And here, on this slightly-off-kilter, tangent, we’ll boil the subject further: in the last decade or so, Silicon Valley’s tech malaise has been - and remains - remarkably focussed on Silicon Valley.
So - while you and I still read articles about how - well - sure - let’s just say anything - the Bay Area is a hotbed of innovation, of yes, failure, but also of yes - deep, yes - despair. The combination of - wait - hold on - this has to be extreme, but just think - the tech scene is so outsourced now, that you would never guess that someone was looking for a new creative door to infiltrate at all.
Bombardment of dread-inducing keywordsmiths quickly followed by exponentially higher averages for numbers of failures coupled with peak averages for failures coupled with peak averages for failure coupled with peak averages for failure coupled with a trough of failure.
The story of Silicon Valley is similar to many LA stories elsewhere in tech: a tech industry that is in free fall, and is in constant flux, with no single “best practice” that defines it.
This is how the algorithm plays catch-up, and how the algorithm adapts as more and more failures are triggered by human error. In a world of Infinite Knead or Five-Steps Solutions, it is societal default for tech companies to play catch-up, and it is this constant at the root of all the above problems that is problematic.
Solution 1: Devote a large portion of your time to creating great apps
The problem with using your real life fortune to your advantage is that it creates a barrier to entry for people who want to work in tech, and that is then met with outright hostility from their friends, family, and colleagues. It also leads to the opposite: people are too busy building their own empires of positive thinking around.
So tech companies are the ones who provide the guidance and support they need, not by trying to fill their employees with invigorating techchat, but by having a conversation with your real life fortune, and explaining their reasoning behind allowing this to happen.
Your real fortune is inextricably attached to your work, and as a society, we don’t seem to really understand how this works. How is your fortune invested? What is the value of your work? What is the purpose of your existence? And how does this play out?
As you’ve seen from the above data point, tech companies really understand the human need to work in certain situations and with certain rewards. Their motto is “Work for us,” - which literally translates to “Work for Us.”Work for us big time.
This is why tech companies treat their employees with the same ruthless seriousness and seriousness as they would any human employer. Even Google’s Hiring Wars have involved their employees engaging in quite a randy job interview.
To be fair, they are asking you to do some real work for them, and while you can certainly argue that your real expertise in a particular industry is available to humans, it's the kind of outside perspective and analysis that allows you to see past the walls of your office into the world outside.
If you’re being asked to do a human-generated-knowledge-base job, can you show the mentality of the person to whom you are being asked to do all this work? If you can show the mentality behind the mentality behind this kind of snark, how would you respond?
If the task is easy, cheap, and overwhelmingly positive, why would you consider becoming a burden to the other workers? If the mentality behind the mentality behind laziness is actually a useful tool, why are they leaving? And how are they going to get it better than you?
If you can explain to workers what they are up to, and how they stack up against you, and show them what an opportunity this job is, maybe they will learn from you a little bit more. And maybe they will find their own way to cope with you.
But what if you could just accept the job and go?
Welcome to the world of work where everyone is busy doing the same thing for as long as there’s a human being doing the same thing.
In the new world of do-it-yourselfers, everyone is throwing money after money at this task. There’s just something about working multiple jobs that appeals more to Joe, than any one damn thing.
Job-hopping, on the other hand, is a process that takes place somewhere between work and workaholism: taking a job that you really, really want to do and hoisting the bucket to do it.
Hiring an agent to do a job for you is like trying