@aral

Valley tech bro billionaire infatuation was *such* a distraction, we lost a decade.

@aral I was just joking with someone about this the other day. My software was used by movements all over the world to rally and organize for justice. I only was able to get out of debt and find some retirement savings when I took a left turn into VC-funded startups for a while.

And now here I am in non profit open source, and, well, those savings were fun to have while they lasted.

Not that I did it for the money. But still.

@aral I think it’s the same in all industries, you can’t make good money simply by good will😮‍💨

Even in big NGO you can earn more than you do some good business to the poor

@aral
But the open source coders also have time to grow legumes and tubers and explore microdosing...
@BigAngBlack

@aral I mean, were things ever different?

@aral This hits incredibly close to home for me.

That's exactly why i quit my job. I want to build _something_ that gives people the opportunity to be creative without being beholden to an exploitative system rotten to the core.

I think it's possible. Perhaps i want to believe it's possible. But if its not, then it's still worth doing.

I am so fucking pumped to be in these conversations. ✊

@aral I'd also add that most of those companies force employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) & Intellectual Property Agreements (IPAs) that badly limit their ability to participate in the libre software community beyond those projects for which they're specifically paid.

It's also awkward when their corporate social media policies police employee speech to the point that using their IRL name online just isn't worth the risk anymore.

@aral I think it’s the same crisis all over though. Mega corporations leading to cog-in-the-machine jobs. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/09/gen-z-lazy-girl-jobs-tiktok-work

@aral I feel this. "Do no harm" has been the bare minimum for my tech career, and it has been challenging. Opportunities are out there, but rare. One of my main goals is to find ways to create more opportunities for like-minded tech workers.

@aral When I talk about this problem with some of my (non-tech) acquaintances I can see them struggling to not yell at me something like "fucking spoiled brat, just suck it".

"Normies" are also clearly at fault for this clusterfuck when they not only do nothing to fix it or prevent it, but also prefer to attack those who oppose it.

@aral 💗

@aral there are alternatives and it's a good time to get creative about them

@aral part of the problem is that work outside large firms or vc-funded startups isn't valued by donors or the media. The director of a tech for "social good' program once told me I didn't have "experience working on real projects" because I hadn't worked for Google (despite their recruiters' best efforts).

@aral

I must respectfully disagree here:

I love hippie-dippy crap for the common good, BUT it needs a workable business model OR it gets taken over by parasites.

The EditPad guy made it work: free edition for regular users, paid edition for superusers at desk jobs.

https://www.editpadlite.com/

@aral it sucks, but that's life. If your goal is money, then you're forced to work with even greedier people.

Is there even any open source, human-right conscious tech companies that can guarantee you a nice house and the same level of stability as Google/Facebook?

@aral tech isn't the only field like this... Almost all of them are.

@aral When society as a collective decides that our purpose as humans is to struggle to survive, we get to where we are.

@aral I don't think it's ever been otherwise. The open source movement more or less grew out of the academic class, which is a vanishingly-small ivory tower of "People who get paid to think." Everyone else gets paid to do something concrete for someone, so it's no surprise that there's no money in just open source software.

@aral if you really want to sell your soul, there's always "fintech"

@aral Back in the day, we didn't expect to get paid for free software development, but we did expect to be left alone and not harassed, sued, or arrested for the public service that we provided. As it turned out, even that was too much to ask for.

@aral Security software for the government or even corporations seems like decent work that's all I can come up with though.

@aral one of the best career paths still is, and has been for the past few decades, is to start with IT consultancies of the world, get a good real world exposure, get beaten into some core SDLC processes, work with decent solutions and platforms (cloud, enterprise, foss, anything) and discipline, then go explore the world as you see fit.

Not sure what exactly you want to say and to whom with that message….

@aral or you can write some bs proposal and get blood money from some state department fund to promote "freedom"where they don't like the current government.

Jesus, are the replies depressing.

Ok, the post lacks a bit of context if you haven't been reading what @aral@mastodon.ar.al was posting the past few days but still...

The man hopes to see you say "Fuck Capitalism" and show some semblance of intellectual support.

One of them straight up said to work security for the government. Jesus F. Christ

@aral screwing people over is damn good money. Privatize the wins, socialize the losses.

@aral the war class have 200 years.

@aral How exactly would you propose to solve this problem? You want to have money, but you also want to work on software "for the common good", who is going to pay for that?

@aral I think people can work on things towards democracy outside all of those bubbles when they scope the problem well and experiment with a simple solution. things do not have to foss or anything, just software that might be useful to people out there. Careers are dead-ends, capitalism is imploding.. just make something useful while you can.my anon p2p jam is at http://atacama.rocks

@aral As I like to say, innovation is no longer by chance, but by finance.

#HumanRights #tech #surveillanceCapitalism

@aral govt contracting was a happy medium for me. 10+ years bldg the software to process Refugees into the US

@aral

What do you mean by suffer? Not make six figures? I did plenty of "hippie-dippie crap for the common good" as do lots of colleagues I know, and made a living. Google/Meta/Oracle living - no, but a decent one.

@aral I'm a librarian. I teach in a university, in a newly-created division where the department I teach in was thrown in willy-nilly with CS and Stats.

DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED on how industry-controlled the division and its top brass are. It's MADDENING.

@aral This resonates even from over here on the marketing/content side of things. Sure you can work for a nonprofit, but they'll expect you to do the jobs of four or five people for a "salary" that only someone with a trust fund, or a partner working at Google, can live on.

@aral Right now America is running on two things …… GREED and STUPIDITY !!!

@aral I gave up on software and computer engineering because of this. I tried to find something but couldn't, and didn't have the financials to go into open source and start a company or product, although I'd love to work in a co-op, for example 😊