My job is to watch dreams die

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/k3zrz/by_request_from_the_jobs_thread_why_my_job_is_to/

by SandB0x • 15 years ago

399 59 15 years ago

pseudonym• 15 years ago

Both interesting and depressing. No matter who you think should ultimately take the blame for the housing crash, it's easy to forget how many people other than just the homeowners are affected by this crap.

mirkules2• 15 years ago

The irony, of course, is that people's economic hardships are creating jobs. Which means there's enough money in foreclosures alone to warrant having an employee to evaluate the extent of foreclosures. It's sickening.

jerf• 15 years ago

Broken window fallacy. Jobs aren't really being created. The people in question are doing the economy a service by facilitating the correct valuations of these assets, so their jobs are bringing value to the economy, but it's value they shouldn't have had to bring in the first place. The net impact on the amount of wealth in society is still hugely negative, as is the "jobs" impact.

(These people are the cleanup crew, in the "broken window fallacy" story they are the ones making the new windows and installing them. They aren't the ones who broke the window.)

forinti• 15 years ago

Tom Waits should put a melody on that.

patrickk• 15 years ago

There's a Hollywood blockbuster waiting to be made out of a story like this (as noted in some of the Reddit comments). Something along the lines of Fight Club (grimy house scenes, top-notch monologue) or Lord of War/Up in the Air (someone doing a toxic job but good at it).

arethuza• 15 years ago

If you want a fictional account, rather than a documentary like the excellent Inside Job, I think a black comedy in the style of Dr. Strangelove might be more appropriate.

jackpirate• 15 years ago

Thank you for Smoking might be a little closer?

marknutter• 15 years ago

Or at least a very decent reality TV show.

davedx• 15 years ago

Interesting, but hacker news? Come on... if I wanted general news, then I'd go to Reddit.

vladd4• 15 years ago

HN is mainly aimed towards insightful stories about "hacking" any system that is not tuned properly and still has room for improvement in order to be more close to our desires.

Entrepreneurship is the main way to hack society and its systems (I put most politicians in the "those that cannot do, teach" department). But the first step in fixing a system is to find out about its issues. From this perspective, this is very much an on-topic story on HN.

See also the meaning of "hacker" written by pg: http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html .

yariang• 15 years ago

Repeating from above:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Stories don't have to be about hacking. In fact, the Hacker News guidelines used to explicitly mention that good hackers were interested in things other than hacking.

I am upset at the trend in HN to increasingly post only technology-related posts. A news submission with no intellectual undertones can be voted up dozens of times as long as it's related to Apple, Android, or something similar. Posting shallow content just because it's tech is the quickest route to becoming Reddit. And that's not a bash on Reddit, I enjoy reddit--but it's not where I normally go for "deeply interesting" content.

simonw• 15 years ago

davidw3• 15 years ago

This is way more of a 'tugs at the heartstrings' type of thing than gratifying intellectual curiosity.

Did anyone not really understand that it's rough for people to lose their houses?

goombastic• 15 years ago

I find complex systems with a lot of variables interesting and "hack worthy." Economics is one such. The human aspect and outcomes of the "hack" appeal as well.

hyperbovine• 15 years ago

This comment of yours is even less interesting than the aforementioned link, while occupying more screen real estate. Explain that.

ristretto4• 15 years ago

Yours is even less so. Like the parent, i found the story uninteresting. If anyone with a sad job got to the frontpage, goodbye IT news. In the end, if the guy thinks his job is sad, quit it, or campaign against evictions. Pretending to be sad and effectively asking for sympathy is ... i can't find the word.

Aron• 15 years ago

You are right, but since the readers of this comment thread are self-selected, you lose the karma battle. Kind of like how on Youtube, every song is the best song in the world.

ristretto4• 15 years ago

Since i m not going to read it, can somebody please post a tl;dr here: http://tldrplz.com ?

</shameless-plug>

ristretto4• 15 years ago

Bury it all you want, i have sympathy for the evicted, not this sleazy redditor. Posts like these are the reason i removed 'reddit.com' from my reddits.

pjriot• 15 years ago

Your sympathy extends to plugging your website and you're calling him sleazy?

molbioguy• 15 years ago

Looking at a beautiful albeit narrow slice of something can hurt you (even though it feels good) because you fail to see the larger picture (which may not be so pretty). It introduces a bias that may lead you to incorrect conclusions and bad decisions. Enjoy the craft, but be wary.

sudonim2• 15 years ago

I've been following the housing bust.

In 2009, I remember reading a resignation later by a guy who made his "F* you money" betting for a housing collapse. He blasted the big banks, ivy leaguers, and old boys network.

I bought complex derivatives (SRS, SKF) but lost betting against the market.

I read http://calculatedriskblog.com for a while and educated myself about the macro factors in the markets.

Through "calculated risk", I learned of Jim the Realtor http://www.bubbleinfo.com/ who videos (vacant) casualties of the housing collapse. Seeing it made it real for me.

Over time, I've realized that the further from reality that decisions are being made, the more likely we are to make destructive decisions.

When soldiers kill people with drone aircraft in video game-like conditions, it removes the reality from something that would be extremely traumatizing when done with bare hands.

In our wonderfully complex world, we sow complexity, and reap disaster. Im not sure what the answer is, but there is something terribly wrong when destruction is more profitable than creation.

alecco2• 15 years ago

> I remember reading a resignation later by a guy [...]

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/10/17/17194/andrew-lahd...

A very good read. Andrew Lahde bet against the "too big to fail" financial institutions. He was an outsider. And he only closed his operations because he considered those institutions wouldn't be able to pay back [further] bets.

sudonim2• 15 years ago

Thanks! I tried to find it without much success.

DanI-S• 15 years ago

Although I agree with your sentiment, it has been reported that drone pilots flying remote missions from the US exhibit similar problems with post-traumatic stress as those flying in-theater:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26078087/

zootar• 15 years ago

The comparison isn't necessarily between remote operation of a drone and flying a plane. As I recall from On Killing [1], air crews have lower rates of PTSD than infantry. I would expect killing someone through a drone's video feed and from a plane's cockpit would have similar psychological costs.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-So...

nazgulnarsil2• 15 years ago

destruction is never more profitable than creation. It just means the profits are being internalized and the losses externalized.

jakarta• 15 years ago

Not to quibble, but I would say that using SRS and SKF doesn't really qualify as using "complex derivatives" to bet against the market.

For most investors there really wasn't an optimal way to do this, using ultra-short ETFs carried a lot of drawbacks. The best way (which I found and put 50% of my PA into) was to go long a Canadian insurer which had a ton of credit default swaps on most of the levered investment banks.

The other thing I would say is that, unless you are somehow exacerbating a problem (e.g.: somehow creating rumors to cause bank runs) then picking up cheap insurance isn't the same as being the guy controlling the predator drone in a strike. You'd instead be simply offsetting someone else's risk.

Splines• 15 years ago

... from something that would be extremely traumatizing when done with bare hands.

The military acknowledges how traumatizing this could be.

From section 7.4 in this doc (http://library.enlisted.info/field-manuals/series-2/FM21_150...):

Killing a sentry is completely different than killing an enemy soldier while engaged in a firefight. It is a cold and calculated attack on a specific target. After observing a sentry for hours, watching him eat or look at his wife’s photo, an attachment is made between the stalker and the sentry. Nonetheless, the stalker must accomplish his task efficiently and brutally. At such close quarters, the soldier literally feels the sentry fight for his life. The sights, sounds, and smells of this act are imprinted in the soldier’s mind; it is an intensely personal experience. A soldier who has removed a sentry should be observed for signs of unusual behavior for four to seven days after the act.

erydo• 15 years ago

I hope that's not a genuine field manual. It's poorly written and quite superstitious:

  > However, it is important not to stare at the enemy
  > because he may sense the stalker's presence
  > through a sixth sense.

anrope• 15 years ago

"When soldiers kill people with drone aircraft in video game-like conditions, it removes the reality from something that would be extremely traumatizing when done with bare hands."

This type of physical disconnect is discussed in a radiolab episode on morality (http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/13/). They discuss two scenarios: (these versions are a bit different, copypasta'd from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)

Scenario 1: A trolley (i.e. in British English a train) is running out of control down a track. In its path are five people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you could flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch or do nothing?

Scenario 2: As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?

In short, more people will flip the switch in scenario 1, but will not push the man off the bridge in the second scenario. From this result, they (researchers) hypothesize that an entirely different part of the brain handles more abstract (i.e. non-physical) decisions; while the more basic, physical decisions may be made elsewhere.

Really cool thought experiment, and a good listen overall. Then again, that's par for the course when it comes to radiolab.

jamaicahest• 15 years ago

And the influx of redditors on HN is complete.

sgt• 15 years ago

Nearly read "My dream is to watch Jobs die". I am far too tired to read HN right now.

tonio09• 15 years ago

this was very emotional article. very sad indeed. isnt it weird that all front page articles on reddit are overtly emotional? it seems that plain groundbreaking research papers will never make it to the frontpage...

count2• 15 years ago

You realize that reddit is one of the most visited sites on the Internet now, right? It's not the little lisp-hackers, YC-funded, nerd-centric community that it started as, and it will never be that again. 19M uniques tends to alter things.

pavs• 15 years ago

Your reddit experience is as good as the sub-reddits you follow.

Subscribe to sub-reddits of your interest and you will only see stories from those sub-reddits on your front page. Stick with the default options and you only see the top stories from default selected sub-reddits.

In a way its like twitter and facebook, the quality of tweets and wall posts you will see are only as good as the people you decide to follow.

mike55• 15 years ago

It thought it will be a post by a VC.

nazgulnarsil2• 15 years ago

First world problems....

My job is to watch dreams die

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