Flock is rolling out a voluntary severance program

My prediction: they are going to change their name and move a lot of their business to multiple subsidiary with different names. Until nobody notices anymore it's all one company formerly known as Flock.

Facebook had a good idea for hiring and retention: pay the highest, and that will boost college students' perceptions of how cool you are.

Facebook got a lot of mileage out of that, running long after public scandals confirmed the early hints of possible sketchiness, back when Google was an attractive alternative.

Though I don't know that's still necessary. The job markets are different now, since there's not many tech employment options that aren't either sketchy or reviled. Anti-AI-worker sentiment seems high lately, outside of HN circles -- much more widespread and negative than I recall any kind of perception of pre-AI tech workers -- yet there aren't a lot of non-AI employment options.

So, some Flock employees might want to leave, over ethics, social status, or company internal culture, but... if they end up at a AI company, they might soon still be seeing a lot of social negative feedback anyway.

("Hi, nice to meet you. ... Me? Oh, I work on, uh, software. ... Yeah, AI is really disrupting things in my field, too. It's been a bit rough, but we're hanging in there.")

Axon which is already well established is quietly stealing Flocks market share while avoiding all the scrutiny.

Related from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835

Shame is the best driver of social change (see, e.g., Rob Reich's The Common Good).

Now we just need the same shame for broader surveillance capitalism (Google, Facebook, AI companies, etc).

Shut down, rebrand, try some different approach to security services

Being a magnet of attention as a despised surveillance corp has to be tiring

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835

Flock was a startup that was funded by Y Combinator. Paul Graham and the other Y Combinator people provided expertise and advice to them throughout their whole journey.

I wonder what Paul Graham says to the Flock executives now?

have a conscious when trying to do immoral things will never work out

I mean look at NSA, Presidency, etc. "no conscious, no problem!"

Just "other" victims and imply they are all criminals somehow someway and you can dismiss any feeling of doing wrong

How could those innocent employees have predicted that helping to build out a surveillance state would make them unpopular?

Unfortunately the selection effect here means that the remaining employees are gonna be super committed to thinking Flock is a good thing for the world, and will double-down on being defensive and angry any time Flock is challenged.