Scott Olson
6 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2023–2026
0:41 · 30K views · May 3, 2016
A clip from Silicon Valley season 3 episode 2 about Pied Piper's product, satirizing startups and stock-driven companies.
Mostly posted as a joke or parody reference in threads about SPACs, layoffs and hype.
6 comments from Hacker News
> The hard part now is liking the industry around it. This is exactly how I feel. I fell in love with computing for the same reasons I fell in love with physics and engineering. I love making things. I love the puzzles. I love digging down to understand things. And on top of that, it always ends up being useful. And then I can share my work with others and they get utility out of it too?! What an incredible and fulfilling job/hobby! But now, the industry really kills that passion. I don't believe we're solving real problems, but mostly just solving made up problems that get us money. We've become incredibly dismissive of fixing things and using thought terminating cliques like "I only care that it works"[0] or "don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough"[1]. When finding bugs we end up arguing if it is "valuable"[2] rather than if it actually helps people. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in discussing if we should fix the problem that were a magnitude more time, per person, than it takes to fix the problem. We've become allergic to deep understanding. We abhor expertise[4]! I thought this was supposed to be a community of nerds? I came to the STEM side because my family was all "business monkeys" and I didn't want any part of that constant BS. There was a real "revenge of the nerds", but the MBAs did strike back. We're incredibly penny-wise and pound-foolish. We love our sayings, but hate understanding. All to keep that velocity up, but forgot that velocity
The problem is that from the outside it seems like Microsoft no longer cares about the product. So much so that "the product" has become "shareholders"[0]. We've just been moving into a world where metric hacking is the desired outcome, not an outcome to try to avoid. These companies are only surviving because of their monopoly statuses. Because of momentum. It's a powerful force. It's the reason Twitter still is around. The reason Facebook is still around. But them being around doesn't mean they're good. It doesn't mean they're useful. It doesn't mean it is a good product. It doesn't mean the users like it. It just means people are used to the way things are and they aren't angry enough to leave for something else. But these companies are actively creating friction for users, daring them to leave, gouging them for everything they can. FFS Microsoft is the largest contributor (even more than Valve) to creating "the year of linux". Sure, it'll never have M$FT's market share, but it sure is eating into their revenue. We've all lost sight of what made software so powerful in the first place. Why it became so successful and changed the world. We used to ship good products that help people, make their lives better, and make lots of money in the process. Now, I think all that anyone cares about is the last part. Now we're actively being hostile to those that make the systems better. And that system is fucked up and will destroy itself. That's not a good thing, because it does a lot
Did the author never watch Silicon Valley? this video Richard, listen-- No, you listen to me Jack. You promised me that you would never compromise the product, so do you feel like taking some action and backing me up on this because me and my product feel pretty compromised right now Richard, I don't think you understand what the product is. The product isn't the platform, and the product isn't your algorithm either, and it's not even the software. Do you know what Pied Piper's product is, Richard? Is--is it me? Oh God no no how could it possibly be you? You got fired! Pied Piper's product is its stock.
The product is the stock price, not "revenue" or "users". If this increase their stock valuation at IPO and destroy the company in a month time, they'll go for it. This is the free market at play, you are welcome. Couldn't be more relevant: this video
Once again the show Silicon Valley satirizes this extremely well: this video The product of a VC backed company is not whatever it sells; the product is its stock, to be sold in the IPO to make the VCs and founders shit tons of cash.