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juve1996

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I don't know why it is this way at my org, but the IT director does not want to talk to PMs, Devs, or Analysts. He would rather have a top level circle of senior managers who insulate him from the actual work.

To me this makes...sense. A general doesn't meet each individual field soldier, it's not feasible and doesn't scale.

Not sure what kind of firms people on here work for, but most of my managers all the way up have 0 life at all. They're constantly working dealing with millions of little details where they have to make an instant decision. It honestly looks like hell.

You're right that we've never seen the effects of raising everyone's wages at once.

We just saw it - a year ago - and it coincided with the worst inflation in decades. Look at the 80s - same thing - high inflation and high wages go hand in hand. They're not to blame, per se, they're just a clear indicator of inflationary periods of time.

Of course it is nonsense to solely blame pandemic relief (vs years of cheap cash and PPP loans) for inflation. I don't think you give the American people enough credit. They're not stupid drones going around. They want to buy things, and they didn't care that it cost more. Companies caught on quickly (like anyone else would.) Compound that with the fact that most conveniences are staffed by wage slave jobs that most americans would turn their noses up at, then you have rich people waiting in long lines at McDonald's as opposed to cheaper options.

The source of the problem isn't wages, it's greed and until the source of the problem is addressed and dealt with every consumer, rich or poor, is going to suffer for it one way or another.

No one is saying that wages are the source of the problem. They may contribute a small piece. In any case, railing against "greed" borders on the mythical. Why is the voracious apetite of many american consumers not considered greed, as well? Moral crusades have no place here, in my humble opinion.

You make an assumptions that is false. 1. Minimum wage increases != wage increases. It's a small subset. The poorest of the poor is never the problem.

Every consumer has some idea of what things are worth and if a company tries to jack prices up for no reason consumers feel cheated and stop paying.

The recent inflation proves otherwise. Many costs have remained sticky for no added benefit. If this was true then we would never have inflation - because the inflation the last 2 years has been so extreme that your belief should have come to pass without any help and much earlier when the supply shocks subsided.

Then as the supply of goods came back they started using the inflation narrative (complete with "printed money" excuse) to justify further increasing prices,

This just proves the point further - consumers continued spending despite the rising costs. But now you'll say they're only now started to feel ripped off? Seems awfully convenient for your argument, but isn't consistent. What is consistent is that raising interest rates have helped somewhat.

The fed is doing the right thing and yes it impacts wages as it impacts other asset classes. Again, if your eggs cost 300% more but your wages increased, it doesn't matter, in the end you're still likely losing.

Because no one would actually be better off. Prices would instantly double. It's just a change of units, like going from getting paid in $ to getting paid the same amount in ¢.

This is so basic but so many people miss it. I have continually explained this to my parents. It doesn't matter how good your 401k is doing if it leads to eggs being $12 a dozen in your retirement.

It's definitely easier to say no in a corporate setting. You have way more options than someone in academia. It's really hard to transfer and your higher ups control pretty much everything.

No, the problem is cost. The medical professional part is secondary because no one wants to pay for hypochondriacs who think their cough at 25 is stage 4 lung cancer based on webMD research, because getting a full body scan is expensive. If it was cheap then it wouldn't matter.

Is it worse than death?

Sure, why couldn't it be? Maybe it has severe, painful side effects. There's a reason many people with stage 4 cancer and low chance of survival decide not to go back on chemo. Maybe it kills them earlier than expected. Then what?

I think this is spot on. Most people want to grow up, but they simply can't. They can't afford the same lifestyle without far more debt inducing schooling, both parents have to work, housing is unaffordable, our congress and presidency is filled with ancient people who have no idea how an iPad works, so policy is far behind the times.

It's no surprise many people just...gave up. There's nothing to latch onto or own - everything is blocked by someone who already got theirs.

Yea, effort estimation is a waste of time much like building a piece by piece project plan of anything.

The key is workflows, like how buildings used to be built. You just keep working on it - no stupid schedule that fails immediately once one little detail to follow goes wrong. Building accurate plans never works and it takes ridiculous amounts of time.

To me it's a natural consequence of wealth inequality. When you have mega funds like the oil countries have, where even losses like this are not really relevant, you will have this behavior. They know it's a moonshot. It's high risk high reward. And many will fail - but in the end, it doesn't really matter that much.

People use knives a lot more than instant pots. They wear down quite quickly and many just buy new ones instead of sharpening. Vitamix blenders are priced quite high to make up for a lower sales volume.

Also, I don't think the market for this stuff is ever truly saturated: every day, plenty of people get their first apartment and need to buy appliances. Instant Pot seems similar to other things like microwaves and toasters, which we don't think of as a dead end due to market saturation.

The market for microwaves isn't, because people use them. Outside of that craze, I don't know of anyone who uses their instant pot anymore. It was a fad, PE came in and gutted it. but the fact is, it probably wasn't going to be this huge performer either way.

I completely disagree with your examples. Cars have massively changed over time - even in short intervals, cars today offer a lot of value you wouldn't get even just 5 years ago in many models. And they're priced accordingly. Computers? Laptops got smaller, graphics improved, performance improved, etc. And still is. Televisions went from CRT to LCD, SD to HD, to OLED. There were continual reasons to upgrade.

The instant pot is like the Bialetti Moka pot - it's a simple device, that doesn't wear down quickly and isn't used enough to wear it down quickly. New devices don't differentiate nearly enough. And the used market is likely flooded with cheap ones that others stopped using.

Windows has lost significant market share over the last 10 years. I wouldn't call that a smashing success. In the US iPhone market share has increased and outperformed android recently. Sure, global market and all - but let's be honest, android is cheap, and VR/AR is still a massive luxury - meaning most won't adopt in poorer regions, even if the the meta option is cheaper.

They have the money to acquire companies specialised in VR and AR just like what Apple has done recently.

Apple builds its own chips, has been designing OSes for decades, building smashing success consumer hardware for decades. They're almost completely vertically integrated. Facebook was an adtech business. Acquiring fledgling startups won't help here.

Both will succeed. Apple will have the ecosystem lock-in advantage for those who can afford the best experience and Meta will win in quantity and make it much more accessible. Zuck's 7 - 8 year bet on Oculus seemed to be the right move all against lots of naysayers and the exaggerations of Meta's stock collapse which recovered against the news.

It's already at quantity pricing and it hasn't succeeded now - what makes you think it will in the future? Meta's stock collapse didn't happen because its fundamental business is still strong - not because of their VR moonshot.

Yea 20 million cheap VR headsets that haven't taken off into the expected market at all. Any hardware company could do that tomorrow. It's easy. Just source the parts.

Apple is practically completely vertically integrated. They design their own chips. They have decades of experience in consumer hardware.

To make AR/VR into what Zuck wants, his hardware is NOWHERE near what it needs to be. And they don't have the chops to get it there. If it's possible, I believe Apple can do it.

They said the same things about the original airpod and it used to not be cool to be into video games and comic books.

Times change. If it fails it won't be because of this reason - people won't be walking around outside with these on.

The Quest 3 will outsell Vision Pro by 10x because of this.

Which is perfectly fine and why Apple will eventually win - they don't need to sell a ton of units right now.

Apple is going about it the right way, the same way that Tesla did with their electric cars. Eventually there will be a model 3 of the vision pro - and all that R&D they put into making it the best will pay dividends down the line. Meta simply won't have that experience because they just did the cheap thing targeted a small market.

Betting against a veteran hardware company like Apple and in favor of Meta seems ludicrous to me.