[HN Gopher] Nobody cares
___________________________________________________________________
Nobody cares
Author : fzliu
Score : 184 points
Date : 2025-01-15 04:15 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (grantslatton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (grantslatton.com)
| theamk wrote:
| The sad part, the "do not care" attitude is infectious. Maybe
| there is a bright-eyed programmer who just joined and who wants
| to make UX better.
|
| They are full of enthusiasm, but nobody (around them) cares.
|
| They are fixing the most annoying bugs that users complained
| forever about.. but they is not recognized, because nobody
| (around them) cares.
|
| They hope to show a good example but nobody cares. Instead they
| get negative feedback when instead of blindly implementing
| horribly-designed feature, they are trying to fix it so it won't
| be so user-hostile.
|
| Eventually they give up and stop caring. When asked what they
| like about the job, their answer is "stability" and "job
| security".
| EGreg wrote:
| So basically, it's like showing stuff to HN?
|
| Here, I'll demo it:
|
| Hey guys I built a totally free, open-source platform that
| helps _you_ build a ton of different things that previously
| were only available to large corporations like Facebook,
| Twitter, and guys like Trump who spent millions on TruthSocial.
| All you have to do is play with it, and you 'll start to have
| superpowers. It is the LLaMa of social networks. Enjoy:
|
| https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
|
| I spent more than 10 years on it and am giving it away
| completely for free to anyone who bothers to look.
|
| Watch the result of this post.
|
| PS: The truth is, it's not about what you built, it's about how
| you present it, where and to whom. Context matters... a lot!
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Downvoted because this is off topic and should be on a proper
| Show HN, not in a random thread.
| EGreg wrote:
| I think it's on topic as it shows exactly what OP was
| talking about ( _Instead they get negative feedback_ ) is
| not confined to workplaces, but is prevalent right here,
| too. "No one cares" is almost correct. Some people will
| care, but most will downvote you and criticize you.
|
| Oh by the way ... I tried doing a "Show HN" with it. It
| just got buried after getting 1 like. If you post something
| that people take _a while_ to engage with, then they don 't
| come back to HN to upvote it fast enough. So it gets
| eclipsed by stuff that's memey and fun. Result: no one
| cares.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I feel like there's "nobody cares about what I do" and
| "nobody cares about how they affect other people" which
| are related but subtly different and imo. GP was more
| about the first and TFA more the second.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| you did a Show HN and it sounds like it didn't work out.
| that sucks to hear pal.
|
| it might be worth taking some time to reflect on what
| your part in that was and what you might do differently
| next time.
| EGreg wrote:
| My part was posting the link
|
| Sometimes the same link can go viral and other times it
| doesnt
|
| But the real issue is when people follow the link and get
| enagaged and dont come back to HN to upvote it fast
| enough before it scrolls off the page
| treve wrote:
| OP is talking about folks caring about making their
| environment a bit better, care about their craft or care
| about making an effort to make the world a better place. It's
| not really the same thing as your work not resonating with
| people.
| EGreg wrote:
| When I said OP I meant theamk
| jondwillis wrote:
| You've been making commits for four months?
| EGreg wrote:
| Check the github for a repo named PlatformHistory. I pruned
| it 4 months ago and broke up the whole monorepo into
| subrepos
| jdenning wrote:
| I just took a look at your project - you really need to
| simplify the README. I read the whole thing but it's still
| not clear to me what you app actually does.
|
| I have no idea what a "Social Operating System" is supposed
| to be. Seems like it's a web/mobile app framework, but it's
| completely unclear why I would want to use it. You need an
| "elevator pitch".
|
| There are hundreds of frameworks, if you want developers to
| use yours, maybe show some example code? No one is going to
| spend a bunch of effort trying to build with your framework
| if they can't see an advantage.
|
| Not trying to be a hater, I care and want you to succeed
|
| Edit: just read some of the links in the readme - so it also
| has something to do with crypto and micropayments? Why would
| I want to use your "QBUX"? Would a developer only be able to
| get paid in your crypto? If so, why should they trust that
| you won't rugpull? If you want people to care about your
| project, you need to think about what _they_ care about (pro
| tip: nobody cares about making you rich via support contracts
| or shitcoin schemes. Sorry.)
| theamk wrote:
| See also: Zombocom problem [0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42542280
| theamk wrote:
| I don't think it's similar at all, unless you have some sort
| of directors/investors telling you what to do (based on your
| comments, you don't)
|
| I (and OP) was talking about people who have power over the
| product (software engineers, managers, designers) not caring.
|
| In your case, people with power over product (you) clearly
| care very much, it's just the product is not interesting to
| others. (Which kinda makes sense? It's yet another PHP
| framework with AI and Crypto, and there is plenty of them...)
| mulnz wrote:
| These people show up, offer trivially incorrect or untenable
| solutions to the trickiest problems. Rarely do they have the
| insight that fixes them. Often they do things that introduce
| more risk.
| spencerflem wrote:
| That's one possibility -
|
| Here's a story of the burnout of one of the GNOME terminal
| maintainers
|
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/259
|
| In a situation where no amount of effort seems to be enough
| its really easy to not see the point anymore
| theamk wrote:
| Not all problems are tricky, there are plenty of easy-to-fix
| bugs that go unfixed.
|
| For example, there is an internal product that I use daily
| that has broken http links in error/status messages.
| PoppinFreshDo wrote:
| I think this is just the flip side of disengaged workers and
| managers.
|
| https://www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-...
|
| To _care_ is to be _engaged_.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Why should someone working at big tech care? Their mission is ,
| generally , to 'capture value' from elsewhere and in the process
| make the world worse. Hard mission to get behind.
|
| And why should a 7/11 worker care? Their employer doesn't care
| about them. Minimum wage / minimum effort and all that.
|
| And Elon Musk as the sole positive example is so lame.
|
| All this bothers me because despite everything I _do_ still care.
| But finding a way to express that is so hard. And after a while
| of it not mattering its hard to justify. And finding somewhere
| where your work actually matters seems impossible when we 're
| funding everything except what's important
| afinlayson wrote:
| Agreed about Musk. Elon Musk as an example of caring, is
| ignorant of his actions vs his narrative. Example him saying he
| says he's the best diablo player in the world, vs seeing him
| play poorly.
|
| We live in a world full of people doing good who don't do it
| for the "player 1 energy"
| kmoser wrote:
| > And why should a 7/11 worker care? Their employer doesn't
| care about them. Minimum wage / minimum effort and all that.
|
| Because their actions affect the customers they interact with,
| who have no direct bearing on their jobs or salaries. To make
| your customers suffer because you're angry at your boss is
| misdirected at best, and selfish at worst.
| spencerflem wrote:
| No that's true- I totally believe that everything is
| connected, that by putting good energy into the world you
| make other people's lives better and in return feel good
| about yourself and inspire others to do good as well.
|
| There's a certain amount of lack of agency and connection
| that the modern worlds taken from us though. A McD's employee
| doesn't see the same customer twice. They're thoroughly
| disconnected from whether the company makes record profits or
| not. They are not empowered to change things. And management
| is often putting out bad energy.
|
| The incentives are such that caring is more effort than not
| and doesn't accomplish much other than appealing to internal
| pride. If that gets grinded down its over.
| mulnz wrote:
| This is a bullshit take considering the amount of pressure put on
| the average worker and their family in the US.
|
| And in software youre going to have to close a ticket or two that
| piss you off. You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never
| deliver new features? Cool, see you in Japan bro.
| russsaidwords wrote:
| Don't let the bastards grind you down.
| jfengel wrote:
| Too late. Too many bastards. Too much grinding.
| medhir wrote:
| I relate to this a lot. Someone is referring to this take as
| "bullshit" contrasting the experience of the average worker to a
| software engineer.
|
| I'd argue the average worker is in the position they're in
| because of a whole chain of people that couldn't be bothered to
| care.
|
| Our government has let go of its principles, because no one in
| charge could be bothered to give a fuck. There's a certain
| nihilism to life in the US in 2025 that has been enabled entirely
| by people not speaking up.
|
| I'm myself guilty of staying on the sidelines. Starting to
| realize that perhaps I need to be louder, because no one else is
| speaking up and that "giving a fuck" is something that must be
| led by example.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I'd argue the average worker is in the position they're in
| because of a whole chain of people that couldn't be bothered to
| care.
|
| This is a lame excuse. My caring is a choice I make. I can
| choose to care whether you care or not. I make the choice for
| myself.
| lazide wrote:
| Just wait until you try to speak up and get destroyed. Why do
| you think folks don't speak up?
| medhir wrote:
| so... the fear of speaking up should lead to staying silent?
| what exactly are you advocating for here
| lazide wrote:
| I'm not advocating for anything. I'm pointing out the cause
| of the effect you're noting.
|
| Concretely, I suspect it's a side effect of 'how dare they'
| type political attacks and increasing balkanization. What a
| lot of folks would call 'California style politics'.
|
| Short of everyone taking a step back and actually
| evaluating what they want/need as people and having a
| productive conversation about it and a useful compromise
| (hah!), I imagine we'll just end up with a 'strong man' who
| can do all the 'bad things' necessary to pull everyone
| together into a consistent direction despite whatever hate
| might be thrown in their direction.
|
| Though typically that is just what someone pretends to be
| so they can loot everything... at least unless people are
| really careful to look at the persons track record of
| outcomes instead of what they are saying right now. And
| since everyone will be all angry and pissed off while this
| happens, lots of room for various bullshit to happen,
| 'others' to be made and punished, etc, etc.
|
| Oh wait....
|
| And yes I know this is a symptom of the problem, but I've
| also literally had enough of my life destroyed trying to
| discuss elements of this already to not do anything else.
| Murder anyone trying to be a hero, and what else is going
| to happen? You'll either have villains, dead bodies, or
| cowards.
| astroalex wrote:
| > Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose
| job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it
| sucks.
|
| Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've actually never had a bad
| experience at the DMV here in Seattle. The staff have been
| efficient, fast, and friendly every time.
| OJFord wrote:
| Maybe I'm just not American, but I've never had to go at all,
| it's just a bizarre TV/movie thing.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think I have dealt with such organization thrice in my
| life. 3 driving tests. And on all times it was as pleasant
| experience as possible.
|
| Only complaint I really have with that system is them caring
| too much. Why does my car need "type certificate" sticker...
| It is all online and tied to VIN... Replacement cost like
| 200EUR and then tens more for showing them paperwork new one
| was ordered...
| p1necone wrote:
| The idea that the DMV is a particularly awful experience does
| seem like something that would be especially susceptible to
| selection bias. Why would anyone ever announce "I went to the
| DMV today and it was fine"?
| spencerflem wrote:
| My experience has been that it sucks but not as bad as
| private customer service.
|
| Getting a refund from UHaul was fifteen hours of pulling
| teeth. DMV was a 45 minute wait.
|
| Worse in Texas where they dont fund it ofc.
| thayne wrote:
| Well, now that it is a meme, and the DMVs where I live is
| actually very effient, I've actually heard multiple people
| say "I went to the DMV, and actually it was fine"
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The service is fine. The lines and waits are horrendous and a
| DMV never seems to have the seating room for that. So you
| spend an hour before you even get in the door like you're
| waiting for a new iPhone or something.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I've had experiences with the DMV in three US states, and in
| two out of the three it was highly efficient and worked great.
| In one of them it was mediocre to unpleasant, but nothing to
| write home about.
|
| I suspect the DMVs in LA and NYC are particularly bad and
| that's why it's a cultural meme.
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| I've had wonderful experiences at DOL offices (which are 3rd
| party contracted), not so much at the DMV. Which one are you
| going to? Honestly worth a drive (or bus ride, depending on the
| issue) to go to a a decent one
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Ironically, we may look with fond memories of the days when an
| actual human being handled our DMV paperwork.
|
| An AI chatbot with an unblinking stare and frozen smile is
| likely to be your new DMV virtual assistant!
| mikewarot wrote:
| Indiana's BMV used to be the Kafkaesque when I went with my mom
| in the 1970s. She waited in a huge line only to find out it was
| the wrong line...waited again to find she didn't have a certain
| document and had go home to get it.
|
| About 20 years ago the would check to see if you had everything
| right as you came in.
|
| Now it's almost magical how fast friendly and efficient they've
| become for the few times you actually have to visit. Most
| transactions are online or via mail.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Or I guess, put another way, IMO this is about Apathy. The
| feeling where doing things or not doing them, what's it matter
| anyways.
|
| I think, a lot of the apocalyptic sentiment lately has a lot to
| do with it. Climate change is already ruining things and will
| only get worse and also has started getting worse faster.
| Politically, economically, things are pretty hopeless. What use
| is picking up trash or wearing a nice shirt in the face of all of
| this. What are we building towards, and does anything I do mean
| anything
| monkeycantype wrote:
| Nah, I moved from a big city where people are feeling squashed by
| the pressure, to a small town, where people feel a bit more
| relaxed, and I am constantly surprised by how much of a shit
| people give. I'm not advocating for small towns here, I like the
| city, I'm advocating for making a society where we act like
| people matter and stop calling anyone who doesn't want to kick
| everyone in the teeth to get ahead a communist, and stop calling
| people who do inspiring visionaries
| hattmall wrote:
| I've lived in most every manner of setting the US has to offer.
| The best by far is the micro-urban settings. Where as opposed
| to a small town with strip malls and neighborhoods, there is
| high density around an urban center that pretty much
| immediately transitions to rural. That way you can still have
| walkability and the mix of bars / restaurants / activities that
| urban settings inspire without all the overhead of actual large
| cities. Even when I lived in large cities I spent most of my
| time in just a few blocks. So a few blocks of city and then all
| the recreational activities of rural areas is pretty great.
|
| There's still issues with people not caring, but it seems like
| those are more so outliers than anywhere near the norm and it's
| a lot more expedient to get in contact with someone that does
| care and can take actionable measures where there is a problem.
|
| Just as an example there was a water leak from the municipal
| system in the right of way in front of my house. It was
| repaired quickly but they had to dig up a lot of the yard,
| which they filled back in. But after a few heavy rains it
| washed out a fair amount. It was a little annoying but I just
| said "Oh well". A few years ago in Atlanta my neighbors had
| reported a sinkhole FOR YEARS, and nothing was done about it
| until it finally caved in and swallowed an entire intersection.
|
| I had a friend come over though and this had been like 3 months
| and he asked about the hole. I told him the situation and he
| just said "Call the city and tell them you need dirt." So I
| did, and told someone that took a message. A couple hours later
| they called me back and confirmed my address and that I needed
| dirt. He said they were busy but would do it tomorrow, and sure
| enough the next day they came with a dump truck, a trailer of
| equipment and filled in the hole, compacted the area, smoothed
| it all out and planted grass. All in 24 hours for a problem
| that impacted no one but me.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| I want to live in a community where everyone cares.
| spencerflem wrote:
| This is largely a political problem, I'd start there
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Trust me: You don't. You'd go insane.
|
| See for example everyone who has to live with an HOA.
| liontwist wrote:
| Is that what caring about people in your community looks
| like? Or some kind of property value paranoia and sense of
| control.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Classically underspecified, you are right. The care has to be
| about others and respecting them, not about oneself. Like in
| a good partnership. Care about giving, not taking.
|
| But as the article frustratedly states, it usually goes the
| other way. Like Jethro Tull progressing into desillusion from
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=luDfuZkeqKU
|
| to
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7SGq7jMdSU
|
| This planet is such a beautiful marble and all we do is
| trample it with our feet. Guys, make a random somebody smile
| today, will ya?
| andrewstuart wrote:
| That's Japan.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, Japan is mostly a place where everyone is afraid to not
| 'be Japanese'. It can be quite stressful.
| janislaw wrote:
| Reading the original article I reflected: "I can totally see
| how this can happen, but for some reason it doesn't happen
| where I live"
|
| I moved to Switzerland 9y ago. People care. I believe this is
| due to high trust society which evolved not that long ago from
| small, poor, tightly woven communities.
| lnsru wrote:
| I am the guy who cares or cared! I will bring lost lady back to
| care home. I will help a kid to find his lost key in the
| playground. I will start fixing technical debt in a product at
| work. While two first cases were naturally the right thing to do
| I didn't expect anything. With technical debt I was stopped
| because I was wasting company's resources. I observe in my diary,
| that I am turning into do not care type person. One can't cary
| about every pothole in the world.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Please never give up the fight against entropy. We can keep the
| flame alive a little longer.
| tolerance wrote:
| Resist the cold churn toward pride-fueled apathy that this rant
| exhausts.
|
| After reading this, if this is supposed to demonstrate the
| psyche of the sort of person who "cares", I really hope he
| keeps indoors and spends a little bit more time on his self
| before stepping out on others.
| lnsru wrote:
| The thing is that I might be another psycho. But there is a
| city center, winter and an old women with blueish hands.
| Wearing no proper shoes and having only a sweater. There are
| hundred other caring and loving persons and missionaries
| around, heavy car traffic too. But somehow I am the one
| bringing her to the care facility a mile away. How can it
| happen!? Why do you think, that only a Good Samaritan can
| care and a psycho can't?
| tolerance wrote:
| Well, pardon me. It doesn't seem to me like you've gone
| mad, but if you are a psycho indeed, I don't want to do you
| further harm.
|
| If you really are "all right" and just an honestly styled
| man trying to cultivate good in a barren city with crushed
| soil and souls, then I reckon there's some care in you of
| some kind much to be desired from others and you know it.
|
| And I suspect that it's the psychos who believe that
| they're "Good Samaritans" and if your word is true then we
| can tell that apparently they're unwilling to provide
| actions that confirm their claims. Crazy.
|
| So, my guess is maybe the world's gone so mad that anyone
| trying to behave sane looks strange, and the ones who are
| mad pretend to be right until wrong shows up.
| lnsru wrote:
| Sorry, but it's in German: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/ge
| sellschaft/panorama/sterbenden... Society is that far,
| that some people just step over the corpse to reach ATM
| and get some cash. World is gone mad and numb to the pain
| of others. So don't be shy if you sometimes help others.
| tolerance wrote:
| > ,,Ich gehe einfach nur rein, mache meine Erledigungen
| und gehe wieder."
|
| What a world. And what a way that this phrase can mean
| different to different people depending on what a person
| perceived to be their duties and their deeds.
|
| Thanks.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| What a worthless rant. There are big problems and there are small
| problems and/or inconveniences. People do care, when they have a
| budget for caring. Unfortunately the modern world depletes that
| budget with the day-to-day life. I live close to where the author
| does and trust me, the city has way bigger problems to deal with
| than the nitpicky bullshit OP is calling out. In the suburb I
| live in, we have an app where the city does receive and implement
| reasonable recommendations. The reason why is that it's a small
| town with large pockets.
|
| The rest of the things are just rants aimed at society? big tech?
| I don't get it.
|
| > When I joined my former Big Tech job, everyone cared. Over
| time, incentives attracted a different set of people who didn't
| care as much. Eventually those people became the majority. It's
| painful to work with people who don't care if you care a lot, and
| eventually I left because of it.
|
| No. Bullshit take. I used to care. But then in 2008, my employer
| showed me that I'm not the 'developer! developer! developer!'
| Steve Ballmer was excited about, I'm just a number on a
| spreadsheet governed by some pencil pushers in finance. All
| employers since have showed me again and again that if times are
| tough, I'm the ballast the company can shed to stay afloat. And
| in the past 4-5 years they've showed me I'm ballast even if the
| company is doing great, because 'activist' investors say so. So
| why should I care? I care about my family, I care about my
| personal projects, I care about my craft and I care about my
| health and the people around me. Do I care about your little
| annoying bug? Fuck no. Why would I? It's not even my intellectual
| property.
|
| > Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose
| job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it
| sucks.
|
| I have. It's actually called the DOL where we live, OP. And it's
| great. I need to renew my license in person because of my
| disability and it takes me 15 minutes in-and-out, I barely have
| to stay in line. I also renew my car tabs online exclusively with
| 0 problems. I really don't understand the DMV meme, at least in
| Washington state.
|
| > We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will,
| defeat armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you
| can't say the man doesn't care.
|
| Oh, you shouldn't have gone there, you lost all credibility my
| friend.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I agree the authors examples were all nitpicky and omg Elon was
| the worst example you could have picked.
|
| But it does touch on a sort of apathy and nihilism that I can
| feel myself falling towards.
| tolerance wrote:
| I gather that the worth of this piece lies in relating and
| resolving _not_ to follow the author's lead.
| spencerflem wrote:
| For sure
| flymaipie wrote:
| People do not care because they don't want to suffer all the time
| they see some lack of effort. Even when there is 80% carers and
| 20% do-not-carers, 80% will suffer and go into the opposing
| group. It has upside-down-bowl stability.
| szundi wrote:
| I care. Title busted.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| What the author of this post is actually mad about is that most
| people don't care about _him_. The people who designed the DMV
| don 't care about him. The people who made the crappy Oracle HR
| software he probably has to use don't care about him. The people
| who designed the bike lanes don't care about him.
|
| It's not their job to. They have about a million other
| priorities, they're not sorry about it, and they shouldn't be.
|
| The DMV, the HR software people, the engineering people, they
| care about lots of things: Following the laws they are required
| to follow; maintaining regulatory compliance. Handling the latest
| set of changes and rules from a higher office who demands they be
| implemented yesterday. Not overwhelming the underpaid staff they
| have on-hand. Figuring out how to deal with a generally
| unpleasant general public, including the guy who wrote this.
| Holding back an ounce of sanity so they can get home at the end
| of the day and be happy and not drink themselves to death.
|
| The reality is that life is a series of tradeoffs. Even if I am
| giving 100% at work (and I have a family and a life, so often I
| am not), that 100% does not get allocated entirely or even mostly
| to "deliver the best experience for the specific needs of the
| author of this article." It's dedicated to getting work out the
| door at an acceptable level of quality; monitoring our systems so
| they don't crash and lose us money; complying with the rules and
| procedures my employer demands I comply with; being tolerable and
| decent to my colleagues so they don't resent me and make my life
| harder. If I think about the needs of _one specific_ customer out
| of the millions that transact business with my employer every
| day, it 's because something extraordinary has happened with
| implications for one of the things above.
|
| What sets people like Elon apart is that they are single-mindedly
| dedicated to getting people to appease them, and also pretty good
| at it. All Elon cares about is whatever interests him day-to-day,
| his ego, his impact on the world, whether people like him or hate
| him. He's "successful", by this author's metric, because he's
| self-obsessed.
|
| All that said, the UK has a phrase for someone who cares only to
| do the bare minimum: a jobsworth, as in, more than my job's
| worth. A jobsworth is unhelpful on purpose, or because enforcing
| apathy is more valuable to them than doing anything that might
| impose upon them later an obligation to act. The thing is - those
| people are universally reviled. They are not liked or approved of
| in society. They're also a severe minority.
|
| Most people are doing their best to stay above water on a dozen
| different things, and you are only one of them. The author ought
| to have some humility and realize that.
| kmoser wrote:
| Then why the huge disparity between cultural attitudes in the
| USA vs. Japan? Clearly the Japanese tend to take more pride of
| ownership, which is OP's point.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Japan also has an entire group of people so disillusioned
| with society they completely lock themselves off from it (0),
| record high suicide rates (1), record low fertility rates
| (2), and a far lower rate of self-reported happiness.
|
| I don't know _why_ they prioritize differently, but I don 't
| think it's working out for them.
|
| Which set of tradeoffs would you rather live under?
|
| (0) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori (1)
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-33362387.amp (2)
| https://apnews.com/article/japan-birth-rate-declining-
| popula... (3) https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-
| happiness-index/...
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| He only thinks it's that way because in Japan, he's the big
| man with the big bucks the whole society caters to. An
| average Japanese person probably makes a terrible salary, has
| few if any economic prospects, sees a stagnant economy, and
| also is very unlikely to even start a family. I'd much rather
| have a family than have store clerks obsses about serving me.
|
| If you have tons of money in Seattle area and live in an
| exurb, and only go to Seattle for the orchestra and a
| baseball game in a box, you probably think everyone in
| America cares too
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I invite the author to work for a large corp or a government and
| try and improve things. The most supportive people for
| improvements will be your team. The least supportive will be the
| higher-level managers. And no, the Director of Transportation is
| not the real manager. That's the mayor or city council.
|
| Why? They get measured on the sweeping stuff, by the broad
| demands, and the people who actually pay them (in money or
| votes).
|
| A better bike ramp that involves user testing but involves a
| delay that pushes work into the next quarter, changing
| accounting? That's a problem. I've lived this scenario where user
| features got axed to ensure all work could be budgeted under a
| particular quarter. Or a sign? That costs money and also needs
| approval, perhaps from another department.
|
| Oh, and you are improving one bike ramp? Can't do that without
| people complaining. Got to improve all of them. So that is now a
| multi-million dollar project.
|
| In a large org, it often isn't clear who owns overall design
| control, if anyone.
|
| Lights that are great for drivers but suck for everyone else?
| That's many things in most cities and that is because drivers are
| the most vocal (and often the largest) population. Drivers win on
| everything from parking to infrastructure spending and drivers
| will tell city council what's on their mind.
|
| For the corporate software I worked on, many users hated it. Tons
| of complaints. Team agreed. Team created proposal to fix it. Team
| managers pitched it to those above for the broader roadmap.
| Management explicitly said they didn't want to waste time on UI
| as the people paying were not the same as the people using.
|
| Never worked for the DMV, but know a guy who maintains some
| software for one. What's the priority? Cheap. Cheap, cheap,
| cheap. Nobody wants to fund the DMV. Nobody wants to pay for
| technological improvements for it. Nobody wants to pay for
| staffing. It is where small amounts get shaved off to pay for
| things people do care about. The guy in charge of the DMV is
| tasked with keeping costs low.
| moconnor wrote:
| Maybe the Will To Have Nice Things is solved by culture not
| process.
|
| I've seen the above too. Imbuing an organisation with the Will
| To Have Nice Things seems unsolved because, as you say, the
| value is constantly traded off against more measurable
| outcomes.
|
| I think the solution has to be building and rewarding a culture
| of doing the right thing, taking pride in delivering not just
| to spec but excellence. So when the org plan demands a giant
| construction barrier near the kids playpark _of course_ the
| person responsible also commissions a dinosaur mural for it.
| Not because it's a KPI or was debated and traded off on the
| functional spec but _as a matter of personal and professional
| pride_.
|
| Interestingly I think the drop in taking pride in your work
| coincides with the relative anonymity of society in which
| reputation is no longer tracked through past interactions or
| word of mouth but is institutionalised in rating systems. This
| is _perhaps_ related to why a more insular and smaller society
| in Japan has managed to retain it to a higher degree. Certainly
| there are elite groups around the world in which everyone knows
| the other players and so reputation and (from an institutional
| perspective) over-delivery are still valued, and these groups
| are the ones that accomplish otherwise unachievable advances.
| The broader anonymous society that delivers only to spec ends
| up with leaky abstractions that gradually collapses under its
| own weight of incompetence once the former culture of Wanting
| Nice Things degrades to Somebody Else's Problem.
|
| If true this predicts a stable rule-of-law-based society or
| organisation in which the most powerful all know each other and
| which otherwise is broken into small mostly-stable communities
| would foster the Will To Have Nice Things more than an
| anonymous interchangeable mass would.
|
| I can hear patio11 reminding me that this should have been a
| blog post.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I imagine so. You need agreement on "nice things" first.
|
| My city constantly fights over this. Is a mural a nice thing
| or is the tax saving? Heck, is colour printing too much? I've
| heard people whine about them printing city handouts for
| council in colour.
| sidkhuntia wrote:
| Wait till you discover India and goverment.
| willswire wrote:
| Everybody cares actually. Obviously the author cares more about
| investing the time to write this blog post than to take a
| sledgehammer and some concrete and fix the bike ramp himself. Or
| he cares to avoid the potential interactions with law enforcement
| that would result from such ridiculousness.
|
| The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest
| affections of the heart are selfish - incurvatus in se (curved
| inwards).
|
| "Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so
| deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts
| of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-
| righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in
| order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it
| so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God,
| for its own sake." - Martin Luther
| 383toast wrote:
| Everybody cares, but not enough to make a difference
| imgabe wrote:
| Man, I've been the engineer in situations like that bike lane and
| believe me, we care. Usually the engineers care. 99% of the time
| the contractor had some "value engineering" suggestions that the
| client was all too happy to take because it saved them a little
| money up front. As the engineer you can try to explain that it
| will be shitty, but they ... don't care.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| A well known CEO noted that in a failing organization he was
| trying to devise a turn around plan for that everyone in the
| organization invariably blamed... the other teams! Not a one
| said "our team is responsible for our failure".
|
| The engineers blamed product, the product people blamed sales,
| etc.
|
| He said he provided this suggestion, "You are of course right
| (it's the other groups fault, and it might have been so), but
| what can you do, in your group, as part of a solution we all
| work towards to help fix this?"
|
| So yeah, it _is_ the other guys fault. But what you can _you_
| do to help fix it?
| imgabe wrote:
| Sure, that's great if you all work for the same organization
| and everyone involved asked themselves that and they all
| benefited from the organization's overall success.
|
| But that is not the case here. That is not how bike lanes or
| many other things get built. The engineer is a consultant
| that works for one independent company. The contractor is a
| different independent company. The client is another company
| or a government entity. Possibly the client involves several
| different entities with competing demands and priorities.
|
| And "success" for the engineer doesn't really mean building a
| good thing. It means a happy client who will come back for
| repeat business.
|
| How does this problem get fixed? Well, eventually someone
| hits that curb and breaks their neck and sues the city. Then
| the city hires an engineer to create design standards that
| they include in future contracts when they build new bike
| lanes.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| Classic CEO. "How can you, the powerless IC, fix an
| organisational problem? No, I mean without me having to do
| anything meaningful or risky"
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| The CEO in question publicly declared his own job would be
| forfeit within a year if he didn't meet goals that were in
| the recent past history of the company, absolutely
| impossible.
|
| He met and exceeded those goals.
|
| The IC isn't powerless with good management.
| imgabe wrote:
| What company was it, who was the CEO, and what's one
| specific thing one of the departments did?
|
| Or are you just copy/pasting LinkedIn drivel?
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Nissan, Ghosn, and I can't answer the third easily
| without delving back into it, but if I think of an
| answer, I'll edit this reply.
| imgabe wrote:
| Never heard of Ghosn before - but you mean this guy?
| https://www.dmarge.com/cars/nissan-bankruptcy-ceo-carlos-
| gho...
|
| The guy who's a wanted fugitive in Japan and fled to
| Lebanon by shipping himself in a piano box?
| Over2Chars wrote:
| 100% correct.
| orwin wrote:
| Power and money got to his head, hard, but he used to be
| a really good manager, probably the best Michelin ever
| had, before he took the job at Renault (then Nissan). Not
| surprised to hear he was very successful there, as he had
| a really good reputation before his divorce (and this is
| baseless gossip, but I will still say I doubt any of his
| wrongdoings were before 2012. Too much power and no one
| to keep his ego checked down).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Definitely a cultural problem where any sort of flaw is
| punished. We definitely need to root that out if we are to
| come together.
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| Care does not come from without, but instead from within.
|
| To proclaim "Why does nobody care about anything?" is to neglect
| an oft quoted axiom: You must be the change you
| wish to see in the world.[0]
|
| 0 - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mahatma_gandhi_109075
| DowsingSpoon wrote:
| Okay, I now care passionately about each and everything I do.
| The bike ramp still sucks. What now?
| em-bee wrote:
| _Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
| the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to
| know the difference._
| zoogeny wrote:
| You know who really cares? The Karen in the HOA who relentlessly
| hounds the board because one of the units in the complex has the
| wrong color paint on their door. Be careful what you wish for, or
| the grass is always greener.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You bring up an important adjacent point. OP believes bikers
| and non-drivers are substantial stakeholders, but ignores that
| the tax complainers and drivers may prefer the world that way.
| And they do hound council.
| hosteur wrote:
| How would a better solution to the bike lane cost more tax or
| worsen situation for drivers?
| xnx wrote:
| Indeed. Imagine a neighbor who was upset that people didn't
| care enough to clear the parkway of leaves and selflessly
| dedicated himself to spend hours loudly leaf-blowing the whole
| neighborhood.
| Sammi wrote:
| Most Karen's are actually great. We only hear about the
| unhinged ones on social media because the algorithm rewards
| outrage. But most Karen's are kind and they care and they work
| hard and they set an example for all of us. It's the Karen's in
| the world that keep all the small things from being shitty all
| the time.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Those aren't Karens, they're all Jessicas
| karmakaze wrote:
| Have you thought this through? Incessant requests for an
| unimportant matter is a sure way to have those in charge of
| said matters _not care_ , not only about that particular
| request but requests in general or the desires of requesters.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| If it's unimportant then why is there a rule against it?
| Why did everyone agree to this rule when they bought a home
| there if it didn't matter? Clearly it exists for a reason
| and if no one enforced it then it's completely pointless
| karmakaze wrote:
| I wonder if this is how Karen logic works, black and
| white thinking with no sense of proportion.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| [delayed]
| Izkata wrote:
| They're called "Karens" because they're unhinged, not because
| of whatever other criteria you're imagining. The kind people
| you're referring to aren't Karens.
| Shank wrote:
| > In Japan, you get the impression that everyone takes their job
| and role in society seriously. The median Japanese 7-11 clerk
| takes their job more seriously than the median US city
| bureaucrat.
|
| My favorite example of this is how, if you visit 7-11 in Japan
| and an employee isn't busy, or is busy but with an unimportant
| task, they will jump to open a cash register and check people out
| the second a queue forms. They will move as quickly as possible
| to clear the queue of people, seemingly aware that everyone has
| some place to be that isn't a checkout line. It's wonderful.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I used to rank the McDonald's in Toppongi hills Tokyo as having
| the best employees anywhere after I saw one run from one side
| of the little shop to the other when the French fry buzzer went
| off.
|
| However, it got beat out by the McDonald's in Arkadelphia
| Arkansas, where the employee fast walked as quickly as hen
| could to take the order to the car waiting in the Drive-Thru,
| and then also fast walked back. Running of course would have
| been against OSHA and gotten hen in trouble so hen did the best
| hen could.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| The run usually isnt because they care its because theyre
| scared of senpai and (bucho/shacho) big boss.
|
| If the management is chill they arent gonna run.
| unknownsky wrote:
| Are you Swedish? Just wondering because I've never seen the
| gender neutral pronoun "hen" in English.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Til https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(pronoun)
| cafard wrote:
| I don't want to see employees running in the direction of hot
| fat, thanks.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| In Japan this attentive behaviour is often out of fear or
| boredom. Either way the service is good overall.
|
| I live here. Sometimes the service isnt good and staff behaves
| like an insentient robot who repeats a script and fucks off.
|
| If you know Japanese and actually talk to them, its obviously
| the same ape base mech the rest of us are driving.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Oh.. do people not do that anymore? At the little grocery store
| I worked at in BC Canada, if there were like 2 or 3 people in
| line we'd call for help if they weren't already on their way.
| Seems like a pretty basic thing.
|
| Here in the US, I don't know what's going on with the cashiers.
| They're slow. They don't say a single word to you, not even to
| give you your total. And they're awful at bagging. I just don't
| get it. It's not a hard job.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| How roles are perceived, becomes how people perceive
| themselves, becomes how people act out those roles.
|
| Or more to the point: Its easier to be what people expect you
| to be.
|
| In my experience the US is especially susceptible to this
| 'roleplaying', probably because all (entertrainment) media
| comes from the same overarching culture.
| mc3301 wrote:
| It is a hard job if you and your partner both have full-time
| jobs and other part-time or side-hustles just to barely pay
| the rent.
| arisbe__ wrote:
| Its worse than that. There is a logic to society, growth and
| scaling that involves accumulating obligations. This is like a
| gravity or a gang hivemind that due to scale inverts the value of
| bettering to the value of self-preservation of a corrupt society
| theatre. They dont want improvement but containment i.e.
| inhibition of creative destruction. What really gets me here is
| just how much people normalize lying.
|
| When you know this (if you arent obligation enslaved) you can
| then just work orthogonally to the system to make something way
| better. In fact it kind of breaks reality for you.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| "does this dress make me look fat"
|
| is it lying or not? People lie all day every day, and if you
| dont they wont like you. They expect you to lie.
|
| Someone invites you somewhere. You respond you dont want to go
| because meh. They get angry. "Atleast make up an excuse or
| something dont just tell me you dont want to go!!"
|
| Very common. More common in women.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I refuse to socialize with people who cannot handle my way of
| communication, unless I strictly require them in a
| professional setting. Recently I organized a party and it was
| so amazing to be able to communicate in a group without any
| barriers at all.
| joeldg wrote:
| I mean... This guy must not have kids in school--because to be a
| teacher, you have to be nothing but a ball of caring because the
| job sucks the life out of you at every step. No money, half the
| country thinks you want to turn their kids into trans people and
| want you to teach their specific brand of a religion and so they
| defund you at every step. I feel bad for teachers--they really,
| really care.
|
| This guy must not ever volunteer for anything--In my town we have
| volunteers who will find houses with dogs chained up and offer to
| build them a fence for free because they don't like seeing dogs
| on chains. We have volunteers who work community evenings and do
| cleanups at schools, parks and graffiti removal for community
| spaces. My city has hundreds of volunteer fronts, and they always
| need an extra hand.
|
| This guy must not ever have bought girl scout cookies or got a
| Christmas tree from the boy scouts, a lot of people volunteer to
| make sure all that happens and the money goes back to the kids,
| and nobody there is getting "paid" and they all care.
|
| This guy must never have talked to a fireman or a parks worker,
| they have crap pay and dangerous job conditions (Park rangers are
| assaulted at the highest rates for any job). They do it because
| they care.
|
| This guy must never have been to a museum... actually, I could go
| on all day about people who care ...
|
| At this point, all I can figure is this guy has his head firmly
| lodged up his rear-end.
| eviks wrote:
| > You might think "something something incentive systems". No.
|
| It's exactly that. All your government and regulatory capture
| examples are precisely about bad incentives leading to bad
| outcomes (including people who cared but stopped caring because
| these perverse incentives punished them for caring one way or
| another)
|
| But wait, the author understands this!:
|
| > Over time, incentives attracted a different set of people who
| didn't care as much.
|
| So it's a YES?
| sandreas wrote:
| It's interesting how people react first when you start acting
| different, doing little things like picking up garbage you didn't
| throw on the ground.
|
| Even my kids went: Why are YOU picking this up, you didn't do it?
|
| I just ask: Why not ME?
|
| After some of similar experiences my kids asked to help and they
| were so excited when a friend of my wife bought them trash tongs
| to help me.
|
| It's not that I'm proudly making the world a better place by
| doing something very difficult (like in the movie Pay it
| forward), but just doing small things that aren't difficult to
| do. Somehow it feels nice.
| whyenot wrote:
| Most of the government employees that work in the bureaucracy do
| care. They care a lot. The reason their "favorite" part of the
| job is "stability" or "job security" is because the pay usually
| sucks compared to industry, and the bullshit you have to put up
| with to avoid scandals, lawsuits, and corruption also sucks. Most
| of the civil servants I know stay in their jobs because they
| really do want to help people; they really do want to make their
| agencies or institutions more efficient and better.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| Yes, but they don't seem to care about the stuff OP cares
| about, therefore they're just mindless bureaucrats. Unlike
| Elon, who's defeating armies of nihilists by sheer force of
| will!!!
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| And playing PoE!
| batiudrami wrote:
| Also external people don't generally know or understand all the
| constrains that led to decisions that are suboptimal (for the
| person complaining).
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I work for the government IT.
|
| Constraints are often bogus, made by a few bad actors and
| never questioned because the government is structured to
| avoid personal responsibility. Unfortunately, this takes away
| agility and disempowers individual workers.
|
| Which, as noted in a nearby comment, makes them coping
| instead of caring.
|
| An overlooked cause is the management science that insists on
| getting rid of individual ownership.
| orwin wrote:
| I've worked as a temp for my government in a bureaucracy (tax
| recovery/delaying) before studying CS (15 years ago now).
|
| The bureaucracy have rules to disempower low-level civil
| servants and keep them from having too much agency.
|
| Everytime someone asked for a payment delay on their taxes, i
| had to fill their data in 2 to 3 different software that did
| not allow pasting (well, the third one did, but wasn't used in
| most cases). If the info given by the citizen was wrong, I
| often took upon myself to correct it even. All that doesn't
| help with willingness to help, but like most people, if someone
| asks me for a payment delay, I'll accept it. But wait, I can't
| if this is the third year they ask one! (Or second year in a
| row). I had to go through another software to ask confirmation
| from an unknown person. Except the demand/justification wasn't
| in a mail but in a letter, in that case my manager had to
| handle it. Except she was overworked, so it took weeks, and
| sometimes the 'tax majoration coz not in time' was probably
| sent before the 'yeah, ok for the delay' letter (if you're in
| France and need help with taxes: send emails, not letters).
|
| Most of the rules were probably there for good reasons: data
| separation and anonymity, and probably fraud/corruption
| prevention. That didn't make them good rules.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| My wife works for the federal government of Canada. Her and her
| coworkers are some of the most sincerely interested and
| concerned people I've met, at least as far as their work goes.
| I work with chronic job-hoppers and shiny-thing-chasers. She
| works with people who care deeply about their teams, the
| quality of their work, the health and purpose of their union,
| the sustainability of their organization, the safety of their
| work, etc. They pour so much into it.
|
| I had a thought years ago that the startup I was working for
| would find them laughably inefficient. Yet that startup is dead
| and gone, in part because they put none of the same care,
| intention, and thought into creating something functional and
| sustainable. We often think highly of how we work from first
| principles, move fast and break things, or whatever, but I
| think many of us have lost sight of what having a regular job
| that gradually, yet more certainly, improves the world around
| us looks like.
|
| I do think they should strive to innovate more. I often write
| scripts to automate my wife's work, and it blows my mind how
| little they've invested in exploring what's possible. Yet
| they're one of the best hydrographic offices in the world.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Some of this I think is misjudged - there is an implication that
| people _know_ what they are doing or what their actions '
| consequences are, but do not care about it.
|
| I would argue that for a bunch of things, _people just don 't
| think_.
|
| It's not that they don't care: they've not even reached that
| stage of awareness. They just don't ever get to thinking about if
| what they're doing has any kind of follow-on consequences or
| implications. It doesn't even enter their minds.
|
| I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but as I've grown
| older I think I've learnt that not everyone thinks like I do. I
| guess here on HN and at work we're surrounded by people who are
| ultimately "knowledge workers" who are paid (and selected for)
| their ability to _think_. We 're doing mental gymnastics and
| playing 4D chess against ourselves in our head all day. Meanwhile
| outside of tech, people aren't and there are IMHO lots of people
| who just think in a totally different way. It's like they stop at
| Step 2 or 3 of a linear thought process, but we as tech engineers
| etc are already on Step 7 of a decision tree with multiple
| branches etc even if we don't actively realise we're doing it.
|
| Not saying we're any better/smarter, but we're at least
| implicitly trained and attuned to thinking things through,
| identifying edge cases, defensively coding to handle inevitable
| misuse/issues etc etc. Not everyone thinks like that.
|
| Some stuff though is just experience or lack of it. I never knew
| how much of a pain it can be to push a kids buggy around until a
| did it and I would see sometimes the difference in others when I
| was struggling with one: some people (other parents with older
| kids, grandparents etc) would offer to help or to go out of their
| way to move out of the way etc, while others were blithely
| unaware (as I was!) and just don't realise because they have no
| knowledge or experience of the situation so even with care, they
| just don't know (which is fine - this is why we have schools and
| books etc, to teach people things they don't know). That bike
| lane in the article looks totally fine to me for example - even
| if I think think a whole range of scenarios in my head, I have no
| in-depth knowledge or experience or understand what the problem
| the author of the article is talking about as it looks totally ok
| to me but I only have very simplistic knowledge of riding a bike.
|
| Tl:Dr - not always malicious or deliberate, just a lack of
| awareness and experience.
| spencerflem wrote:
| As an antidote to this, one thing I like to do is notice when
| something is subtly nice.
|
| I've bumped into those little wobly plastic things making a
| narrow turn. Saved me from a scratch.
|
| The lights in my apartment are arranged so its quick to turn them
| all off when walking out the door.
|
| That sort of thing.
|
| One of the best parts of living in society with as much
| specialization as we have is that everything usually has a lot of
| thought beind it. Sadly, that thought is often towards making it
| more extractive and not better for me. But when it does work out
| its such a lovely feeling. That someone out there did this gift
| for me and we will never meet but share this invisible
| connection.
| mc3301 wrote:
| I really enjoyed your comment. Without digging deep into design
| philosophy, it really is a fun practice to try hard to notice
| the things around you (especially in the physical world as
| opposed to digital) that were specifically designed for you in
| mind and have actually positively affected you. Most of them
| were quite intentional, indeed! Isn't that great?
| LastTrain wrote:
| On Vomiting in Dunning-Kruger...
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| As someone who works for a local government bureaucracy - not
| caring is a coping mechanism because if you let every sub-optimal
| thing bother you then you'd just burn out. Very few jobs are
| structured in a way that those directly involved can determine
| how things are done so there is no real value in caring about how
| long a process takes. Where people have some agency you might be
| surprised how much people do care even in relatively low paying
| bureaucratic jobs.
|
| In a similar way, many of us walk past multiple homeless people
| every day. Do you not care about them? Well, in an abstract sense
| yes of course but as there's not a lot you can do about it right
| now you evolve an indifference to it.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Love the analogy and your explanation
| liontwist wrote:
| Why doesn't Japan have this problem?
| GreatGaijin wrote:
| - Culture that prioritizes collective good over individual
| need
|
| - Functioning government
|
| - Competency, skilled engineers
| ks2048 wrote:
| I thought Japan had a reputation for pointless bureaucracy
| (faxing useless paperwork around to get something approved,
| etc).
| M95D wrote:
| Faxing... So very convenient!
|
| We have to personally take the paper orginals to various
| offices around the city, wait hours in a queue, get another
| paper document, go make copies, assemble another folder and
| go to yet another office/institution.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Don't forget when your coworker prints out a memo, asks
| you for edits on the paper, then you go in and edit the
| virtual document.
| unknownsky wrote:
| I hear that in Japanese schools, the kids do most of the
| cleaning, like sweeping, cleaning the boards, taking out
| trash, and cleaning windows. Janitors mostly do building
| maintenance or major jobs.
|
| That must instill the sense that environments that are shared
| collectively are everyone's responsibility. When janitors
| clean up after us, it instills the sense that we can do what
| we want and it's the problem of some lowly person to deal
| with it.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I hear that in Japanese schools, the kids do most of the
| cleaning, like sweeping, cleaning the boards, taking out
| trash, and cleaning windows. Janitors mostly do building
| maintenance or major jobs.
|
| We did this in Catholic grade school. Every week the
| assignments would rotate. The cleaning involved sweeping
| the class floor, washing the chalk board, beating the
| erasers of chalk dust, and pulling the trash bag from the
| can. The janitor took care of the rest like the hallways,
| offices and so on.
|
| Would never happen in a NYC public school as the kids would
| be doing a union job.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| The OP is kind of wrong, because Japan has a different set of
| issues that Nobody Cares about that the OP hasn't understood
| Japan enough in Japan to immediately consider. Ironically,
| one could say that the OP failed to spend 1% longer thinking
| about this part of their claim to imagine that a different
| society might perhaps have different "nobody cares" that are
| not immediately visible to them, before making it.
|
| Japan is infamous for a certain kind of work culture that
| demands being in the office even when it's lot necessarily
| productive to do so; so onerous that it harms domestic life,
| among others.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_company_(Japan)
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment
|
| I can well imagine that the OP would point out to the
| pervasive unproductive work culture, or unnecessarily
| exploitative work culture, and wonder why nobody cares about
| it.
|
| Note that the dynamic of work culture impacting domestic life
| is to such an extent that the government is recently trialing
| arguably drastic measures:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/06/asia/tokyo-
| government-4-d...
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Yes, but the author doesn't care
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| I feel like the article is mostly focused on environments
| around us, so it makes sense to focus on Japan in this
| context. He's not saying it's an entirely flawless country
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > Japan is infamous for a certain kind of work culture that
| demands being in the office even when it's lot necessarily
| productive to do so; so onerous that it harms domestic
| life, among others.
|
| I think that's the opposite. They care too much. That
| collective school cleanup example above has a similar
| extreme. If you literally live to work, you'll forget about
| caring for yourself and collapse.
|
| Tokyo Government just introduced a 4 day work week for its
| workers. You'd be surprised how much friction there has
| been to this, by the workers.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| >Why doesn't Japan have this problem?
|
| Japan has some of these problems. For example: they do not
| care about homeless people. In Japan, I saw a homeless person
| sleeping between two car lanes, amongst some bushes.
| Literally 50cm of space separating cars, and he was lying
| there with his possessions.
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| There were many homeless people on the streets of Tokyo every
| time I went in the 2000s, building little cardboard homes
| every night and taking them down every morning.
|
| If you mean the bureaucracy - every one of my coworkers there
| grumbled about dealing with government morass the same way we
| complain about the DMV here.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Living outside NYC, I'm reminded of both extremes with every
| visit to the city.
| fredphilo wrote:
| this articles has a ton of typos but that reinforces the
| emotional state the author was - an emotional state that i think
| is becoming more and more common. theres an underlying anxiety
| here; the world you grew up in is gone. this is bad and we (the
| author and myself) are not falling victim to nostalgia. all the
| things i interact with are becoming more and more dysfunctional.
| everybody has their answer to whose fault it is, people to blame
| for the fact that things simply don't work anymore, but i think
| an analysis of this "lack of care" or "i just dont dgaf" attitude
| on the part of the workers, the employees of the companies who,
| theoretically, make the USA and similar countries the beacons of
| good living that they appear to be, might be fruitful. i'll
| definitely be thinking about this observation for a while.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I have a feeling this is a very common sentiment as one gets
| older though.
|
| When you live somewhere where wages and costs diverge further
| and further every year, as you get to be 30-40-50-60, etc. you
| feel more and more like the world was better back then
| f4stjack wrote:
| Preach brother. I am in the same boat but in the caring side of
| things. I read e-mails, I respond to them as promptly as I can. I
| read the tickets and contact the users to resolve their issues as
| quickly as I can. I attend to meetings, do the required things
| and long story short, I give two shits about what is going on
| around me.
|
| You know what I get? Additional assumed responsibilities is what
| I get, because I read the goddamn mails sent to the goddamn
| regional IT staff distribution list - I am the "knowledge base".
| If you are naive you might, just might, assume that additional
| responsibilities involve a raise or a title change.
|
| Hell. No.
|
| The final straw was a person got promoted without any interviews
| etc. to a position I am de-facto doing. So you keep the people
| who care in the same position because "they get the job done" and
| you raise the people who doesn't care and the end result is this
| situation.
|
| But hey! KPIs are green, the job gets "done", right? Who cares?
| tolerance wrote:
| I feel like I've been in his shoes before and they tend to run
| you toward running people away from you who do "care"...well they
| may not care about how long it takes a guy to get a shed approved
| or order McDonald's (can a man claim to care who cares to wish to
| expedite his order of _that_?) or that nobody wants to help him
| lace the streets with dog crap sack sticks when they're worried
| about actual human issues like they're well-being, dignity and
| identity.
|
| I'm conflicted by this article. Because I hate most of it,
| because I relate to it.
|
| Institutional gripes are low hanging fruit that are only
| significant in relation to taking care of what's relevant to a
| mundane life but not relevant at all to a life worth living and
| dying over as a man. Maybe a man- _child_ , but not a man.
|
| This reads like "Suicidal Tendencies All I wanted was my Pepsi"
| remixed into Yacht Rock. This is not a rant, but a wining
| pantomime griping over things that a town elder would roll his
| eyes over his grave and take pity on the youthful.
|
| So yeah man, I felt you. I felt you. But I beg Allah that I never
| have to feel where you're coming from again beyond knowing about
| how I once felt myself & the destruction it caused me and the
| disdain it arises from the people who I thought I was just trying
| to help.
| xnx wrote:
| "Nobody Cares [about the things I think they should care about in
| the specific way I think they should]"
|
| The author seems very conscientious and civic minded, but there
| are often unsatisfying explanations for why things are they way
| they are or why people act how they do.
| solatic wrote:
| Everybody has a limit to their capacity To Care About Things.
| It's not fixed in stone, people can care about more things and
| more deeply, but at any given time it's essentially some finite
| capacity. A glass-half-empty mentality (like the author's) is to
| look at everything that people don't care about and despair,
| while a glass-half-full mentality is to look at everything people
| _do_ care about and remain optimistic about our ability to
| inspire people to care _more_.
|
| The classic needs ladder states that first you need to take care
| of yourself, only after which can you take care of your in-group,
| only after which can you take care of your out-group. A lot of
| the process of inspiring others is to first set a good personal
| example, then helping others in such a way that ascribes cultural
| value to paying it forward, i.e. to teach people to fish instead
| of giving them fish. Sadly, this culture had largely dissipated
| in a society where so many people first have so much trouble
| taking care of their own needs. But it can be restored, with some
| optimism and finding people who are receptive to it.
| spencerflem wrote:
| lovely perspective <3
| liontwist wrote:
| Nobody is asking you to care and fix everything. They are
| asking you to care about the things in direct control, like
| your job or kid.
|
| This thread is filled with "I do care but can't because _". And
| yet there are those rare people who do care, and with a little
| bit of preparation and effort make a big difference.
|
| When people start in a new job they go through a tough 3-6 week
| sink or swim experience, and then the skills and approach they
| develop rarely changes. Think about that. Most professionals
| probably have spent 200-300 focused hours of their entire life
| trying to get good at what they do for 40 years.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| > Sadly, this culture had largely dissipated in a society where
| so many people first have so much trouble taking care of their
| own needs.
|
| I have been thinking about this a lot lately, thank you for
| writing this.
|
| I have a pet theory that selling products and services that
| reduce people's ability to look after their own needs (either
| directly or as a side-effect), while marketing that the same
| product actually improves your life is one of the key business
| strategies of our generation.
| johnfn wrote:
| I don't like this post, mainly because I think I don't like the
| attitude behind it. It seems somewhat obvious to me that people
| who do care exist and are out there; all you have to do is go and
| ask people what they care about and you'll get some interesting
| answers. You can choose to view the world as having no one who
| cares, but that seems seems a distorted way of viewing the world.
| And distorted in way that will make you more lonely, since you
| aren't looking for other people like yourself, since you've
| concluded they don't exist.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| The DMV in Seattle is good though...
| dfedbeef wrote:
| It's called the DoL btw. I guess nobody cares about getting
| department names right anymore.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| Believe it or not, there are many super rural places in the US
| where people care because there is such a close knit community
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Maybe I'll retire to one. Will I be welcome as a transgender
| person? How far do I need to drive for tofu? I've been eating a
| lot the last few weeks and I don't want to give it up
| Yen wrote:
| I've lived in Japan for a few months. I was about halfway through
| the article, thinking about how it seemed to be a counter-
| example, before the author called out Japan specifically.
|
| For all the other differences in culture, the attribute of
| "People Actually Care" seems to have a huge impact on how
| pleasant a place it is to visit or live.
|
| I don't know why it seems to be the case there. I don't know how
| to replicate it. I don't think it's magic. I've heard people
| bandy about the theory of cultural homogeneity. That might be a
| _factor_, but I doubt it's the full story.
|
| I suspect if you dig into it, differences in economics are a
| major factor. In the US, it feels like caring is actively
| punished, economically. Caring is nice, but someone can only
| _afford_ to care if their other needs are met.
|
| I also wonder if density is a major factor - not so much for the
| difference in economy of scale, but the difference of "if my
| physical space is incredibly constrained, I'm both more
| incentivized to keep it looking nice, and there's less of it to
| keep looking nice."
|
| And, of course, it's not like Japan is some kind of otherworldly
| utopia. There's serious tradeoffs and differences, there's
| negatives compared to other countries. But it does seem like
| almost everyone, everywhere, just... puts in a bit more effort.
| Takes a little bit more time.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > There's serious tradeoffs and differences, there's negatives
| compared to other countries.
|
| The collectivism of the society which both gives them a public
| sense of ownership of the whole country (thus, the caring),
| also yields crazy bullying in school and work, a high suicide
| rate, and lots of racist and xenophobic attitudes.
|
| Maybe it's changing. It's been a long time since I spent any
| real time in Japan. My buddy who grew up in Tokushima also is
| out of touch with how things are there now. Who knows?
| disambiguation wrote:
| Everyone cares, but:
|
| - everyone has a different idea of what that means.
|
| - many problems can't be solved by one person.
|
| - caring has an opportunity cost.
|
| - caring introduces liability.
|
| - we live in a society.
|
| Caring is a luxury, most people are just trying to survive.
| pestaa wrote:
| Another example of everything is amazing and nobody is happy.
|
| Maybe not everything. And certainly not nobody. But there's so
| much to be grateful for in most people's lives, if we all just
| calibrated our perspectives a little.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Karl Marx talked about alienation -- we are alienated from our
| work, we are alienated from one another, and eventually alienated
| from our humanity.
|
| I disagree with Marx about a lot of things, but I do think that
| this theory makes a lot of sense. As we become increasingly
| mechanistic in our work, we feel less agency. Less control. Less
| attachment to the work. We stop caring about the product.
|
| You can pay people to care, for agile, but ultimately the
| alienation wins. The solution? I'm not sure! Probably several
| possible things, not least of which is probably work that's
| focused on building one's community and helping meet their needs.
| morgengold wrote:
| I tend to agree with the author. But then, look around: a lot of
| stuff works really really well.
| throwaway277432 wrote:
| I care. It's frustrating sometimes, but I still can't help
| myself.
|
| Working with people that also care (and are empowered to do
| something about it) is the greatest thing. I've worked in several
| such teams over the years and it's absolutely awesome.
|
| On the opposite side, working on a team that doesn't is the
| worst.
|
| I've actually been reprimanded by middle managers for caring,
| because caring sometimes takes more time than planned, and an
| arbitrary internal deadline wasn't met. I've come to realize they
| do in fact care, just not about the software but only about their
| own promotion. And the core issue is that they don't actually
| know why their own deadlines and feature requirements exist, they
| just get them handed to them.
|
| This is different when you work closer to and with a customer
| directly. They know exactly what's important and why they need X
| or Y. When someone actually has to deliver results and deal with
| the users, they are more invested in having a working system.
| Here, caring involves finding the "right" person (usually not the
| one in charge), talking to them and figuring out what they really
| need (not want) and how they're using the system.
|
| In such a setting, caring and building stuff that truly works is
| also reflected in performance reviews as everyone including the
| customer is happy.
|
| You really have to pick your battles. I've had to make some
| concessions myself: some stuff turns out to be more complicated
| or unclear than it is at first glance, and sometimes you really
| don't have and can't make time for it. And in really large
| companies, there are sometimes so many people involved that you
| often can't get the answers you need or access to the person you
| need. Or you end up at legal which is more often than not a dead
| end.
| daft_pink wrote:
| I think if you want the closest thing to Japan in the United
| States, consider moving to Hawaii.
|
| Seriously, the cops drive Toyota 4Runners. It's an asian majority
| state.
|
| It might be a good compromise into what you are looking for.
| Fricken wrote:
| >White LEDs reduce car crashes by 0.1% and that is measurable,
| but sleep quality and aesthetics are not measurable. You just
| have to care about them. And nobody cares.
|
| I've always been sensitive to the flicker and broken colour
| spectrum of fluorescent lights, it has been a longstanding "How
| come everyone is so willing to spend all day every day under
| these horrible lights?" type pet peeve.
|
| This guy has a problem with white LEDs and I'm not sure what his
| issue is. He really hates them but didn't explain why. I can't
| empathize, I don't understand.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Also he says that they switched to white LEDs because they
| don't care when they likely switched to save on their electric
| bill.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| From skip-reading, this is not about motivation (intrinsic or
| otherwise) in general. This is about other people not caring
| about you, or what you care about.
|
| I care a great deal about DevEx, and since no one else tends to
| care as much as I do, I can do good work for a few years, but
| then I'm worn out from fighting alone. I move on and hope things
| are more aligned somewhere else. Doesn't mean my co-workers are
| wrong for "not caring", just that I haven't found my peers.
|
| The driver who doesn't let you into her lane perhaps cares deeply
| about not being late, again, to pick up her kids from daycare. Or
| her brother is about to do that stupid thing again, and if she
| doesn't try to stop him, she'll feel bad forever, again. Which
| lane you're in doesn't even register on her list.
| Sammi wrote:
| It's really about culture. The US is high individualism, low in
| long-term orientation, and high in indulgence. The US has a bad
| culture for caring.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensio...
| guelo wrote:
| Republicans want to tear government apart and privatize
| everything. Democrats have big ideas but sacrifice them on the
| altar of protecting public unions. Nobody fights for good
| government. I'm sick and tired of the endless big vs small
| government argument, I want to vote for good effective responsive
| government, good hang for the tax buck whatever it's size.
| bilater wrote:
| The sad game theory result of this is that no one ends up caring
| or comes to the conclusion there is no point of caring. Wonder if
| it is at all possible to reverse it once you fall in this cycle.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I don't care because I honestly believe that caring in a world of
| stupid cunts is not worth the limited time I have on this Earth,
| which I'd rather spend doing things that make me happy, instead
| of being perpetually frustrated and disappointed. There are some
| people who keep pushing out good value despite the frustration
| and I think they're the real heroes, but I'm not a hero myself.
| BTW the society is constructed in such a way that I won't have
| kids so all of you can go fuck yourself once I die.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| This article resonated with me and OP was able to clearly
| articulate what I have been feeling pretty much my entire life.
| It's probably not as extreme as OP makes it sound but it's there.
| Enough to make you feel defeated. The dreaded feeling of "yeah we
| are going to be so f*cked 100 years from now" because no one
| gives a shit. In Japan this feeling transforms into optimism and
| hope because people generally do care and take things seriously.
| It has given me the strength to care and try to do my best. The
| power not be an asshole to the person next to me. The ability to
| see the bigger picture.
| ReDeiPirati wrote:
| I don't have faith that this is something we can fix in the short
| term because most of us have been educated in a very competitive
| environment where individuals come first. I'm not saying that the
| opposite is good either, but we should find a balance in between.
| I also feel like that we are all becoming more disconnected,
| alone, and where the center of gravity is only ourself. Despite
| my premise, I still have some hopes for future generations, but
| unfortunately I think that things will get way worse before
| correcting.
| swed420 wrote:
| > most of us have been educated in a very competitive
| environment where individuals come first
|
| This is definitely intertwined with rampant individualism, but
| I don't think it's just our education or lack thereof that's to
| blame. It's also the environment we're born into and therefore
| never really question where it leads us and why. Century of the
| Self [0] makes an excellent case for where/how things went
| wrong, and we never deviated from this path because capitalism
| and its consumption-first economies would never permit such a
| thing.
|
| For those comparing post-WWII to now, the only real difference
| seems to be capitalism becoming ever more desperate to squeeze
| all remaining profits. Capital concentrates [1] and profits
| continue to trend toward zero as Marx warned they would. It's a
| fundamental contradiction built into capitalism that has yet to
| be addressed except for by those few who are already
| disproportionately benefiting from the arrangement at everyone
| else's expense.
|
| Consider how the average baby boomer was treated by their
| company of employment compared to the average worker in the
| 21st century. Employers now make it painfully obvious that
| everybody is disposable, and the only thing that matters are
| the metrics tied to their own compensation, no matter how
| disconnected that is from producing results that are actually
| good for society. The workers are all incentivized to become
| back-stabbing careerist wolves fighting and hoarding secrets
| instead of cooperating to build actual Good Things. The best
| way to get a raise is to jump ship to another company. Etc.
|
| Given all of the above, it'd be very strange if we _didn 't_
| end up in the hellscape that we are currently in.
|
| [0] https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/
|
| [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-
| managers-h...
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > we never deviated from this path because capitalism and its
| consumption-first economies would never permit such a thing.
|
| While I haven't read Century of the Self, I will say that
| most of East Asia outside of China and NK are fiercely
| capitalistic. Ads are everywhere and obvious. There's a huge
| focus on consumption and status. There's generally much
| looser restrictions on zoning, gambling, and prostitution
| than the West. And yet the cultures continue being a lot more
| collective and understanding of their fellow person. South
| Asia is less capitalistic (having transitioned from more
| socialistic modes of economic organization somewhat
| recently), but is still quite capitalistic.
|
| I think capitalism might _exacerbate_ this in the West but it
| is fundamentally a Western problem. Most of East and South
| Asia still operates on an extended family model where there
| 's an expectation that when a person or a family is having a
| hard time they take resources from their family and when
| they're in a position to do well they give resources to their
| struggling family members. Lots of extended families have
| family members who are ... problematic. Many of these folks
| have gambling issues, can't hold down jobs, have mental
| health problems, etc. But families support them. They never
| really thrive but they usually have food, shelter,
| companionship, and understanding around them. I think this
| creates a level of empathy that's just absent from Western
| society.
|
| My partner and I are Asian but we have caucasian friends.
| Many of our caucasian friends will cut off problematic family
| members immediately. Indeed a lot of caucasians I know are
| very quick to cut people they don't like or who don't align
| with their values out of their life. This culture of
| individual supremacy is what I think really plagues the west
| which used to at one time have a less individualistic nature
| and now finds its hyper atomization eating away at the
| foundations of its societies.
| cafard wrote:
| The Maryland DMV used to be quite efficient. Once, having mislaid
| my driver's license (at my mother-in-law's, 100 miles away), I
| drove to the Wheaton DMV, and was out within 20 minutes with a
| new license.
|
| This was about two years before 9/11, after which a whole lot of
| rules came down about verifying one's identity, and the DMV then
| crawled.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Japanese culture might have the impression of caring but if you
| get to spend more time there it's all a face . People are people
| and they don't care. The magical city the author wants is
| something you need to create and fight to maintain. It's not out
| there waiting for you. The smaller the town the easier it is to
| accomplish. You aren't gonna change Seattle and certainly not New
| York City.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Japanese culture might have the impression of caring but if you
| get to spend more time there it's all a face act. On the surface
| they pretend to care but well, People are people and they don't
| care. The magical city the author wants is something you need to
| create and fight to maintain. It's not out there waiting for you.
| The smaller the town the easier it is to accomplish. You aren't
| gonna change Seattle and certainly not New York City.
| joeyagreco wrote:
| > I want to live in a community where everyone cares.
|
| This summarizes the whole thing quite well.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Has the author been tested for ADHD? Not that people with ADHD
| are the only ones that care. They just care really hard about all
| the little things, and have a really hard time switching it off
| for their own benefit.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| What you're describing sounds more like OCPD than ADHD to me
| from-nibly wrote:
| I mean that's in the anxiety disorder family so it probably
| bleeds between both.
| alganet wrote:
| > They just care really hard about all the little things
|
| Maybe they just care and the world has become an endless
| distracting sea of little things that get in the way.
|
| I mean, there's a lot of people trying to shift others
| attentions to little things, like ego.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| The author should really move to Japan if they're so impressed.
| Then they'll get to find out what things in Japan no-one gives a
| shit about, and the shine will wear off.
| myheartisinohio wrote:
| Nihilism is a cancer on the western psyche.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I care about the work I do.
|
| Just sayin'.
|
| Of course, I'm kind of outside the "incentive system," so I do it
| for different reasons.
|
| Yes, it's frustrating, when I encounter obvious "Person didn't
| care" stuff. Sometimes, it infuriates me, but usually, it helps
| me to feel that I need to care more about my own work.
|
| I'm not sure that I buy that every example given is a "Person
| didn't care" instance. I feel that personal values may play a
| part, in interpreting the work.
|
| Also, when you run large organizations/municipalities, small
| numbers become big numbers, quite easily, and you are often
| serving folks with very different priorities. Can't make everyone
| happy. Often, unfortunately, people decide to make the weakest
| people unhappy.
|
| Want people to care? Incentivize them. That's not just money.
| Treat the people (and their work) better. Hire and promote good
| managers. Stand up to unreasonable demands from above, etc.
| csours wrote:
| Whatever your locality is, there are existing opportunities to
| volunteer. Even if you don't particularly care about whatever
| that organization does, it's a great place to meet people who
| care, and they usually care about more than one thing. Maybe ask
| them about mutual aid.
|
| ---
|
| There is a very real danger in being too helpful in some
| organizations. I was too helpful and I got looks from my
| coworkers. People would call and ask for me specifically, which
| pissed them off.
|
| In some organizations being too helpful is threatening to the
| boss. Are you trying to take their job?
|
| ---
|
| Another problem is the legacy mudball - it's not just for source
| code. The sidewalk fix that would cost less than $1000 in
| materials may wind up costing $100,000 after bubbling through all
| the required layers. The layers are there because of very real
| historical failings, but they create failures NOW. It's hard to
| build things now because of 'the sins of the father'.
|
| ---
|
| You can't fix bureaucracy all at once - it's not one thing, and
| it has many different causes.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42645391
| charlie0 wrote:
| After all thay griping, this last bit really stuck out at me.
|
| >We're not going to move to Japan, but would absolutely be
| willing to move within the US.
|
| Let me finish it for him.
|
| >I just don't care (enough).
|
| As for me, I'm looking forward to visiting Japan.
| auggierose wrote:
| That bike lane ending might be so because it forces you to slow
| down. You are not supposed to crash into unsuspecting pedestrians
| when the bike lane ends. You should actually stop and get off the
| bike at this point.
| highfrequency wrote:
| Sometimes people don't care, but often they are just unaware
| because there is no mechanism for feedback to make its way to
| them after they have designed the thing. Whoever designed that
| bike ramp probably designed a thousand other road features and
| lives many miles away; he knows none of the visceral details that
| you see every day in your specific corner of the universe.
| frotty wrote:
| 100% of the people around me at work care.
|
| I wish they didn't, because they're bad at their job and "them
| caring" puts them as a peer for experts and people who both care
| AND are competent/experienced via design by committee and
| inclusion. Their incompetency is explained away as "unique point
| of view."
|
| So perhaps the entire piece is an exercise in overgeneralization,
| where you assume that everyone has a baseline amount of
| competency. That curb could have been designed by a very caring
| intern, who is awful at what they do. They were managed by
| someone who had 100 other deadlines that are more important. They
| care about that curb, but they care about 100 other things with
| more priority.
|
| We're in the era of Good Enough.
|
| I find it's an impossible thought experiment to judge doing 100
| things Good Enough is better/worse than doing 1 thing perfectly
| and ignoring 99 other things.
|
| There is a massive difference between actively not caring and
| passively omitting attention.
|
| Peppered into the diatribe is direct, aggressive, not caring. But
| that doesn't validate the general stance.
|
| Make a consultancy called Caring Company that makes
| companies/products/projects more efficient at same or less cost.
|
| My institution has hired multiple consultancies to fix structures
| and form new ones... the entropy of pay grade and how to
| prioritize thousands of tasks in parallel doesn't "get solved"
| because someone finds that some employee is just bad at what they
| do. And what do you do when you find you can only hire those
| employees because you don't pay enough for better, because your
| products' incomes don't match the skill level required?
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