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. Add a token / currency to the mix, costs + returns on investment. And now you have something substantial to judge.
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?
I would argue that incompetence is a form of not caring.
It means that one just does, maybe even more then necessary because one doesn’t actually understand what their responsibilities are. And to be not detected it’s better to seem very busy and very caring.
Maybe some fraction of incompetent interns are playing a kind of double game, where they merely pretend to be really caring.
But I doubt that’s the norm. There really are a lot of not so smart people of all ages out there in positions way beyond their actual capability.
Edit: And in a lot of situations the dumb and hard working are way more dangerous than the smart and lazy.
With the dumb and lazy being somewhat better, so I partially agree with the parent.
In my 15 years, I’ve had a lot of interns, and a lot of indirect interaction with other interns. I can usually spot a genuine one in about a day at this point.
The "era of good enough" here really resonates with me, I've been in product and people mgmt and there's a lot of tension between "optimal amount of quality for the business" vs "optimal amount of quality for the user", esp in B2B or other contexts where the user isn't necessarily the buyer. The author sort of blows off "something something bad incentives" but IMO that is the majority of it.
On top of that, people have genuinely different preferences so what seems "better" for a user to one person might not to another.
And then on top of that, yeah, some people don't care. But in my experience w/ software engineers at least, the engineers cared a lot, and wanted to take a lot of pride in what they built, and often the people pushing against that are the mgmt. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes not, that whole thing can get very debateable.
> The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the programmer, the executives. None of these people care.
I was working in this space! And I got fired for refusing to work on more upsell features for clients like Coca Cola and such.
I don't want to work on adding fucking ADS into checkout. That is fucked up.
My spouse bought us kindles recently, and it popped in my head today that at some point e-books are going to have ads interspersed…
There are kindle alternatives. Luckily the technology isn't that advanced and any/all of them pretty much MUST support a general PDF (or whatever other similar format). You might have to manage your own library a bit but that means you can just use these devices completely offline
I think e-readers are not that high on the list of technologies most at risk to be taken over by ads
if you don't, someone else will. Maybe you could've introduced a "bug" that makes it so it usually doesn't work except when a member of the QA team is looking at it :P
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.
Love the analogy and your explanation
Why doesn’t Japan have this problem?
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.
I asked myself the same question when I saw exactly 1 homeless person in all of Tokyo.
There has been a global trend to decommission psychiatric hospitals. Japan didn’t follow suit, and today has 10x the beds per capita compared to the US.
This is balanced by the fact that it’s much harder to commit someone against their will in the US.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/japans-homeless-population/#:....
>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.
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.
> 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.
I thought Japan had a reputation for pointless bureaucracy (faxing useless paperwork around to get something approved, etc).
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.
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.
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...
> 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.
They care about the wrong things. Ultimately everyone cares about something and then there is tons of things no one or that anybody doesn't care from simply because you have limited amount of possible care to give.
Yes, but the author doesn't care
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
- Culture that prioritizes collective good over individual need
- Functioning government
- Competency, skilled engineers
With:
- A declining population
- Rural collapse
- Stagnating economy
- Shut in problem for old people
Like most cultures, Japan gets some stuff right and some stuff wrong. It's not perfect. Certainly not to say US culture couldn't improve by adopting some aspects.
Living outside NYC, I’m reminded of both extremes with every visit to the city.
This is a really uninformed article that comes off as just plain whiny. Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.
I hired a contractor once, who was a fantastic one. We were designing some changes to one of our rooms, and he had a proposal that would have made for some interesting, yet unfortunate corners in one of our rooms. It would have been more annoying and more expensive, but I don't think for one minute that it was because they didn't care.
They just didn't live in the space, they didn't spend enough time sitting in the problem to appreciate other solutions. I however had, and when I presented them with a cleaner solution, they ruminated on it for a bit and loved it. Saved a ton of time and money, and the end solution was better.
All it took was a conversation, and building a shared understanding of the needs and possibilities.
Ha. The traffic curb example is actually a good one. I don’t think it’s an excuse to build a potentially dangerous ramp because you aren’t a cyclist yourself. People who design ramps should be capable to do it properly.
Imagine it were a ramp for wheelchairs and they would have decided that a 20 degree slope is doable.
> isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.
But this is exactly the "don't care" attitude. Ignore the specifics of the problem, avoid studying it or just giving it a thought. Didn't think that, not being a cyclist themselves, they should ask somebody who is. Didn't even think about very obvious things, like putting a warning sign ahead of the actual object that it would warn about.
No. That person did not care. Really sad.
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.
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.
The move fast and break things mantra, at least in my estimation, was always about not being fearful of trying new things. The things that break on the way were always going to break in the long run with enough changes accrued over time anyway. Implicit is an assumption that the things that were breaking were the most dysfunctional, or most restrictive parts, of incumbent systems of work or thought. Moving fast for the sake of moving fast, or for the sake of breaking things, was never the goal. It became a slogan of misplaced pride aimed at making movement the goal. At least that’s how I feel about that era.
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.
Also external people don’t generally know or understand all the constrains that led to decisions that are suboptimal (for the person complaining).
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.
There are many problems with individual ownership though. It is a whole large system where people constantly change. You need to have multiple owners and redundancy otherwise all the projects are dependent on one individual who might quit any time. Things happen in the past, people make mistakes and you start to incorporate processes to avoid it because people are and will always be imperfect, you end up with thise processes and bureaucracy.
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!!!
And playing PoE!
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.
In the hypothetical world where Im the Supreme Leader, there are crack teams of sharpshooters that who get placed around randomly selected grocery store parking lots dealing out summery justice to people that dont return their shopping carts.
Sounds terrible!
At least the benevolent supreme leader cares! Just look at the corpses!
Does anyone have the time to care anymore? I searched for "time" in the comments and found a few unrelated hits.
Good enough is going to be the output when nobody has the time or people's time isn't valued.
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.
> 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.
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.
lovely perspective <3
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, lives many miles away, and never communicates with the people that handle injury reports; he knows none of the visceral details that you see every day in your specific corner of the universe.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you Swedish? Just wondering because I've never seen the gender neutral pronoun "hen" in English.
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.
I don't want to see employees running in the direction of hot fat, thanks.
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'.
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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
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.
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?
Classic CEO. "How can you, the powerless IC, fix an organisational problem? No, I mean without me having to do anything meaningful or risky"
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.
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?
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.
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?
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).
100% correct.
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.
Definitely a cultural problem where any sort of flaw is punished. We definitely need to root that out if we are to come together.
He's really talking about aesthetics (the philosophy of beauty) and how we lost the ability do admire beautiful things. The only means we have to assess & debate merit are quantitative (and lossy) so the grotesque dominates.
There are a couple exceptions about apathetic doctors and degrading community, but most of his examples are complicated and ugly things (McDonalds app, the bike ramp, dog mess , etc)
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Given the design, looks like the rider will definitely be getting off the bike one way or the other.
> We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will, defeats armies of people who don't care.
The interesting part of this article and the comments this site have produced is this statement and the fact you’ve all either ignored it or just accepted it as fact.
You’re all part of the problem.
Bloggers mention Musk like they do Trump to politicize their writing for some stupid reason. Ignoring it isn't part of any problem. Starting a flame war over it is.
[delayed]
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.
Please never give up the fight against entropy. We can keep the flame alive a little longer.
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.
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?
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.
Sorry, but it’s in German: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/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.
> „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.
I used to care so much 10 years ago. I didn't have to factor the state of the world or society into all my decision. I trusted society fully like I trusted air.
Now I feel like the boiling frog and I only trust a handful of people. I don't trust the system. I don't trust that it's fair. I feel like being honest is harming my survival odds.
Imagine you have to live in North Korea... Your awareness of how that society operates can make it challenging to sing your praises to your dear leader.
I really hope things change. I live outside the US and it feels like we get the worst of everything. It's as though the political machinations which used to take place in Africa to keep the people poor has spread on to parts of the western world in a slightly different form. In Africa, the environment is about artificial deprivation of resources and rights; in the west, it's about deprivation of opportunities.
In Africa, the goal is to deprive people of resources and rights; to allow corporate monopolies to exploit their labor as much as possible. In the west, the goal is to deprive people of opportunities to prevent them from competing against monopolies.
I thought about this the other day and came up with a theory that people _do_ care if the thing they are doing has their name associated with it for everyone to see (in theory).
Edit: And sometimes, it's just the tragedy of the commons
I agree 100% with the comment about the McDonald's food ordering system. It is legitimately the worst of all the major fast-food chains. It is slow, ad-heavy, and there are certain things that you cannot order.
When I know what I want, I order at the counter, which is faster and there's never a queue because everyone else is using the kiosk. There isn't a cashier waiting but you just stand there and somebody will stop to take your order pretty quickly.
I wonder if it’s really about not caring or rather optimizing for perverse incentives or just lack of competency.
> 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.
Most complaints I hear about the DMV are just about long lines.
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.
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
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"?
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.
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.
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"
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!
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.
Maybe I'm just not American, but I've never had to go at all, it's just a bizarre TV/movie thing.
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 200€ and then tens more for showing them paperwork new one was ordered...
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
I've always been perplexed and dumbfounded by this to the point where it had a really bad effect on my life because I just couldn't believe that it's happening, in a sense my life was on hold. I couldn't believe that people don't understand the simplest things in life, that my own parents or brother or friends don't seem to care at all. I grew up with them at the same time after all, it didn't make sense to me. Even back in school when we were clearly not learning anything and the whole system was a joke, nobody said anything. Nobody cared. To me it was obvious that it can't be an IQ problem, they are human and go through the same systems as me and it doesn't even require intelligence to understand. What I ended up realizing much later is that people intentionally don't care and they intentionally make an effort not to know better. It's an optimization strategy that people develop consciously and subconsciously so that they don't have to do any more work, don't run into more risk, don't offend etc. They literally just give up while outwardly keeping up the pretense of caring.
I noticed the same thing that the article writer noticed: You can point out obvious problems to the exact person responsible for them and they will agree with you and later they still don't fix it. They just don't care, it's like you mentioned some geographical fact about a town in South Africa to them. A normal person would call this psychopathic behavior but now it's the human norm. I decided to cut people out of my life that don't care [about anything except themselves] because obviously there is just no point in interacting with them. To be honest, that's almost everyone in society. They are self benefit machines, hyper optimized for their own wellbeing. Fine, be a machine then but don't be surprised when I recognize you for what you are and I don't start playing tetris where the only outcome is benefit for you.
It's also sad how even in this thread on hackernews almost everyone disagrees with the author and they keep claiming that people do care about some stuff and it's okay and we are all human after all and so on. I want to emphasize: You aren't supposed to have to care about everything. But some people do in fact have jobs and specific duties and they are paid to care about them and still don't do it.
Nihilism is a cancer on the western psyche.
Nihilism is cynicism with a turbo button
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, folks 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. If you are an "above" person, then don't be insecure. Let the people under you, stand up to you, if you are being unreasonable. It really doesn't hurt as much as you might think. You always have the power to force your will, anyway, but I found that it was a good idea to listen to my employees.
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.
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...
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.
> 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...
> 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.
By “nobody cares”, I think they mean “not everyone shares my exact priorities”.
I see this rant against the exact way a bike lane was installed- installed because someone cared ALOT to get it approved and built- and all they can think to do is complain?
The world is a complex place full of trade-offs and compromises, I feel for the people that worked so hard to get this project done.
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.
I’ll care - for money.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Really depends on the context. And the rule. Some rules are stupid, some situations have no rules but "expectations" ("Have it your way" is a famous slogan arguably perverted by reasoning for a few people). The rules could be made for powertripping reasons or safety reasons.
I wonder if this is how Karen logic works, black and white thinking with no sense of proportion.
Those aren’t Karens, they’re all Jessicas
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.
How would a better solution to the bike lane cost more tax or worsen situation for drivers?
Don't let the bastards grind you down.
Too late. Too many bastards. Too much grinding.
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
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.
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.
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.
>Our government has let go of its principles, because no one in charge could be bothered to give a fuck.
Oh they care... about money. We're being sold out but keep re-electing the same perpetrators simply because "it's better than the other person".
Meanwhile a third of our country is a mix of "not caring" or legitmately unable to keep dates in mind and find a poll booth to vote. Who knows how things would change if voting was compulsory, as was receiving a ballot in the mail.
> 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.
Just wait until you try to speak up and get destroyed. Why do you think folks don’t speak up?
so… the fear of speaking up should lead to staying silent? what exactly are you advocating for here
It's human nature. You don't put your hand into a fire because early in your childhood, you learned the consequences of those actions.
>what exactly are you advocating for here
Nothing really. Bad people do bad things to keep good people down. figure out how to prevent that.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
it's a chain of broken windows. Their employers should care about making sure the primary interface with business cares. But they don't. So it goes down the chain until we simply say "7/11 is a sad place to be"
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.
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"
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.
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.
> 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?
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".
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.
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.
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
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!
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...)
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.
When I said OP I meant theamk
You’ve been making commits for four months?
Check the github for a repo named PlatformHistory. I pruned it 4 months ago and broke up the whole monorepo into subrepos
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.)
See also: Zombocom problem [0]
Downvoted because this is off topic and should be on a proper Show HN, not in a random thread.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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]
Okay, I now care passionately about each and everything I do. The bike ramp still sucks. What now?
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.
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.
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.
It's cultural. Japan and Asian in general is a lot more conformist and taught to care about the larger society. Huge contrast of the individualism of US enforcing "hustle culture" and "dog eat dog world".
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/...
>Which set of tradeoffs would you rather live under?
I'll take the one that doesn't lay me over every year to hit record profits, thanks. There's degrees of not caring and the US is very far on the "you are just a number" peg. The fake drinking parties at least try to make me feel involved.
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
Those are a lot of very wrong assumptions. Salaries aren't US level but more than liveable because even most non-tokyo housing is perfectly reasonable. The economny is stagnant (and now recessionary) but they have a decent amount of safety nets. They don't need to worry about walking to work one day to be locked out or being in debt if they collapse (yes, there are some very dark work patterns to "lay off", but you won't suddenly have zero salary next month).
>I'd much rather have a family than have store clerks obsses about serving me.
Okay, the US has neither. So...
>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
These are small micro-behaviors, not a larger mindset. Even a rich tourist would notice the difference between someone taking your ticket for an orcheastra and going to a corner store in Japan.
I don't think they are wrong assumptions. Japan has higher suicide rates, lower rate of having kids, and on and on.
And like I said, obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average Japanese person doesn't benefit from these things because the average Japanese person lives in a cramped, barely livable closet-sized apartment in a huge city where costs are probably not close to wages
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.
There are an infinite number of things to care about (which is to say, to spend resources on, because that's what caring about something actually means), a finite amount of resources allocated to everyone except about 6 people who have a practically infinite amount of resources, and a social organization system that revolves around getting as much of those resources as possible and nothing else. What you're looking at is the real end product of "there is no such thing as society, only the individual and the family" neoliberalism. It's not just that no one cares, it's not even that no one has answered the question "Why should I care?". It's that the majority of people simply cannot care.
> I want to live in a community where everyone cares.
This summarizes the whole thing quite well.
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.
> 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.
What you’re describing sounds more like OCPD than ADHD to me
I mean that's in the anxiety disorder family so it probably bleeds between both.
I want to live in a community where everyone cares.
Trust me: You don't. You'd go insane.
See for example everyone who has to live with an HOA.
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?
Is that what caring about people in your community looks like? Or some kind of property value paranoia and sense of control.
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.
This is largely a political problem, I'd start there
That's Japan.
Eh, Japan is mostly a place where everyone is afraid to not ‘be Japanese’. It can be quite stressful.
Believe it or not, there are many super rural places in the US where people care because there is such a close knit community
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
>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.
Also he says that they switched to white LEDs because they don't care when they likely switched to save on their electric bill.
I tend to agree with the author. But then, look around: a lot of stuff works really really well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 naivé 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?
The DMV in Seattle is good though...
It's called the DoL btw. I guess nobody cares about getting department names right anymore.
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.
I read the blog post feeling the author's rage, but your insight is far more important. Humanity's collective goodwill is stifled by friction and inertia while moneyed interests are given jetpacks.
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.
I care. Title busted.
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.
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Wait till you discover India and goverment.
On Vomiting in Dunning-Kruger…
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.
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.
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.
I gather that the worth of this piece lies in relating and resolving not to follow the author’s lead.
For sure
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.
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.
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.
> the amount of pressure put on the average worker and their family in the US.
Broken windows. To use his example with bikes: the firms didn't care enough to allow the engineer to properly angle that entrance to the sidewalk. The engineer didn't care to push back because they were underpaid and things are getting more expensive at home. Things get more expensive because landlords are taking advantadge of the situation to jack up prices, because no regulation cared enough to stop that (or worse, regulation cared about money more and landlords "donated" to him to sway their ruling).
This apathy is a virus that spreads. At some point it becomes hard to figure out where it started. It's just this fog that seemingly always existed.
>You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never deliver new features?
I don't get paid to deliver features. If that bug is really critical enough I may push back on it.
Or I simply realize it's above my paygrade, don't care, leave a paper trail down the line for when they inevitably blame me, and do what I'm told like a proper worker.
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.
Everyone has a breaking point and negativity bias makes the awful stuff pile on quicker.
Put it another way: Things are getting worse for more people. It may still be "amazing" for most people, but the ones next to the metaphorical "awful" line see it creeping. So it can feel very arrogant when someone a mile out says "why aren't you happy, it's great" as you see the line start to take your amazing things.
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
>Or he cares to avoid the potential interactions with law enforcement that would result from such ridiculousness.
uhh, yes? What was the point of this ridiculous metaphor you yourself created?
>The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest affections of the heart are selfish
It's a bit more basic than that. If people aren't happy they care less, because their senses dull to focus only on survival and not assisting one's community.
A lot of people are unhappy these days.
Everybody cares, but not enough to make a difference