kourt

No, that's a person with "high hourly earned income".

Making wealth is not the only way to get rich. For most of human history it has not even been the most common. Until a few centuries ago, the main sources of wealth were mines, slaves and serfs, land, and cattle, and the only ways to acquire these rapidly were by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or confiscation. Naturally wealth had a bad reputation. - Paul Graham

Politically, NAFTA, GATT, MFN status for China, and the creation of the H1-B program all happened around the stuff waps mentions above (oil price drop, stock bubble, and dot.com bubble of the 1990s). When the latter burst, the effects of the former became more clearly apparent. While this lead to increased opportunity in many countries, the cumulative result of all these changes makes the entry-level job market in developed countries in 2014 or 2004 very different than that of 1994, 1984, or 1974, and it's difficult for older Westerners to account for this when projecting their own experiences.

Good idea. Let's call it "Bell Labs".

1) What if you had a brother with an IQ of 98. Would you rather he had a respectable factory job, or become homeless?

2) Are you aware that many of the least-tradable services are the least "cognitively demanding"? So I guess you want to tailor the bell curve of the population so that everyone is either > 120 so that they can do very highly cognitive work, or < 80 (so that they are content doing extremely menial work). Isn't it a little inconvenient that around 68% of the population is 85-115 IQ?

That's a completely sensible stipulation. It's imperfect like all security, but it's a legitimate reason rather than just a barrier.

On one hand, trademark preservation is important.

On another hand, how many companies would kill for a community of "Raving Fans" like this? And in addition to enthusiasm, the site seemed very high quality and thus complementary to Ikea's marketing.

I see this more and more even in edited publications. It's especially irksome here since the article contains almost no actual writing.

While you are correct that people vary, many managers seem extremely ignorant of 200 years of research on this topic and start from grossly wrong initial conditions (e.g., "40 hours is the bare minimum and should be considered slacking: a professional works until the job is done and we really expect 50 hours; we prefer passionate people, which starts at around 55 hours"). It would be far better for almost everyone if the typical standard expectation were based on a typical standard human, not on outliers (e.g., people who carry the DEC2 mutation and need only 6 hours sleep).

Look at it another way: the 75% of the workforce who is average would stop burning themselves out to the point of negative productivity, and supermen like yourself would be truly recognized for your outstanding contributions, rather than just "meh, meets expectations".

[0] e.g. http://www.slideshare.net/flowtown/rules-of-productivity-275...

The week dates are even more awesome, really: I use them whenever I can.

I would love a maintained {n,}curses mode spreadsheet that can handle excel1040.com.

There's nothing wrong with saying "I like Linux, but it's becoming Lennartix and I'm concerned."

Granted, that may seem like ancient history, but RDRAND is an indication that Intel still makes mistakes.

Less fragmentation is more efficient in many ways, but just like any monoculture, it is also fragile.

Maybe he's on everybody's side. What freedom is more important than the freedom to be true to one's self? What good is free speech[1] when the private, individual exercise thereof results in the professional equivalent of capital punishment?

[1] Whether campaign contributions are always identical to speech in all contexts is immaterial here: in this case, they're close enough.

Similarly, one could argue that people accumulate debt 18-22 because their immature brains are too stupid to understand cause and effect, ignoring more salient facts like: 1) 18 year olds have not had time to establish specialized professional experience so their earning potential is low due to no fault of their own 2) Immigration and trade policies have deliberately and drastically reduced the earning potential of unskilled labor (which includes basically all 18 year olds, including future MD's and PhD's) 3) Housing costs and especially education costs have skyrocketed in the past 40 years 4) Education is increasingly financed through debt rather than loans.

This is not as much fun as "kids today are so stupid!", but IMO a far more accurate explanation for why a current college student will incur more debt than a Boomer who could earn enough each summer hauling hay or working in a unionized factory to pay a year's tuition at State U.

I spent 18-22 enrolled at one university earning a degree in the major that I listed on my application packet, but I interned at a different company each summer. If I'd worked during the academic year, I'd probably have had several additional jobs during the period: folding towels at the gym, computer laboratory attendant, resident advisor, off-campus food service and off-campus retail.

I'm also reminded of the studies that document that routinely exceeding a 40 hour week causes reduced productivity (IGDA "Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work"), and that 40 hours was based on assembly-line work and the corresponding number for creative work is probably 35 hours max leads me to think it's just not possible to have a side project without interfering with your main job to some degree.

So yes, I've gladly given up TV and movies and gaming, but that still doesn't seem to make a side project feasible, which is really sad.