The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

Summary

It's understandable why the guys who had big tech startup successes in the 90s and early aughts think that "DEI" is the cause of all their problems. Not understandable in the "gotta hand it to em" sense, but in the sense that it's not hard to follow the stupid mistake they all make.I didn't see any of this unfold, but I think I've pretty much seen it. 2005, old dorm room with mold on the walls, the birds start to chirp their alarm to the fact that you're up way too late. I can't argue with anyone who wants to say the place exudes "a masculine energy," or at least a masculine smell. I'm here because programming was the only career path for which, in the limited vision of my youth, I could already see and understand exactly what I'd be doing, and that there was very little I would need from anyone else to get there. I'd be very suprised if Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, and James Damore don't know, and to this day yearn to recreate, the sensations I'm describing. They never find it again, because:These men are no longer young. I'm not either. I still have Ideas, and I still think about what it would be like to crush it for a few weeks straight, alternating between coffee and beer, manifesting a vision. But... well, if you're still young, you'll find out soon enough, and otherwise, you know already that there are too many other things that need doing, because responsible people have responsibilities.The Internet is no longer the world's great frontier, and the pool of unsatisfied wants that suddenly welled up as the world first came online is not what it once was. There once was no graphical operating system, no decent web browser, no search engine that could find what you were looking for. The basic amenities are now there. Of course there is still much room for innovation, but merely being able to write a computer program and understand what computer networks are good for is no longer the superpower it once was. If you're young enough to pound Red Bulls all night,...