Once while reading the book "Hacking Capitalism," I read a sentence that struck me: "The tech industry is technology embedded in capitalism." I had never thought about it that way, but it made total sense. The book focuses on that fact from the perspective of a worker in that system and how to "hack" it to have a healthy relationship with it, yet I believe there's also another angle worth reflecting on: the perspective of the people who consume technology. I don't like to call that group users, because I believe it dehumanizes them.
I always conceived of technology as an extension of our lives to make certain things more convenient. For a long time, I assumed good intentions from the makers of those technologies, from the executives of Facebook to those from Apple. Isn't it amazing to have the tools to be connected to so many people? Or hardware like iPhones that lower the entry barrier to technology? "We aim to make the world a better place." I also bought into this story when I joined Shopify and stayed there for many years. Their version of making the world a better place was making e-commerce better for everyone. I'd call my 20s a phase of illusion with technology. How naive I was...
Fast forward to today, what I feel is a lot of disappointment with the tech industry. Seeing the leaders whom I long respected celebrating Trump becoming the winner makes me sad. Years ago, they didn't dare to talk about such things publicly. But we've normalized a reality where they feel comfortable doing so. It's all about money, and which millionaire isn't happy with their taxes being cut? And the worst part is, many of us are so exhausted, confused, and driven by primitive emotions whose buttons were pressed by these same people, that we are unable to think clearly. This is not the tech industry I want to be part of. But whom do I trust?
If anything, I think this whole experience has taught me whom to trust and why. First and foremost, I trust the tools that don't push solutions that could work offline into a service behind a subscription for the sake of monetization. For instance, I'm on board with paying a license for a macOS note-taking app. But a subscription? No way. Recently, I came across an app that had note features built in and forced you to pay once you went above x notes. Sorry, not for me.
Then from those solutions, I prefer the ones that choose standard formats and/or expose APIs to enable interoperability. I believe someone should stay with a service because they like it, not because the service made it hard for them to leave. As we are building Tuist, we see that pattern in the developer tooling space, and we are working on changing it. We believe the right to freely choose the solution to one's problems should be respected. When a service respects that, it signals what values they stand for. Sure, this can change, but once you stand for certain values, changing them is unlikely because it would damage your reputation. This is why I choose tools like Logseq or iA Writer that use plain markdown files, which I can store in a Git repository for synchronization.
If the solution is open source, even better. I'll gladly support the developer or the organization behind it financially. This often means a drop in UX compared to the closed-source alternatives, but I've learned to appreciate that instead of being negative about it. I care much more these days about the values than the presentation of the solution itself. Note that open source doesn't necessarily mean longevity. But if they steer the direction of a popular tool poorly, it's likely that the community will fork and continue its development. I can also contribute my own ideas and code to improve the tools that I use, which I think is amazing.
I'm fine if the tool is VC-backed as long as the investment is reasonable relative to the value the tool is generating and its market. When a tool has been thrown onto a hyper-growth path, I can tell because their desperation to meet investors' expectations is often reflected in the tool becoming a Swiss army knife, releasing one feature after another. Alternative models are possible, but rare. The reason why I'm fine with tools that receive investment is that there are creators who are not financially privileged enough to quit their jobs and start their own businesses without initial funding. Investment solves this, and good investment can yield amazing outcomes. Penpot and Zed are examples of that, and I'm optimistic they'll get off the ground business-wise and become references in their space.
Choosing the right technology that's future-proof, respects people's values, and is fair is getting trickier, but I now have my own framework, and it has been working great for me. It often means I don't jump on the hyper-marketed trains that come and go, but I'm fine with that. I'm no longer excited by the shiny technology but by the human one.