98 karma · joined September 25, 2018
That would normally be the case, but I would argue that salary and housing has a strong connection in places like SV. People need to get a certain salary to be able to stay (and start a family) in the Bay Area. Which means that people have a high incentive to increase their salary and that some of those who don't have to leave. As overall the people who stay have more and more money the cost of housing increase, in turn giving people even more need to increase their salary.
That would all normally stop at some point, but since so many wealth companies centralize in the Bay Area the spiral continues.
There is absolutely reasons to believe that equalizing pay, across companies rather than occupations, could be part of the solution. Less efficient companies underpaying their employees would fold. More efficient companies would get more money to hire even more people. Prices would stabilize, careers would likely be more predictable.
This was part of economic policy in Sweden in the ~1960s and as far as I can tell generally considered successful. Though it will, and did, also created large wealth inequality without other measures.
I don't see the relevance of the tone of the book. Especially not if the author of the article suggest that his own arguments have more merit. Nor does the introduction of the book [0] actually seem to have many scare quotes. A scare quote is when you question something by quoting it, most often without elaborating. That isn't the usage of quotes in the introduction of the book as far as I can tell, it is the usage of quotes in the article though.
> I'm not sure the article has embellished much given the introduction.
Again I don't see why it is relevant what the book does nor that this is actually the case in the book. Things like "colourful mud-slinging on the basis of anecdotes" and "can be dismissed as lurid gossip" is certainly just that and present in the article. If it was true that Brotopia only contains anecdotes that can easily be dismissed then why do we even need the rest of the article?
> The article actually points out the book's main bias, "Chang does not consider any alternative theses that might cause gender disparities in occupational sectors."
Since we don't really get to know what the theory of the book is in the article I don't think that is that relevant either. When I read an "analysis and review" I want to know what the theory of the book is and its merits. That the author of the book didn't consider a specific theory might be an argument in the overall discourse, but isn't necessarily relevant for the merit of the book's argument. Unless it can be specifically tied to what the book is actually saying.
> That's where you'll find better data and better theories to explain the data.
If he wants to discuss the overall issue, and not just the book, there are plenty of other research studies one could and should refer to.
> I think the article is correct to point out that tech is getting an unusual amount of attention given the gender disparities in other fields.
Again I don't see the relevance since we are talking about a book on this exact issue. How do you correctly measure the amount of attention something should have? I would say it is pretty safe to skip that discussion all together and just argue the issues instead.
The majority of these points have now been about other things than the contents of the book in question.
> The article is also correct to point out that redistributing work means taking women out of other sectors and displacing men to other sectors (although obviously hyperbolic in suggesting we just swap with nurses), and this change won't necessarily lead to better outcomes overall.
Even from the scare quote summary earlier in the article I can guess that the book argues that this should happens because the state of the boys club isn't the natural state, but an injustice. You could certainly argue that that doesn't matter, but then you would also have to argue against being a meritocracy.
> why is it necessary to "break up" the boy's club in tech when we clearly didn't need any such call to break up the boy's clubs in medicine or law.
Didn't we? In these discussions people tend to argue that medicine and law is much more formalized and that it therefor is easier to effect change from the top. Since the book presumably is about the informal structures in technology that seem like a relevant argument.
> But note that while those fields overall are roughly gender equal, the genders have still segregated themselves into various specializations, eg. surgery is still male dominant, pediatrics is female dominant.
Which largely isn't the case in technology i.e. its an overall problem not in specializations.
> The sexism narrative can't explain this, but the works by the psychologists the article cites actually can.
If you, like the article, dismisses the book in favor of a particular study that might be the case, but that just isn't a very strong argument. To make that a strong argument you would have specifically address the points, and the overall thesis, of the book and then make a counter argument based on that. That is exactly what I would expected and didn't get from the article.
> Anyway, I could trot out plenty of citations on this, and I have here on HN in the past, but there's little point. It almost always devolves into pointless squabbling.
I am not asking to write as long as you did. I much prefer one or two points and we could argue. I just don't think there is much support for that in this article which is exactly what I argued in my previous comment.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-01/women-onc...
Could you summarize, or mention a few? Because I struggle to see much of any merit to the article. It starts out with scare quote even in the first paragraph which is, if not just outright bad, criticized enough to be a faux pas in itself. It continues with rhetorically embellished opinions about the book, which most of us haven't read. Then presents a bunch of numbers that we again don't know if they are particularly relevant. Finally it spends most of the rest of the article discussing other theories that the author prefers.
I would expect an analysis like this at least partly present the theories discussed in the book in a relatively natural light to then discuss those theories.
Edit: On second though it is very unlikely we will have a productive discussion here. People never seem to have been able to handle this type of discussion on HN and judging by the response this isn't the exception.
So since the quality of both the article and the comments are low I would instead recommend people to flag the story.
If anything I think the idea that a Chinese manufacturer with complete access to the hardware having to execute some exploit towards the web interface to get access is far fetched. So is that you could pretend to update the firmware (surely no one is going to notice that the new version doesn't have the features you wanted?) and that dumping the firmware would be inconvenient (it would be the first thing you did if you suspected something).
If there is anything working against the Bloomberg story it is that it is too plausible. Often reality clashes with imagination, but the Bloomberg story contains almost everything you could imagine happening.
That a bank who can't handle security compromises their customers user experience rather than their customers security is a good thing.
The reason the regulate these things aren't because it is fun. It is because there are fundamental security problems that needs to and will eventually be fixed. Companies like Apple have largely already, or at least potentially, fixed these problem just only for themselves. If you want to fix it for everyone you very likely need some sort of mandate.
A not insignificant part of the large Internet companies power comes from that they are the only ones who can handle, or people trust to handle, security. It isn't that hard today to create your own e-mail system or smart phone. But managing those systems, especially for a reasonable cost at scale, is just beyond what most new entrants in the market can handle.
It isn't though, at least not compared to the state of things. Pretty much any government would be competent enough to mandate some sort of two-factor authentication that would greatly improve security and make a lot of phishing and hijacking a thing of the past. Of course different governments would have different success rates, if not in terms of security at least in terms of elegance. But that is like everything else. People die everyday by the lack of road safety and healthcare.
If you read almost any constitution they protect "life and liberty". Today those things are being impacted by a lack of security. Peoples messages, private pictures, assets, infrastructure, opinions and even geopolitics are all affected.
Yesteryear the most you could do was largely to expose someones password, read their university e-mail and steal some source code. Relative to the impact security is a lot worse today.
It is one of the few ways to have an equal society. With to large income inequality the welfare state becomes unsustainable. The poor can't pay for services performed by the rich and ultimately you get a society like the US or worse. Everywhere doesn't have to be the same, no one is forced to live in Sweden. Swedes have very good visa conditions and generally do very well abroad.
> How are you going to convince them to go to Sweden instead of US?
Sweden is a small place. To the extent it needs top talent there is plenty available. People who want to make $300k shouldn't and largely won't move to Sweden anyways. This isn't a competition Sweden can win. Sweden is largely successful because it competes, or have competed, on its own terms. Not by trying to be a worse copy of something else.
Swedish society can, or could, attract people that wants things that are in line with what it is good at and not readily available in other places i.e. its unique selling proposition. Things like education, family and quality of life. There is a foundation to provide those things that has been lost in the last 10 years or so. A lot of people move for opportunities, making money is only one opportunity.
I think it is telling that you are also leaving the Netherlands as a significantly lower tax rate couldn't keep you there either. Note that I am not saying the Sweden is attractive at this point, just that I find it unlikely that taxes are the main problem.
Personally I don't like Hong Kong, but it will certainly be different. Don't miss out on going to Shenzhen.
> It's effectively cap to enforce equality of outcome.
It isn't so much to enforce equality of outcome as to enforce equality of income. What you are experiencing is to a large extent being on the wrong side of inequality. Just that isn't income inequality, but rather things like wealth, real estate, inheritance and education. Inequalities which people in Sweden largely aren't aware of, or accustomed to. If you had arrived 10 years earlier you would have, at least to a larger extent, been set for life. Other than that I can certainly see your perspective because it is almost impossible for a "salary man" to catch up in Sweden.
* Cost of living for a good quality of life still being relatively high or rising, especially in Lisbon and other tourist/expat areas. And a second tier city in Portugal is much less of a clear choice since that is comparable to a lot more places.
* The tax system being very complicated. One can always argue about how much tax to pay, but few people want a complicated tax system, especially not as a foreigner. (And is usually an indication that other systems are complicated as well).
* The tech scene not really happening. Despite the usual "next Silicon Valley" it doesn't really stand out from anywhere else as far as I can tell.
There might certainly be things I don't see, but at least initially it doesn't seem like Portugal rise above the competition to the extent that you wouldn't have to consider quite a few other options.
I like a lot of what dhh says, but I think the weak part of his arguments is probably practicality. There are plenty of people that agree with him in principle, but are destined to make other choices because of the way the world works.
That said, if there ever was a time when quality of life mattered it is now. I am convinced that whichever country can scale quality of life will have success. Pretty much everyone of the established startup hubs, and even the non-established ones, are essentially limited not by knowledge, capital or workforce but quality of life.
When cities say they lack companies, or companies say they lack workforce, or the workforce say they lack salary, it is really that money isn't buying them the quality of life needed to be effective.
Up until that point the invasions, surveillance, renditions, torture and threat to civil liberties could be justified as, or at least categorized as, means to oppose Al Qaeda. By killing bin Laden he became just another enemy in a long line of people that the US wants to kill. And the methods of the war on terror, instead of a regrettable period in US history, just another tool for the US to use as it sees fit.
> And would anyone expect different actions from Russia? From Israel?
Probably not, which is sort of the point.
> ‘They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,’ the retired official said. ‘Go straight there. Osama was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.’ Some of the Seals were appalled later at the White House’s initial insistence that they had shot bin Laden in self-defence, the retired official said. ‘Six of the Seals’ finest, most experienced NCOs, faced with an unarmed elderly civilian, had to kill him in self-defence? The house was shabby and bin Laden was living in a cell with bars on the window and barbed wire on the roof. The rules of engagement were that if bin Laden put up any opposition they were authorised to take lethal action. But if they suspected he might have some means of opposition, like an explosive vest under his robe, they could also kill him. So here’s this guy in a mystery robe and they shot him. It’s not because he was reaching for a weapon. The rules gave them absolute authority to kill the guy.’ The later White House claim that only one or two bullets were fired into his head was ‘bullshit’, the retired official said. ‘The squad came through the door and obliterated him. As the Seals say, “We kicked his ass and took his gas.”’
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of...
A defining moment for the US for sure. It showed the war on terror wasn't excusable and that even the most conscious and educated president would still be a hypocrite when it really mattered. It has been downhill ever since with Russia and China doing largely whatever they want.