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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

I guess most of these jobs don’t allow for music or YouTube to be used during work?

I’m just thinking that people already spend a lot of time just consuming content, so if it were possible to watch YouTube while at the factory, maybe it wouldn’t be as unpopular.

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I work in manufacturing. There are a few instances where watching YouTube may not be a huge hazard, but 98% of the roles I've seen the are reasonable reasons to not permit that. If nothing else, it'd be easy to let quality suffer which causes many bigger headaches.

I went to a panel discussion at a conference last year. Operations managers agreed labor was their biggest challenge. The manager for the promotional materials company who was probably around 60 discussed how he has loosened up a bit the last ~15 years. If someone sends a couple texts and it slightly impacts the units they (personally) do per hour, it was better than being super strict and losing employees. He had to adapt because the mentality was far different than when he started in the workforce.

He just needs to wait a decade, the Chinese workers will be retiring and will not be replaced. Entire product segments probably just go away or the inflation raises the table such that the managers situation now is the norm. Problem solved.

You seem obsessed with the “China population collapse” propaganda (which is put out by the usual suspects, btw). Anyways, I hate to break it to you, but this is also the trend throughout the entire Western world. Besides, automation and AI is going offset a lot of those worker losses (which is actually a win). And in 20 years the Chinese will still be giving birth to as many if not more people than the entire combine West.

That's true that West has population decline as well, but due to 1 child policy the decline in China is going to be much steeper.

I think mainly on the pensions side of things, and perhaps a lot of empty real estate and infra maintenance issues. But they will still be graduating more engineers than the West combined and in general, a better educated and more socially cohesive workforce. I think they are gonna be just fine, even if we don't like their political system (which will likely evolve, anyways).

China demographics are disastrous, this is not propaganda, it’s facts. That doesn’t mean western aren’t disastrous.

I agree it won’t matter too much, they’ll automate more so they won’t need this many people.

So how is that a disaster? Wasn't one of the big concerns a decade or go about over population? This means less agriculture required, more land for nature, less pollution, fewer energy needs, etc.

It's a disaster for China's economy in the long term unless they automate themselves, which they'll very much want to do. It isn't a disaster for the natural ecosystem obviously.

Want to do? They’re doing it now, and are ahead of the west in some processes already. It’s a made up concern because they are a geopolitical rival. And their economy is already a major success story; they’ve lifted something like 800 million people out of abject poverty in the last 25 years.

I don't disagree about the economic outcome today, but I don't understand how you can say that demographics issues are made up - either they are made up in the west, too, or they aren't. Nobody knows what will happen in the next 25 years, maybe nothing much, maybe we'll all be replaced by humanoid robots in the west, in the east and in the third world, too.

They are made up in sense of it being some kind huge pending disaster for China. Also, trends can reverse with the right policies.

The disaster is a classic train wreck in super slow motion best proxied by 30-year government bond yield, currently the highest on the curve at 2.27.

Meh, the same usual suspects doing the predicting have been wildly wrong on nearly all things China for the past 30 years.

From my limited experience working in a factory environment, listening to music can be a real workplace safety issue if it reduces your ability to hear forklifts or coworkers shouting warnings.

Do you hire deaf people?

I always found the laws prohibiting drivers from wearing earplugs (some exemptions for motorcycles) and the like pretty funny.

US employers cannot discriminate against a deaf person and must make reasonable accommodations to make it safe for them to do their job.

US employers are not legally required to make accommodations for people who simply want to listen to music at work.

Today's vehicles already have a lot of sound deadening (and good stereos) and it is becoming a problem for emergency vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lvTBmBDPno

> US employers cannot discriminate against a deaf person and must make reasonable accommodations to make it safe for them to do their job.

> US employers are not legally required to make accommodations for people who simply want to listen to music at work.

So it would be reasonably possible, but since it's not legally required they'd rather make their workers miserable for no benefit, and then complain how difficult it is to hire people?

Well, just because an employer can make reasonable accommodations for one or a few deaf people, doesn't necessarily mean that it would be reasonable or safe for the entire organization to operate in the same way. A "reasonable accommodation" could be something like a modified job role. E.g. you might move someone from a role that can't safely be done while deaf into a role that they could do. That's something that you could do for one or a couple of people, but you couldn't do for everybody.

I do agree with the sentiment that employers should take more efforts to make their jobs enjoyable to do. But some job sites have things that can kill people. The reason that heavy machinery beeps when it backs up is because people died at work before it did.

If you have even the slightest amount of situational awareness sound deadening or infotainment gizmos will not render you unaware of an approaching emergency vehicle. Scan your mirrors, scan your instruments, scan the horizon, repeat. The problem is unqualified, uneducated drivers.

Sound is great because it does not require line of sight. There's a reason why emergency vehicles have both lights and sirens, and it isn't because all of them have unnecessary equipment.

Agreed, but the root cause of the issue the emergency vehicle operator are noticing isn't sound deadening or infotainment gizmos, it's inattentive distracted drivers. Probably playing with their cell phones instead of driving. Similarly, in a manufacturing situation playing with your phone or watching tv is likely to cause problems. Inattention and inability to focus on the job is the problem. You can't solve that with technology, but you can with education.

Distracted driving is certainly a problem.

But, have you ever driven a quiet vehicle in an urban area where there are plenty of objects to block your line of sight? It is quite easy for a emergency vehicle to sneak up on you in a modern vehicle even when you are paying attention.

It's really a simple relationship -- if you block sound, it makes it harder to hear things.

This is exactly the reason why newer emergency vehicles have things like rumbler sirens. These sirens don't do anything to make people more attentive, but what they do is generate frequencies that are more likely to penetrate into modern vehicles.

You don't get to excuse a lapse in situational awareness because one or another of your senses is compromised. Compensate. Concentrate. Whatever it takes. Or, of you find that you're sufficiently impaired that you're not competent any longer to do the task, slow down and stop safely. You're in control, and therefore you're responsible. Be it driving, operating a forklift, or a spot welder on an assembly line. Do not cede control.

I honestly can't tell if you're serious or not.

I'm sure OP has never once made a mistake due to a lack of situational awareness. Everyone knows there's a little situational awareness gauge on your watch that beeps if it drops below 40%. That's how you know it's compromised. Not when an accident happens or anything like that.

Classic example of being unwilling to concede the argument.

> Do you hire deaf people?

I think you may start to understand the requirement once you realize the issue is where attention is and is not placed, instead of what sense is being exercised.

I mean, think about it. The recommendation was to consume forms of entertainment. In the factory I worked, there was a mandatory safety rule where you were required to establish eye contact with forklift drivers. Why is that a requirement?

Funny - eye contact is my "secret" to crossing the road in places like south east asia

that's not a problem if the people who will be interacting with fork lifts stay in designated areas as do the forklift operators. Nothing is ever going to b 0% chance of an accident but simply adhering to basic rules should keep people on an assembly line listening to spotify from taking a forklift to the knee. Have you ever worked on a factory floor at all? Sure some positions would be impossible but not for 80-90% of them.

In the factory floor I previously worked in, you needed to cross the forklift's domain to go to the bathroom and break room. This involved using exits also used by the forklift. You needed to hear it coming.

Even setting aside the forklift, having music playing reduces your ability to hear a coworker shout "Help, my clothes are caught on the line. Push the emergency stop".

Music might be allowed - though the factory is often loud enough that it isn't really practical. You still need to be able to hear the safety signals though.

YouTube cannot be allowed - you need to be ready to work when the line moves the next part to you. There are also safety concerns with watching youtube instead of the various hazards which are always there.

If the factory is so loud that listening to music isn't practical, the workers should have hearing protection that would limit the effectiveness of safety signals...

Listening to music should work, no pun intended. Watching YouTube though?

Yeah I guess it’s probably not realistic for most factory jobs. I am just thinking that “get paid $20 an hour to do a simple task and watch YouTube/listen to music” is actually kind of appealing to many people.

This is a lot of security guard and front desk jobs. if a boss doesn't like smartphones on the job, I know people who read books or knit between tasks.

When I was 18 I got paid below minimum wage to sit in my car delivering pizzas while listening to the radio. Far better than the higher paid shop job I tried at university.

Today with not just unlimited music (with no adverts), but the vast amounts of audio books you can listen to, it's even more appealing for people with limited financial obligations.

Having worked at a very simple factory job that involved hot-pressing plastic-aluminium film into shapes, yeah, that would end badly. It's unskilled job, that doesn't mean it's mindless.

If you look away from your job you might lose a finger,.. or *gasp* even worse, stop production!

> Watching YouTube though?

Yeah, I can't make that work. Only my most routine work can be done with the TV on (and providing it's my 5th rewatch).

It's a matter of habit and personal traits.

I grew up doing homework with the TV on and still sometimes work with a tiny video overlay showing some anime or tv show.

You basically pay attention to a small part of it, and switch focus as needed (pause your task or pause the video). You'll still miss a lot of the video but you just don't care.

I know this is unthinkable to some people but I've met more than one person who does it, so it's not ultra-rare. Possibly related to ADD/ADHD? I don't know.

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