there’s simply no way around the fact that we’re pretty fed up with a certain philosophical framework in Silicon Valley. It has many names: the growth mindset. OKRs. KPIs. Even Minimalism — the predominant aesthetic of our era. But at its core, it all comes down to one thing: the relentless optimization of everything in our world.
From Andy Barnes:
The idea that all of the world should be measured in dollars to stockholders is actually a relatively new idea. It used to be that we thought that businesses had their purpose. Your purpose was to be making newspapers or fountain pens or whatever. And now we act as though the only purpose of a... See more
In my six years at Google, I got to observe this force up close, relentlessly killing features users loved and eroding the last vestiges of creativity and agency from our products. I know this force well, and I hate it, but I do not yet know how to fight it. I call this force the Tyranny of the Marginal User .