Comment by TrackerFF
14 hours ago
Money happened.
Wherever there's big money to be made, will also attract ambitious people hungry for money and power - it's that simple.
Now that FAANG jobs aren't looking all that attractive, many such people have set their sights on AI research/dev and quant finance jobs. The latter one has exploded in popularity / virality the past years. Previously a niche profession within finance which, frankly, most had no clue existed, has become almost a mainstream ambition. Some of the people that never identified themselves as nerds, will wander from industry to industry, which one that pays the most.
But back to the nerds: Some nerds obviously changed. If you throw generational wealth at most people, they will change. Few people are so disinterested in money that it is simply not a thing they care about.
What's more, many nerds discovered that with enormous amounts of money, comes enormous amounts of power. You can now actually lobby for your sci-fi dream world, which is what some of the billionaire nerds are doing.
The money and power corrupted them.
I just want enough money to retire and write interesting open source software, but doing that in my 20s made me poor, so since then I am trying to speed run retirement so I can go back to it.
Sadly, while I find AI effective, I also find it's removed the craft and personal reward I get from open source. So I will instead grow potatoes.
I'm coming full circle on the AI thing, it's almost entirely useless at creating a crafted result, so counterintuitively it places a greater premium on craft just at a time the industry as a whole are running in the opposite direction. There are some pieces of software I've thought of building now that I would not have considered a worthwhile pursuit a few years ago, solely due to this idea that a crafted result may have an increasingly inherent value in its own right
Even if machines can be made to produce compact, well thought out and beautiful, the interaction pattern almost inevitably ensures the "developer" produces something that is neither compact, well thought out or beautiful
100%. What matters most is always the intention of why a person does something. If it is based on external factors like money or power, and not intrinsic motivation like being fascinated or interested in new technology, this will happen.
Haven't quant jobs always been lucrative since the category had been invented?
> What's more, many nerds discovered that with enormous amounts of money, comes enormous amounts of power. You can now actually lobby for your sci-fi dream world, which is what some of the billionaire nerds are doing.
> The money and power corrupted them.
Actually accomplishing things in the world that constitute building a sci-fi dream world requires significant amounts of money and power, and any person or institution at all that could in principle have the capacity to do this would also have the capacity to become corrupt, at least by someone's judgement.
Personally, I'm pretty happy with many of the sci-fi things that tech billionaire nerds have made their money by bringing into existence. I rode across town in a self-driving Tesla the other day while giving orders to its AI system about how and where to go. That was a pretty sci-fi dream world experience. That's worth quite a bit of corruption.
> I rode across town in a self-driving Tesla the other day while giving orders to its AI system about how and where to go. That was a pretty sci-fi dream world experience. That's worth quite a bit of corruption.
This is why people hate nerds. Will not explain.
Plenty of people also hate whatever identity label you want to use for yourself.
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It would be fair to reflect for a moment, perhaps you are not impacted by the negative aspects of the corruption making this a much easier stance to take.
Multiple rounds of gamergate happened. All nerds without 7 figure income were kicked out as loosers (insoles). Now being nerd means larping as bilionare.