Single party rule in California has been an improvement. We have a functioning government. Kinda helps in a pandemic. When we got rid of our last Republican governor we paid down our debt and California entered this dire period with a big reserve. The notion that some sort of optimal condition is reached by trashing government is just a clueless and stupid idea.
No. I know a lot of people upset with Amazon in large part because they have devastated Main Street. Convenience is not the only human value worthy of consideration. I do use them sometimes, but even then, for some products it's a bad experience because you get fakes.
I order from https://bookshop.org. It's a sort of umbrella for local bookstores: one storefront, many vendors. I select my favorite local bookstore and support them.
The worst interviews of my life were at Google. The reason is, they ping me when I am not looking and that gives me the idea to look - then they are my first interview. The last time I went through a new job search I studied first for two months. The google interview was before all that. Bombing was painful! IMHO job interviewing is a skill and practice is essential.
I grew up in the author's city in the midst of long term economic abandonment and decline. It was terrifying, to be honest. I think the spread of this across the industrialized Midwest elected Trump. I have had many arguments with fellow liberals about the globalized economy. In a nutshell, I don't believe in it, if the result is an alienated wasteland where the old working class economy used to be. We, the elite (I include myself as I'm a well off and successful engineer), have destroyed the social contract by supporting and implementing outsourcing and automation. The result may well be the destruction of our democracy. Cheap consumer goods from China are not worth this price. The article is only wrong in downplaying the potential of bringing industrial jobs back to this country. That is essential, as a part of the overall change in priorities.
In my view being optimistic about the future is in conflict with believing that China will become the dominant power. There are many concerning signals from China, not least the situation of Muslims and also the surveillance state. There is much we don't know about the true situation of debt, public and private, in China.
I didn't like the analysis because markets are mushed together. Amazon market share for cars and books is different. It is meaningless to analyze the monopoly impact where monopoly is defined as the whole market for all us goods. They have to be broken out or corrective action will be postponed for too long.
I subscribe to the paper version of my local paper because it is so much easier to actually get information from. It's so well designed. I think the reason people have gravitated to online news is herd mentality. What I like about paper news: my focus is more under my control. I can evaluate and skim whole articles at once. I am not constrained by what if visible in the window. Also, no distractions. Every time I open my computer or phone I am waylaid by distractions. I am a software / AI engineer and I think we have created a dystopia.
One thing I am seriously afraid of is that our tech dystopia will drive local newspapers out of business. I hate to think of what that will do for corruption, inefficiency, everything. Just awful. I dread the day my local newspaper announces they are ceasing publication. The reduction is staffing over the last 15 or 20 years is incredible. I think the San Jose Mercury went from 1800 to 35. That is depressing.
Another great cost saving idea of Ronald Reagan was the closing of all the mental hospitals, supposedly to be replaced by community clinics (which never happened). The unrolling disaster of homeless with severe mental illness continues, on and on and on. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. What a legacy.
I had 12 years at a major tech company, then I contracted for awhile. Before the bust I felt like a film star fielding calls whenever I was looking for work. Fun is the word; I was so in demand. When the bust hit I was actually choosing to take some time off (and taking classes). After that I was the only person in my Java class who got a job, out of 35 or so, and that job was one third my previous contractor hourly, and it was intermittent. On, off, on, off, with that small company. One of my friends in my class was unemployed for two years. I live in SF and the Mission had been flooded with bright young wannabes with shiny degrees, and they all disappeared during the bust. One horrifying thing happened that I was close to. The small company that I had gotten a gig with went under and the CEO committed suicide. That was a few months after my final check. He was a brilliant and funny guy. I have had a lovely run of success lately and I try to remember how much of it is luck plus timing. Also we underestimate the true hardness of hard times. Best to be appreciative.
I didn't get life changing money but got good money. I like the new position, I've had some amazing opportunities. But it's high stress. The market segment is hot and the buyer is betting on us. It's great in the way a huge messy challenge is great. It's hard problems. For me, I got stock buyout from sale and on hire stock grant that I have to stay for some years to earn out. I plan to stay. Altogether maybe 700K. Maybe more. Not sure. I feel pretty good but it's intense. For our size startup it's hard to imagine how it could be better than this. Nothing is easy.
I love my job but at an earlier one, every day I wanted to quit. My boss was threatened by me and did not value me. He tried to show he had my skills. He valued another engineer more. I felt jealous, stifled, and miserable. I learned a valuable lesson though. Don't quit because you have an impulse. Wait until you have figured out your next move.
We use it heavily but these aren't the features I dislike. In function Teams is a workflow browser but compared to real browsers it is very low functioning. No good bookmark system and ugh, no tabs. Even the back arrow doesn't scope properly, and anyway I find myself jumping around because I need multiple contexts.
I find the meetings and phone to be fine.
It does suck memory like a hog. Because it is a workflow browser I have to have the app open and also several browser accessed versions. That means my laptop slows down a lot.
They are illegal in California. I have heard it said that has been a pro-competitive influence for companies here which is one reason for the dynamism of the tech sector.
At forty I was just getting started. I'm 63 and I have done lots of super hard projects and I keep learning more and I have advanced up the tech ladder. And, the problems are harder than ever. For me the key is going after the hardest problems because that is what I like the most. Think system software, compilers, AI. It just seems to have been a good career move though that was never my intention. I've worked in areas of the software field that are thought of as difficult, and that has helped me.
I see this differently. I grew up in Chicago in the era of decline. Economic decline begets social decline. Much is made of the pathology of poor communities, and I've heard it before: for jobs to come, you need to 'fix' the people, the schools, the community. But funny thing, if the jobs are stripped away, the people sink into despair and dysfunction. You see it today, in white working class communities where it seems nearly everyone has succumbed to opiates. When I was growing up it was called the pathology of the Black family. In my area, jobs fled because the companies didn't want to pay union wages. Then gangs took over. The people were blamed for the dysfunction. What happens when the jobs disappear is the real problem.
Living standards have gone down and life has become much more economically insecure for most working people as a result of the policies that economists recommend. This includes globalization, free trade, low taxes, destruction of labor unions, and the like. The authors support these policies. These changes have been accompanied by a political system that no longer represents the left behind. So of course the losers are not compensated; that is by design, not accident. I think we have the choice to either become more equal or face increasing political instability and viciousness - and the latter is more likely, witness Trump, Brexit, etc. I have lost respect for economic analysis because it has been so out of touch with political and social consequences as to be hugely destructive to the fabric of society. Much more of this and I hate to see what will become of our society.
I live in SF and I have been in and out of the tech industry, so I know the city from both perspectives. (I now work at one of the big tech companies.) So many people outside of the industry work more than one job. They need to. Wages are too low. That is the problem, wages. Focus on that, economists, so ordinary people can get by on one job's wages.
I live in a old Victorian with small rooms and solid wood doors. This was fantastic when my son was growing up and when my wife was alive. Her tv watching noise did not take over the house; no one's did. It was great. One room is big, the dining room, where we all gathered. The kitchen was nice size too. I have to really appreciate this floor plan, plus the solid wood doors. I am noise sensitive.
I got a job at Microsoft through acquisition (not located in Redmond) and I gotta say, I am kinda loving it. Very challenging and good tools. Happy to be here. I think the Satya era is an improvement, from what I hear. To me they seem pretty serious about being a good environment for women.
I'm worried about the impact of collapsing valuations of Lyft and Uber. Out of curiosity, does anyone know what big successful companies have gone public when they were losing large amounts of money? What happened to the stock price?
I am 63 and I'm having an amazing career right now. I am levels and levels above where I ever thought I'd be. It's too stimulating to retire. I've always been attracted to the hardest problems I could find and that paid off, but it took a long time. I don't know how people do that quickly, unless it's partly luck. I'm not Ivy League so I had to earn every opportunity.
Nobody seems to have read this article although many people seem to identify with the topic because of their own suicidal feelings. I found the article very moving and I learned a lot about suicidal illness. The article is brutally honest. I understood how it could be that a person would not think about the pain their suicide would cause. I appreciated the amount of hopelessness and pain the author was in. One thing that is clear is that his pain is his mother's pain is his sister's pain is his family's pain... It's a large and complex family system, that has beget this suicidal person. It gave me a lot of compassion.
This is true. The problem is that most jobs have had stagnant wages for decades and developers are an exception. That is where the guilt comes from. But we need income growth like we need other kinds of growth. The transition to carbon free economy is going to be expensive. It's not going to happen if we decide income growth is toxic.
Having been in the Bay Area startup scene for 20 years (and now through acquisition working for one of the big tech companies) I think the reason so many startups are here is because they can hire the experienced developers that will make their startup succeed. There is a whole ecosystem here and that can't be duplicated easily (or at all).