Job advancement rather. Career advancement is possible by making users happy and telling executives at other companies "I did that". It's a better story if you had to fight for it.
I'd be OK if they closed entirely, but barring that I demand they pay the costs of externalities they create. One method of doing so would be hiring private security. They should also have to carry a bond to pay out for any DUIs, violence, vandalism, domestic violence or sexual assault that they are a co-conspirator of.
You have to scroll far past the accusations of racism and outrage to reach the story here:
> Here’s how the off-duty work program works: Some businesses — like large nightclubs — are required by the city to have security, which until 2020, sometimes had to be off-duty Minneapolis police officers.
Nightclubs often are required to have security beacuse they are a nuisance to the surrounding area and the taxpayer shouldn't be picking up the tab because you decided to overserve your customers. The off duty cop requirement is the only odd part here in my view and that appears to be gone now.
To respond I need to separate mental illness into three categories.
The first category contains illnesses like schizophrenia, with schizophrenia you can induce symptoms of the illness in healthy people by giving them medicine used to treat parkinsons. We can point to specific structures and chemical reactions in the brain as a cause for the illness, it may not be perfectly understood but we have a good understanding of what is going on.
The second contains things like personality disorders. It's not clear these are actually related to physical defects, at least in the same way the first category is. For example people who meet diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder often report no symptoms and are successful in day to day life, some even thrive. Borderline personality types are often distraught over the state of interpersonal reletionships, that is the primary source of their suffering, however they behave in ways that destroy those reletionships. These behaviors aren't accidental, they involve sophisticated thinking, borderlines spin complex webs of lies to justify and hide these behaviors.
The third are things that are normal human suffering. Most people feel anxiety for a big date or a job interview. Most people feel sad when they lose a loved one. Negative emotions are a part of life. It's hard to draw a line on what is normal but a nonzero number of people are medicated for having normal human emotions.
It may not be helpful for the second and third category to be enabled in the way they have been.
For the second group, as the root of their strife is generally interpersonal, and only changing day to day behavior, over a lengthy period of time will have any effect in alevating the true symptoms of the illness. We can pretend the problem "isn't their fault" but essentially all their issues can be tied directly to their own behavior, it may not be their fault but it's certainly their problem.
For the third it isn't clear that they need to be treated at all, if you are too sad to go to work because your son died a month ago, nothing is wrong with you. Perhaps people are sad in society in general because the society in general sucks, medicating them in mass lowers the collective motivation to fix the society, what's the end game there?
Tell someone with an issue with their physical condition that it is because of diet and lack of exercise and many would change habits, tell them it's due to a incurable but perhaps treatable cancer and some will chose suicide.
Tell kids that they are unhappy due to choices made in day to day life and they might change those choices, tell them it's due to a incurable but maybe treatable issue with their brain and some will chose suicide.
The problem may be classifying typical human misery as incurable illness.
> it's actually really easy from the management side of the table to tell when someone is just laying on the flattery and trying to say all the right things to butter people up.
How do you know you didn't just catch the people who are bad at it?
It really depends on who is in the room. In my experience founders and people who are busy (C level folks, IC's) tend to prefer my style of commutation, it's middle managers who end up not liking me. Career wise that tradeoff appears to have been a pretty good one to make, but caveat emptor of course.
Sometimes you can be surprised with this question and they will explain a actual strategy with multiple moving parts and everyone is better off by having it explained. Often you can catch a technical gap or two during this explanation and improve on the approach.
It's really only the incompetent that get offended.
Are you familiar with "The Emperor’s New Clothes"?
> Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and go to work. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool. Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled. Although startled, the emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever.
In the corporate world, the emperor has clothes, but they are underwear and everyone pretends its a full suit and tie. Basically speaking, in order to sound more important people say "Omni channel sales strategy" but what that actually is a small Salesforce integration.
One way to not have to attend those meetings is ask questions like "by Omni channel sales strategy do you mean..." and remove the fluff from whatever they are saying, basically be the child in the story.
I think the FBI but they got yelled at in the 70s[0] for doing that sort of work and given new guidelines to prevent it[1] and apparently haven't done much like it since.
It can tell you something about hiring practices. The quality of the host of a restaurant probably shouldn't tell you about the staff in the kitchen, but in reality if they made the choice to go cheap in the front the the house they also very likely made the same choice in the back.
Job advancement rather. Career advancement is possible by making users happy and telling executives at other companies "I did that". It's a better story if you had to fight for it.