I found myself in a very similar situation. My solution was to get a job at a large company. It didn't help much with the making friends part, but I am happy now that I don't work alone. I would consider whether a startup is right for you at this time.
You have a valid point. The challenge for me is these ideas don't go away; instead, they sit in the background incessantly calling to me, making me feel like I'm missing something important. I took a position with a big company that I hoped would give me stability and flexibility to work on my own projects, and it does, but I'm failing to do so.
I agree, it seemed like he was driving at the idea that we shouldn't dismiss the way women were acting as wrong, but instead try to see the advantages of their approach. Even though he didn't say it like this, I imagine his thought process was that being overly aggressive in negotiations creates ill-will and hurts you in the long run. Maybe there are men out there who constantly ask for raises and would be better off if they didn't.
>I hope men aren't discouraged by this.
90% of men are simply trying to avoid the entire issue as much as possible, because stuff like this happens all the time.
I don't really see the problem here. Indians are willing to work under these conditions, which honestly don't sound worse than the US. It sounds like even though they might shrink/grow teams at will, because the building has many teams, the risk for the individual is low. And you said that companies are happy with the work these teams do. So what is the problem?
Indians are willing to work under these conditions => willing or don't (think they) have much choice? And i'm sure rows of long, room wide desks without any separation between 1m workspaces with touching chairs and cameras pointing at you to keep you in your chair is not normal/allowed in the US? It certainly is not over here. I see quite a lot wrong with it. It keeps the prices low, sure. I didn't say the companies hiring them are happy though; I said they keep hiring them because it seems like a good idea and you have this team doing work, you can show the hours they spent, you can show what they did etc to your boss. It's kind of 'secure' compared to, let's say, Elance, where a really good developer(team) suddenly disappears to turn up a few months later with 'sorry, had some personal/company/financial/cosmic radiation issues' leaving you to explain why you hired this loose cannon.
Quality wise I have not seen anything coming from these shops, however that might be OK for departmental (read CRUD; the type MS Access was made for) LoB applications, mobile apps and internal sites.
Yes they do have a choice. Their choices are more limited because they live in a poorer country. On the American companies, didn't you said I hear some companies actually get work done this way and are very happy with it, growing continuously without worrying about who does the tech; Not saying you're 100% wrong on outsource being a safe option for managers, but you really did say that American companies were happy with outsourcing.
If you apply basic microeconomics to this situation, it is actually very simple. The company makes Indian workers better off, American workers worse off, and American companies better off.
I indeed did say happy. Should have the context on my screen when typing replies. You have a point of course; they do have a choice. Sort of. If you are not very talented but you did get a CS degree (which holds for a lot of people), what are you choices really?
Guess the point was that outsourcing is no longer cheap (it is) and I only know about coders as that's what I encounter every day, I'm not thinking call centre employees etc. So it's rather logical why all try to get a CS degree, as the article probably applies well to call centres or manual labor. For CS is see a bright future; I would just like it more if Indian founders would go for nice, high quality startups offering services for 70% of western prices instead of massive factories hiring anything they can get and selling for 30% (and rising).
This is nonsense. Various funds available to ordinary people, including pension funds, do invest in the hedge funds and private equity funds. If anyone were actively buying businesses and replacing people with capital equipment, it would be these groups.
I never implied that sama's actions were doxing. I would however, like to a clear statement from mods regarding actual doxing, whether by them or other users.
I don't see how this rule helps me figure out the meaning of sama's actions. At least five people (including myself) in that thread interpreted his actions as indicating that mods would use tactics like this (presumably escalating) against people they perceived as trolls. However, I would be happy to hear that this was not the case, and this action was a random occurrence.
Without any clarification, I think that this sort of thing has a chilling effect on discussion. People will self-censor for fear of being subject to harassment, either by mods or other users.
Why would it be a bad thing if mods used escalating tactics against these things you call trolls? Nobody that isn't subject to paranoid delusions is going to self-censor because they're afraid "sama" will harass them. So far he hasn't harassed anybody, so why are you proposing that mods might do so? Last I checked, a guy that called out "sama"'s bullshit in his blog still posts here and isn't being harassed or silenced by mods. That's because there's a difference between posting endless shitty vacuity under alt accounts and writing with the intention of benefiting the reader. And there's a huge difference between having a chilling effect on discussion, which is what moderation is supposed to do, and harassment, which I don't think you know what that is. If anything, it's what these so-called trolls do to HN. I have no idea how anybody that isn't a p-zombie can possibly look at the folks that run this site and think that these people might be out to get them. I don't think they're interested in making this site any sort of Casablancian dystopia. You can tell this is the case because that's what they say. (Note that they didn't literally actually say this. Just like how they aren't literally actually saying they're not going to reveal all the alternate account havers yet somehow I know this.)
When Hacker News gets rid of shadowbanning, and maybe the nitpicky editing of submission titles, and the numerous other features designed to annoy users for the sake of qualitative social engineering, then maybe we can talk about everyone just being nice and polite and treating one another like adults.
Until then, knowing whether or not a moderator exposing user information (regardless of what it is) to indimidate them is considered fair game by the staff would, at the very least, be nice, rule or no rule.
But thanks for reminding me to update that link in my profile. You should try the greentexting userscript I wrote - I think you'd be surprised at how many HN users actually use > to prefix their quotes. It improves readability quite a bit.
Well everyone here is as anonymous as they choose to be, apart from being outed by mods. Given that mods can ban any person with a click, I don't see any excuse for them punishing people by selectively providing their personal information.
The original post was
>Can we have a publication named "The Forgotten Male Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" now?
Is this really the sort of thing that warrants violating a persons privacy over? If we are going to use "name and shame" surely it should be for things that are manifestly abusive, not expressing an opinion.
I think that when people argue against unions, they are usually implicitly arguing against the moral duty of the company to concede to the unions demands, or to allow the union to form (assuming they could legally prevent the union from forming). They are not arguing against the right of the union to try to achieve better wages or conditions, or arguing it is immoral to do so.
It is quite easy to be a principled proponent of free markets, no matter who they benefit in a particular instance. It is quite a stretch to say that anyone who claims to adhere to this principle is really an agent of the capitalists.
I'm not making a generalization about people who are opposed to unions (much less your clever interpretation about what people who are opposed yo unions are really opposed to, though I don't think that that interpretation is at all consistent with as NY of the anti-union arguments I've ever heard, much less a reasonable description of the general basis of such opposition). I was making a generaluzation about "capitalist idealists" and what it means to be one.
I rode the corporate buses, and underpaid or not, the drivers are highly professional. I wouldn't trust my life to a random fellow employee over a trained and experienced driver.
I appreciate you and DannyBee's comments. It is disheartening to me that basic economics is treated here as right wing propaganda. Mainstream economics won against all other theories academically. Yet many otherwise educated people are unaware of fundamentals such as the welfare theorems (or dismiss them out of hands with "muh frictions").
Thanks! Here's my economic explanation for why people don't understand economics or have intelligent political opinions in general: there's just no incentive to. Understanding economics is hard, and for the individual there's really no penalty for not understanding it. This is why you have otherwise brilliant people who just don't seem to understand basic supply and demand. Not saying this is true in every case, some people just have a different opinion of the tradeoffs involved, e.g. they're willing to accept slower economic growth in exchange for less creative destruction.
My hope is that this becomes less and less true as people become more mobile. Imagine if you could just teleport to a political jurisdiction that is more aligned with your opinions. Suddenly, the penalty for not understanding economics could be very high.
Have to disagree with you there. Educated people tend to be well informed and hold sensible opinions on global warming, vaccination, and education (and often hold silly opinions on nutrition, even though there is a very strong incentive). Economics is unique as something where people disdain the mainstream.
One notable difference (you can see it in this thread) is that people assume economists are somehow different from other academics. That academics in general can be trusted, but economists are sellouts. What they miss is that there is no significant difference between Economics as a field, and other fields. They get paid slightly more, but otherwise the journals, professional organizations, tenure committees, etc. are exactly the same. There is literally no point where the capitalist comes along with bags of money for his obedient intellectual servants.
The real reason people don't accept the mainstream is that it is very dismal. It says that your revealed preference proves that you value a cup of coffee in every morning over the life of an African (since you could donate that money to life saving charities). It says that inequality can't be fully ironed out because some people are more productive than others. It says that there is no way to shuffle around interest rates, bank accounts, etc. and make everyone better off. It says that there is no easy way to make the world better, because the free market has already maxed out the easy gains.
Personally, I think that the best way to encourage people to be more open to the mainstream, is to tell the other side of the store. Economics is also uplifting. It says that when you work for a company, you are creating value, and that that value can and does help people other than yourself (through the tax system). I also believe that tech has very large positive externalities (especially once you understand that taking people's jobs isn't an externality). Finally, it enables people to embrace the positive, self-affirming aspects of Ayn Rand's philosophy, without going to extremes. I do feel guilty that I don't do more for the people who are worst off. But at least I can enjoy my money, and my life, without feeling guilty that I'm driving some artist out of the current trendy area.
I think that given the right incentives, people will learn something even if it is dismal and boring, like economics is for a lot of people. I'm sure you can think of some examples. However, as I said in the post above, there is no incentive to understand economics, because there is no penalty for having a stupid political opinion, and really no reward for having a well-informed opinion.
Except that "Basic economics" has a series of prerequisites that people like DannyBee are ignoring.
Free Markets are only efficient with perfect information, fluidity, and lots of jobs (Necessary but not sufficient). Labor markets are almost never as fluid or with enough supply to make them efficient in the way people seem to imply.
Misapplying economic theories has led to so much misinformed political thought in the past century I almost wish we stop talking about supply and demand in schools (joking, but only slightly).
"Except that "Basic economics" has a series of prerequisites that people like DannyBee are ignoring.
"
I actually don't believe free markets are particularly efficient, and labor markets certainly aren't.
But I also don't believe you can magically provide a way to make it feasible for everyone to stay exactly where they are, for as long as they like, regardless of job market, housing, etc.
At a base level, as you can see in a lot of the replies, it comes down to "people believe that if they've been somewhere long enough, they now have a right to stay there as long as they like, and anything else is harsh and mean".
Even if i thought this was right, I doubt you can find an economic model that allows this to happen, and can survive long term (and as evidence i offer that, in the history of civilization, nobody has accomplished this).
If you can, great!
I'd love for it to be the case that people can always afford to live where they like, no matter what.
>At a base level, as you can see in a lot of the replies, it comes down to "people believe that if they've been somewhere long enough, they now have a right to stay there as long as they like, and anything else is harsh and mean".
>Even if i thought this was right, I doubt you can find an economic model that allows this to happen, and can survive long term (and as evidence i offer that, in the history of civilization, nobody has accomplished this).
Insurance against changes in housing prices might let people avoid the effects of gentrification much longer. Imagine a bond that pays the difference between the current average rental rate and some "strike price" $X (when this difference is positive).
Likewise, you cannot simply hand wave away prerequisites if they're big enough. The friction here is enormous (the cost to move to another city can be extremely large).
The argument was that people should move to a cheaper city if being a Facebook bus driver can't support them.
But that doesn't imply that Facebook is forcing people to move cities. Facebook isn't altering the labor market by employing drivers at market rates.
I hope you'll agree that the frictions from moving arise from changes in cost of living (or in the labor market, which doesn't appear to be changing). If the change in the housing market is gradual enough, the frictions need not be very significant, since they are amortized over a longer period of time.
