> I'm quite happy with it as there are lots of people willing to hire devs who are willing to not be condescending and have some semblance of adherence to social norms
“the type of person who can build frontends for Google AdWords doesn’t have the skills necessary to do something better and should be content providing a service and taking care of their family” is one of the most condescending things I’ve read in a long time. Even for hacker news.
You ever watch that South Park episode where they make fun of Hollywood where all the actors love the smell of their own farts? These days I feel that this is a pretty apt of a criticism of SV and Bay Area culture..
This is not only unprofessional, but straight up offensive. If your demeanor is even close to similar in conversations with other peers or prospective employers, you will have a very difficult time being taken seriously.
>> If I ever start a company the #1 thing I will look for in others is positivity. I wouldn't stand for this crap.
What's conspicuously lacking here is not positivity per se, it's the absence of civility & decency. Those are two very different sets of attributes.
Lack of an outright positive demeanor won't sink a team. Lacking civility and decency, however, will stick a severe wrench in any project.
edit : On a personal note, reading this was unpleasant and embarrassing. I'm sorry the OP had to go through this.
edit 2 : retracting the following statement after reading apologies published by those involved - "I'm glad I now know who not to interact with in the community"
> The open source contribution/project would have to have a sufficiently high bar for it to be even considered. Else, I'd just assume they were being less than honest. I'd rather someone tell me they spent a year working on themselves, playing video games, hiking, etc.
You think working on a passion project and trying out a startup is toxic and then you come out with this pessimistic bucket crab viewpoint? You’d be doing people a favour not hiring them, I’d feel bad for anyone working for you.
> I think it would require the assumption that he thinks that Amazon devs are generally bad as well as the assumption that he thinks that laughing at them is something that's generally permissible.
They are so bad that laughing is permissible.
Maybe you just don't spend enough time around arrogant people to interpret this sentence this way :)
An aside from the comment, but I don't appreciate the derisive tone of their first paragraph:
> a handful of elite tech companies decide to waste the time of literally billions of people with juvenile jokes that only they find funny.
I sort of agree, but it's not nice, and not necessary. It also isn't particularly classy to then go on to say "and we're so much better, because we do useful things".
(I do happen to find Cloudflare, as a company, so much better, and awesome things like 1.1.1.1 and warp make me really want to push my employer to use Cloudflare for all the things).
> We are tired of being told we're socialy awkward idiots
I would advise a different response to address this concern than the one provided by this website. I think Zed Shaw's obviously a very talented programmer, but this is the kind of thing that doesn't earn the respect of the people he's trying to convince, and does more to reinforce a stereotype that works against his goals. You want the people paying you money to think of you as a reliable solution rather than a potential problem. Wearing a t-shirt with a gun pointing at, presumably... your boss?... is not the right way.
The SF/SV tech community defined by high-growth startups, maybe. I don't think he is qualified to say a damned thing about the actual practicing developers.
> Just a feeling of exasperation when seeing the product.
Well maybe you're not the target market then? It looks like a no-code rather than low-code effort, and I'm hazarding a guess that you're a dev and so ...
> It was never my intention to be "shitting" on anyone.
I'm sure that you didn't.
Here's the thing: this is a "Show HN" - somebody has been brave enough to show their new thing to the community. People vary - some are much more sensitive than average, particularly in a community like this that self-identifies as not-average, and will take the mildest criticism very personally.
If something's not for you, there's always the option of not commenting, or at least starting out by saying something encouraging to soften the blow.
I'm okay with this. I'd rather be calculating than have my head in the sand about the business models of social networking what-have-you applications.
>What if a casual hookup site texts your new girlfriend--even though you signed up a year before meeting her?
While I don't and won't have to experience this, your imagined relationship suffers more from lack of trust and honesty than "some dumb app does some dumb, annoying thing."
>"we do it for the money lulz" is a shitty and stupid argument.
Don't Straw Man me. If my code was going to be used for something I perceive as evil, I'd leave the job.
Our industry doesn't need yet another pointless, embarrassing ethics/integrity campaign when the people writing the code don't care.
> This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didn't make every perfect decision for their product.
Start through another community then? It is nobody's fault if you can't impress people. But I find people being very welcoming here to bad ideas and half-baked products that are absolutely low quality and soon gets abandoned.
> Please man, use your brain at least a little bit.
Thank you for being condescending. If you expected being a bully might shield you from tearing apart your argument you will be very disappointed.
15 people is a lot closer to two than to Adobe which is the point of my comment you entirely fail to grasp.
Every companies taking out a large companies is an outlier by definition. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist and remains a clear counterexample to your extremely wrong original opinion.
This discussion is finished as far as I’m concerned by the way. You have clearly demonstrated you are not worth talking to. I will let you massage your fragile ego by yourself.
> I'm quite happy with it as there are lots of people willing to hire devs who are willing to not be condescending and have some semblance of adherence to social norms
That actually sounded pretty condescending to me.
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