Comment by no_wizard
8 days ago
>It seems like the tech industry has become just like any other industry that has gotten entrenched, and today’s tech leaders simply don’t inspire me like how the leaders of previous eras did. Today’s Web media companies are far scarier than 1990’s Microsoft ever was.
Three letters: MBA
When the MBA's came into the tech industry everything got stale, 'safe' and unexciting as they want to leech their fucking hands over everything in the name of maximal profit.
Private Equity follows MBAs so you see more PE firms getting into tech during the same period. Same story, fucking leeches leeching makes the leeches happy at the expense of society. In fact, it seems PE firms and MBA grads love making the world an actively terrible place
I hate business bros. They ruin god damn everything.
As if IBM, the big bad monopolist boogeyman of the '60s-'80s, or DEC or HP or Sun or Compaq or any of the other giants of that era were free of MBAs?
The tech industry (well frankly any industry) of the 60s-80s were different entirely. So was the way the government regulated things, and the expectations people had about corporations and their role in society.
While I agree with your sentiment, I think a useful mental model thinks of business bros/MBAs et. al. as natural consequences of growth-at-all-costs capitalism. By our economy’s very nature there’s demand for more every quarter, with substantial money riding on that more occurring on time and as expected. So there’s of course then demand for the services of professionals specialising in more. One can still dislike them of course, as one might the police as an institution, for example, but I don’t find it useful to hate them as people. Ultimately most of us are drawn by incalculable circumstance and survival pressures into happenstance careers, and alienating other humans doesn’t do anything to progress a cause.
Before posting this I feel it’s worth clarifying I didn’t take you to say you do hate them as people, please excuse the ramble.