[Power tools] replaced a shitload of work (and thus jobs).
In the case of power tools, they didn't really replace any existing jobs because employment in construction has followed population growth nearly perfectly over the past 80 years or so. What power tools did was to allow for much larger homes (and other projects). House sizes have grown from 1100 ft2 in the 1940's to over 2300 ft2 today. Without power tools and other technological advancements you would expect well over 10 million construction workers in our economy, but instead it is closer to 6 million.
So not all technological advancements cost jobs. Some just improve productivity and quality of life without any measurable impact on jobs. On the other hand some technological advancements have produced massive unemployment for generations (the Luddites didn't find new jobs, they just died off), and it is foolish to assume this could never happen again.
All Technology has its benefits and its problems. And not always do they equal out. But over the long haul, technology has benefited mankind. Or else, we'd have a lot more Luddites.
It doesn't really matter whether technology advancements are a net benefit or hindrance to society as a whole. If there is at least a small segment of humanity which can benefit, the technology will be developed. Might as well have the benefits of technological advancements for everyone if we will need to deal with the negative side anyway.
There are some technologies which require an immense financial investment that can be delayed for a while, such as nuclear weapons. But even that has its limits as we have seen in North Korea. AI on the other hand will not be expensive. If we couldn't keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of North Korea, what hope do we have of keeping AI advancements which fit on a phone away from bad faith actors?
"HR works for management". Not entirely true. On more than one occasion I've heard a manager talking to HR and complaining that they were ignoring his recommendations for experience.
HR still works for management, just management which is higher up than the managers you have talked with. The only time I ever saw a VP of HR who seemed to sometime outrank the CEO was when he was appointed by the VCs to cut costs. In that case he stilled worked for management, just the management which outranked the CEO (the board).
I think the new direction needs to be more options on the high end. Actually have a version of the latest iPhone / Samsung that has 2mm more depth to allow twice the battery power. Have screen sizes ranging from 3.5"-7". There are needs in the marketplace which aren't being met, and I know sales to at least users like me stalled as a result. The moment Note screens stopped getting bigger (curved screen doesn't count) is the moment my Note 4 became my first phone I have owned for over 3 years.
My guess is the author of this post doesn't even manage a dozen employees, let alone 26,000. One sure fire way to identify someone who has successfully moved up the ranks of responsibility at a large enterprise is they understand how vastly more difficult each move up the corporate ladder is. The thought that some manager of an independent book seller with perhaps a few dozen employees could handle a 26,000 person enterprise is laughable for anyone who has the slightest clue what they are talking about.
Civilization happens in spite of government, not because of it. Good government is the result of civilization, not the cause.
What are you talking about? There has never been a civilization in history without some form of governance. Property rights, dispute resolution, mutual defense, etc. are but a few of the many things which are universally necessary for anything that resembles civilization. All are functions of government, no matter what each civilization calls it.
Most prices are 20-30% greater than other regions in the country because of the cost of a store lease is very high, and you have to pay at least $10/hour, usually more, for minimum wage labor.
Correct, prices are only 20-30% greater than other regions of the country. Not 200-300% greater like housing is.
Studies seem to show that it is very hard to accurately assess employees during the interview process. The only effective way of keeping quality up is to fire under-performers. If Amazon hasn't been doing this regularly enough for eight years, then I could see why this could be long overdue. To some extent you can find useful work for under-performers to do, but as some point you just get too many of them.
I thought the switch from split sick/vacation to pooled PTO was about the opposite incentive structure -- let people who don't get sick have "extra" vacation time.
That was how it has been marketed, and it sounds good. It just doesn't work out that way when implemented. The reality is closer to your later comments:
I think they *hoped* it would just end some amount of unscheduled absenteeism by discouraging people from taking unplanned days off, since they weren't "free".
Bingo. The real reason here is to limit the total number of days off. This is deemed easier than actually identifying people who abuse sick days. But unfortunately the opposite happens, where more people actually do get sick because less people are taking time off when sick, and the company loses more productivity. On top of that people lose more vacation time, and become less productive because of that as well. It was a decent if not poorly thought through idea which we now have data to show doesn't work.
But bean counters who only look at total hours employees sit at their desks will not notice any of these issues. And their bosses who determine if the initiative is a success will have an incorrect perception of its effectiveness.
Paid sick or better yet personal days should be the norm.
Most full-time employees have a number of hours PTO they can take; at least in the professional world, this is the case....
The problem is many employers now lump sick days and vacation together into the same pool. This causes people to not want to use PTO for sick days since it cuts into their vacation. There really is no good fix for this other than employers trusting their employees, which would allow for unlimited sick days (or at least unlimited until short term disability is more appropriate).
Google is not and SHOULD not be the thought police. If their algorithms show these to be common search queries, take that as a hint that we need to DO something - as long as that something isn't to sweep things under the rug by censoring the results.
That is a very easy ideology to maintain if you don't think too hard.
Google's search engine by definition censors what you see on the Internet when using their service. Even limiting your results to popular sites, or the ones Google thinks you probably want to see, is censoring out plenty of other results.
Circumventing censorship laws by "suggesting" to private companies what is and isn't appropriate things for people to see is bad.
No one is doing that here. Google will still serve up results for "Hitler is my hero" if the user types that in. What Google doesn't want to do is suggest that search query because they feel a sizable number of users simply don't want to see those suggestions. You will also note they don't offer up pornography related search suggestions for similar reasons. Nothing is being censored, they are just keeping things PG-13 until the users initiates a search on their own.
There just aren't enough "Senior Architect / Manager / Director / VP" roles for everyone to get one, Marie. We can't all eat cake.
My post was clear that there weren't enough high level positions for everyone, but I disagree that there aren't enough architect, manager, etc. positions to go around for everyone interested in and capable of that level of responsibility. Everyone I have worked with who is both interested in and capable enough to work at that level has reached it. That may not be true in XX years when the IT field is not growing anymore, but it is true today.
This notion that average, normal, decent people are worthless pieces of shit that should just go fuck-off and die at the age of 40 is going to bit you all in the ass, soon. Madame Defarge is knitting away.
What part of having your salary capped at closer to $120k (in the Midwest suburbs anyway) is the same as believing someone is a "worthless pieces of shit that should just go fuck-off and die at the age of 40"? For people either without much motivation or who prioritize other measures of success other than busting their ass in the corporate world, that is a very good salary.
My coworker sitting next to me makes about $50k less than I do for nearly the same job, but he doesn't want the responsibility of a major project's success on his shoulders, wants to take vacations even during busy times, and generally spends his free time on his hobbies rather than learning new technologies. He still makes just over $125k, and certainly isn't being treated like a worthless piece of shit. He is merely paid differently because of a different level of dedication and responsibility level.
In other words - nothing has changed except the lie was exposed. And if it wasn't a lie, then this gives the corporate management a chance to fix it.
There is no lie in what you wrote. First off, in your analogy if I wanted music lessons but didn't have the time right now, why would being offered free lessons change the amount of free time I have?
Second, the initial act of writing the firmware is not the only thing a company has to worry about. They have to worry about testing it, deploying it, maintaining it, providing service to users, etc. The cost of paying a programmer to write the firmware is likely a very small part of the total cost of deciding to make Linux support a priority.
Isn't that true with most jobs, though? If we study what salary burger flippers stabilize at, I'm sure part of it is because they eventually become shift managers or graduate and get on to a high paying job.
It is true of most jobs, but we are talking about careers here. Your analogy is more like looking at when software developer intern salaries peak.
But if you truly want to see where technology workers cap in salary, you need to look at the entire career progression. This includes Director of IT, CTO, entrepreneur, etc. The only thing this study shows is that you should have a career plan past senior developer / architect or your pay will stagnate in your 40's and beyond. Either that or be happy with $150k per year, which most people would be.
While it quite possible to have your salary bump 10% per year on average in your late 20's / early 30's, it's not like that could continue forever. Once you reach a Senior Architect / Manager / Director / VP role by your 40's there isn't much room to grow for most people. Sure a select few will become executives or successful entrepreneurs, but that is not possible for everyone.
Having your salary peak at around $150k and then only keep up with inflation isn't that bad of a thing. Plenty of professions are worse off (actually nearly all professions).
"B-bu-but the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier!" said you, over and over.
Keep telling us who the fucking dupe is, dipshit.
And they were right to say that, because no evidence to the contrary came out until October of 2017. Fact checkers cannot see into the future. Spouting off conspiracy theories and being correct every once in a while is easy; basing your opinions and beliefs on verified facts is far more difficult.
Gender dysphoria is classified exactly the same as schizophrenia and anorexia. It is even thought to be a subclass of schizophrenia, as over 60% of people with GD also have been diagnosed with both.
Citation needed. Even this paper discussing links between GD and schizophrenia shows either a very slight or more likely no correlation.
Gender dysphoria is simply not known to be a subclass of schizophrenia, and you are talking out of your ass.
I should clarify. For many statements, and likely most political statements, whether or not the statement is technically true or false is rarely enough information. Political statements are rarely completely false but misleading statements are common. Good fact checking needs to spend just as much time if not more time identifying potentially misleading statements than worrying if the statement itself is false.
All of your "fact checkers" said that the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier... They screamed for months that it was a five-alarm pants-on-fire lie.
They had said there was no public evidence supporting this claim, and until October of 2017 that was a true statement. In October a Washington post article showed that while it was originally funded in 2015 by Republican donors, the Clinton campaign began funding the research in 2016 as opposition research.
Within 24 hours of the Washington post article, and other corroborating research from CNN and Fox News, Snopes updated their information on the topic. This is what good fact checking looks like.
Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information
Bullshit. They politicize the hell out of it. Something is either true or false. They are both filled with "True, but" conditionals.
Many things are not simply true or false. Many times they are misleading. Both of these sites do a good job in identifying misleading information and label them as such.
Somehow seeing yourself as fatter than you are (anorexia) is non-controversially viewed as a disorder, but seeing yourself as a male when you have ovaries and a vagina is seen as completely normal. Suggesting that it's a disorder not much different than anorexia is treated as sacrilege.
That is because biologists and psychologists disagree with your laymen interpretation of the similarity between these seemingly similar conditions. A mental disorder has a precise definition, and simply being abnormal does not automatically qualify. The American Psychiatric Association did at one time use the term "gender identity disorder", but as their understanding of this condition improved they changed it to "gender dysphoria". This is still a medical condition, just like being near sighted is, but it is no longer considered a disorder (which has a precise definition).
The APA still considers gender dysphoria as something which needs to be treated, but the treatment does not include ignoring the patient's gender identity. Treatments such as hormone therapy and surgery are more common.
These really are facts, not opinions, because they are backed up by decades of research and clinical practice. We will never know with 100% certainty what the best course of treatment is, just like no fact can ever be 100% verified, but our current understanding of gender disphoria comes from a significant scientific effort.
You on the other hand use your laymen understanding of the psychiatric profession to form opinions which are not based on the wealth of evidence which shows your opinions to be false.
Any who will determine is it is trustworthy, let me guess... AI...
Fact checking is a real thing and it does work. Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information, and augmented with AI sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter could significantly reduce the amount of false information in social media and Internet searches. It certainly wouldn't be easy, but neither is anything else these large Internet companies are doing day to day.
For the foreseeable future you will still need human researchers to investigate false claims, but AI would be very useful in finding instances of these false claims once they have been verified.
Slashdot Mirror
[Power tools] replaced a shitload of work (and thus jobs).
In the case of power tools, they didn't really replace any existing jobs because employment in construction has followed population growth nearly perfectly over the past 80 years or so. What power tools did was to allow for much larger homes (and other projects). House sizes have grown from 1100 ft2 in the 1940's to over 2300 ft2 today. Without power tools and other technological advancements you would expect well over 10 million construction workers in our economy, but instead it is closer to 6 million.
So not all technological advancements cost jobs. Some just improve productivity and quality of life without any measurable impact on jobs. On the other hand some technological advancements have produced massive unemployment for generations (the Luddites didn't find new jobs, they just died off), and it is foolish to assume this could never happen again.
All Technology has its benefits and its problems. And not always do they equal out. But over the long haul, technology has benefited mankind. Or else, we'd have a lot more Luddites.
It doesn't really matter whether technology advancements are a net benefit or hindrance to society as a whole. If there is at least a small segment of humanity which can benefit, the technology will be developed. Might as well have the benefits of technological advancements for everyone if we will need to deal with the negative side anyway.
There are some technologies which require an immense financial investment that can be delayed for a while, such as nuclear weapons. But even that has its limits as we have seen in North Korea. AI on the other hand will not be expensive. If we couldn't keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of North Korea, what hope do we have of keeping AI advancements which fit on a phone away from bad faith actors?
"HR works for management". Not entirely true. On more than one occasion I've heard a manager talking to HR and complaining that they were ignoring his recommendations for experience.
HR still works for management, just management which is higher up than the managers you have talked with. The only time I ever saw a VP of HR who seemed to sometime outrank the CEO was when he was appointed by the VCs to cut costs. In that case he stilled worked for management, just the management which outranked the CEO (the board).
I think the new direction needs to be more options on the high end. Actually have a version of the latest iPhone / Samsung that has 2mm more depth to allow twice the battery power. Have screen sizes ranging from 3.5"-7". There are needs in the marketplace which aren't being met, and I know sales to at least users like me stalled as a result. The moment Note screens stopped getting bigger (curved screen doesn't count) is the moment my Note 4 became my first phone I have owned for over 3 years.
My guess is the author of this post doesn't even manage a dozen employees, let alone 26,000. One sure fire way to identify someone who has successfully moved up the ranks of responsibility at a large enterprise is they understand how vastly more difficult each move up the corporate ladder is. The thought that some manager of an independent book seller with perhaps a few dozen employees could handle a 26,000 person enterprise is laughable for anyone who has the slightest clue what they are talking about.
Civilization happens in spite of government, not because of it. Good government is the result of civilization, not the cause.
What are you talking about? There has never been a civilization in history without some form of governance. Property rights, dispute resolution, mutual defense, etc. are but a few of the many things which are universally necessary for anything that resembles civilization. All are functions of government, no matter what each civilization calls it.
Most prices are 20-30% greater than other regions in the country because of the cost of a store lease is very high, and you have to pay at least $10/hour, usually more, for minimum wage labor.
Correct, prices are only 20-30% greater than other regions of the country. Not 200-300% greater like housing is.
Since TFA brought it up I can't wait for an evidence-based, rational discussion on the best text editor for Linux.
Hasn't Sublime basically made the vi / emacs debate a moot point?
Studies seem to show that it is very hard to accurately assess employees during the interview process. The only effective way of keeping quality up is to fire under-performers. If Amazon hasn't been doing this regularly enough for eight years, then I could see why this could be long overdue. To some extent you can find useful work for under-performers to do, but as some point you just get too many of them.
I thought the switch from split sick/vacation to pooled PTO was about the opposite incentive structure -- let people who don't get sick have "extra" vacation time.
That was how it has been marketed, and it sounds good. It just doesn't work out that way when implemented. The reality is closer to your later comments:
I think they *hoped* it would just end some amount of unscheduled absenteeism by discouraging people from taking unplanned days off, since they weren't "free".
Bingo. The real reason here is to limit the total number of days off. This is deemed easier than actually identifying people who abuse sick days. But unfortunately the opposite happens, where more people actually do get sick because less people are taking time off when sick, and the company loses more productivity. On top of that people lose more vacation time, and become less productive because of that as well. It was a decent if not poorly thought through idea which we now have data to show doesn't work.
But bean counters who only look at total hours employees sit at their desks will not notice any of these issues. And their bosses who determine if the initiative is a success will have an incorrect perception of its effectiveness.
It appears that 43% of companies (and 51% of private companies) offer PTO as opposed to vacation / sick time in 2016. source
Considering 23% of employees are offered no paid time off, it appears the majority of workers with that benefit have their vacation and sick days combined.
Paid sick or better yet personal days should be the norm.
Most full-time employees have a number of hours PTO they can take; at least in the professional world, this is the case....
The problem is many employers now lump sick days and vacation together into the same pool. This causes people to not want to use PTO for sick days since it cuts into their vacation. There really is no good fix for this other than employers trusting their employees, which would allow for unlimited sick days (or at least unlimited until short term disability is more appropriate).
Google is not and SHOULD not be the thought police. If their algorithms show these to be common search queries, take that as a hint that we need to DO something - as long as that something isn't to sweep things under the rug by censoring the results.
That is a very easy ideology to maintain if you don't think too hard.
Google's search engine by definition censors what you see on the Internet when using their service. Even limiting your results to popular sites, or the ones Google thinks you probably want to see, is censoring out plenty of other results.
Circumventing censorship laws by "suggesting" to private companies what is and isn't appropriate things for people to see is bad.
No one is doing that here. Google will still serve up results for "Hitler is my hero" if the user types that in. What Google doesn't want to do is suggest that search query because they feel a sizable number of users simply don't want to see those suggestions. You will also note they don't offer up pornography related search suggestions for similar reasons. Nothing is being censored, they are just keeping things PG-13 until the users initiates a search on their own.
Not going to work when you have the flu would also be helpful, but probably even the CDC understands that is not a reasonable recommendation.
There just aren't enough "Senior Architect / Manager / Director / VP" roles for everyone to get one, Marie. We can't all eat cake.
My post was clear that there weren't enough high level positions for everyone, but I disagree that there aren't enough architect, manager, etc. positions to go around for everyone interested in and capable of that level of responsibility. Everyone I have worked with who is both interested in and capable enough to work at that level has reached it. That may not be true in XX years when the IT field is not growing anymore, but it is true today.
This notion that average, normal, decent people are worthless pieces of shit that should just go fuck-off and die at the age of 40 is going to bit you all in the ass, soon. Madame Defarge is knitting away.
What part of having your salary capped at closer to $120k (in the Midwest suburbs anyway) is the same as believing someone is a "worthless pieces of shit that should just go fuck-off and die at the age of 40"? For people either without much motivation or who prioritize other measures of success other than busting their ass in the corporate world, that is a very good salary.
My coworker sitting next to me makes about $50k less than I do for nearly the same job, but he doesn't want the responsibility of a major project's success on his shoulders, wants to take vacations even during busy times, and generally spends his free time on his hobbies rather than learning new technologies. He still makes just over $125k, and certainly isn't being treated like a worthless piece of shit. He is merely paid differently because of a different level of dedication and responsibility level.
In other words - nothing has changed except the lie was exposed. And if it wasn't a lie, then this gives the corporate management a chance to fix it.
There is no lie in what you wrote. First off, in your analogy if I wanted music lessons but didn't have the time right now, why would being offered free lessons change the amount of free time I have?
Second, the initial act of writing the firmware is not the only thing a company has to worry about. They have to worry about testing it, deploying it, maintaining it, providing service to users, etc. The cost of paying a programmer to write the firmware is likely a very small part of the total cost of deciding to make Linux support a priority.
Isn't that true with most jobs, though? If we study what salary burger flippers stabilize at, I'm sure part of it is because they eventually become shift managers or graduate and get on to a high paying job.
It is true of most jobs, but we are talking about careers here. Your analogy is more like looking at when software developer intern salaries peak.
But if you truly want to see where technology workers cap in salary, you need to look at the entire career progression. This includes Director of IT, CTO, entrepreneur, etc. The only thing this study shows is that you should have a career plan past senior developer / architect or your pay will stagnate in your 40's and beyond. Either that or be happy with $150k per year, which most people would be.
While it quite possible to have your salary bump 10% per year on average in your late 20's / early 30's, it's not like that could continue forever. Once you reach a Senior Architect / Manager / Director / VP role by your 40's there isn't much room to grow for most people. Sure a select few will become executives or successful entrepreneurs, but that is not possible for everyone.
Having your salary peak at around $150k and then only keep up with inflation isn't that bad of a thing. Plenty of professions are worse off (actually nearly all professions).
"B-bu-but the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier!" said you, over and over.
Keep telling us who the fucking dupe is, dipshit.
And they were right to say that, because no evidence to the contrary came out until October of 2017. Fact checkers cannot see into the future. Spouting off conspiracy theories and being correct every once in a while is easy; basing your opinions and beliefs on verified facts is far more difficult.
Gender dysphoria is classified exactly the same as schizophrenia and anorexia. It is even thought to be a subclass of schizophrenia, as over 60% of people with GD also have been diagnosed with both.
Citation needed. Even this paper discussing links between GD and schizophrenia shows either a very slight or more likely no correlation.
Gender dysphoria is simply not known to be a subclass of schizophrenia, and you are talking out of your ass.
Yes, things are simply true or false.
I should clarify. For many statements, and likely most political statements, whether or not the statement is technically true or false is rarely enough information. Political statements are rarely completely false but misleading statements are common. Good fact checking needs to spend just as much time if not more time identifying potentially misleading statements than worrying if the statement itself is false.
All of your "fact checkers" said that the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier... They screamed for months that it was a five-alarm pants-on-fire lie.
They had said there was no public evidence supporting this claim, and until October of 2017 that was a true statement. In October a Washington post article showed that while it was originally funded in 2015 by Republican donors, the Clinton campaign began funding the research in 2016 as opposition research.
Within 24 hours of the Washington post article, and other corroborating research from CNN and Fox News, Snopes updated their information on the topic. This is what good fact checking looks like.
Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information
Bullshit. They politicize the hell out of it. Something is either true or false. They are both filled with "True, but" conditionals.
Many things are not simply true or false. Many times they are misleading. Both of these sites do a good job in identifying misleading information and label them as such.
Somehow seeing yourself as fatter than you are (anorexia) is non-controversially viewed as a disorder, but seeing yourself as a male when you have ovaries and a vagina is seen as completely normal. Suggesting that it's a disorder not much different than anorexia is treated as sacrilege.
That is because biologists and psychologists disagree with your laymen interpretation of the similarity between these seemingly similar conditions. A mental disorder has a precise definition, and simply being abnormal does not automatically qualify. The American Psychiatric Association did at one time use the term "gender identity disorder", but as their understanding of this condition improved they changed it to "gender dysphoria". This is still a medical condition, just like being near sighted is, but it is no longer considered a disorder (which has a precise definition).
The APA still considers gender dysphoria as something which needs to be treated, but the treatment does not include ignoring the patient's gender identity. Treatments such as hormone therapy and surgery are more common.
These really are facts, not opinions, because they are backed up by decades of research and clinical practice. We will never know with 100% certainty what the best course of treatment is, just like no fact can ever be 100% verified, but our current understanding of gender disphoria comes from a significant scientific effort.
You on the other hand use your laymen understanding of the psychiatric profession to form opinions which are not based on the wealth of evidence which shows your opinions to be false.
Any who will determine is it is trustworthy, let me guess... AI...
Fact checking is a real thing and it does work. Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information, and augmented with AI sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter could significantly reduce the amount of false information in social media and Internet searches. It certainly wouldn't be easy, but neither is anything else these large Internet companies are doing day to day.
For the foreseeable future you will still need human researchers to investigate false claims, but AI would be very useful in finding instances of these false claims once they have been verified.