Technology

"There are still great people at Google"

A mind-plague of our time to call mediocrity greatness, as being exceptionally intelligent and being a tech wizard has absolutely nothing to do with being a great person. That is the same as saying the top %1 of Plumbers are great people. When faced with tough life choices, these Plumbers may show negligible character. Stop devaluing greatness.

It's a serious overvaluation of self and commodization of the term, a weakening of the term, so as to devalue it. It's a mind virus to say flippantly, "that person is great" when in reality they are average. The meaning of the word is being dilluted.

• Greatness is doing the right thing without being compensated or even recognized for it!
• Greatness is doing great things on your own (person). Group goodness is good people, action.
• Greatness is not involved in any way with Corporations. Corporations are profit above all else.
• Greatness is achieving what others could not achieve. Many awesome search engines were bought out and ruined by Big Tech, as they do with any competing technology.
• Greatness is not involved with violating the privacy of the whole world in any manner.

Silicon Valley is an immense perspective bubble that is equivalent to personality re-write. That anyone at Google can be thought of as a "great person" is a total and complete failure of perspective. Super smart, great Programmers, great Engineers, sure.

Being a great person almost always involves hardship, perserverance, and success against all odds. Read any classical book. Having a Billion dollar company pay you to turn a digital wrench has not one basis for "greatness" in any way, shape or form.

Think about all the "Great" people in the History of Earth. What did they have in commmon? How many people can be "Great"? Hundreds or even dozens at one Corporation? Gimme a break, that doesn't even fit the definition of greatness, unless your cognitive dissonance is confusing it with mediocrity and that is a societal mind virus.

So, let's be precise with our life terms like an actual programmer would be with technical terms except applied to your own life. So, you follow rules, you get along well with others, you don't hurt anyone physically, verbally or emotionally, you donate and work for causes, you create great stuff. This is expected of all people so that makes you average. You are an average person.

Making a comparative judgement against failed people does not make you great. In fact, that brings you down a notch.

Maybe along with all those other traits instead of creating great stuff you create exceptional stuff. The term applied to you is now "an exceptional 'job title' ".