Open source entered a bubble because companies started requiring active open source contributions to staff+ engineering requirements. The model was never sustainable. A select few contribute to open source out of sheer passion, but the majority are/were using it as a career advancement mechanism or network effect.

The result is that major companies were able to advance their technology and profits rapidly off of people's free work. The result is better products, services, and tooling for everyone, but let's not kid ourselves about who benefits most from open source: large companies.

To give a troll response:

In the current context, I guess it means someone who doesn't live on the internet complaining about issues they do nothing about as if it does something tangible to change the real world.

Also - Let's not act like Twitter is absurdly complex. Handling that amount of traffic was hard in 2008, yes. It's not hard in 2022. The app itself is what? CRUD with stream processing? Some complexity with scaling that, but it's not self-driving... that's for damn sure. Even if they haven't reached L5 yet, L4 AV is an infinitely harder problem than storing arbitrary text/images and serving ads.

It appears the country is finally trending back to moderate after the dumpster fire that was the last 7 years. Will companies continue to be hyper focused on political stances now that they're missing earnings? I think companies will leave the virtue signaling to the internet and get back thinking about how to maximize revenue. If people use the platform, and companies get click-through, I think they will advertise on it.

              Conservative Moderate Liberal

One of the rituals on my team that has stuck for years is an hour block every two weeks for the team to simply talk. No plan, no forced games or activities, only conversation. It gives us a chance to learn about each other freely. No discussion (within reason) is off the table; we talk about anything from food to astrophysics.

Unstructured conversation has been the only thing that consistently keeps people excited that it's on the calendar. It's a chance for everyone to see the authentic side of their teammates and learn who they are.

As a side note, we have to stop blaming platforms for human problems. What social media has done to the world isn't new, it simply used to be contained.

Software Engineers and Data Engineers have one of the best leverage positions in the work force. If you don't like your current employer's practices, find another one.

From what I've seen, working in large corporate environments, is that people make their own productivity prisons doing things that no one asked for or working late hours on something no one is waiting for. Individuals create the stress for themselves by trying to standout or impress others.

If someone doesn't care about career progression, which I'm assuming is most of the anti-productivity crowd, they can get along just fine at almost any company doing only the minimum requirements of a role, have a fair work/life balance, and live a normal life.

If someone takes a mid six figure comp package from a major tech company, they should expect to work hard going into that role. Those jobs aren't for everyone. There are plenty of less stressful work environments in technology that will pay someone a decent salary and will be much less demanding.

This is the same as a newspaper refusing to publish an op-ed they don't agree with.