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Macrodata Refinement

(lumon-industries.com)
722 points gaws | 10 comments | 01 Feb 25 21:46 UTC | HN request time: 1.186s | source | bottom
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pavlov ◴[01 Feb 25 23:18 UTC] No.42903578[source]▶
Working at a startup before product-market fit can feel like this.

You don’t know why the work is important, but it must be done so we can at least discover whether it was important. You may not get that information, but you can take comfort in assuming someone does have it.

You’re mostly disconnected from your previous life.

There is a guy in the next office feeding baby goats, and your reaction is: “Yes, it makes sense that we’re also exploring feeding baby goats.”

People come in as blank slates and you’re grateful to have their companionship in the shared madness.

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1. goaaron ◴[01 Feb 25 23:29 UTC] No.42903670[source]▶
This completely misses the disturbing horror aspect of the show.
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2. pavlov ◴[01 Feb 25 23:39 UTC] No.42903754[source]▶
Severe enough burnout at a startup (or crunch-mode game studio, or similar) can give you a reasonable simulacrum of that.

Come in, go home, come back. Did something actually happen that wasn’t work? Unclear.

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3. ethbr1 ◴[01 Feb 25 23:40 UTC] No.42903769[source]▶
Yeah, to me the show was much more about how every modern real company secretly wished they could sever their employees, and how much they'd abuse that power dynamic if they actually had it.

Work without workers? Perfect!

4. mptest ◴[01 Feb 25 23:45 UTC] No.42903799[source]▶
>come in, go home, come back.

https://youtu.be/2n34NrkDlZk

this felt germane

5. inopinatus ◴[02 Feb 25 00:07 UTC] No.42903980[source]▶
ah yes the pineapple
6. trhway ◴[02 Feb 25 04:31 UTC] No.42905839[source]▶
to me it isn't about burnout, etc. To me the show is a metaphor for "nothing personal just business" - for how people may turn off that human personality inside them and do whatever is "just doing my job/following the order".
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7. yapyap ◴[02 Feb 25 15:34 UTC] No.42909268{3}[source]▶
I don’t think it’s either, I think they’re working on a way to get secrets out of the human brain.

Mark my words.

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8. manapause ◴[02 Feb 25 16:33 UTC] No.42909669[source]▶
That’s funny because I thought they captured it perfectly. Cults can be blissful places; the experience and friends I’ve made amidst the madness I’ve experienced in startups made me stronger in the end.
9. usefulcat ◴[03 Feb 25 04:54 UTC] No.42915122{4}[source]▶
The severance procedure is about slavery.

Undergoing the severance procedure and having your "innie" work at Lumon is exactly akin to having your own personal slave. The innie does all the work, the outie collects the paycheck. The outie controls whether the innie lives or dies, since the innie literally does not exist outside of work.

I guess another part of the tradeoff is that you're giving up a significant part of your life time-wise. The number of waking hours experienced by the outie would be substantially reduced (presumably around 40 fewer hours per week). Overtime would really suck, especially if unpaid. From the perspective of the outie, working overtime would be exactly equivalent to the company taking away additional hours of their life.

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10. trhway ◴[03 Feb 25 09:59 UTC] No.42916665{5}[source]▶
yes, that sounds also reasonable. Like a good piece of art it allows a range of interpretations. At the same time it being Ben Stiller, i see his absurd comedy treatment of whatever serious interpretation we come up with, Space Force on [dark and heavy] steroids.