I like the appeal of throwback tech. Most users do not want obvious AI. The trick is providing user-desired, friendly features that deliver high value.
E.g., I don’t want to create dashboards and other monitoring alerts in Datadog, just show me the real problems. A super slow query running once per day or a fast-enough query running 10x per second aren’t problems, which are the recommendations I get from these tools today.
“The core thesis has always been to take the mundane and make it magical.”
I'll cross my fingers, but trusting a contacts managing app and allowing that risk should at least be a trade off for cool new tech. It seems like she wants a tiny Google-esque suite of products.
You love it that they socially signaled to you their awareness of the old “AI is everywhere but it’s integrated so well you can’t see it” phrase? Thats basically how these names are conjured up.
I played with it a bit. It's a nice name and a rebranded-Yahoo-flavored spin on evite meets flickr. Not world-changing but a reasonable thing to try, and to the article's point, something mundane from Silicon Valley is a bit refreshing.
Hopefully we’re one step closer to realizing that the core concept that determines who wins all the marbles is just an amalgamation of sociopathy and sensitive dependence on initial conditions, rather than some version of merit.
I love this. Why? Because Mayer is doing her very best to chip away at the myth of meritocracy. It makes me happy for people to realize this because belief in this myth is a big part of what allows our current societal inequity and wealth inequality to ctoninue and grow.
I just have to pick out one comment from the article (which I can't vouch for one way or the other; it's just funny):
> She once told me that she felt confident in judging design because her mom was a grade school art teacher. Just saying.
Ah yes another company she can run into the ground. Her track record is horrible. Remember when Yahoo leaked like a billion users info under her command and the company attempted to cover it up?
Honestly, I haven't made it. And I get cynical myself irrationally at younger people doing cool stuff. But I realise it's just jealousy. And all I need to do is build cool stuff I like. No one on the internet knows if you are 70 or 20 years old.
The personality cult around her is very off-putting to some people (me). Also the fact that she slept with Larry Page while he was CEO. Sure it was a different time in American culture but it's still gross, and never gets brought up, only that she was "Google's first female engineer".
I don't think Mayer is as impressive as the disproportionate wealth she has acquired compared to the average American may imply, but I feel that way about basically every billionaire (not that I know her exact net worth, but I assume it's substantial). That said, misogyny is quite a force - look at the level of hatred leveled at Hillary Clinton as one example.
This is actually one of the more important functions needed for a free market to function. She's doing something we think is stupid and at the end of it the pot of money/influence she has will either be greatly diminished or she'll be right and get a massively larger pot for the next round. That she is doing this is a massive win for us because it is greatly in our interest for her to either prove she's awesome by enriching our lives with a much better product/service or for her to burn the piles of money she's accumulated before they are passed on to her kids (who are highly likely to be unimpressive, or have children that are unimpressive). Either we get a much better product/service or we get a much diminished time for her descendants to fail back to average, it's a win-win for society no matter which way this goes.
I don't know how much I'd agree with "much", given that's she's worth an estimated $600 million. At a paltry 5% apr, that's still $30 million a year in interest.
It's what people don't get about the excesses of capitalism/free markets. They serve a function. We get massive productivity/research/business process gains of millions of people putting their money where their mouth is everyday and playing a repeated game for more money/size/ influence from providing a better solution. That only works if people are reasonably sure they will keep the gains from their risks/hard work so we can't just steal the proceeds from them before it gives outsized clout to their more than likely idiotic descendants. Instead we need it to be reasonably easy for them to lose their money in a way that doesn't deter future risk taking of everyone else, of which this is one way.
I actually think this function is the real reason it's so bad that Rehnquist kneecapped antitrust so badly in the 70's through 90's and we have a nation of oligopolies now. The oligopolies can exercise outsized market power and stay in existence for way longer than they would otherwise, which gives outsized and long lived returns to the idiotic offspring at the expense of pricing above marginal cost for society, which does harm us on every purchase via the higher price, but really harms us through keeping idiots in excess wealth that should have gone to some smart upstart, costing us decades of that upstart making wise choices.
I once asked my first boss - worth tens of millions - why don’t you just sell your company, and retire for good? Instead of working 10-12 hours, 6-7 days a week?
He simply told me that he’d go crazy from boredom, and that the business was his life. He loved the work, his clients, his employees, everything about it.
The man was on his second heart-attack, pending divorce, but that’s what he loved doing.
He’s now in his mid 60s, and still doing the same. Some people are just made to work.
I think I may be slowly turning into this (sans the tens of millions) and I don't really have as much problem with it as a younger me would have expected. My problem is more finding work that I think actually adds value to the world and doesn't cause me burnout. Turns out if I have work that doesn't destroy my soul, I'm willing to keep doing it; it's one of the main things keeping the nihilism from creeping in.
I had a discussion with someone in similar position. He implied that at a certain point it is about succeeding and keeping score, rather than about the money.
The people who would bail out and live on a beach are probably the kind of people who wouldn't have the success to do so. (I count myself amongst them.)
I wonder if he would think of it as some people just are made to play, which in his case happens to align with what others call work...hence the tens of millions.
She is spending her own money and her rich friend's money to give her team a good salary and a chill work environment. I don't see a problem with that.
Well I suppose I’ll just head into your home, help myself then. Like I said, I enjoy free stuff.
As a radical truth seeker on a forum devoted to them (or so some have claimed anyway)…
Marisa Mayer is one of billions? What evidence can she put forward her status is not coupled to conservative politics heavily repeated by media?
Perhaps it’s all just dopamine and oxytocin addiction due to intentional propagation of conservative socio economic and political memes of the past, enjoyment, Schadenfreude, of worker deference?
As a radical truth seeker, I’m not content to accept such lazy and old social memes (it’s not 2006 anymore) as sacrosanct truth. Thats pseudoscience, living in a biological state the past we know is essential. It smells of religious conviction, banal stubbornness, laziness, and entitlement.
Will reality unzip if “this isn't the way”?
Goodhart’s law: Is “they enjoy it” a good enough measure to burn up resources on startup role-play? Is startup culture and hand wavy billionaires based upon conservation of dated (it’s not 1900s anymore) political rhetoric good enough?
As a Xennial it’s been interesting watching Boomers and GenX lose their energy for the future and replace it with demands of fealty to their past via social media.
Us radical truth seekers are not so content conserving past propaganda and success. “Commit it [conservation of past society] then to the flames…”
There are lots of people who do think that way. You never hear about them again. You only hear about the minority who do take another swing.
Also, who’s to say she doesn’t “admit it”.
She can acknowledge her fortunate circumstances while still deciding she wants to spend her future building another company which may or may not succed
I’m not as “lucky” as her, but I can’t stay “retired” for more than 9 months. I’ve tried twice. It’s not even money, financially I have more than enough to retire now, I kind of just have to be doing something that I think isn’t bullshit, and I’m not ever going to get good enough at my hobbies to pursue them full time
Hunger drives people. For some it's the hunger for financial safety to cover their needs (housing, food, etc.), for other it's the hunger for being better than your previous self, or better than your peers/competition.
Truth be told, if you're all set in life - financially independent - and don't need to produce anything, it is incredibly easy to just become another dilettante.
Actually pursuing hobbies full time takes some serious discipline, because you really don't have any commitments - and can quit whenever you want, without any consequences whatsoever.
And, thus, for the vast majority - focusing on hobbies full-time can become a chore. You rarely (if ever) hear about retired rich people that become the very best in some field they see as their hobby.
At least with work, you have clients / customers. It's much easier to tell your boss "fuck you, I quit" once you have that kind of money - than to quit on your paying clients/customers.
Also, and this is just my observation, people seem to become (intellectually) duller real quick after they retire and don't do anything specific.
It’s not just a matter of commitment with hobbies either. I like Dream Theater and I play electric guitar. But try as I might I will never even come close to John Petrucci. It’s not even physically doable, although I’ve gotten pretty decent over the years. Whereas in my professional life I _am_ at the top of the food chain if I want to play ball. I just sometimes struggle to find an interesting game to play so to speak.
I am not normally good with famous tech people and names but this one stands out to me as the person who ran Flickr into the ground. I was quite sad about that, and sadly it will not recover from it either.
