Or… heart me out, maybe it’s because Elon knows they have the most to loose and are thus more likely to do whatever he wants to not get kicked out of the country.
Elon made some statements that made his disdain for the “laptop class” quite clear. He is no saint, or genius. He’s mostly just an extremely ruthless smart man.
Sure, that is also a possible (even likely) explanation. As I said, I don't defend Musk - my opinion of him is quite low and is getting lower and lower. Just wanted to point out the trouble with the argument. Anyway.
He has finally showed the world his true self. I am happy about that - I don't want another capitalist sanctified for being a genius, which he is not. The more this becomes clearer the better for everyone.
Your response to that problematic event seems like dealing with trauma and some of the words you use like “our society has become […] significantly more feminized” seem to indicate some of those issues are still unresolved.
While I appreciate that you turned this into a positive, I don’t think violence and tough love is something we should promote, celebrate or even tolerate as a society.
Here is a crazy thought: how about we strive to create a space where everyone feels valid as they are, where they feel that have a space where they can contribute, rather than make people feel like they have to toughen up in order to “take charge” or forcefully “making space” for themselves by forcing others to follow their will.
The guy hitting you was not an appropriate response, neither is you possibly disrupting class by cracking jokes. The solution is communication and respect. Getting buff and letting a culture of “boys will be boys” prevail is not.
Why do you think that people "as they are" are the best thing for society to have? What about the people who are violent and employ tough love, as they are? Should they feel valid too?
Your premise of "everyone feels valid as they are" written directly alongside "[we should not promote] violence and tough love" betrays the contradiction. What you actually mean is we should strive for everyone to change themselves to be feminized and noncompetitive, and the people who are already this way should feel valid.
"The solution [to dealing with a bully] is communication and respect" is not based in reality. No bully has ever responded to communication. What they do respond to, and what society responds to, because we have had it ingrained in our brain stems for millions of years, is masculinity and assertiveness, backed by a (perceived) threat of violence. I'm sorry that you don't like this, but it cannot and I argue should not be changed, short of chemically poisoning everyone's testosterone levels with microplastics.
My statement on the feminization of society doesn't come from trauma. Global testosterone levels have been dropping for decades[1]. You can see it in old pictures: men were less fat, more competitive, and happier. Rates of sex and relationships among men and young boys have dropped precipitously.
Speaking anecdotally, I feel most fulfilled when I embrace my masculine side and focus it on positive pursuits. Competition, pursuit of status, and power can all be good things if focused. This event unlocked that in me and helped me live a more fulfilled life I'm the long run.
In fact, your response is exactly what I'm talking about. Productive masculine behavior is shamed nowadays. That's sad to me.
> Productive masculine behavior is shamed nowadays
Can you list some examples for that? It just doesn't match my experience. When people complain about masculine behavior, it's never the productive kind.
Jumping at the opportunity to lead and fighting (figuratively) to spar with the instructor first seems like behavior that some would find heroic and others would find unfair. (note that boys that behave this way in elementary school are mostly advised to take medication to calm down and behave like their female classmates).
They say Ritalin is prescribed primarily for the teachers.
It doesn't really help the student all that much since they go from hyper, attention-seeking and not paying attention to stagnant, inhibited and disinterested (and still not paying attention).
I believe it does work for its purpose, but the dose is usually much too high and had to be taken often enough (it only lasts 3 to 4 hours) that the kid is pretty much constantly peaking then coming down.
Eventually they did create "extended release" tablets that probably fix that issue, so my experience may no longer apply.
So then you'd be in favor of Universal Healthcare, subsidies for gym memberships for low income individuals, stricter regulations against lying/misleading in fast food/junk food, and stricter regulations/penalties for pollution?
> Rates of sex and relationships among men and young boys have dropped precipitously.
Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but it sounds a lot like you want a return of pederasty? Let's assume you mean relationships and sex with people of similar ages, what ages should we imagine when you say "young boys"?
Well he did express a desire to return to traditional manliness, and you can't get more traditional than ancient Greece, right?
I think it's great that he managed to positively channel his masculinity, but I have my doubts at considering getting punched in the back of the head a good or acceptable thing, even though it may have had a positive outcome in his case. Perhaps I'm too feminized.
Product-led typically means "driven by customer needs" but also being able to make the correct trade-offs vis a vis engineering and sales considerations. That is, delivering something that is in line with what you can build and not delivering "value" that the customer is not ready to pay for.
Which can be opposed to "sales driven" where the sales team sold something, engineering has to play catch up, which can lead to technical debt and lack of focus mid-term.
Or engineering led, where the engineering team will decide priorities and might push cool tech demos that will never become successful products. Google being the best example of this type of culture.
Edit: article is terrible. He creates strawmans to sell his wares. As always, beware of consultant blogs.
Product led is about building the best product, with the “best” taking into account customer wants.
But product is just one dimension of customer needs, and customer needs are fulfilled across all other departments either directly or indirectly. A sales-led company can still be driven by customer needs, so the definition is way too broad.
Also the statement that “product led” means “making the correct trade off between sales/engineering” is too broad. You could just as easily say “sales/engineering led” means “having the correct mix of product”.
There's no such thing as "customer-led". That's not a common term, or when it's used it's used so generically as to mean pretty much everything.
"Product led" describes specifically what a "product manager" is hired to do -- make trade-offs primarily between engineering and sales (as well as take into consideration management priorities and general user satisfaction, but user satisfaction is only one priority out of many -- and often not the top one, either).
And if "sales-led" or "engineering-led" resulted in business success then product managers wouldn't exist, because they wouldn't be needed. But sales and engineering often have very conflicting priorities, and would result in drastically different products if left to their own devices.
You don't seem to be understanding what I'm saying at all. Let me try again.
Sales managers specifically focus on sales, they manage internally and have people underneath them. Similarly, engineering managers focus on engineering, manage internally and have people underneath them.
Product managers don't have people underneath them, they don't have reports (except for other product managers). It's a fundamentally different position that is explicitly cross-departmental.
And the idea of product managers existing without sales/engineering managers is nonsensical. Who would they talk to in those departments then?
Of course everybody tries to add value. But the point here is that product management is the only position that is explicitly cross-departmental, precisely to prevent departments from making decisions that seem to make sense internally but don't for the company as a whole.
Because experience shows that, without product managers, departments often do make decisions that make sense for the department but don't for the business as a whole.
At very small companies, the founder/CEO is often the de-facto product manager, but once you reach a certain scale you need to hire product managers to handle all the lateral communications and decisions, while the CEO focuses on things at the top.
I am understanding, I am disagreeing. I've worked at both "product-oriented" and "non product-oriented" companies, including as a product manager, and what you are saying applies to both.
> But the point here is that product management is the only position that is explicitly cross-departmental, precisely to prevent departments from making decisions that seem to make sense internally but don't for the company as a whole.
At non product-oriented companies, companies still have cross-departmental roles. This is sometimes a singular function (called something like central planning, pmo e.t.c.), but can also sit in cross-functional meetings for heads of departments, or sometimes there are divisional strategy teams which then meet, negotiate and divide back.
> At very small companies, the founder/CEO is often the de-facto product manager, but once you reach a certain scale you need to hire product managers to handle all the lateral communications and decisions, while the CEO focuses on things at the top.
Product Managers at large companies do not facilitate all lateral communications. They facilitate lateral discussions to and from product, for example between "logistics and product", or between "sales and product".
They won't facilitate the discussion between logistics and sales (i.e. "we need a bigger warehouse in 3 years"), or between retail and logistics ("your delivery is late") for instance (which requires other cross-departmental collaboration and planning).
> And the idea of product managers existing without sales/engineering managers is nonsensical. Who would they talk to in those departments then?
Exactly! All I mean is you can't use proof that product managers exist as proof that a company is product-oriented. I've worked in a company that wasn't product oriented that had product managers, and they still added plenty of value :)
My view is that you can have a product-oriented company without having any product managers, because product-orientation isn't to do with any of this stuff. It's to do with the company setting its primary goal to make the best product (i.e. making better things than competitors). It's the focus on building products that's the different thing, not the focus on customer or reducing silos.
As an example, an outsourcing cleaning contract company will not be product oriented, but will be customer oriented and will have an organisational structure that allows cross-departmental communication. They could also still have product owners and a 'product-led' IT division for instance.
I'm in agreement with pretty much everything @crazygringo has said.
I don't know if this will help, but if I can offer a clarification on why I think product-led id not synonymous to "customer-led" or "market led" is that it's not simply finding and responding to market demands.
You have different types of product managers (f. ex. I am kind of excluding "technical product managers" from this characterization), but typically, product needs to own and understand what customers want BUT be able to understand the tradeoffs, factor in what delivering that value actually entails* AND assess the opportunity cost of pursuing these features vs 1 000 000 possible ideas.
This is typically not the job of sales managers, engineering managers or marketing managers, etc. So product is the function that uses market demands + input from all these other managers, gets buy-in and then helps things go smoothly.
* Building a feature is only part of the cost of a feature. It has to be marketed, it has to be maintained, it has to be improved, etc.
In some places, you need to pay rights to play music in your store. As Square has a great number of business customers, it might be an easy upsell. Like get paid and provide a great ambiance?
Could also be a play to help reframe how people think of Square and be able to expand in other categories SMBs might need.
That's a great point I hadn't thought of. For example, small coffee shops play music on Spotify. IANAL, but I assume that's technically illegal, though no one will sue a tiny coffee shop over that. But once you start expanding to multiple shops, you may want to get more "legitimate". You already have Square, so now you can just add the Tidal service to your bill
The cost is less Tidal and more the Ascap and BMI licensing. It looks like there are companies who will bundle the cost of licensing into your monthly fee, though.
Some? Can you please tell me about where you legally/legitimately can perform recorded music in a public place for public consumption without "permission"?
I can't speak to the legality, but i've seen countless places (retail shops, restuarants, etc) where they were playing radio over the speakers. Also, i've seen playing over spotify.
As have I, and every one of those are breaking ASCAP/BMI licensing. A lot of stores subscribe to "in-store" networks, and that subscription covers these licensing fees. Using someone's iDevice with their Spotify/whatever app even if it is paid for is NOT a license for public performances. You (royal you) can disagree with it, but it is what it is. If it is usually the smaller places that feel the proper licensing is too expensive, but will be floored when they get popped.
Things can stay the same way for a long time, especially since, as you point out, governments now have large scale surveillance/ controls tools.
That doesn’t mean that things will be going well for these populations. You might just have a lot of death and suffering that will be ignored or hidden form the wider population.
You might also have important declines in life expectancy, wellbeing and happiness.
So, sure, a system can be robust and stay in place for a long time, doesn’t mean it won’t suck.
This reminds me of a part of Toynbee's framework for civilisational decline. If the leaders of a society stop being creative, they can no longer lead by inspiration and example and so need to start to dominate to retain and exert power. Maybe you could see censorship as part of that, but it's a bit early to tell for sure.
But what's more interesting is what he says comes after: in reaction to a dominant leadership, the masses withdraw their loyalty and start to devise new religious forms (or maybe repurpose old ones). So a growing religious fervour could be a sign of things going wrong. I don't think we see that yet, but it could be something to keep an eye out for if people lose faith in the power of politics to improve their situation.
“If” people lose faith in the power of politics to improve their situation? A good portion of the US has lost that faith.
I’d also argue that our leaders have lost their creativity. The real test will be over the next two years. The Democrats have that long to show they can rekindle creativity that will help people. If they don’t, I fear Trump may turn out to be a leading indicator to much worse demagoguery.
But it seems to me that there is still a lot of energy from the population at large being devoted to politics, such as with the higher turnout in the last presidential election. When that starts to decline, such as when people just can't be bothered to vote, will be the real sign they no longer have faith in politics.
I think you are right regarding creativity – but that is the case across the West it seems to me.
Some people are attributing the Georgia senate race outcomes to the fact that many republicans didn't bother to vote in the special election (because they heard it was "rigged"). If those people don't vote again then we will see the US head in the direction you mention. I also think you can't look at 2020 and not see increased religious fervor everywhere (in reply to comment above).
Letting people be mislead about vaccines harms people, letting people get brainwashed into mistrusting the legitimacy of their institutions harms people, letting people use their platform to incite genocide harms people.
They actually have metric to measure those things, it’s just that they prefer to dial down the heat, not kill it. It’s just too good for engagement.
Don’t “both sides” death and misery. It’s not a philosophy debate.
> They actually have metric to measure those things, it’s just that they prefer to dial down the heat, not kill it. It’s just too good for engagement.
To be fair they are clearly fighting a delicate balance of censorship and community moderation. It's different from say a forum of yesteryear, because a forum can have a clear set of community values that should work for everyone.
Facebook and all social media is a single platform for many communities, and so given the new role of moderator they are in the impossible position of making a set of community values that apply to all communities.
I think the reason a lot of material isn't outright banned where you or I would see obvious misinformation or hate is because of this.
But This IS a philosophy debate. Fundamentally what is at stake here is how western society decides free speech is to be handled, and if it can be handled at all with social media.
I urge anyone here to define metrics for harm reduction that are operationable.
If you get any far with that, then tell me how you feel if the tools that will achieve these operational metrics were inverted in their purpose.
Also in the case of Covid vaccines, the heavy handed censorship being imposed seems to make people I know more nervous about the vaccine, as it is perceived to be "pushed" by those in power.
