I don't know that replaceability (true or not) should have that much of an outsized impact on the expectations of humane treatment

I realize capitalism rewards scarcity here, but imo this is a piece explicitly about the tolls that tends to bring

i've never seen a company take action from someone leaving, and any push for change has to be sustained by people still at the company.

i'd be curious if anyone has ever seen it happen

The main one I can think of is companies altering their return to work posture after having an exodus of employees who did not want to return under stated terms. This sort of thing is rare though as it needs to be simultaneous, consistent feedback that is actionable.

i think there's also a fallacy there that you can't work on billion dollar cases while also pursuing million dollar ones

even if they were the same people, relatively simple cases like this probably helps provide some sense of closure while the big fish are being hunted

like art, not all software must be commercial

Pretend Wordle was an open source MIT licensed game that someone created and released online.

Or pretend Wordle is one of the countless examples of freeware (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware) that exist online.

Would we be having the same conversation?

It's strange to me that many folks can't accept some people release things and don't necessarily care how it's further used, when the exact thing happens for many other examples of software and software products.

It's a form of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) that's rooted in some personal insecurity. Some people can walk away from temptations of great wealth and power but I can also see how many people can't.

You’re attacking people as if every one has the same motivation and every one is only self serving.

I’d like people who are in opportunities like this and can’t retire for life if they wanted to, to make a quick million or what have you because I don’t enjoy our status quo of how society functions.

Come on, Mr. Frodo. I can’t carry it for you…

It's such a common capitalist concept that a word was invented for it: Monetize.

I was thinking the same thing. Say that someone builds a fantastic web framework, or the very best package for Node... say a single package that brings together all the comforts that would normally require 200 dependencies. Almost one would ask why you'd release that for free, source code included.

Honestly I think it's great. More of us should find small project, where the current selection is just awful half-baked apps, develop by someone who only goal is to stuff as many ads as possible into your face, and just undermind them with free well designed apps.

Nearly every one who has built a fantastic web framework that went on to becoming very popular has financially benefitted from it. That kind of ubiquity can garner lucrative speaking gigs, consulting and contracting gigs, and more. These all being beyond what a normal brilliant developer would get.

Yeah I think so. Just because some thing is open source doesn’t mean it can’t be monetized.

> Being an engineer who wasn’t happy with a situation like this, I gave my manager a piece of my mind. She brought gender into the equation and said that I couldn’t speak to a girl like that, so I decided to hang up the phone.

I'm going to guess there's more to "gave my manager a piece of my mind" than described that led to firing

Talk about property taxes next tim

(this was published back in dec)

This article is focusing on user customization in the wrong places. OS window chrome is mostly invisible to most users nowadays. The places where customization happens is within apps. Custom emojis, sticker packs, browser themes, slack themes, whatever else.

IMO "theming" and customizing visual appearance is alive and well. But it's moved to higher layers.

> They've solved the trust and the brand issue, and _that_ is their moat.

I think they've solved it better than their competitors, but I'm not sure that they've solved it broadly for people using hospitality services.

For better or worse, one bad experience tends to sour people that I've talked to on the overall host-driven places to stay. Whereas for hotels and other more traditional forms, that seems to be compartmentalized to specific locations ("ugh, the hilton in boston") or chains ("I'm avoiding all Marriots from now on").