edc117

Completely broken on multiple levels. In a lot of industries now, as an employer you can't win even if you buck the trend and lead out your competitors on wages and benefits. The highest paid warehouse worker, waitress, etc. will still barely make ends meet, never be able to afford a house, so on. Decades of devaluation of labor (automation, venture capital, bad laws & regulations, etc.) has really done a number, and I don't see a way to easily reverse the damage. IMO, the top end of the economy needs to be brought back closer to the bottom end, but I just don't see it happening.

It's just absolute lunacy. If that's the stated goal (and it sure looks like it), the 'academic left' is at least partially responsible for a large majority of the prosperity of this country over the last few decades. How can you have a successful, rich country when you're antagonizing your allies and roughly half of your citizens?

These people will burn down their own house and wealth to make sure others don't feel welcome. How hard is it to just learn to live with people that don't agree with you?

I hope you're right, because his dopey supporters have destroyed any balances or opposition to him other than the courts (which he is also busy attacking and undermining).

Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.

Pretty hard to forget when he keeps reminding people how abrasive he can be every five minutes.

Will they? Trump has said he's in favor of the H1-B program and has given no indications that he plans to lessen or stop it. Tariffs will likely be used as bargaining tools - you won't see tariffs directed at a country because a US corporation has outsourced labor there. There's a lot of noise about changes to immigration right now, but I'd be very unsurprised if little or nothing changed.

I understand, and broadly agree for what it's worth - as someone with friends and peers in those groups, I'm very worried about the tone of the discourse.

That said, I think it's good to recognize it's not a 0 or 1, open minded vs racists, or however it could be framed. There are a whole host of people in the middle, and actions like the one I mentioned push people towards the crazier views we see. It makes good people stand to the side and say nothing, maybe, instead of pushing back against it.

Far too extreme a view. I'm very unhappy with the H1-B program and how it has been used to depress wages for engineers, but I understand (and agree with) the need for us to compete globally and not stagnate. I have nothing but respect for a lot of overseas engineers and have worked with some very intelligent, kind, generous individuals in my time.

What I strongly oppose is - and I've seen this up close and personal three times in the last five years - large companies or investment companies buying/merging smaller companies, then gradually offshoring/firing (about 10-20% per year) US jobs in favor of overseas jobs while keeping their customer base. These companies, their revenue streams, their customers exist because of US employees and engineers, and yet they're thrown out at the first chance because someone overseas will do the work for less (often one third of a US salary). This is a complete betrayal of the people who worked to build these companies in the first place. These revenue streams would not exist without them.

H1-B is used in a very similar way: they get anyone they can over here, and pay them 10-20% less than a US counterpart, then use that to justify lower wages/raises to existing employees.

I agree that some people unfairly blame the overseas engineer, but don't simply write them off as racist or hateful - they're having their livelihoods taken from them, and leadership is very good at hiding or shifting blame.

And then they don't respond to email or slack. Are they missing it? Ignoring it? No one knows. Meanwhile, time sensitive deadlines come and go.

There's no clear, easy protocol that works for everyone, unfortunately. Some people are always going to operate on the 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' model. And I say this as someone who is often in the 'always busy' camp.

If you don't have any proof of that, you're no different than those that believe he exists. (Respectfully) Agnosticism really is the only correct scientific approach.

Way back in 2012, this affected a lot of my thinking around software piracy/selling software, and I think a lot of it has proven pretty insightful in the intervening decade:

https://www.fortressofdoors.com/piracy-and-the-four-currenci...

The images are shot, but that may be all the attention his site is getting today.

Edit: Many others are already saying it, but thank you for sharing, Lars. No one should have go through this, and your thoughts were beautifully written. Makes me feel very grateful/humbled for so much that I take for granted.

Good catch, hadn't seen that.

So the researchers, shareholders, and leadership of OpenAI will be happy to give up being ridiculously wealthy so they can be only moderately wealthy, and everyone else gets a basic income?

I'm also just skeptical of UBI in general, I suppose - 'free' money tends to just inflate everything to account for it, and it still won't address scarcity issues for limited physical assets like land/property.

I've love to be wrong about both of these things.

A little bittersweet for me, lost an uncle to this about 10 years ago...but still happy and a little inspired, proud of our species. I really hope ours is the last generation(s) that have to suffer through that awful disease.

I think kids act like this because society has created this problem, and continues to ignore it because it's financially expedient. There's a great deal of frustration about their impotency to affect environmental change - hell, any change that would result in less money for the wealthy. Pessimism and hyperbole is a natural outcome.

There was an excellent thread/discussion about it a while ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35977891

Some might fall into the category you've described, but I'd hazard a guess that a lot more are afraid of the rise of AI due to its owners. The cost to develop and operate these machines is high, and you can be sure whoever is using them to replace work done by people today will capture and hold every possible penny.

People are afraid that AI will not serve the common good, and will instead serve a very rich few. Why? Because that's how it's always been with new advances, and more than ever how it is today. The vast gaps in wealth inequality will grow much larger with AI - it needs to be addressed first.

Suing and paying fines as a means of preventing abuse of free speech isn't working. Very rich individuals can pay fines without blinking, but the really pernicious one is the lawsuits - a large legal team can make it hell for any smaller actor, can delay and run the case down, can settle privately and completely bury the issue, etc.

I'd rather see us fix our enforcement mechanisms to work better before trying to take off the filters on dangerous and violent free speech.

You forgot the other half of the question - is your solution the only possible answer? - at which point you can really only evaluate all possible combinations. I agree it's one of several ways to test for a 'clever' student, though.

Same meaning, but different context of use is what I think you meant. The context is key in all these discussions. No one thinks 'master' means 'owner of human (black) slaves' in 'Master of Science' any more than they do for Github, yet here we are.

Hi,

As someone who worked in this space for just shy of a decade, you're wrong. The problems often reduce down to challenges that are familiar to most people in large scale software (CRUD entry, redistribution of %s or #s, scaling and performance, testing, etc), and people who love their craft will enjoy solving those challenges. It's like saying no one could ever possibly enjoy math; just silly.

As someone that doesn't use reddit much, could you explain? I thought the front page was essentially a combination of popular things from the subreddits you regularly visit?

I'm guessing also high COL areas.

Does anyone know the answer to this? I'm very curious. I actually wonder if it would be worse to report that you have video evidence of a thief, because they may no longer be liable (hey, we delivered it to where it had to go, rest is up to you) vs just saying 'it never got here'.

Yeah, I know this is becoming common and online markets are a race to a bottom, but in stark numbers like this...it really feels like there isn't a good ending to this story.

Similar boat, have to look after my parents now and the difference between my father watching Fox News (well...any news these days) regularly and not is night and day. He's far more angry with it on, its just nonstop outrage and cynicism. I'd love to find something that would satisfy his desire to 'stay current' without the overreaction and FUD, but maybe he'd just go looking for it anyway.

Yeah, and in particular: anonymously. It seems to bring out the absolute worst in people when they can say anything without immediate or visible consequences of their words.

Worked in a bank when I was younger (Not WF). Was fairly trivial for us to confirm that the cashiers check was actually issued by us. It shouldn't have been held longer than a day at most, particularly not for a client.

Unless your game is actually good, in which case I'd think it would drive sales. Anecdotally, I've bought several after trying the demos for them (and the opposite as well).

There's certainly precedent among some of the larger players. Look at Blizzard - just about everything has occasional free weekends or trials of some sort after the initial release.

Just my two cents, but agree completely. Remote lets me focus on my work better, and skipping the commute is a huge benefit to my mood overall. Plus far less gas, car maintenance, I can go for a run during lunch...

It's also hard to overstate the freedom it gives you - you can literally live anywhere in the US you please. It's not for everyone but I don't think I could go back at this point.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Jokes aside, interesting and well thought-out list, thank you. Going to try some of these as I am visiting very opinionated, ornery family this week.

Sorry, but disagree. I guarantee you many passionate software developers are working on their development skills - learning new frameworks, building personal projects that carry into their day to day work, and yes, sometimes even developing something the company can use 'for fun'. Are there developers that don't? Sure, same as there are sales people that don't.

Edit: As another post says, it's because sales people are only one step removed from the revenue-gaining process - they are often directly responsible for closing a sale, so they can easily claim credit.