supernova87a

I think many big tech companies are in a "we don't know what our next big goal is" kind of phase.

And this would be ok for a small company. But when you have tens of thousands of people who now need new clear marching orders, this is a very dangerous thing. And doubly so if you keep on changing those people's goals because you think you need to launch something big and new that requires thousands of people to build it (but you don't know exactly how it's going to be built).

Why is it dangerous (and I mean org-productivity-wise)? Because everyone has a natural need to feel useful and that they're productive and deserving of their pay.

So when clear instructions are lacking about what we're supposed to do, we make up things to work on. We hire people who say they can help us figure out what to work on. We create managers to manage people who seem to not know what they're working on, so that some direction can seem like it's clear. Because you can't have 10 people not knowing what they're working on, without a manager to manage their not knowing what they're working on. We schedule meetings to find out what other people are working on, and how we should get involved to be useful, distracting the few who are actually being productive.

So you find, after a few years, that you've accumulated a massive apparatus of people who have created a behomth of their own, simply from the desire to believe they're working on something useful. Sometimes they're very convincing, looking like they're working on something useful.

And unpleasant as it is (and surprising, as Elon Musk showed), many of them could stand to be fired without much detriment to the original purpose of the company.

Figure out what you want to build before you hire tens of thousands of people to do it. (and whether it will work). Or, at least as a caution, when your goal changes but you already have tens of thousands of people, be prepared to act unless you want to find yourself unwittingly in this position.

I know this is endlessly debated elsewhere so I'm not trying to conclude a meaningful discussion here, but, since HN has been an interesting and intellectual environment to discuss things.... (and I'm sure there are past threads on it)

Lately (as in, the last 30 years) it feels like the original intent of the CA initiative process has been lost and has swayed the policies of a state back and forth / patched things haphazardly without real public understanding of the implications or tradeoffs.

I mention this because a big aspect of Prop 22 was the specific disqualification of the legislature from modifying certain provisions of it (to prevent it being watered down or negated). 7/8 legislature vote required to change it! Why not just make it 99% vote at that point...

And btw, part of the court's decision / explanation was that in CA jurisprudence, when an initiative has spoken on a certain topic or requirement, deference to the people's will is mandatory and cannot be circumvented by the legislature against the conditions set by the initiative. In fact that's a good aspect of initiatives.

But:

-- Initiatives need surprisingly few people to start them, and then it turns into a money-fueled marketing campaign that goes crazy, trying to sell people on very simplified arguments about major policy changes. And then the issue must be decided, there is no deferring it. Perhaps the days of when idealistic founders thought that initiatives would be debated clearly and carefully in the town square are anachronistically long gone, and that check is no longer effective.

-- The public as a general group is asked to make big decisions on things that eventually turn into huge debt obligations, change to our fundamental government process, etc. without full understanding or discussion behind the longer term implications. And of course, since when has the general public been a good judge of fiscal restraint or future responsibility? Pitch a spending initiative the right way and of course it will be approved. $500M vs. $20B? Who cares.

-- While the notion that the people themselves should be able to put forth legislation directly and override the legislature is admirable and in some circumstances very fitting that some questions go to the people, initiatives are being held on things that the legislature in fact should be the decider or deliberator of. Again, things that have budget impacts, specialized knowledge, etc needed.

-- Initiatives are very bad at publicizing or making people aware of who benefits and who does not. And especially in the future. Initiatives never have a time limit to them, freezing the policy in place to solve a problem-at-one-time, but then they go on for decades with unintended aftermath. Prop 13 I'm looking at you.

Anyway, this is all part of a larger (admittedly half-baked) theory I have about the problems democracies face when we don't have 4-5 major problems that everyone agrees on, but 200-300 first world problems where everyone thinks theirs is the most important. How is a democratic process to solve: which problems it should spend the time and energy to fix?

I would love to know if any progress is being made in CA on the initiative and constitutional processes.

I wonder if, even if the bird doesn't take the boat for a long distance (i.e. cutting off time spent flapping), just having the ability to rest and recover in the middle of the ocean provides it the boost to keep on going. Or some safety factor. Just like Midway Atoll for us...hah.

Palm oil is full of saturated fats isn't it?

Is this not more applicable to the (yes of course, many) 1-previous generation of bleed-air based planes where the AC packs are linked to the jet exhaust?

I thought that 787 etc. now use purely electrical power that are now (and for the future generation of planes) a no-bleed-air-anymore system.

Are you sure / do you have info that HN doesn't use some kind of "holding pen" for stories to have a fixed amount of time to see if they get a certain % of votes before being kicked down the list?

This is a classic problem with forums, and I wonder if HN already has something in place that you might not have factored in (which could then just be tuned better).

"Libertarian reluctantly calls fire department"

-- The Onion

What about brokerages like Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, etc?

Are holdings in money market funds/accounts in such typical brokerages protected / owned like a security? Or should one regard it also like cash, and not FDIC insured greater than $250,000? (but while also trusting those institutions are unlikely to fail or have risky policies)

Isn't the question though, if you acted on the set of companies/banks that were showing these signs, how often would you be right and saved your money (or made money)?

The analyses that tell you what led to a particular crash are hard to stomach as a reliable bet for the next time.

I just saw this story: https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230310718/20-...

("20 banks that are sitting on huge potential securities losses—as was SVB")

Would you short Ally right now? Hard to make such a bet.

I just watched it -- aside from the very interesting mechanics of the FDIC coming in and taking over a bank, I thought Sheila Bair (the then FDIC chair) came off as very knowledgeable, realistic, and critical of the risks posed by big banks. She went on to become a university president after the recession / banking bailout.

Here's a practical advice question -- if one's holdings / savings in brokerages, etc. are in government money market funds, are you safe from a bank run? I.e. it's not explicitly cash that the bank could have lent out, but rather a fund? I assume of course that stock holdings, ETFs, etc. are absolutely things you "own" once they are settled in your account. Right...?

(say, like you keep most of your stuff in Fidelity or Vanguard typical kinds of brokerage accounts)

> That's pawn shop levels of selling. To say they are in trouble is like saying it would be tough to sell a house that is currently on fire.

"Motivated seller!" -- Lionel Hutz

I wonder if our eyes being a more discerning sense compared to hearing drives how much (or some maximum) technology investment that will go into audio improvements, before people evaluating the price of some new microphone say, "eh, can't really tell at this point".

What is amazing to me is that, just like cameras have become so accessible to the masses everywhere, cheap condenser microphones that do a pretty tolerable job are now within reach of everyone who can click on Amazon for $20. And unless you're really an audio snob or someone recording for archival / professional purposes, the $700-3000 microphones that were the reference standard of the past are no longer necessary to sound pretty good. (Maybe they're an aspirational equipment just like the big DSLRs are/were).

The miracle of modern manufacturing.

Maybe you should read more about it. If you know how many people are going to be aging into the Social Security system, and needing Medicare/Medicaid, and some simple assumptions about the budget and tax revenue, you can easily generate the approximate shape and amounts of those financial projections.

It is so simple a calculation and so ridiculous a situation, as you say (but in a different way than you mean), that this is a huge problem that will have to be confronted.

The CBO generates those kinds of calculations, and they're not a group known for making up things out of thin air.

I don't know what you're disputing over. It is both a tax, and it is an insurance program.

I thought the idea of Social Security was an insurance program to guard against you outliving your means if you live long enough, not an I-get-paid-back cash-out of your payments.

Aren't you having a fundamental misunderstanding about what the purpose of SS is?

And not sure if you know, but the dollar figures are more like:

Max pay into the program: ~$300k over your 40 year working life (if you maxed out the contribution cap, 6% tax on $167k currently)

Max payout from the program: ~$600k (if you draw the maximum when you retire and luckily live a long time, ~20 years)

Not "paying in $1m, and only getting $200k", by a long shot.

I think it's quite in the opposite direction of how you think you're being taken for a ride.

I don't know what case you're alluding to or what program that has such examples. But those examples sound like fraud and corruption.

I'm not sure where your facts (or opinions) are from.

There is a coming wave of retirees, and an associated decrease in the workers per retiree to support them.

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/2022/

See page 12, page 15.

If you both are not understanding the issue, and not interested in learning about the details, then maybe you shouldn't take a strong opinion on the matter.

And where does the money for raising salaries come from?

I didn't say efficiently. I said fraud, which is a different thing.

If you want to attack efficiency, you have a lot of work to deeply change how the government, and in fact many aspects of our public / government works. How they use contractors, the kinds of contracts they're allowed to enter into, the reviews and permitting and public commenting they need to engage in, unions, labor rates, etc. That would be as big a challenge as the above debate.

I have heard these schemes and problems being perpetuated by agencies like the police, where they have terminal salary-based retirement benefit plans. (or in the style of, "your last 3 highest paying years") The officers conspire to get the retiring man as many hours as possible in his last years, overtime etc. Or more subtle things like, every road construction site has to have a police officer on duty. It's a bad oversight / policy by the government that allows this to happen. And hard to change politically.

I agree with this very much of course.

> "Do you have some kind of similar study that doesn't come out of the Republican Party? Maybe something a little more non-partisan?"

Not sure what your point is. I'm not sharing the article/infographic and animated budget scenarios as "this is what needs to happen" from some party's perspective. The point is a graphical display of the size of different buckets (which I take as fact) and the sliders that you can play with. The cases being presented are just examples. You can mentally slide the bars / cut line and see how much is required.

> "I also find it funny how the infographic doesn't show a scenario where only defense cuts are made, because it would show us how cutting defense spending is a really simple path toward a balanced budget without changing anything else.

I don't know if you have looked at it, but the defense bar is as big as each of the Medicaid, other mandatory, and "all other" spending bars each. You would have to cut the entire defense budget and still not solve the problem, and only make a fractional share of what is achieved if you implemented cuts to those other programs.

> "Another example of the flaws of this argument/article is how Social Security is self-funded, and not in any financial jeopardy on its own. [1] Some of the other entitlement programs on the list also work that way."

Maybe you have to redefine your definition of self-funded. Sure it is self-funded, as long as taxes increase a lot, given the demographic wave coming. If taxes don't increase, or one of these other options, it will run out of funds. If we don't agree on that, we have a problem. This is the entire debate about the problem we face.

> "Regardless, my understanding is that a government's budget never has to be balanced. It doesn't operate like a family household...."

Well, correct, but the question is how deep do we go into the hole. If you read the story, and the charts, you can see the projections of debt going to 200% GDP. At that point we will be paying enough interest on our debt to have funded several large programs themselves.

> "You're saying our only options are for taxes to rise, benefits decreasing, increasing retirement age, or snowballing debt. But why are those our only options?"

And the other options are?

> "The other part would be looking at government inefficiencies and flawed policies that aren't on your list. For example, should we not talk about how suburban development and the interstate highway system is a monetary drain on wealth for the majority of the country?"

Sure, talk about it, but can you change the bulk of the US to capture whatever benefit you can from that change, within 50 years to save the programs needing the money?

> "I know I've spent a lot of time on this one issue as a specific example, but it's really just one of many ways in which being smart and efficient about the use of the vast wealth generated by the US would go a long way...."

The talking is all good, but the bottom line is will your proposals come up with the money in time?

If you assume that most government programs have on the order of a very few % misspending or outright fraud (which is the case, aside from fiascos like the pandemic stimulus payments) then you just have to assume that the real decisions to be made are the "should we have this program at all" or "do rates need to increase / benefits need to decrease". The auditing and details will get worked out by an existing government apparatus designed to ensure this. You cannot let yourself get lost from the bigger picture believing that what is missing is the audit. The big questions are what need to be solved.

One big challenge I see with the whole business about pension reform (and government spending in fact) as a public debate is that two sides are talking on totally different planes. In France, and someday very soon, here in the US. And the public in a certain sense, will problematically have to end up voting a simple yes/no on extremely complex topics which are incentivized to push buttons on single issues. cf. Brexit.

On the one side (hopefully meaningful to this crowd) is a group that when confronted with the sheer numbers involved and tradeoffs that would make any dent in the coming demographic-driven bankruptcy (shorthand name for it), have to keep things running and try to come up with the actually mathematically workable or "implement this decision" plans with the resources they have. Not aspirations.

Take a look at this for example:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/06/upshot/balanc...

See those numbers/scenarios, there is no getting around the severity of the situation.

Then on the other plane, there are people (politicians, and people in general in the country) who deal in "symbols" and qualitative statements about what they think who is entitled to, what was promised, etc. "Eat the rich!" etc.

And lately it seems, rarely the twain shall meet. Or at least, it's quite rare to find leaders who are equally incentivized or capable of handling both sides of this adeptly. Also, the people who don't understand the numbers generally tend to shout and insist they're right. On the other hand, numbers people don't usually shout (and underplay the severity of coming problems; the type that analyzes is usually civil about it). Also, and this is an evolving thought -- I don't think democracies are very well suited to allocating the pain of a country's long-term downturn very well, or having people understand when your country's resources are actually decreasing.

One thing is for sure -- there is a massive unpleasant reckoning coming in terms of what benefits and tax rates people believed they would experience. There is no magic getting out of this hole, it will be one of / combination of:

-- taxes will rise (for whom?)

-- benefits will decrease (for whom?)

-- retirement age will increase

-- borrowing will increase (from whom?)

And undoubtedly it will largely fall on the next generations. Or just in time for my retirement.

Well, as I alluded to, sophisticated programmers/managers think about all the cases they may have to optimize for.

You know, one thing that I don't see discussed much is:

Just like more advanced programmers worry about the worst case scenario of some code you've written rather than just the average -- with these remote working policies, sometimes the question is not just, will it make everyone on average a more productive employee, but what is the worst case that might affect your team under very tolerant remote work policies?

Because if a few people's decrease in productivity is so noticeable working remotely that the team in general suffers / no longer works well, then it's a different consideration.

There is something difficult to quantify about the notion that when a few people on a team start being less responsive /interactive, it can have a real impact to how people think of the pace of what you want the team to operate at. Especially if you're doing prototyping / early stage creative work where you're not operating by tickets, but rather looking over each others' shoulders to give live feedback and trade ideas.

Not everything about work is to be designed to simply give what the employees would naturally want.

Do you remember in the movie "Up in the Air" when some technology to lay off people en masse remotely was presented laughably as some dystopian craziness in the future?

> The more "human" feeling thing is to have 1-1 zoom calls with each person being fired so you can talk to them about their situation and specifics.

I think they also do that. This is just to give people the initial news as soon as possible, and without ambiguity or speculation as it takes days to percolate through if you did it 1:1.