“I fight for the user” has been lurking in the hindbrains of so many tech workers since the Tron years, somehow nestling comfortably alongside of the idea that “I don’t need a union, I’m a temporarily embarrassed founder.”
Oof. I don’t like this sentence, because I’m in it.
I feel like the entire US engineering industry is in it. My Swedish and German colleagues all have unions. One of my coworkers tried explaining to a Swede the other day how we have the “right to work” 😂😂 I was so embarrassed for him.
I don’t get it, what does “a temporarily embarrassed founder” mean?
It’s a combination of “temporarily embarrassed future billionaire” with the (mostly mythical) “garage software business founder”.
Many software programmers (including me) spent the first decade of our careers sure we would produce a world-shaking program in our garage, and then found a company to scale it to the world.
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (source)
Oof. I don’t like this sentence, because I’m in it.
I feel like the entire US engineering industry is in it. My Swedish and German colleagues all have unions. One of my coworkers tried explaining to a Swede the other day how we have the “right to work” 😂😂 I was so embarrassed for him.
Hey it’s you, the reason I fucked off from IT 22 years ago. Things are going exactly as I imagined
I don’t get it, what does “a temporarily embarrassed founder” mean?
It’s a combination of “temporarily embarrassed future billionaire” with the (mostly mythical) “garage software business founder”.
Many software programmers (including me) spent the first decade of our careers sure we would produce a world-shaking program in our garage, and then found a company to scale it to the world.
It’s a reference to this quote:
Edit: apparently the original John Steinbeck quote was:
“i would totally be a founder right now if it weren’t for [excuse xyz]”
Damn bro, you ain’t pitching the next disruptive idea to VC parasites?!?!
Fucking pleb