FAQ on Leaving Google

> Context: When I was laid off from Google, I knew I'd be deluged with questions. I wrote this FAQ to share with friends and family, to prevent repeated explanation.

This is quite sweet in its stereotypical techie approach to life - your friends and family are asking questions about your situation because they care about and want to bond with you, not because they particularly care about the actual information you're conveying :-)

right. human being gets laid off.

Has this ever happened before. It does seem like SV folks have an elevated sense of purpose. Which is maybe fair to a point because of SVs inclusion in our online lives. But really, it seems like people in high paid jobs getting laid off isn't so much news for anyone, in general.

Maybe if there's some juice about how to order the world's information, but then they'd get sued for saying no doubt.

Not everything on the Internet is aimed at you. Sometimes it's aimed at friends and family who the author doesn't see every week.

Did I imply that it was, no, so why imply it.

That's what social networks and email is for, not broadcasting it to the wider world, see, you're on Hacker News, me you, them and everyone in general.

Well, at least I for one feel better now.

plonk

> Perhaps you're still looking for the 'blast far and wide' angle.

Consider the idea that there is no angle here at all. What if you are simply witnessing people communicating with other people? No angles, no channels?

You read this, and your takeaway was that "SV folks have an elevated sense of purpose". That is only true under the premise that they wrote this with the intent to .. I don't know, self-market. To get reach, clicks, whatever. The usual imaginary Internet points.

What if they didn't? What if we just stumbled upon part of a genuine conversation that simply isn't directed at us?

I'm sorry if I sounded aggressive earlier - because I was.

I grew up on a different Internet, where the vast majority of stuff was in some form genuine, even if it was psychotic, moronic or simply mundane and boring.

You might disagree, but my bullshit detectors tell me that this is genuine. Which is rare these days. And because I miss that stuff, I am somewhat protective of it. Sorry for lashing out.

PS - "autistic" as code for "retarded" is, you know, like, so totally 2018.

PPS:

> Your position is ridiculous about keeping a situation private, while it's on the front page of hacker news. Give yourself a reality check about intentions.

If somebody else posts a link to something I wrote to some link aggregator, that neither says nor changes anything about my intentions when I wrote it. That much should be, in your words, "self-evident".

This is not about privacy. Just because you can access it in a browser does not make you the target, just as being able to listen to a conversation in a subway does not make you a party to it. Again, self-evident.

PPPS:

After that "moron", I'll take back my apology, thank you very much,