Werd I/O

Over the last decade or two tech has become dominated by the startup: a small, new business that rapidly reinvents itself in an iterative process. Once upon a time, the aim of that process was - or at least, seemed like it was - to be as useful as possible to a well-defined target group of users. These days it feels like the aim is mostly to gain as high a valuation as possible by moving from venture capital funding round to funding round, eventually making bank through an exit event.

That startupification has had an interesting effect on tech communities. I’m from the utopian era of the web, when we all thought we could build something to connect that world, and by doing so that we would make it more peaceful. These days, it seems like people are mostly in it to make millions of dollars - which feels like an emptier, less exciting goal, to say the least. The possibilities for social change used to seem endless; now the conversation is mostly about funding rounds or financial yield. In itself, it’s boring, but it also changes who is attracted to the space: we’ve gone from a loose group of weird social idealists to being overwhelmed by a bolus of the most boring possible people. The tech workforce is becoming Wall Street in hoodies, far more concerned with the performance of their RSUs than the impact they’re having in the world.

Of course, there are still idealists: people who believe in making the world more equal and democratic, and that technology has a part to play in making it happen. The indieweb movement remains one great example of this; there are also plenty of people working on tech for good, or mission-driven endeavors where the social impact comes first. Even in companies that are a part of this financialization of tech, there are people doing great work on inclusivity, unionization, and advocacy for social responsibility. Nonetheless, at this point, these groups are in the minority.

I find that personally demotivating - it’s not why I got into the space, or why I’m excited about it - but it’s also kind of counterproductive. If you’re laser focused on helping a defined group of people, you’re more likely to build a valuable company, because you’re literally generating value. Conversely, if you’re focused on making money as a goal rather than a means to an end, you’re more likely to make shallower decisions that undermine your value. Being focused on helping your user means you’re aligned with them; being primarily focused on your financial goals means you’re primarily aligned with yourself. To put it another way, if the aim is to raise a round or make a bunch of money personally, you’re more likely to make decisions that screw your users and undermine that goal to begin with. It’s also just a selfish, stupid way to look at the world.

Remember this Apple campaign?

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

It doesn’t say here’s to the stockbrokers, is all I’m saying. Tech could use a little more crazy, a little more outside thinking, a little more equity-mindedness, and a little less greed. That’s how the world gets changed: by focusing on people, not on dollar bills.

Photo by Israel Andrade on Unsplash

‌‌I’m posting Fairness Fridays: a new community social justice organization each week. I donate to each featured organization. If you feel so inclined, please join me.

This week I’m donating to Project HOME. Based in Philadelphia, Project HOME aims to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty in the Philly area.

It describes its mission as follows:

The mission of the Project HOME community is to empower adults, children, and families to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty, to alleviate the underlying causes of poverty, and to enable all of us to attain our fullest potential as individuals and as members of the broader society. We strive to create a safe and respectful environment where we support each other in our struggles for self-esteem, recovery, and the confidence to move toward self-actualization.

Its work includes permanent, subsidized housing for individuals and families who had been homeless; learning, training, and employment; affordable healthcare services for the underserved; and K12 education for vulnerable children and teens. Its work is holistic, addressing underlying causes as well as immediate needs.

I donated. If you have the means, please join me here.

Last year, I drove across the country, twice.

We were always going to go to the east coast. One of the last clear things my mother said to me, over a Zoom link to the hospital because I wasn’t allowed into her room because of covid protocols (until her situation got a lot worse), was, “how am I going to get to [my great grandparents’ house on Cape Cod]?”

I promised her that we would get her there. In the event, we brought her ashes.

Driving all together for one more road trip - an extension of journeys we’d taken when I was a kid - felt like the right thing to do. It was meaningful time for the three of us, and it was a sort of resolution on my promise, even if it was not the way any of us wanted it to happen.

It’s a beautiful country. It’s troubled and full of people who are hurting, and it has a terrible history. But man. The landscape is breathtaking; the perseverance of people who build amazing things despite it all is inspiring.

On the road trip back, my sister and I took a southerly route. While we were in the South, we deliberately only ate at Black-owned establishments. It was clear that the racial politics of places like Alabama are still set in the distant past, and we saw the owners of some of these establishments suffer both systemic and direct abuse (they were also the friendliest places with by far the best food we tried). We visited the Greenwood District in Tulsa and saw that the aftermath of the race massacre is ongoing. We saw that plaques commemorating Dr King’s work are often kept at arms length.

It was also clear that the country isn’t blue or red; it’s purple. There were progressive people fighting hard for equality everywhere we went. And there was the opposite. It would be disingenuous to say they’re just different; one is pushing towards justice, and the other is pushing against it. I believe justice will win, but it’s been a long, hard struggle.

I don’t necessarily recommend going on a road trip during a pandemic. (We were careful, were in a lull, tested frequently, and did not get covid.) But I do recommend traveling the country when it’s safe. It’s eye-opening, and a good reminder of how much of a bubble places like San Francisco really are.

I hope to do it again, and to see more, once the pandemic is over. I want to hear the music of New Orleans in full swing; I want to visit bars and hang out in restaurants and hear the stories that are hard to get to in a world of social distancing and health protocols. Hopefully it’s soon.

If you’d asked me a few years ago who won the browser wars, I would have said open standards: web pages were finally opening and rendering well no matter which browser you chose to use. There was a significant choice between rendering engines, chromes, and parent companies to pick from, and although there were some differences in how quickly new HTML features were picked up or exactly how quickly pages rendered, the web itself continued to work.

This year, I’m finding that websites increasingly break if I’m using Firefox. Sometimes, it’s something small, like a page failing to give me Apple Pay as a way to check out if I’m not using Safari. Increasingly, though, it’s meaningful: navigation doesn’t function or forms don’t submit.

This has to mean that engineers aren’t testing in Firefox anymore, and in turn that businesses aren’t prioritizing it. Because every other major browser is now using Webkit or Blink (itself a Webkit fork), that means web browser rendering has effectively become a monoculture.

That’s a bummer for me, because I’ve been a die-hard Firefox user since its release. But it’s also a real problem for the web. Firefox is the last mass-market open source web browser project: built by volunteers and a non-profit with diverse stakeholders in mind. The alternatives are all run by large corporations with philosophies based on lock-in: Google, Apple, and Microsoft, respectively. And only Google and Apple control the engines.

The saving grace is that only one of those companies - Google - is an advertising firm. Apple has wisely staked its reputation on privacy and security (even if it often doesn’t live up to those ideals). The modern Microsoft is really about creating better work experiences, and Edge correspondingly may have a similar approach to security - but as long as its browser rendering engine is controlled by Google, it’ll be optimized for displaying ads.

Clearly, most browser vendors have decided it’s not financially viable to create their own rendering engine. That’s a shame, and a missed opportunity. The web is nothing more than a set of standards, and there’s leeway for interpretation between implementations. If it weren’t for the Webkit / Blink split in 2013, there would effectively be a monopoly over the web.

At any rate, I’m going to pour one out for Firefox. It was a major force for good on the web, and therefore in the world; I’d love to see it come back faster, slimmer, and with renewed vigor. Until then, I need my web pages to work.

I slept for over ten hours last night, which felt like a miracle after a very long, stressful week. There’s a lot going on, and a lot going wrong, so the act of breathing and resting feels good. And biologically necessary.

My targeted ads lately have been focused on art, I guess because I’ve been clicking around a lot of outsider artists. But instead of the interesting work by emerging talents that I would like to see, I’m seeing a ton of direct to consumer startups selling things that they think other startup bros would like.

It’s horrifying.

I mean, sure, I’ll just ignore the art and move on. But I feel really bad for this next generation of kids who really believes that if they just hustle a little bit harder, if they spend their entire lives sweating and working and building, their lives will improve. There is a minority chance that it will lead them to more wealth, which is probably what they think they want. There’s also a majority chance that it will ruin the relationships in their lives and lead to them waking up in their early thirties burned out and alone.

There’s a whole get-rich-quick side to hustle culture that doesn’t even make sense according to its own internal logic: you’ll get rich in a compressed time by burning the candle at both ends and making your life shorter through stress and aggravation.

Okay, great. Then what? Are you going to retire? Concentrate on gardening? Or are you going to find, perhaps, that you’re addicted to the lifestyle you’ve created for yourself, and that you’re dependent on validation from the thing you do to make a living, such that if that thing ever goes away, you’re lost?

To be clear, I enjoy (meaningful) work: I like building things, and I like the feeling of incrementally pushing the world closer to an ideal that I would like to see. There’s a kind of egotism in it for sure (why should I be pushing the world towards my values?), but also a feeling of purpose and achievement. What I’m not into is the sense that you need to lose a piece of yourself to be competitive, or even to be valid in doing what you’re doing. You only get one life, and so much is more important than work.

It’s always worth considering why these messages are put out; who supports them; who really benefits if you follow their advice; and what happens if you choose to live another way. It’s propaganda, and propaganda always serves a central purpose.

Life for you, your community, your relationships, and your communal well-being. There’s no need to work yourself to the bone and potentially push yourself to an earlier death in order to make someone richer. Even if that person is you.

I mean, fuck off.