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Most of you are following the twitter saga. Politics and other issues aside I wanted to address one leitmotif brought forward by Musk and his horde of sycophants. Numerous times I have seen the argument “time to fight IT entitlement” used as a battle cry before performing massive layoffs. I have worked in IT for 20 years and while I have encountered some bad apples, on the whole the majority of Engineers and IT tech folk have been hard working and diligent people. I was working abroad from North America for 16 years and I was shocked when I returned to see the level of C Level, CEO etc entitlement. The salaries of this class of worker (and remember we are all a team as they love to say in the meetings!) had in my opinion unjustifiably skyrocketed to levels their predecessors could not have dreamed of. Inevitably to justify such a situation one must find a scapegoat and the hard working IT tech folks are an easy target.

Or are they?

My buddy and fellow Vanguard @mkevenaar started his own mastodon server and the growth rate has been unbelievable. Rather than be a twit on twitter, ranting continuously and trying to provoke everyone, people like @mkevenaar quietly and calmly using their “entitled” skills decided to build an alternative. 

As for the twits I will say one thing, great success is not a license to lose your dignity. It may feel good and powerful to fire large groups of employees through an email and to threaten the rest with “work hardcore” but remember the human condition is volatile. One day you are up the next down. It was not IT folks who overly hired themselves, it was the CEO”s  who made these errors. However, it will be the IT folks who will pay the price. 

Elon Musk has had great success and no one is taking away from his achievements but humans have a tendency to become inebriated with success and smarts become stupids, humility turns into hubris. 

When a Roman General won a great battle he would be given a parade through the streets of Rome as a reward. However, placed behind him in the chariot someone would be constantly whispering “remember you are only a man not a God”. Of course the Romans did not want the General to try and overthrow the Emperor but perhaps even more importantly they did not want the talented General to become bloated with self indulgence and bravado, as that would result in a feeling of invincibility and being a “stable genius” 🙂 which results in very stupid mistakes. Elon “you are only a CEO, not a God”!

 

Come join the Mastodon server at masto.nu !

 

cheers

 

Yeah Twitter has gotten very bad lately I have noticed and I had to turn on the Protected Tweets option to stop all the accounts following me.  I have joined the Mastodon server and will slowly make my way over as twitter is going to implode at some point.  Also does not help they let someone back on either. 😢

Twitter has been a s**t-show since Musk took over.  I used to respect the guy, but he needs to understand that not everyone plans to work 80+ hour weeks and sleep at the office (let alone go to the office) like he does.  I respect his drive, but his apparently lack of respect for employees that honestly are just trying to have some work/life balance and do their jobs well is….appalling.  I’d be very hesitant to allow him to take over any more company’s for sure. 

The amazing thing about IT folks is that if they don’t like what they see, they’ll often come up with a better alternative.  I haven’t spent much time on Mastadon, but I’ll be interested to see how things turn out. 

For sure, it was a bit…interesting to realize how much Facebook and the like targets you with ad’s and post and such...things that Mastadon doesn’t do.

I like to avoid the drama. Reddit seems more useful for me because I can actually learn stuff and have a discussion there. The character limit in twitter was never a selling point for me.. Most people use twitter just to link to another site.   It’s like trying to use a tictoc when you need a 30 minute YouTube video to get in depth. Theres a time and place for everything.


Insane how much it sold for. Social media is good for ads and marketing I guess, but sadly, people need to get off their phones and get outside from time to time. Think about how many miles you have scrolled on your phone or PC and hours wasted and the junk they sneak in between the posts you actually want to read.  

 

Perhaps I’ll check out Mastadon to see what the hype is about too. I’m always a fan of signing up, learning the new platform, then never using it again if it’s not for me or continuing if it is. At least when someone asks me I can have a valid opinion. 

 

 

 

You raise a good point...I spent most of my time on Reddit.  I pretty actively avoid Facebook when possible, and Twitter occasionally sucks me in.  The crazy thing about Twitter and it’s character limit is that I was talking to a much younger coworker of mine and he had no idea why the character limit exists, and the root of how you posted to twitter by sending SMS/texts to it to post.  Speaking of miles of endless scrolling, we’re getting towards the end of the year…won’t be long until Reddit sends out the RedditRecap stats for each user and how much time and scrolling everyone did.

You raise a good point...I spent most of my time on Reddit.  I pretty actively avoid Facebook when possible, and Twitter occasionally sucks me in.  The crazy thing about Twitter and it’s character limit is that I was talking to a much younger coworker of mine and he had no idea why the character limit exists, and the root of how you posted to twitter by sending SMS/texts to it to post.  Speaking of miles of endless scrolling, we’re getting towards the end of the year…won’t be long until Reddit sends out the RedditRecap stats for each user and how much time and scrolling everyone did.

 

I prefer my Spotify lists to see what music I listened too. My friends and I usually share our lists with each other to poke fun at some of the bands we listened too. haha

Oh yeah..that recap is pretty great.  At least all of my family now has their own account, so hopefully I’ll get a lot less of what my wife and kids listened to this year.

Great write up from a great guy! Most times, they forget how they started. I think Musk is losing it. Perhaps, it’s all market strategy because he did this with Bitcoin etc.  Thank you for mentioning @mkevenaar work. I never knew, therefore I will be checking it out. Is there a way to integrate this already with WordPress etc? By the way, you can write a blogpost on your product, and I will help promote it for free on my blog, and via my social media platforms.

You raise a good point...I spent most of my time on Reddit.  I pretty actively avoid Facebook when possible, and Twitter occasionally sucks me in.  The crazy thing about Twitter and it’s character limit is that I was talking to a much younger coworker of mine and he had no idea why the character limit exists, and the root of how you posted to twitter by sending SMS/texts to it to post.  Speaking of miles of endless scrolling, we’re getting towards the end of the year…won’t be long until Reddit sends out the RedditRecap stats for each user and how much time and scrolling everyone did.

Reddit!!! This is one of the toughest platform to grow your community. 

 

Yeah I am wondering whether Musk is just having fun and on purpose trying to provoke people or maybe he has gone slightly bonkers :) 

He might be trying to purposely sink twitter then claim a tax cut or something

Yeah I am wondering whether Musk is just having fun and on purpose trying to provoke people or maybe he has gone slightly bonkers :) 

I think he is just having fun! 

He might be trying to purposely sink twitter then claim a tax cut or something

Knowing him probably.

Yup, and remember Free Speech is drowned out and rendered worthless when spoken in a room full of screaming folks who are frothing at the mouth. The rules were put in place for a reason and cry baby Musks, Trumps and Dumps should not be allowed to wreck the system

😖😖😖

 

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