, the "do not care" attitude is infectious. Maybe there is a bright-eyed programmer who just joined and who wants to make UX better.
They are full of enthusiasm, but nobody (around them) cares.
They are fixing the most annoying bugs that users complained forever about.. but they is not recognized, because nobody (around them) cares.
They hope to show a good example but nobody cares. Instead they get negative feedback when instead of blindly implementing horribly-designed feature, they are trying to fix it so it won't be so user-hostile.
Eventually they give up and stop caring. When asked what they like about the job, their answer is "stability" and "job security".
OP is talking about folks caring about making their environment a bit better, care about their craft or care about making an effort to make the world a better place. It's not really the same thing as your work not resonating with people.
I just took a look at your project - you really need to simplify the README. I read the whole thing but it’s still not clear to me what you app actually does.
I have no idea what a “Social Operating System” is supposed to be. Seems like it’s a web/mobile app framework, but it’s completely unclear why I would want to use it. You need an “elevator pitch”.
There are hundreds of frameworks, if you want developers to use yours, maybe show some example code? No one is going to spend a bunch of effort trying to build with your framework if they can’t see an advantage.
Not trying to be a hater, I care and want you to succeed
Edit: just read some of the links in the readme - so it also has something to do with crypto and micropayments? Why would I want to use your “QBUX”? Would a developer only be able to get paid in your crypto? If so, why should they trust that you won’t rugpull? If you want people to care about your project, you need to think about what they care about (pro tip: nobody cares about making you rich via support contracts or shitcoin schemes. Sorry.)
I am not sure what you read that said any of the things you asserted in the "Edit" section. None of that is true. The token doesn't even exist yet. There is no "rugpull" possible in any event.
But I think this illustrates perfectly what I said originally. Context matters. The context on HN is "I see a word that triggers me (token / web3) somewhere and I immediately assume all these things I haven't seen or read, and forget about anything you actually did."
That's why it is very important how you present things. The original Facebook was just a bunch of profiles in php. And yet people used it like mad and investors camped out Zuck's dorm room. It's not so much about what you build but how you present it.
You are focusing on technical details too much, I don't think any of the initial Facebook users cared if it was php or not, they cared about what they saw on the screen.
While presentation definitely matters, the product itself has to be actually interesting (especially on HN). For example, current HN's top post is about Anthropic - and I don't even know what their stack looks like!
On the other side, if the product's is Yet Another PHP Framework then your target audience is (1) PHP developers who are (2) unsatisfied with existing frameworks they know and (3) willing to spend hours to try the unknown thing. This is a pretty narrow category.
I'm not triggered by crypto/web3 - I think there are a lot of good use-cases. I'm trying to explain to you that the README and website introducing your product/framework/platform (whichever it is, I'm still not sure):
1) Doesn't explain to the target market (developers) why they should use your product
2) Throws up a bunch of red flags to developers who actually bother to read it all, namely that your business model seems to be either/both of selling devleoper support (is that why there aren't any good developer docs?), or locking developers into a token with no published tokenomics or even a contract address (as you noted, the token doesn't exist!). Anyone with any experience in crypto knows that there is risk adopting an ERC20 token, you *need* to address the risk points (eg the potential for rugpull, available liquidity) if you want anyone to take you seriously.
My point is, this is why you are getting no traction from developers. People aren't ignoring your completely free awesome code because of apathy, it's because you're not doing a good job showing them any benefits to using your product. Your marketing needs work.
Also, you should really consider if you actually have a product that fits your market. It sucks to spend a lot of time developing a product that the market doesn't want, but you might be in that position. If so, no amount of marketing will help you.
Ironically, I went to the effort to parse through all your docs because I wanted to help you understand why your Show HN failed, but now I kind of feel like I wasted my time, making it harder for me to care in the same way for the next person in a similar position.
Anyhow, take the critique or not -- I wish you luck either way!
I don't think it's similar at all, unless you have some sort of directors/investors telling you what to do (based on your comments, you don't)
I (and OP) was talking about people who have power over the product (software engineers, managers, designers) not caring.
In your case, people with power over product (you) clearly care very much, it's just the product is not interesting to others. (Which kinda makes sense? It's yet another PHP framework with AI and Crypto, and there is plenty of them...)
These people show up, offer trivially incorrect or untenable solutions to the trickiest problems. Rarely do they have the insight that fixes them. Often they do things that introduce more risk.
This is a bullshit take considering the amount of pressure put on the average worker and their family in the US.
And in software youre going to have to close a ticket or two that piss you off. You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never deliver new features? Cool, see you in Japan bro.
> the amount of pressure put on the average worker and their family in the US.
Broken windows. To use his example with bikes: the firms didn't care enough to allow the engineer to properly angle that entrance to the sidewalk. The engineer didn't care to push back because they were underpaid and things are getting more expensive at home. Things get more expensive because landlords are taking advantadge of the situation to jack up prices, because no regulation cared enough to stop that (or worse, regulation cared about money more and landlords "donated" to him to sway their ruling).
This apathy is a virus that spreads. At some point it becomes hard to figure out where it started. It's just this fog that seemingly always existed.
>You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never deliver new features?
I don't get paid to deliver features. If that bug is really critical enough I may push back on it.
Or I simply realize it's above my paygrade, don't care, leave a paper trail down the line for when they inevitably blame me, and do what I'm told like a proper worker.
I feel like there's "nobody cares about what I do" and "nobody cares about how they affect other people" which are related but subtly different and imo. GP was more about the first and TFA more the second.
I relate to this a lot. Someone is referring to this take as “bullshit” contrasting the experience of the average worker to a software engineer.
I’d argue the average worker is in the position they’re in because of a whole chain of people that couldn’t be bothered to care.
Our government has let go of its principles, because no one in charge could be bothered to give a fuck. There’s a certain nihilism to life in the US in 2025 that has been enabled entirely by people not speaking up.
I’m myself guilty of staying on the sidelines. Starting to realize that perhaps I need to be louder, because no one else is speaking up and that “giving a fuck” is something that must be led by example.
I’m not advocating for anything. I’m pointing out the cause of the effect you’re noting.
Concretely, I suspect it’s a side effect of ‘how dare they’ type political attacks and increasing balkanization. What a lot of folks would call ‘California style politics’.
Short of everyone taking a step back and actually evaluating what they want/need as people and having a productive conversation about it and a useful compromise (hah!), I imagine we’ll just end up with a ‘strong man’ who can do all the ‘bad things’ necessary to pull everyone together into a consistent direction despite whatever hate might be thrown in their direction.
Though typically that is just what someone pretends to be so they can loot everything… at least unless people are really careful to look at the persons track record of outcomes instead of what they are saying right now. And since everyone will be all angry and pissed off while this happens, lots of room for various bullshit to happen, ‘others’ to be made and punished, etc, etc.
Oh wait….
And yes I know this is a symptom of the problem, but I’ve also literally had enough of my life destroyed trying to discuss elements of this already to not do anything else. Murder anyone trying to be a hero, and what else is going to happen? You’ll either have villains, dead bodies, or cowards.
>Our government has let go of its principles, because no one in charge could be bothered to give a fuck.
Oh they care... about money. We're being sold out but keep re-electing the same perpetrators simply because "it's better than the other person".
Meanwhile a third of our country is a mix of "not caring" or legitmately unable to keep dates in mind and find a poll booth to vote. Who knows how things would change if voting was compulsory, as was receiving a ballot in the mail.
> Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it sucks.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've actually never had a bad experience at the DMV here in Seattle. The staff have been efficient, fast, and friendly every time.
I think I have dealt with such organization thrice in my life. 3 driving tests. And on all times it was as pleasant experience as possible.
Only complaint I really have with that system is them caring too much. Why does my car need "type certificate" sticker... It is all online and tied to VIN... Replacement cost like 200€ and then tens more for showing them paperwork new one was ordered...
The idea that the DMV is a particularly awful experience does seem like something that would be especially susceptible to selection bias. Why would anyone ever announce "I went to the DMV today and it was fine"?
Well, now that it is a meme, and the DMVs where I live is actually very effient, I've actually heard multiple people say "I went to the DMV, and actually it was fine"
The service is fine. The lines and waits are horrendous and a DMV never seems to have the seating room for that. So you spend an hour before you even get in the door like you're waiting for a new iPhone or something.
I've had experiences with the DMV in three US states, and in two out of the three it was highly efficient and worked great. In one of them it was mediocre to unpleasant, but nothing to write home about.
I suspect the DMVs in LA and NYC are particularly bad and that's why it's a cultural meme.
I've had wonderful experiences at DOL offices (which are 3rd party contracted), not so much at the DMV. Which one are you going to? Honestly worth a drive (or bus ride, depending on the issue) to go to a a decent one
Indiana's BMV used to be the Kafkaesque when I went with my mom in the 1970s. She waited in a huge line only to find out it was the wrong line...waited again to find she didn't have a certain document and had go home to get it.
About 20 years ago the would check to see if you had everything right as you came in.
Now it's almost magical how fast friendly and efficient they've become for the few times you actually have to visit. Most transactions are online or via mail.
Patton Oswalt has a bit on this and its too true. The problem with the DMV isn't the DMV or its employees... its the general public who can't be bothered to read basic instructions.
Same. Getting a drivers license and car plates in Seattle was a _fantastic_ experience. Start with a simple, fast web app. Finish with a 10 minute start-to-end in person appointment.
Or I guess, put another way,
IMO this is about Apathy. The feeling where doing things or not doing them, what's it matter anyways.
I think, a lot of the apocalyptic sentiment lately has a lot to do with it. Climate change is already ruining things and will only get worse and also has started getting worse faster. Politically, economically, things are pretty hopeless. What use is picking up trash or wearing a nice shirt in the face of all of this. What are we building towards, and does anything I do mean anything
Nah, I moved from a big city where people are feeling squashed by the pressure, to a small town, where people feel a bit more relaxed, and I am constantly surprised by how much of a shit people give. I’m not advocating for small towns here, I like the city, I’m advocating for making a society where we act like people matter and stop calling anyone who doesn’t want to kick everyone in the teeth to get ahead a communist, and stop calling people who do inspiring visionaries
I've lived in most every manner of setting the US has to offer. The best by far is the micro-urban settings. Where as opposed to a small town with strip malls and neighborhoods, there is high density around an urban center that pretty much immediately transitions to rural. That way you can still have walkability and the mix of bars / restaurants / activities that urban settings inspire without all the overhead of actual large cities. Even when I lived in large cities I spent most of my time in just a few blocks. So a few blocks of city and then all the recreational activities of rural areas is pretty great.
There's still issues with people not caring, but it seems like those are more so outliers than anywhere near the norm and it's a lot more expedient to get in contact with someone that does care and can take actionable measures where there is a problem.
Just as an example there was a water leak from the municipal system in the right of way in front of my house. It was repaired quickly but they had to dig up a lot of the yard, which they filled back in. But after a few heavy rains it washed out a fair amount. It was a little annoying but I just said "Oh well". A few years ago in Atlanta my neighbors had reported a sinkhole FOR YEARS, and nothing was done about it until it finally caved in and swallowed an entire intersection.
I had a friend come over though and this had been like 3 months and he asked about the hole. I told him the situation and he just said "Call the city and tell them you need dirt." So I did, and told someone that took a message. A couple hours later they called me back and confirmed my address and that I needed dirt. He said they were busy but would do it tomorrow, and sure enough the next day they came with a dump truck, a trailer of equipment and filled in the hole, compacted the area, smoothed it all out and planted grass. All in 24 hours for a problem that impacted no one but me.
Classically underspecified, you are right. The care has to be about others and respecting them, not about oneself. Like in a good partnership. Care about giving, not taking.
But as the article frustratedly states, it usually goes the other way. Like Jethro Tull progressing into desillusion from
Reading the original article I reflected: "I can totally see how this can happen, but for some reason it doesn't happen where I live"
I moved to Switzerland 9y ago. People care. I believe this is due to high trust society which evolved not that long ago from small, poor, tightly woven communities.
I am the guy who cares or cared! I will bring lost lady back to care home. I will help a kid to find his lost key in the playground. I will start fixing technical debt in a product at work. While two first cases were naturally the right thing to do I didn’t expect anything. With technical debt I was stopped because I was wasting company’s resources. I observe in my diary, that I am turning into do not care type person. One can’t cary about every pothole in the world.
Resist the cold churn toward pride-fueled apathy that this rant exhausts.
After reading this, if this is supposed to demonstrate the psyche of the sort of person who “cares”, I really hope he keeps indoors and spends a little bit more time on his self before stepping out on others.
The thing is that I might be another psycho. But there is a city center, winter and an old women with blueish hands. Wearing no proper shoes and having only a sweater. There are hundred other caring and loving persons and missionaries around, heavy car traffic too. But somehow I am the one bringing her to the care facility a mile away. How can it happen!? Why do you think, that only a Good Samaritan can care and a psycho can’t?
Well, pardon me. It doesn’t seem to me like you’ve gone mad, but if you are a psycho indeed, I don’t want to do you further harm.
If you really are “all right” and just an honestly styled man trying to cultivate good in a barren city with crushed soil and souls, then I reckon there’s some care in you of some kind much to be desired from others and you know it.
And I suspect that it’s the psychos who believe that they’re “Good Samaritans” and if your word is true then we can tell that apparently they’re unwilling to provide actions that confirm their claims. Crazy.
So, my guess is maybe the world’s gone so mad that anyone trying to behave sane looks strange, and the ones who are mad pretend to be right until wrong shows up.
Sorry, but it’s in German: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/sterbenden... Society is that far, that some people just step over the corpse to reach ATM and get some cash. World is gone mad and numb to the pain of others. So don’t be shy if you sometimes help others.
> „Ich gehe einfach nur rein, mache meine Erledigungen und gehe wieder.“
What a world. And what a way that this phrase can mean different to different people depending on what a person perceived to be their duties and their deeds.
I think that's actually a known psychological phenomenom. The more people there are, the less likely someone steps in to help. Because if help was needed, someone of all the other people would have already helped. Same with driving past car accidents for example.
It's good to keep this in mind. If you see something and no one is helping, it's good to check. Especially when there are other people around.
Personally I just try to do right within my influence. And helping someone find their keys, or going after a stray pet, and similar fits right into that. It won't change the world, but it makes life better for someone and I'd hope to be treated similarly if I was in that situation.
And caring at work in an institution? I don't know, it seems part of survival to learn to not care there.
Agreed about Musk.
Elon Musk as an example of caring, is ignorant of his actions vs his narrative.
Example him saying he says he's the best diablo player in the world, vs seeing him play poorly.
We live in a world full of people doing good who don't do it for the "player 1 energy"
What a worthless rant. There are big problems and there are small problems and/or inconveniences. People do care, when they have a budget for caring. Unfortunately the modern world depletes that budget with the day-to-day life. I live close to where the author does and trust me, the city has way bigger problems to deal with than the nitpicky bullshit OP is calling out. In the suburb I live in, we have an app where the city does receive and implement reasonable recommendations. The reason why is that it's a small town with large pockets.
The rest of the things are just rants aimed at society? big tech? I don't get it.
> When I joined my former Big Tech job, everyone cared. Over time, incentives attracted a different set of people who didn't care as much. Eventually those people became the majority. It's painful to work with people who don't care if you care a lot, and eventually I left because of it.
No. Bullshit take. I used to care. But then in 2008, my employer showed me that I'm not the 'developer! developer! developer!' Steve Ballmer was excited about, I'm just a number on a spreadsheet governed by some pencil pushers in finance. All employers since have showed me again and again that if times are tough, I'm the ballast the company can shed to stay afloat. And in the past 4-5 years they've showed me I'm ballast even if the company is doing great, because 'activist' investors say so. So why should I care? I care about my family, I care about my personal projects, I care about my craft and I care about my health and the people around me. Do I care about your little annoying bug? Fuck no. Why would I? It's not even my intellectual property.
> Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it sucks.
I have. It's actually called the DOL where we live, OP. And it's great. I need to renew my license in person because of my disability and it takes me 15 minutes in-and-out, I barely have to stay in line. I also renew my car tabs online exclusively with 0 problems. I really don't understand the DMV meme, at least in Washington state.
> We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will, defeat armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you can't say the man doesn't care.
Oh, you shouldn't have gone there, you lost all credibility my friend.
People do not care because they don’t want to suffer all the time they see some lack of effort.
Even when there is 80% carers and 20% do-not-carers, 80% will suffer and go into the opposing group.
It has upside-down-bowl stability.
What the author of this post is actually mad about is that most people don't care about him. The people who designed the DMV don't care about him. The people who made the crappy Oracle HR software he probably has to use don't care about him. The people who designed the bike lanes don't care about him.
It's not their job to. They have about a million other priorities, they're not sorry about it, and they shouldn't be.
The DMV, the HR software people, the engineering people, they care about lots of things: Following the laws they are required to follow; maintaining regulatory compliance. Handling the latest set of changes and rules from a higher office who demands they be implemented yesterday. Not overwhelming the underpaid staff they have on-hand. Figuring out how to deal with a generally unpleasant general public, including the guy who wrote this. Holding back an ounce of sanity so they can get home at the end of the day and be happy and not drink themselves to death.
The reality is that life is a series of tradeoffs. Even if I am giving 100% at work (and I have a family and a life, so often I am not), that 100% does not get allocated entirely or even mostly to "deliver the best experience for the specific needs of the author of this article." It's dedicated to getting work out the door at an acceptable level of quality; monitoring our systems so they don't crash and lose us money; complying with the rules and procedures my employer demands I comply with; being tolerable and decent to my colleagues so they don't resent me and make my life harder. If I think about the needs of one specific customer out of the millions that transact business with my employer every day, it's because something extraordinary has happened with implications for one of the things above.
What sets people like Elon apart is that they are single-mindedly dedicated to getting people to appease them, and also pretty good at it. All Elon cares about is whatever interests him day-to-day, his ego, his impact on the world, whether people like him or hate him. He's "successful", by this author's metric, because he's self-obsessed.
All that said, the UK has a phrase for someone who cares only to do the bare minimum: a jobsworth, as in, more than my job's worth. A jobsworth is unhelpful on purpose, or because enforcing apathy is more valuable to them than doing anything that might impose upon them later an obligation to act. The thing is - those people are universally reviled. They are not liked or approved of in society. They're also a severe minority.
Most people are doing their best to stay above water on a dozen different things, and you are only one of them. The author ought to have some humility and realize that.
Then why the huge disparity between cultural attitudes in the USA vs. Japan? Clearly the Japanese tend to take more pride of ownership, which is OP's point.
Japan also has an entire group of people so disillusioned with society they completely lock themselves off from it (0), record high suicide rates (1), record low fertility rates (2), and a far lower rate of self-reported happiness.
I don't know why they prioritize differently, but I don't think it's working out for them.
Which set of tradeoffs would you rather live under?
>Which set of tradeoffs would you rather live under?
I'll take the one that doesn't lay me over every year to hit record profits, thanks. There's degrees of not caring and the US is very far on the "you are just a number" peg. The fake drinking parties at least try to make me feel involved.
He only thinks it's that way because in Japan, he's the big man with the big bucks the whole society caters to. An average Japanese person probably makes a terrible salary, has few if any economic prospects, sees a stagnant economy, and also is very unlikely to even start a family. I'd much rather have a family than have store clerks obsses about serving me.
If you have tons of money in Seattle area and live in an exurb, and only go to Seattle for the orchestra and a baseball game in a box, you probably think everyone in America cares too
Those are a lot of very wrong assumptions. Salaries aren't US level but more than liveable because even most non-tokyo housing is perfectly reasonable. The economny is stagnant (and now recessionary) but they have a decent amount of safety nets. They don't need to worry about walking to work one day to be locked out or being in debt if they collapse (yes, there are some very dark work patterns to "lay off", but you won't suddenly have zero salary next month).
>I'd much rather have a family than have store clerks obsses about serving me.
Okay, the US has neither. So...
>If you have tons of money in Seattle area and live in an exurb, and only go to Seattle for the orchestra and a baseball game in a box, you probably think everyone in America cares too
These are small micro-behaviors, not a larger mindset. Even a rich tourist would notice the difference between someone taking your ticket for an orcheastra and going to a corner store in Japan.
I don't think they are wrong assumptions. Japan has higher suicide rates, lower rate of having kids, and on and on.
And like I said, obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average Japanese person doesn't benefit from these things because the average Japanese person lives in a cramped, barely livable closet-sized apartment in a huge city where costs are probably not close to wages
They are wrong assumptions. They aren't so signifigantly high that they fundamentally affect the perceptions of the culture. Japan is 14.29 per 100k suicide rate. the US has 14.21. Japan has something low like 1.2 kids per family, the US has 1.66, also pretty dang low. You gotta do a lot of heavy lifting to say those differences make for a much worse culture.
>obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average Japanese person doesn't benefit from these things because the average Japanese person lives in a cramped, barely livable closet-sized apartment in a huge city where costs are probably not close to wages
Tourism goes both ways. You can switch Japanese with American and this metaphor is just as apt. You're missing a lot of subtleties and cultural difference just saying "well Americans make more money on average" while comparing the quality of life of the lower compensated parts of each society.
Fair play. I'm open more to the idea that a culture where people care about the greater good makes more of a difference. Haven't seen it myself, and I'm still skeptical that if he were an average Japanese person he'd see it the same way. But your argument is convincing.
It's cultural. Japan and Asian in general is a lot more conformist and taught to care about the larger society. Huge contrast of the individualism of US enforcing "hustle culture" and "dog eat dog world".
I invite the author to work for a large corp or a government and try and improve things. The most supportive people for improvements will be your team. The least supportive will be the higher-level managers. And no, the Director of Transportation is not the real manager. That's the mayor or city council.
Why? They get measured on the sweeping stuff, by the broad demands, and the people who actually pay them (in money or votes).
A better bike ramp that involves user testing but involves a delay that pushes work into the next quarter, changing accounting? That's a problem. I've lived this scenario where user features got axed to ensure all work could be budgeted under a particular quarter. Or a sign? That costs money and also needs approval, perhaps from another department.
Oh, and you are improving one bike ramp? Can't do that without people complaining. Got to improve all of them. So that is now a multi-million dollar project.
In a large org, it often isn't clear who owns overall design control, if anyone.
Lights that are great for drivers but suck for everyone else? That's many things in most cities and that is because drivers are the most vocal (and often the largest) population. Drivers win on everything from parking to infrastructure spending and drivers will tell city council what's on their mind.
For the corporate software I worked on, many users hated it. Tons of complaints. Team agreed. Team created proposal to fix it. Team managers pitched it to those above for the broader roadmap. Management explicitly said they didn't want to waste time on UI as the people paying were not the same as the people using.
Never worked for the DMV, but know a guy who maintains some software for one. What's the priority? Cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Nobody wants to fund the DMV. Nobody wants to pay for technological improvements for it. Nobody wants to pay for staffing. It is where small amounts get shaved off to pay for things people do care about. The guy in charge of the DMV is tasked with keeping costs low.
Maybe the Will To Have Nice Things is solved by culture not process.
I’ve seen the above too. Imbuing an organisation with the Will To Have Nice Things seems unsolved because, as you say, the value is constantly traded off against more measurable outcomes.
I think the solution has to be building and rewarding a culture of doing the right thing, taking pride in delivering not just to spec but excellence. So when the org plan demands a giant construction barrier near the kids playpark of course the person responsible also commissions a dinosaur mural for it. Not because it’s a KPI or was debated and traded off on the functional spec but as a matter of personal and professional pride.
Interestingly I think the drop in taking pride in your work coincides with the relative anonymity of society in which reputation is no longer tracked through past interactions or word of mouth but is institutionalised in rating systems. This is perhaps related to why a more insular and smaller society in Japan has managed to retain it to a higher degree. Certainly there are elite groups around the world in which everyone knows the other players and so reputation and (from an institutional perspective) over-delivery are still valued, and these groups are the ones that accomplish otherwise unachievable advances. The broader anonymous society that delivers only to spec ends up with leaky abstractions that gradually collapses under its own weight of incompetence once the former culture of Wanting Nice Things degrades to Somebody Else’s Problem.
If true this predicts a
stable rule-of-law-based society or organisation in which the most powerful all know each other and which otherwise is broken into small mostly-stable communities would foster the Will To Have Nice Things more than an anonymous interchangeable mass would.
I can hear patio11 reminding me that this should have been a blog post.
I imagine so. You need agreement on "nice things" first.
My city constantly fights over this. Is a mural a nice thing or is the tax saving? Heck, is colour printing too much? I've heard people whine about them printing city handouts for council in colour.
Everybody cares actually. Obviously the author cares more about investing the time to write this blog post than to take a sledgehammer and some concrete and fix the bike ramp himself. Or he cares to avoid the potential interactions with law enforcement that would result from such ridiculousness.
The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest affections of the heart are selfish - incurvatus in se (curved inwards).
"Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake." - Martin Luther
>Or he cares to avoid the potential interactions with law enforcement that would result from such ridiculousness.
uhh, yes? What was the point of this ridiculous metaphor you yourself created?
>The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest affections of the heart are selfish
It's a bit more basic than that. If people aren't happy they care less, because their senses dull to focus only on survival and not assisting one's community.
Man, I've been the engineer in situations like that bike lane and believe me, we care. Usually the engineers care. 99% of the time the contractor had some "value engineering" suggestions that the client was all too happy to take because it saved them a little money up front. As the engineer you can try to explain that it will be shitty, but they ... don't care.
A well known CEO noted that in a failing organization he was trying to devise a turn around plan for that everyone in the organization invariably blamed... the other teams! Not a one said "our team is responsible for our failure".
The engineers blamed product, the product people blamed sales, etc.
He said he provided this suggestion, "You are of course right (it's the other groups fault, and it might have been so), but what can you do, in your group, as part of a solution we all work towards to help fix this?"
So yeah, it is the other guys fault. But what you can you do to help fix it?
Sure, that's great if you all work for the same organization and everyone involved asked themselves that and they all benefited from the organization's overall success.
But that is not the case here. That is not how bike lanes or many other things get built. The engineer is a consultant that works for one independent company. The contractor is a different independent company. The client is another company or a government entity. Possibly the client involves several different entities with competing demands and priorities.
And "success" for the engineer doesn't really mean building a good thing. It means a happy client who will come back for repeat business.
How does this problem get fixed? Well, eventually someone hits that curb and breaks their neck and sues the city. Then the city hires an engineer to create design standards that they include in future contracts when they build new bike lanes.
The CEO in question publicly declared his own job would be forfeit within a year if he didn't meet goals that were in the recent past history of the company, absolutely impossible.
Power and money got to his head, hard, but he used to be a really good manager, probably the best Michelin ever had, before he took the job at Renault (then Nissan). Not surprised to hear he was very successful there, as he had a really good reputation before his divorce (and this is baseless gossip, but I will still say I doubt any of his wrongdoings were before 2012. Too much power and no one to keep his ego checked down).
> Nobody:
> LinkedIn 'influencers': "Yesterday I was walking to an interview. There was a starving dog on the road. I stopped to feed him & missed the interview. The next day I got a call asking to come in to do the interview. I was surprised, but I went. Then the interviewer came in. He was the dog."
This is such a low effort learned-helplessness response. Look, there are good CEOs and bad CEOs, I'm not here to defend them, but one thing you have to understand is that CEO action is an extremely blunt instrument. Of all the problems in an org, the vast majority can not be directly solved by the CEO, they can just sort of broadly steer the culture in the right direction, but folks down the chain need to solve problems at their own level. Of course there are tradeoffs in an organization and so not every problem can be solved, but if folks who understand the details can't propose any kind of solution that doesn't A) require CEO action or B) every other person to act exactly the way they propose, then they're not really helping.
I understand there's a lot of toxic environments where it's not worth trying to improve things, but a blanket statement pointing at CEOs en masse as the root of all problems is just as stupid and reductive as CEOs who don't do anything to empower ICs and learn from the front-line expertise.
I have no way of knowing if this is true, but supposedly Musk gets down and dirty at the front line, on the factory floor, every single week trying to solve problems:
There are two groups of people: blamers and doers. For example, people will often blame local government for issues such as not disposing of fly tipping garbage quick enough, but they will not do much to clean up the pavements with sofas or fridges around their house – a man with a van can often drive over these large bits of garbage to a recycling centre for like $30/£30 an hour. Sometimes people will say government is spending money poorly, but they will not have participated in any of the consultations the government did on the matter, even if they were online or accepted mail-in comments. And in workplaces, they will often blame other departments without having put in elementary effort to resolve the issues with them. Sometimes people will blame government services for collapsing – there are certainly many YouTubers that constantly moan about how bad public transit is in many regions of the US, but few will donate to groups and politicians that genuinely want to replan public transit. Few will campaign for them, which can be done online in the fraction of a time it takes to produce a video.
If an org gets taken over by the blamer culture, it is doomed. These people will make no attempt at fixing problems, even when that would sometimes take 5 minutes and an email, but they will moan. And they will blame, and sometimes they'll blame the person suggesting an easy and workable course of action to resolve the problems.
Interestingly, sometimes resolving the problem takes less effort than sustained moaning, and certainly less mental strain. And still, people who tend towards the blamer group will blame and moan. Though I make no insinuation that moaning doesn't have any other benefits (such as YouTube video revenue, virtue signalling, and similar) – it is clearly appealing to one of the two groups I mentioned.
> Interestingly, sometimes resolving the problem takes less effort than sustained moaning, and certainly less mental strain.
That would involve actually doing some kind of work that people doing the complaining would like to avoid in the first place, because it's "someone else's responsibility to get it right!".
You know who really cares? The Karen in the HOA who relentlessly hounds the board because one of the units in the complex has the wrong color paint on their door. Be careful what you wish for, or the grass is always greener.
You bring up an important adjacent point. OP believes bikers and non-drivers are substantial stakeholders, but ignores that the tax complainers and drivers may prefer the world that way. And they do hound council.
Indeed. Imagine a neighbor who was upset that people didn't care enough to clear the parkway of leaves and selflessly dedicated himself to spend hours loudly leaf-blowing the whole neighborhood.
Most Karen's are actually great. We only hear about the unhinged ones on social media because the algorithm rewards outrage. But most Karen's are kind and they care and they work hard and they set an example for all of us. It's the Karen's in the world that keep all the small things from being shitty all the time.
Have you thought this through? Incessant requests for an unimportant matter is a sure way to have those in charge of said matters not care, not only about that particular request but requests in general or the desires of requesters.
If it’s unimportant then why is there a rule against it? Why did everyone agree to this rule when they bought a home there if it didn’t matter? Clearly it exists for a reason and if no one enforced it then it’s completely pointless
I don’t think it’s black and white to think, hey that door isn’t an approved color, and I care about community standards, so I’m going to submit a note on it
I wouldn’t personally do this but I can see how someone would without it being mean spirited
Really depends on the context. And the rule. Some rules are stupid, some situations have no rules but "expectations" ("Have it your way" is a famous slogan arguably perverted by reasoning for a few people). The rules could be made for powertripping reasons or safety reasons.
> Why did everyone agree to this rule when they bought a home there if it didn’t matter?
I don't think you have thought this through. People are generally not asked about every bylaw individually. Maybe they bought the house because it was close to work. Or maybe they bought the house to get the kids into a good school. Maybe they bought the house because they just loved the garden. Or maybe they bought it because that was the only one they could afford after a long search and they were exhausted and just wanted to live somewhere.
Even if they read the rules maybe they cared about 80% of them and couldn't give a hoot about that specific one. (Maybe they like that their neighbour can't turn their front yard into a mechanic shop, but they don't care what colour their door is. That sort of thing.)
They might have agreed to it in a legalistic sense. As in they signed a piece of paper which referred to an other piece of paper which had this rule in it among many others. But you can't pretend that that means they "agreed" to it in the common sense meaning.
> Clearly it exists for a reason
That is not always clear. No.
> if no one enforced it then it’s completely pointless
Some rules are completely pointless. Weather or not they are enforced is a different point. But either way enforcing it doesn't make it have a point if it had none to begin with.
They're called "Karens" because they're unhinged, not because of whatever other criteria you're imagining. The kind people you're referring to aren't Karens.
No there is most definitely more to it. There is a generalized trend as to what unhinged social media Karens care about. A Karen isn't a Karen if she is just spouting conspiracy theories loudly at you. She is only a Karen if she is adamant that you follow the established rules of good society, whatever she is convinced that these rules are. Karens value "good" group behavior, whatever their definition of good is, and they are willing to tell you to get in line. Karens care that you don't put external costs onto others. Karens care.
A "hinged" Karen is your common group mom stereotype, who makes sure everybody is doing well and that everyone understands what is up and is following along. She has no problem telling you what you should and shouldn't be doing, but you love it because she is lovely. Hinged Karens are simultaneously the scaffolding and lubrication of good society.
> In Japan, you get the impression that everyone takes their job and role in society seriously. The median Japanese 7-11 clerk takes their job more seriously than the median US city bureaucrat.
My favorite example of this is how, if you visit 7-11 in Japan and an employee isn’t busy, or is busy but with an unimportant task, they will jump to open a cash register and check people out the second a queue forms. They will move as quickly as possible to clear the queue of people, seemingly aware that everyone has some place to be that isn’t a checkout line. It’s wonderful.
I used to rank the McDonald's in Toppongi hills Tokyo as having the best employees anywhere after I saw one run from one side of the little shop to the other when the French fry buzzer went off.
However, it got beat out by the McDonald's in Arkadelphia Arkansas, where the employee fast walked as quickly as hen could to take the order to the car waiting in the Drive-Thru, and then also fast walked back. Running of course would have been against OSHA and gotten hen in trouble so hen did the best hen could.
I'm not sure what was going on in tokyo, but in arkadelphia it was simply that there are a huge number of people waiting for food and the employee did not want them to wait any longer than they had to.
"hen" is my go-to gender neutral 3rd person singular pronoun.
I realize that English speakers use "you" for both singular and plural, having retired "thee" and "thou", but the resulting ambiguity has led to the creation of a new word, "y'all", or sometimes prepending it with "all of" for clarity.
Using "they/them" in the singular will just lead us down the same path.
Why not short circuit it and just add the pronoun English speakers have needed forever?
How often is the gender of the pronouned person(s) relevant? In my experience, almost never.
Right now I am reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer for the first time and guess what, back in 1984 there are uses of “they” in a situation where gender of a hypothetical singular third person is irrelevant. It is not confusing in the slightest, compared to a completely new artificially created word.
As a writer, he can make sure that he crafts a situation so that they is unambiguous. I have tried using it in my personal life only to stumble on whether they is one or many.
That's why I settled on borrowing a word that has proven its mettle
(Edit: I used "he" here because William Gibson seemed to identify as a guy, but Gibson's gender is completely irrelevant to this.)
Oh.. do people not do that anymore? At the little grocery store I worked at in BC Canada, if there were like 2 or 3 people in line we'd call for help if they weren't already on their way. Seems like a pretty basic thing.
Here in the US, I don't know what's going on with the cashiers. They're slow. They don't say a single word to you, not even to give you your total. And they're awful at bagging. I just don't get it. It's not a hard job.
How roles are perceived, becomes how people perceive themselves, becomes how people act out those roles.
Or more to the point: Its easier to be what people expect you to be.
In my experience the US is especially susceptible to this 'roleplaying', probably because all (entertrainment) media comes from the same overarching culture.
What, we expect cashiers to be slow and bad so that's how they act? That's ridiculous. I expect them to scan my groceries at a reasonable pace, put the eggs and bread on top, and read me the total when they're done. I expect their managers to give them heck if they're clearing lines at half the speed as the next cashier over. That's about it.
It's not a shameful or embarrassing job. My sister-in-law made a career out of it. She's happy there, so I'm happy for her. She gets good benefits and decent pay. Just do your job and everyone's happy.
I've literally done it. It's not hard. Maybe if you have some health conditions that make it difficult to stand, but I hope the store will provide accommodations if you do.
One thing that rarely mentioned in Japanese 7-11 efficiency is the "employment ice age" problem that contributed to it: there was a massive job crisis around 1993-2005 and major STEM university graduates were dime a dozen. A McDonald's but with only clones of Gordon Freeman as employees tends to become a bit different place than a regular hamburger shop.
theres an effect in countries with high average iq where the quality of low skill labor workers is higher. I dont remember the name, but was convinced it was causal.
its similar to what you are saying, but applies across the board, not just to university grads, and in taiwan also.
i suspect japanese workers at 7-11 now are not college grads still working there from the 90s. its mostly young part time workers. i see middle age people sometimes. Noteably theyre losing the high quality service reputation entirely because many of the stores are being run by immigrants from nepal and the philipines now who dont follow the japanese service memes.
They also mess up the sushi at sushiro/kurasushi and your fish come sideways.
Its worse than that. There is a logic to society, growth and scaling that involves accumulating obligations. This is like a gravity or a gang hivemind that due to scale inverts the value of bettering to the value of self-preservation of a corrupt society theatre. They dont want improvement but containment i.e. inhibition of creative destruction. What really gets me here is just how much people normalize lying.
When you know this (if you arent obligation enslaved) you can then just work orthogonally to the system to make something way better. In fact it kind of breaks reality for you.
is it lying or not?
People lie all day every day, and if you dont they wont like you.
They expect you to lie.
Someone invites you somewhere.
You respond you dont want to go because meh. They get angry.
"Atleast make up an excuse or something dont just tell me you dont want to go!!"
I refuse to socialize with people who cannot handle my way of communication, unless I strictly require them in a professional setting. Recently I organized a party and it was so amazing to be able to communicate in a group without any barriers at all.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 435 ms ] threadThey are full of enthusiasm, but nobody (around them) cares.
They are fixing the most annoying bugs that users complained forever about.. but they is not recognized, because nobody (around them) cares.
They hope to show a good example but nobody cares. Instead they get negative feedback when instead of blindly implementing horribly-designed feature, they are trying to fix it so it won't be so user-hostile.
Eventually they give up and stop caring. When asked what they like about the job, their answer is "stability" and "job security".
I have no idea what a “Social Operating System” is supposed to be. Seems like it’s a web/mobile app framework, but it’s completely unclear why I would want to use it. You need an “elevator pitch”.
There are hundreds of frameworks, if you want developers to use yours, maybe show some example code? No one is going to spend a bunch of effort trying to build with your framework if they can’t see an advantage.
Not trying to be a hater, I care and want you to succeed
Edit: just read some of the links in the readme - so it also has something to do with crypto and micropayments? Why would I want to use your “QBUX”? Would a developer only be able to get paid in your crypto? If so, why should they trust that you won’t rugpull? If you want people to care about your project, you need to think about what they care about (pro tip: nobody cares about making you rich via support contracts or shitcoin schemes. Sorry.)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42542280
But I think this illustrates perfectly what I said originally. Context matters. The context on HN is "I see a word that triggers me (token / web3) somewhere and I immediately assume all these things I haven't seen or read, and forget about anything you actually did."
That's why it is very important how you present things. The original Facebook was just a bunch of profiles in php. And yet people used it like mad and investors camped out Zuck's dorm room. It's not so much about what you build but how you present it.
While presentation definitely matters, the product itself has to be actually interesting (especially on HN). For example, current HN's top post is about Anthropic - and I don't even know what their stack looks like!
On the other side, if the product's is Yet Another PHP Framework then your target audience is (1) PHP developers who are (2) unsatisfied with existing frameworks they know and (3) willing to spend hours to try the unknown thing. This is a pretty narrow category.
1) Doesn't explain to the target market (developers) why they should use your product
2) Throws up a bunch of red flags to developers who actually bother to read it all, namely that your business model seems to be either/both of selling devleoper support (is that why there aren't any good developer docs?), or locking developers into a token with no published tokenomics or even a contract address (as you noted, the token doesn't exist!). Anyone with any experience in crypto knows that there is risk adopting an ERC20 token, you *need* to address the risk points (eg the potential for rugpull, available liquidity) if you want anyone to take you seriously.
My point is, this is why you are getting no traction from developers. People aren't ignoring your completely free awesome code because of apathy, it's because you're not doing a good job showing them any benefits to using your product. Your marketing needs work.
Also, you should really consider if you actually have a product that fits your market. It sucks to spend a lot of time developing a product that the market doesn't want, but you might be in that position. If so, no amount of marketing will help you.
Ironically, I went to the effort to parse through all your docs because I wanted to help you understand why your Show HN failed, but now I kind of feel like I wasted my time, making it harder for me to care in the same way for the next person in a similar position.
Anyhow, take the critique or not -- I wish you luck either way!
I (and OP) was talking about people who have power over the product (software engineers, managers, designers) not caring.
In your case, people with power over product (you) clearly care very much, it's just the product is not interesting to others. (Which kinda makes sense? It's yet another PHP framework with AI and Crypto, and there is plenty of them...)
Here's a story of the burnout of one of the GNOME terminal maintainers
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/259
In a situation where no amount of effort seems to be enough its really easy to not see the point anymore
For example, there is an internal product that I use daily that has broken http links in error/status messages.
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-...
To care is to be engaged.
And in software youre going to have to close a ticket or two that piss you off. You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never deliver new features? Cool, see you in Japan bro.
Broken windows. To use his example with bikes: the firms didn't care enough to allow the engineer to properly angle that entrance to the sidewalk. The engineer didn't care to push back because they were underpaid and things are getting more expensive at home. Things get more expensive because landlords are taking advantadge of the situation to jack up prices, because no regulation cared enough to stop that (or worse, regulation cared about money more and landlords "donated" to him to sway their ruling).
This apathy is a virus that spreads. At some point it becomes hard to figure out where it started. It's just this fog that seemingly always existed.
>You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never deliver new features?
I don't get paid to deliver features. If that bug is really critical enough I may push back on it.
Or I simply realize it's above my paygrade, don't care, leave a paper trail down the line for when they inevitably blame me, and do what I'm told like a proper worker.
I’d argue the average worker is in the position they’re in because of a whole chain of people that couldn’t be bothered to care.
Our government has let go of its principles, because no one in charge could be bothered to give a fuck. There’s a certain nihilism to life in the US in 2025 that has been enabled entirely by people not speaking up.
I’m myself guilty of staying on the sidelines. Starting to realize that perhaps I need to be louder, because no one else is speaking up and that “giving a fuck” is something that must be led by example.
This is a lame excuse. My caring is a choice I make. I can choose to care whether you care or not. I make the choice for myself.
Concretely, I suspect it’s a side effect of ‘how dare they’ type political attacks and increasing balkanization. What a lot of folks would call ‘California style politics’.
Short of everyone taking a step back and actually evaluating what they want/need as people and having a productive conversation about it and a useful compromise (hah!), I imagine we’ll just end up with a ‘strong man’ who can do all the ‘bad things’ necessary to pull everyone together into a consistent direction despite whatever hate might be thrown in their direction.
Though typically that is just what someone pretends to be so they can loot everything… at least unless people are really careful to look at the persons track record of outcomes instead of what they are saying right now. And since everyone will be all angry and pissed off while this happens, lots of room for various bullshit to happen, ‘others’ to be made and punished, etc, etc.
Oh wait….
And yes I know this is a symptom of the problem, but I’ve also literally had enough of my life destroyed trying to discuss elements of this already to not do anything else. Murder anyone trying to be a hero, and what else is going to happen? You’ll either have villains, dead bodies, or cowards.
>what exactly are you advocating for here
Nothing really. Bad people do bad things to keep good people down. figure out how to prevent that.
Oh they care... about money. We're being sold out but keep re-electing the same perpetrators simply because "it's better than the other person".
Meanwhile a third of our country is a mix of "not caring" or legitmately unable to keep dates in mind and find a poll booth to vote. Who knows how things would change if voting was compulsory, as was receiving a ballot in the mail.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've actually never had a bad experience at the DMV here in Seattle. The staff have been efficient, fast, and friendly every time.
Only complaint I really have with that system is them caring too much. Why does my car need "type certificate" sticker... It is all online and tied to VIN... Replacement cost like 200€ and then tens more for showing them paperwork new one was ordered...
Getting a refund from UHaul was fifteen hours of pulling teeth. DMV was a 45 minute wait.
Worse in Texas where they dont fund it ofc.
I suspect the DMVs in LA and NYC are particularly bad and that's why it's a cultural meme.
An AI chatbot with an unblinking stare and frozen smile is likely to be your new DMV virtual assistant!
About 20 years ago the would check to see if you had everything right as you came in.
Now it's almost magical how fast friendly and efficient they've become for the few times you actually have to visit. Most transactions are online or via mail.
Here in the UK, pretty much any interaction with our equivalent (DVLA - Driver and Vehicle Licensing) can be done online or by phone.
If you want/need to apply in-person for a licence or to pay vehicle tax, you can do it at many post offices.
I guess it is a centralised system, while the DMV is per-state.
I think, a lot of the apocalyptic sentiment lately has a lot to do with it. Climate change is already ruining things and will only get worse and also has started getting worse faster. Politically, economically, things are pretty hopeless. What use is picking up trash or wearing a nice shirt in the face of all of this. What are we building towards, and does anything I do mean anything
There's still issues with people not caring, but it seems like those are more so outliers than anywhere near the norm and it's a lot more expedient to get in contact with someone that does care and can take actionable measures where there is a problem.
Just as an example there was a water leak from the municipal system in the right of way in front of my house. It was repaired quickly but they had to dig up a lot of the yard, which they filled back in. But after a few heavy rains it washed out a fair amount. It was a little annoying but I just said "Oh well". A few years ago in Atlanta my neighbors had reported a sinkhole FOR YEARS, and nothing was done about it until it finally caved in and swallowed an entire intersection.
I had a friend come over though and this had been like 3 months and he asked about the hole. I told him the situation and he just said "Call the city and tell them you need dirt." So I did, and told someone that took a message. A couple hours later they called me back and confirmed my address and that I needed dirt. He said they were busy but would do it tomorrow, and sure enough the next day they came with a dump truck, a trailer of equipment and filled in the hole, compacted the area, smoothed it all out and planted grass. All in 24 hours for a problem that impacted no one but me.
See for example everyone who has to live with an HOA.
But as the article frustratedly states, it usually goes the other way. Like Jethro Tull progressing into desillusion from
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=luDfuZkeqKU
to
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7SGq7jMdSU
This planet is such a beautiful marble and all we do is trample it with our feet. Guys, make a random somebody smile today, will ya?
I moved to Switzerland 9y ago. People care. I believe this is due to high trust society which evolved not that long ago from small, poor, tightly woven communities.
After reading this, if this is supposed to demonstrate the psyche of the sort of person who “cares”, I really hope he keeps indoors and spends a little bit more time on his self before stepping out on others.
If you really are “all right” and just an honestly styled man trying to cultivate good in a barren city with crushed soil and souls, then I reckon there’s some care in you of some kind much to be desired from others and you know it.
And I suspect that it’s the psychos who believe that they’re “Good Samaritans” and if your word is true then we can tell that apparently they’re unwilling to provide actions that confirm their claims. Crazy.
So, my guess is maybe the world’s gone so mad that anyone trying to behave sane looks strange, and the ones who are mad pretend to be right until wrong shows up.
What a world. And what a way that this phrase can mean different to different people depending on what a person perceived to be their duties and their deeds.
Thanks.
It's good to keep this in mind. If you see something and no one is helping, it's good to check. Especially when there are other people around.
Personally I just try to do right within my influence. And helping someone find their keys, or going after a stray pet, and similar fits right into that. It won't change the world, but it makes life better for someone and I'd hope to be treated similarly if I was in that situation.
And caring at work in an institution? I don't know, it seems part of survival to learn to not care there.
We live in a world full of people doing good who don't do it for the "player 1 energy"
The rest of the things are just rants aimed at society? big tech? I don't get it.
> When I joined my former Big Tech job, everyone cared. Over time, incentives attracted a different set of people who didn't care as much. Eventually those people became the majority. It's painful to work with people who don't care if you care a lot, and eventually I left because of it.
No. Bullshit take. I used to care. But then in 2008, my employer showed me that I'm not the 'developer! developer! developer!' Steve Ballmer was excited about, I'm just a number on a spreadsheet governed by some pencil pushers in finance. All employers since have showed me again and again that if times are tough, I'm the ballast the company can shed to stay afloat. And in the past 4-5 years they've showed me I'm ballast even if the company is doing great, because 'activist' investors say so. So why should I care? I care about my family, I care about my personal projects, I care about my craft and I care about my health and the people around me. Do I care about your little annoying bug? Fuck no. Why would I? It's not even my intellectual property.
> Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it sucks.
I have. It's actually called the DOL where we live, OP. And it's great. I need to renew my license in person because of my disability and it takes me 15 minutes in-and-out, I barely have to stay in line. I also renew my car tabs online exclusively with 0 problems. I really don't understand the DMV meme, at least in Washington state.
> We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will, defeat armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you can't say the man doesn't care.
Oh, you shouldn't have gone there, you lost all credibility my friend.
But it does touch on a sort of apathy and nihilism that I can feel myself falling towards.
It's not their job to. They have about a million other priorities, they're not sorry about it, and they shouldn't be.
The DMV, the HR software people, the engineering people, they care about lots of things: Following the laws they are required to follow; maintaining regulatory compliance. Handling the latest set of changes and rules from a higher office who demands they be implemented yesterday. Not overwhelming the underpaid staff they have on-hand. Figuring out how to deal with a generally unpleasant general public, including the guy who wrote this. Holding back an ounce of sanity so they can get home at the end of the day and be happy and not drink themselves to death.
The reality is that life is a series of tradeoffs. Even if I am giving 100% at work (and I have a family and a life, so often I am not), that 100% does not get allocated entirely or even mostly to "deliver the best experience for the specific needs of the author of this article." It's dedicated to getting work out the door at an acceptable level of quality; monitoring our systems so they don't crash and lose us money; complying with the rules and procedures my employer demands I comply with; being tolerable and decent to my colleagues so they don't resent me and make my life harder. If I think about the needs of one specific customer out of the millions that transact business with my employer every day, it's because something extraordinary has happened with implications for one of the things above.
What sets people like Elon apart is that they are single-mindedly dedicated to getting people to appease them, and also pretty good at it. All Elon cares about is whatever interests him day-to-day, his ego, his impact on the world, whether people like him or hate him. He's "successful", by this author's metric, because he's self-obsessed.
All that said, the UK has a phrase for someone who cares only to do the bare minimum: a jobsworth, as in, more than my job's worth. A jobsworth is unhelpful on purpose, or because enforcing apathy is more valuable to them than doing anything that might impose upon them later an obligation to act. The thing is - those people are universally reviled. They are not liked or approved of in society. They're also a severe minority.
Most people are doing their best to stay above water on a dozen different things, and you are only one of them. The author ought to have some humility and realize that.
I don't know why they prioritize differently, but I don't think it's working out for them.
Which set of tradeoffs would you rather live under?
(0) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori (1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-33362387.amp (2) https://apnews.com/article/japan-birth-rate-declining-popula... (3) https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-happiness-index/...
I'll take the one that doesn't lay me over every year to hit record profits, thanks. There's degrees of not caring and the US is very far on the "you are just a number" peg. The fake drinking parties at least try to make me feel involved.
If you have tons of money in Seattle area and live in an exurb, and only go to Seattle for the orchestra and a baseball game in a box, you probably think everyone in America cares too
>I'd much rather have a family than have store clerks obsses about serving me.
Okay, the US has neither. So...
>If you have tons of money in Seattle area and live in an exurb, and only go to Seattle for the orchestra and a baseball game in a box, you probably think everyone in America cares too
These are small micro-behaviors, not a larger mindset. Even a rich tourist would notice the difference between someone taking your ticket for an orcheastra and going to a corner store in Japan.
And like I said, obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average Japanese person doesn't benefit from these things because the average Japanese person lives in a cramped, barely livable closet-sized apartment in a huge city where costs are probably not close to wages
>obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average Japanese person doesn't benefit from these things because the average Japanese person lives in a cramped, barely livable closet-sized apartment in a huge city where costs are probably not close to wages
Tourism goes both ways. You can switch Japanese with American and this metaphor is just as apt. You're missing a lot of subtleties and cultural difference just saying "well Americans make more money on average" while comparing the quality of life of the lower compensated parts of each society.
Why? They get measured on the sweeping stuff, by the broad demands, and the people who actually pay them (in money or votes).
A better bike ramp that involves user testing but involves a delay that pushes work into the next quarter, changing accounting? That's a problem. I've lived this scenario where user features got axed to ensure all work could be budgeted under a particular quarter. Or a sign? That costs money and also needs approval, perhaps from another department.
Oh, and you are improving one bike ramp? Can't do that without people complaining. Got to improve all of them. So that is now a multi-million dollar project.
In a large org, it often isn't clear who owns overall design control, if anyone.
Lights that are great for drivers but suck for everyone else? That's many things in most cities and that is because drivers are the most vocal (and often the largest) population. Drivers win on everything from parking to infrastructure spending and drivers will tell city council what's on their mind.
For the corporate software I worked on, many users hated it. Tons of complaints. Team agreed. Team created proposal to fix it. Team managers pitched it to those above for the broader roadmap. Management explicitly said they didn't want to waste time on UI as the people paying were not the same as the people using.
Never worked for the DMV, but know a guy who maintains some software for one. What's the priority? Cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Nobody wants to fund the DMV. Nobody wants to pay for technological improvements for it. Nobody wants to pay for staffing. It is where small amounts get shaved off to pay for things people do care about. The guy in charge of the DMV is tasked with keeping costs low.
I’ve seen the above too. Imbuing an organisation with the Will To Have Nice Things seems unsolved because, as you say, the value is constantly traded off against more measurable outcomes.
I think the solution has to be building and rewarding a culture of doing the right thing, taking pride in delivering not just to spec but excellence. So when the org plan demands a giant construction barrier near the kids playpark of course the person responsible also commissions a dinosaur mural for it. Not because it’s a KPI or was debated and traded off on the functional spec but as a matter of personal and professional pride.
Interestingly I think the drop in taking pride in your work coincides with the relative anonymity of society in which reputation is no longer tracked through past interactions or word of mouth but is institutionalised in rating systems. This is perhaps related to why a more insular and smaller society in Japan has managed to retain it to a higher degree. Certainly there are elite groups around the world in which everyone knows the other players and so reputation and (from an institutional perspective) over-delivery are still valued, and these groups are the ones that accomplish otherwise unachievable advances. The broader anonymous society that delivers only to spec ends up with leaky abstractions that gradually collapses under its own weight of incompetence once the former culture of Wanting Nice Things degrades to Somebody Else’s Problem.
If true this predicts a stable rule-of-law-based society or organisation in which the most powerful all know each other and which otherwise is broken into small mostly-stable communities would foster the Will To Have Nice Things more than an anonymous interchangeable mass would.
I can hear patio11 reminding me that this should have been a blog post.
My city constantly fights over this. Is a mural a nice thing or is the tax saving? Heck, is colour printing too much? I've heard people whine about them printing city handouts for council in colour.
The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest affections of the heart are selfish - incurvatus in se (curved inwards).
"Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake." - Martin Luther
uhh, yes? What was the point of this ridiculous metaphor you yourself created?
>The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest affections of the heart are selfish
It's a bit more basic than that. If people aren't happy they care less, because their senses dull to focus only on survival and not assisting one's community.
A lot of people are unhappy these days.
The engineers blamed product, the product people blamed sales, etc.
He said he provided this suggestion, "You are of course right (it's the other groups fault, and it might have been so), but what can you do, in your group, as part of a solution we all work towards to help fix this?"
So yeah, it is the other guys fault. But what you can you do to help fix it?
But that is not the case here. That is not how bike lanes or many other things get built. The engineer is a consultant that works for one independent company. The contractor is a different independent company. The client is another company or a government entity. Possibly the client involves several different entities with competing demands and priorities.
And "success" for the engineer doesn't really mean building a good thing. It means a happy client who will come back for repeat business.
How does this problem get fixed? Well, eventually someone hits that curb and breaks their neck and sues the city. Then the city hires an engineer to create design standards that they include in future contracts when they build new bike lanes.
The CEO in question publicly declared his own job would be forfeit within a year if he didn't meet goals that were in the recent past history of the company, absolutely impossible.
He met and exceeded those goals.
The IC isn't powerless with good management.
Or are you just copy/pasting LinkedIn drivel?
The guy who's a wanted fugitive in Japan and fled to Lebanon by shipping himself in a piano box?
I understand there's a lot of toxic environments where it's not worth trying to improve things, but a blanket statement pointing at CEOs en masse as the root of all problems is just as stupid and reductive as CEOs who don't do anything to empower ICs and learn from the front-line expertise.
That's not what I said. Must've struck a nerve.. CEO by chance?
https://techstartups.com/2024/12/20/marc-andreessen-on-elon-...
So the CEO as "big ship pilot" but not in the trenches fire fighting seems to be contradicted by at least one CEO if this is true.
If an org gets taken over by the blamer culture, it is doomed. These people will make no attempt at fixing problems, even when that would sometimes take 5 minutes and an email, but they will moan. And they will blame, and sometimes they'll blame the person suggesting an easy and workable course of action to resolve the problems.
Interestingly, sometimes resolving the problem takes less effort than sustained moaning, and certainly less mental strain. And still, people who tend towards the blamer group will blame and moan. Though I make no insinuation that moaning doesn't have any other benefits (such as YouTube video revenue, virtue signalling, and similar) – it is clearly appealing to one of the two groups I mentioned.
That would involve actually doing some kind of work that people doing the complaining would like to avoid in the first place, because it's "someone else's responsibility to get it right!".
To proclaim "Why does nobody care about anything?" is to neglect an oft quoted axiom:
0 - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mahatma_gandhi_109075I wouldn’t personally do this but I can see how someone would without it being mean spirited
I don't think you have thought this through. People are generally not asked about every bylaw individually. Maybe they bought the house because it was close to work. Or maybe they bought the house to get the kids into a good school. Maybe they bought the house because they just loved the garden. Or maybe they bought it because that was the only one they could afford after a long search and they were exhausted and just wanted to live somewhere.
Even if they read the rules maybe they cared about 80% of them and couldn't give a hoot about that specific one. (Maybe they like that their neighbour can't turn their front yard into a mechanic shop, but they don't care what colour their door is. That sort of thing.)
They might have agreed to it in a legalistic sense. As in they signed a piece of paper which referred to an other piece of paper which had this rule in it among many others. But you can't pretend that that means they "agreed" to it in the common sense meaning.
> Clearly it exists for a reason
That is not always clear. No.
> if no one enforced it then it’s completely pointless
Some rules are completely pointless. Weather or not they are enforced is a different point. But either way enforcing it doesn't make it have a point if it had none to begin with.
A "hinged" Karen is your common group mom stereotype, who makes sure everybody is doing well and that everyone understands what is up and is following along. She has no problem telling you what you should and shouldn't be doing, but you love it because she is lovely. Hinged Karens are simultaneously the scaffolding and lubrication of good society.
My favorite example of this is how, if you visit 7-11 in Japan and an employee isn’t busy, or is busy but with an unimportant task, they will jump to open a cash register and check people out the second a queue forms. They will move as quickly as possible to clear the queue of people, seemingly aware that everyone has some place to be that isn’t a checkout line. It’s wonderful.
However, it got beat out by the McDonald's in Arkadelphia Arkansas, where the employee fast walked as quickly as hen could to take the order to the car waiting in the Drive-Thru, and then also fast walked back. Running of course would have been against OSHA and gotten hen in trouble so hen did the best hen could.
If the management is chill they arent gonna run.
I realize that English speakers use "you" for both singular and plural, having retired "thee" and "thou", but the resulting ambiguity has led to the creation of a new word, "y'all", or sometimes prepending it with "all of" for clarity.
Using "they/them" in the singular will just lead us down the same path.
Why not short circuit it and just add the pronoun English speakers have needed forever?
How often is the gender of the pronouned person(s) relevant? In my experience, almost never.
That's why I settled on borrowing a word that has proven its mettle
(Edit: I used "he" here because William Gibson seemed to identify as a guy, but Gibson's gender is completely irrelevant to this.)
I live here. Sometimes the service isnt good and staff behaves like an insentient robot who repeats a script and fucks off.
If you know Japanese and actually talk to them, its obviously the same ape base mech the rest of us are driving.
Here in the US, I don't know what's going on with the cashiers. They're slow. They don't say a single word to you, not even to give you your total. And they're awful at bagging. I just don't get it. It's not a hard job.
Or more to the point: Its easier to be what people expect you to be.
In my experience the US is especially susceptible to this 'roleplaying', probably because all (entertrainment) media comes from the same overarching culture.
It's not a shameful or embarrassing job. My sister-in-law made a career out of it. She's happy there, so I'm happy for her. She gets good benefits and decent pay. Just do your job and everyone's happy.
its similar to what you are saying, but applies across the board, not just to university grads, and in taiwan also.
i suspect japanese workers at 7-11 now are not college grads still working there from the 90s. its mostly young part time workers. i see middle age people sometimes. Noteably theyre losing the high quality service reputation entirely because many of the stores are being run by immigrants from nepal and the philipines now who dont follow the japanese service memes.
They also mess up the sushi at sushiro/kurasushi and your fish come sideways.
When you know this (if you arent obligation enslaved) you can then just work orthogonally to the system to make something way better. In fact it kind of breaks reality for you.
is it lying or not? People lie all day every day, and if you dont they wont like you. They expect you to lie.
Someone invites you somewhere. You respond you dont want to go because meh. They get angry. "Atleast make up an excuse or something dont just tell me you dont want to go!!"
Very common. More common in women.