Hacking Capitalism: Modeling, Humans, Computers, and Money.

by Kris Nóva

I believe the most favorable of working conditions to be a group of motivated, well funded, and supported individuals who are given an opportunity to achieve more as a group than they would have been able to achieve in isolation.

Learn to embrace redirection. The more powerful the assailant, the more energy can be redirected for your agenda.

Your understanding of where the industry has an abundance of resources will also hint at where you can find these higher paying jobs.

By attaching ourselves to profit, we can leverage the system for a more effective ride to the top.

The tech industry is metaphorical profit-driven foam. Your opportunity will come in the form of finding the surface of a nearby bubble and riding it to the top.

In computer science, you can often exchange simplicity for flexibility. The trade-off is complexity. Complexity is difficult to maintain, but it can be worth the maintenance burden at times.

I often say that the only difference between a hacker and successful entrepreneur is that the entrepreneur picked a legal target to exploit.

Perhaps their most important skill is a hacker’s ability to observe the state of the world and find spaces for opportunity.

The likelihood that a wide-open door will present itself is rare. But it’s much more probable that a small overlooked detail will lead to another overlooked detail.

Attention to detail can be an effective way to bring yourself up to speed with others in the industry.

Closer to the Market is a term used to illustrate that as an individual grows in title and influence the impact and influence of the competitive market economy will become more relevant.

If you plan on communicating with them, you’re going to have to speak their language. I suggest becoming as fluent as possible in the mechanics of business by researching state of the art business strategy and educating yourself on the mechanics of capitalistic business. Specifically startup and growth culture in the tech sector.

In the most basic sense, there are two ways to increase profit. Increase revenue (collect more water) Decrease expenses (stop losing water) That’s it. That’s the entire model for how the elite frame every conversation. The system is simple. The system is elegant. The system is powerful. To be honest, I wish that more software engineers would build systems as simple as the profit system.

The simplest way to increase revenue is to outperform your competitors.

The simplest way to decrease expenses is to extract more value from workers than they cost the company to employ.

In my experience there will be a comfortable landing pad for aggressive and stoic personalities at any tech company.

The henchpeople work on behalf of the elite, and most of the henchpeople don’t even realize that they’re a part of the group. In many cases, members of the henchpeople are promoted to the elite.

Masculine socialization is a set of ideals that start a young age and defines ideal (or perfect) masculinity as related to toughness, stoicism, heterosexism, self-sufficient attitudes, and a lack of emotional sensitivity.[5]

In my experience, confirmation bias is common among ruthlessly competitive personality types. They see the evidence they need to flag something or someone as a risk, and block it out completely.

Capitalism seems to reward or favor ruthlessly competitive people who were socialized accordingly. Capitalism works against everyone else, while effectively favoring narcissism and birth privilege.

According to Alessandra Cassara and Mary L. Rigdonc at the Department of Economics, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA "women enter competitions at the same rate as men when the incentive for winning includes the option to share part of the rewards with the losers (i.e., when the incentive system is socially oriented)"[7] which is a fascinating conclusion.

Where I find guarded positions of power in tech, I expect to find a surplus of competitive men.

In my opinion anyone born into a country such as the United States is coerced into the economy, and not opting into the situation. Learning that self-interest is the default expectation can be a hard lesson to learn if someone finds themselves naturally caring, thoughtful, or altruistic in their nature.

The moment that you can influence what they perceive to be in their self-interest is the moment that you can influence their actions.

Organizations within a company exist as a way of managing costs. Companies allocate a subset of their total resources to an organization and measure the results. This means that organizations have goals and limited resources.

Where there are limited resources, there will be competition for those resources.

Employees might compete for pay but not for credit.

In my experience competitive chaos leads to organizational chaos.

Alignment of incentives is a key task for senior executives

Competitive chaos can be extremely grueling, especially for newer technologists or anyone without intrinsic power or control.

The ruthlessly competitive nature of the industry inevitably means that there will be intelligent people who end up very hurt.

Where there are smart, competitive, and hurt people, there will be toxic behavior.

Toxic behavior can stem from disappointment, distrust, or—in most cases—organizational dysfunction itself.

A common trait of toxic behavior is its ability to spread to or infect others in an organization.

In an effort to protect themselves from experiencing another trauma, they might preemptively sabotage other efforts that they see as a threat.

And toxicity is, in a way, the antisystem to productivity.

How to avert toxicity so reports can do their best work?

The ability to frame a position in the eyes of capitalism is important. The system is remarkably effective in ensuring that workers learn the lessons of self-interest the hard way. In contrast, authentic representation can oftentimes be considered dangerous. For instance, this book tries to authentically portray capitalism. Many might consider this book dangerous.

Use this knowledge to your advantage! Frame the options based on your knowledge of the system.

Bros typically use condescending language and bullying tactics to gain a competitive edge. Bros often unnecessarily compete where they should collaborate, and this competition can be harmful.

Bro culture will remain unnecessarily competitive, but you can use this to your advantage by creating a false contest. In other words, bros want to feel like they’re winning. Give them a contest to win, and frame the contest to serve your needs. Create an environment so that their victory opens the doors to a greater victory for yourself.

Try to influence the bros to do the operational work by creating a false competition. Structure your work to leverage their work.

Masculine occupants in the tech industry also seem to have greater faith in competition. This faith can often lead to favorable results in the quest for profit. And while competition may often lead to profit, that doesn’t imply alternative avenues such as collaboration can’t be as effective.

The antisystem of competition is collaboration.

A collaborative group can often outperform an existing competitor. Where there’s competition, there’s opportunity to outperform the competition by collaborating.

For every ruthless competitor, there is an equal opportunity to combat that competition with teamwork.

The competitive and collaborative cycles in tech are seemingly never ending. Small instances of competition form inside collaborative structures. Small instances of collaboration compete with less effective competitive forces. The cycle is ongoing.

These types of people effectively overlook collaboration, and they also tend to downplay the advantages of collaborating with others.

How can I get better at finding opportunities for collaboration?

If your goal is to outperform the elite, an extremely effective tactic is to find a group of like-minded people that you can hack the system with.

Rise with your cohort

When a bond of trust is broken within a collaborative system, a form of psychological subdivision occurs and the system divides into smaller competitive systems.

Executive function to create and maintain trust in a large group

Where there’s mutual trust, there’s healthy collaboration. Where there’s healthy collaboration, there’s mutual trust.

How to build trust? More collaboration/interaction!

Zero-Trust is the act of removing all faith from a belief; acting purely on validation and proof.