The level of denial of the problem in this thread is astounding. It will only exacerbate the issue.
We are not heroes out of an Ayn Rand novel. We don't live in a bubble, we live within a rich and complex society. We better learn empathy towards the rest if we don't expect to get forced to give back. There are many social issues, youth unemployment being one of the worst.
And we, techies, are in a great position to promote social development instead of short-sighted and selfish corporate profits, to promote a free internet where users are in charge, to help out others who don't have our talents.
A lot of technologies we use (Internet, Web, Unix/BSD) were financed in good part by the public.
Or you can keep aiming for 6-figure salaries with a sports car. And a bottle of anti-depressants.
It's just like another comment(can't find it right now) said in an earlier story. Techies are turning into the new Bank execs. Greed[1] is taking over; screw anyone/anything that tries to stop us. At this rate, tech people will be in high-security gated communities while everyone outside suffers from being displaced with no plan on how to keep them busy & happy.
All the denial & excuses you're reading I'm sure also exist in the minds of Bank/Oil/megacorp execs too.
>Or you can keep aiming for 6-figure salaries with a sports car. And a bottle of anti-depressants.
Excuse me, I want everyone to have six figures and a sports car. Yes, I realize this is not ecologically feasible, but other than that I don't see anything inherently wrong with being quite comfortable, as long as you do so in a basically egalitarian society.
Neither a six figure salary nor a sports car require winning the startup lottery or overwork. Nor do sports cars require six figure salaries: case-in-point, a good condition used Honda S2000 can be had for under $10,000 if not under $5,000 these days.
Nor are startups lottery tickets: people tend to overvalue equity at early startups, but tend to undervalue it at mature and well established ones (the equity percentage may be smaller, but the chance of that equity becoming liquid and appreciating is higher).
There are much easier ways to make 6-figures than playing the startup lottery. (I mean, unless perhaps we are considering multi-billion dollar businesses that happen to be located in California to be "startups").
The level of self-hatred in your post is astounding.
You seem to identify the problem as a lack of empathy on the part of "we, techies". You should speak for yourself on that one, as I (and probably most others here) feel no sense of belonging to your "we, techies". For many here, technology is the means by which we express our empathy: what is a startup if not a recognition of and solution to a human problem.
1. I don't see anyone here claiming to be a Randian hero or that we live in a simple society, quite the opposite. It seems to be you claiming that "youth unemployment" and other "social issues" are (simply) our fault and things that we can fix on our own.
2. For all the hate that AirBnB is getting (both in the article and this comment thread), it has provided income, housing and friendships to countless unemployed youth, many of whom lack the credit to sign a lease. Countless more have been able to keep their homes because of AirBnB. In response to Hurricane Sandy, AirBnB did this: https://www.airbnb.com/sandy (wow, corporate profits and social good going hand in hand, who'd have thought).
Perhaps they should pay the hotel tax in some jurisdictions, perhaps they would do better to comply with some regulations (most of which were intended for commercial properties, not a guy renting out his extra room to make rent). But lets not overlook the overwhelming good that AirBnB has done for so many, including myself.
3. One constant in this community (hacker news) has been the promotion of a free internet where users are in charge. The techcrunch article you say "we" deny implicitly suggests limits on the freedom of the internet: it's anti-bitcoin, anti-sharing economy etc. These are things made possible only by a free internet, which is threatened (mostly) not by our industry but by telecoms, hollywood & by extension the government.
4. Technology is not some trifling thing that is "created" by recent public or private financing. It's the legacy of over a million years of cultural evolution from before we were even a species. If anything, we owe it to our ancestors to continue the great human experiment, to keep learning about our environment (science) and how to control it (technology) to create better lives for ourselves and those who follow us (social development).
5. Yes, many of us (including myself), believe the free market is a important tool to achieve this* . Other ways we contribute are furthering Science, Art and Sport. Yet another tool is voluntary charity. And yes, another is political action through the government.
* It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest - Adam Smith
This growing strategy of doing a top post that purports to respond to caricatures of other people is tiring, but is increasingly common (I would wager that an average depth query for HN posts would show a strong trend towards decreasing).
Yes, someone said the post is hyperbolic drivel. You can argue subjectively whether that is true or not, but simply calling it "denial" is not a credible way of responding to it.
And FWIW...public enemy #1? Linkbait garbage. The "hero tech genius of SV" remains an absolutely common media story, and SV companies remain among the most respected and adored names. Comparing them with banks, or claiming that they're perceived as a public enemy, is indeed, hyperbolic drivel.
Some people protested a bus in San Francisco. Cue hysterics and gross-overreactions.
We're talking about TechCrunch here, they're the ultimate SV echo chamber known for losing their mind over startups like Color and Hipster.com without even knowing what those startups did before they launched (btw, both startups are now dead). They're about as journalistic as reality tv is documentary.
Hardly. It doesn't take many brain cells to realize that technology is the one thing that may get a debt ridden society solvent - by creating tools that multiply the impact of every individual's wealth and reduces the strain of debt - much of which has been created by irresponsible government. Spray painting Big Bad Wolf on every technologist's street corner as seems to be the purpose of recent doom and gloom media efforts is nothing more than an expression of the efforts to magnify the psychological angst that someone, somewhere, has more money than someone else.
Society outside of NYC/SF/a few other places has never heard of the tech industry or it's exceptionalism. The middle of the country doesn't know that we exist. And in NY, our claims of grandeur are drowned out by the overwhelming swagger of the finance guys.
My parents thought that "Silicon Valley" was "that 90's thing". Many Americans haven't paid attention to it or heard about it since the dot-com burst.
I have also several times encountered the idea that "there are no more software jobs, they all went overseas". Of course that has no basis in reality, but that is one of the themes about the tech industry that is perpetuated by various forms of media.
>"I have also several times encountered the idea that "there are no more software jobs, they all went overseas". Of course that has no basis in reality, but that is one of the themes about the tech industry that is perpetuated by various forms of media."
One of the smarter guys in my physics class was convinced that programming was a dead end career. I was perplexed since he read a lot of science and tech news and seemed pretty up to date on things in general.
You make it sound like the midwest is riding around in buggy whips and without electricity. You really think people haven't seen The Social Network? That entire movie was about the arrogance of Zuckerberg and what a special little snowflake he was.
The midwest is very aware of the tech industry, even if large numbers of hackers in one place are harder to find there (due to population density). Awareness is probably lower among working class people, but even they usually have smart phones these days.
It's not SF, but there's a really nice tech scene here in NYC. Who cares about the finance people? I don't care if NYC's #1 most famous industry is tech. Rank #2 or #3 or #4 is fine too, just so long as there's a decent enough amount of it going on to enjoy.
>Or you can keep aiming for 6-figure salaries with a sports car. And a bottle of anti-depressants.
I was with you until you brought out this incredibly smug false dichotomy, and this presumption with the anti-depressants. Up until this sentence, you were making a solid point but you injected your personal feelings into it right there. There is nothing that says you can't make 6 figures, drive a sports car, and still give back and be happy. The notion that anyone who enjoys spending the money they've earned is popping anti-depressants and trying to find meaning in their lives is just as bad as comparing progressivism to nazism mentioned in the article it just goes in the opposite direction.
My point was on the focus on getting rich or die trying.
I have absolutely no problem with big salaries for people with a balanced mindset and life. But this combination is a rare thing in technology. Big salaries most usually require being a workaholic.
> I have absolutely no problem with big salaries for people with a balanced mindset and life.
First, saying that Silicon Valley's housing and inequality is caused by technologists "getting rich or dying trying" seems gravely wrong.
Second, many professionals find their work intrinsically fulfilling and enjoyable. Not everyone works just for money or to fill an some kind of an unhealthy addiction. Postdocs and graduate students often work a great deal harder for a lot less.
You're also assuming an even more atomized society than anything Rand could imagine: most people understand that for them alone utility of wealth is a step function, they don't need to be told that. Yet, they want their kids to attend good schools, which means means paying outlandish prices for a tiny home in a good school district (in most of Bay Area counties schools are assigned by residence) or even more for a private school. They also don't want to jeopardize their families with the kind of pay-check to pay-check existence that leads to disaster when one of the dual earners loses their income. Is this morally right? No, Silicon Valley has deep housing problems (geography, failure to build upwards, zoning, and other regulations) and the entire state's education system is a nightmare. Yet as much as we'd like these problems to go away, this is the reality and we can't avoid it for the time being.
It's also great that folks like Bill Gates exist, for whom achievement is not a step function. As a Linux/BSD user I hated his guts as Microsoft CEO, but his non-profit work has been nothing short of amazing. He could have easily taken "f u money" decades ago and retired to a middle-class lifestyle with some angel investing on the side. Yet he amassed a fortune long after it ceased to bring him any _personal_ benefit: he chose to use it to pursue even more ambitious projects that benefit everyone.
I'm not in any way saying that private non-profits make government investment un-needed -- the Internet, immense achievements in aerospace, etc... are but a few examples of public sphere producing great things. Even Peter Thiel has admitted as much in recent interviews. Yet, public investment in hard problems is obviously not mutually exclusive with private enterprise either.
>Postdocs and graduate students often work a great deal harder for a lot less.
Graduate student here. Yes, we're working for something other than purely to gain money, but that doesn't mean we don't actually want a balanced, reasonable lifestyle.
The article lacks surprising self-awareness in a lot of respects, but I want to focus on one specifically: "Today’s companies are increasingly destroying the value of existing companies to create the next generation of products and services."
It's not just that people are mad at Silicon Valley companies for competing with existing industries. It's that they're mad about Silicon Valley companies riding roughshod over the web of compromises and understandings that exist between these industries and the people affected by these industries. And summarily dismissing all of these concerns as merely political protection for existing players, as libertarian leaning people are wont to do, doesn't cut it.
As Silicon Valley companies leave cyberspace to enter meat space, the biggest realization they will have is that managing interactions with other humans becomes tremendously more important. On the internet, websites are sandboxes. In real life, every thing a company does has effects on other people. E.g. AirBnB can't do whatever they want on their website, but the rentals they broker are real apartments in real buildings with real neighbors, who have their own concerns that have nothing to do with AirBnB's profit motive.
1. Marc Andreesen's "Software is eating the world" investment theory.
2. The history of the robber baron era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Technologies like steamboats, steel, railroads, oil, etc. also arose first in industries where they were "strictly beneficial" and let people do things they couldn't otherwise do. But by the early 1900s, they'd started eating other industries. The automobile eliminated the professions of carriage drivers and horseback riders. Oil eliminated the whaling industry. Textile manufacturing moved from water-power mills in New England to steam & oil-powered mills in the South. The largest single occupation in 1900 was "domestic servant" - by the 1950s, it no longer existed, because home appliances had completely replaced the job.
All of these involved significant dislocation of workers, and the corresponding political blowback. There was a large anarcho-communist movement in the U.S. from the 1890s to 1920s [1], including violence and bomb scares [2]. We almost became a fascist country in 1933 [3], a "counterrevolution" of sorts to FDR's New Deal.
But that doesn't mean we'd want to return to a world where we didn't have cars, horseshit lines the streets, whales are extinct, everybody sleeps at dusk, and the bulk of the population works in textiles or domestic service. The process of getting here wasn't easy, but all of the political upheaval and human dislocation was very necessary to build the world we have now.
Famously, in the early part of the 19th century there was civil unrest caused by the continued mechanization of looms (a process that started in the 18th century): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites
>The largest single occupation in 1900 was "domestic servant" - by the 1950s, it no longer existed, because home appliances had completely replaced the job.
So my neighbor's domestic servant must be imaginary then right?
I think it just changed names. It is now called "domestic worker". U.S. Census suggests that the number has only declined about 21% from 1900(927,402) to 2012 (726,437). It is suspected though that current statistics are off by about half (because of unreported undocumented workers) so the actual numbers likely have grown, (even per household).
You think a vacuum, dishwasher, mixer, blender, washer/dryer and microwave reduces the work that much? Be sure to express this to your significant other.
Nah, Incompetent Politicians, Wallstreet/Banks are still public enemy No. 1. Perhaps people that live in the SV area who are not in the industry consider the tech industry an enemy because they have been priced outside of homes and are feeling left behind. Those outside of SV don't consider SV an enemy or even think about them.
They are #1, but it is safe to say that SV is trending. I've heard bad shit from people that live in Oakland, people in the Midwest that have never been to SF or Oakland, and increasingly on the net I see grumpiness building.
All anecdotal, of course, but I do see it.
I think much of the vilification of the political system and Wall Street is unwarranted and driven by lack of understanding. That said, folks in Silicon Valley will very soon join the club and see for themselves what it is like, because as automation and technology continues to eat away at jobs, they are not far behind these industries as far as vilification goes.
This is, honestly, a pretty silly article since it is cherry picking certain bad apples and setting it against the backdrop of the bus protests in San Francisco (mostly the last round of gentrification protesting against this round of gentrification). Yes, SF's housing market is crap, which is a combination of absurd laws and regulations plus demand. Tech workers wanting to live there are helping on the demand side, but that's about it.
As for disruptive industries, cherrypicking AirBnb and Uber isn't representative of the vast majority of the industry. Airbnb enables about 1/2 of its users to illegally sublet their apartments in cities like NYC. And its annoying a lot of the folks out here. But does that make other tech companies bad? Uber, from various anecdotal insider reports, seems like a pretty shady company that tried to operate illegally in multiple cities but is being reigned in. Does that make other tech companies bad? King.com got absurd trademarks for their game designed to extract money from unsuspecting players and is now using those trademarks to inhibit competition. But does that make other tech companies bad? Yes, Apple price fixed the whole book publishing industry and Google bought and killed off multiple products people liked and Adobe costs too much and all three of them conspired to keep tech wages down. And Facebook is an immense privacy-gobbling behemoth that won't let you install their Android app unless you let them read your SMS messages. But does that make ALL other tech companies bad?
Realistically, it's a combination of the fact that some companies are now big enough to actually throw their weight around money/size wise the way other industries do -- Industries that get kickbacks, govt handouts, etc on things like corn and oil that most of America hates -- and the fact that the bad actors are getting a decent amount of press for their bad actions. But that doesn't make all tech companies bad. Nor does it make the actors engaging in these actions all bad. And it certainly doesn't make the average wage earner at a company working for a living worthy of harassment.
>As for disruptive industries, cherrypicking AirBnb and Uber isn't representative of the vast majority of the industry. Airbnb enables about 1/2 of its users to illegally sublet their apartments in cities like NYC. And its annoying a lot of the folks out here. But does that make other tech companies bad? Uber, from various anecdotal insider reports, seems like a pretty shady company that tried to operate illegally in multiple cities but is being reigned in. Does that make other tech companies bad? King.com got absurd trademarks for their game designed to extract money from unsuspecting players and is now using those trademarks to inhibit competition. But does that make other tech companies bad? Yes, Apple price fixed the whole book publishing industry and Google bought and killed off multiple products people liked and Adobe costs too much and all three of them conspired to keep tech wages down. And Facebook is an immense privacy-gobbling behemoth that won't let you install their Android app unless you let them read your SMS messages. But does that make ALL other tech companies bad?
You know, it doesn't make all tech companies automatically bad, but in statistical terms, it sure as hell establishes a pattern.
Once is accident. Twice is coincidence. Thrice is enemy action.
First, name me an industry that doesn't have 3 companies that have done something bad. Education? Medicine? Even grandmothers? Nope, sorry.
Second, basically EVERY company is a tech company these days. Honestly, Uber and Airbnb aren't even really tech companies. They just use tech. Like virtually every other company.
Do people even really consider Uber to be a tech company? I assumed that we all just were interested in them because they aim to solve a problem that many of us experience in cities, because they are disruptive and we dig disruptive startups.
Sort of like why HN is interested in Tesla. Technology is certainly involved there, but I don't think of them as a "tech startup". Tesla hires mostly non-CS engineers I imagine, and I suspect Uber mostly hires drivers.
Tesla is definitely a technology company. They're doing innovative things with electric car technology. They're not a software company, or a web startup.
Uber, on the other hand, pretends to be a tech company, but in reality is a consumer services firm.
Most tech companies you have never heard of. The public has never read a single news article or angry blog post about most of them. The majority of tech companies is certainly not making the rest of us look bad, they aren't making us look anything.
It was purposeful to give that many examples. Just because there are that many I can think of... compare that to just how many tech companies there are. And consider that Uber and Airbnb aren't even tech companies.
This is hyperbolic drivel; obviously TC is trying to create something out of nothing to drive clicks. Average lay people don't know about the stories referenced in this article and could not care less. Step out of the echo chamber!
I concur with this assessment. There are people outside of silicon valley who care about silicon valley. Much like there are a ton of people who watch reality tv and think that it's real. Since this is HN there are probably a larger then average number of readers who would fall into this camp.
But for the most part. Nobody outside of that region cares. I'm on the east coast, SV isn't in the news, it's not a concern, nobody here that I am aware of here can be bothered to care what happens.
For evidence, watch the Daily Show (a fairly mainstream liberal show) take on the Google bus incidents.*
Yes, there is animosity, some of which is deserved, towards rich people, some of whom are in the "tech industry".
But very few people without an agenda to push hold anywhere near the level of vitriol promulgated by the "tech press" (really a euphemism for crappy tabloids).
It's another step forward in the maturation of the Internet technology industry, which grew up, with the Internet itself, under a regime of benign neglect.
That time is over, as evidenced by the growing impingement of regulations, taxes, law enforcement, spying, and now populism on what Internet technology companies are trying to do.
I don't see any reason to believe that Internet technologies are somehow unique or special enough to avoid these sorts of interactions and conflicts with the rest of broader society.
Many CEOs and investors of Internet companies seem to think of themselves as self-made and self-contained leaders who are naturally free from the constraints of other industries. The leaders of railroads, steel mills, oil companies, car companies, real estate, etc. once saw themselves the same way. Now those industries are tightly hemmed with regulations at the local, state, national, and in some cases international levels. Internet companies will be too--especially as they tread onto these turfs.
I'm not saying this is good--I'm just saying it's reality.
To fight back, the Internet industry will need a strong presence in Washington and in politics. But that goes against the pseudo-libertarian culture, so they don't have one, aside from the few biggest companies like Google and Facebook.
The hardest part is that there is no natural political home for the Internet company mindset today. The Democratic Party, while in line with the social leanings of Internet leaders, is also home to the populist movements taking aim at Silicon Valley's riches and entitlement.
And while part of the Republican Party is in line with the economic and regulatory mindset of Internet companies, it does not hold the reigns of the party. It is at least sharing them with Tea Party and religious grassroots movements that most Internet company leaders are personally uncomfortable with.
Wow, check out the comments on that article. Are we sure this isn't a parody?
> Scott Johnson · Managing Director at New Atlantic Ventures
> Like the Yankees, and Patriots, Harvard, and Oracle, Siilicon Valley has a swagger that comes from repeated success. So of course there is growing resentment toward the region. Bask in it. The resentment is just admiration manifested as envy.
Just because Uber wants to disrupt the Taxi industry does not mean that they have any obligation or ability to also fight malaria, human trafficking, stop world hunger and terrorism, or house the homeless.
By all means, it would be ideal if the people getting rich would devote some of their wealth and, after retirement, perhaps some of their time, to tackling these problems. Bill Gates has been doing great work advocating this sort of philanthropy and we should all encourage that.
Uber isn't a charity though, their mission statement isn't fighting these problems. If they want to make corporate donations to charities, that is fantastic, but they are not a charity themselves. Expecting solutions from them to these problems is unfair.
Really? You think people elsewhere in the USA care about the Echo Chamber's opinions of itself? If anything tech companies are public enemy no. 2 (no. 1 being the NSA) because they don't respect users' privacy.
If Silicon Valley was located anywhere else in the USA and not in the San Francicso Bay Area would things ever have gotten this bad? How much of the problem can be blamed on the tech industry and how much of it can be blamed on the area's notorious politics (beg Twitter to stay within city limits, invest 10 billion dollars for the high speed rail link to downtown San Francisco, refuse to build more housing to meet demands, complain about tax paying tech workers forcing the poor out of the area).
There are lots of good comments here, and as the writer, I do appreciate all of them.
One element of this story, which was hard to really spend the time on, is the public's difference in perception regarding disruption of other technology companies, compared to its perception of industrial and service based industries. The public doesn't seem to care when a company like Intel takes on a company like Fairchild Semiconductor. Part of the issue is a lack of technical sophistication, so it is difficult to separate competitors based on their products. The more important reason, though, is that technology devouring technology is easily understood as progress. 500 engineers lost their job at one firm, but a new firm is hiring 500.
Now take a look at the service disrupters like AirBnB, Uber, etc. First, unlike technical disruption, the public understands the businesses here very well. It's a hotel. It's a taxi. It's a laundromat. Second, there is a distinct feel that these new companies are not playing by the rules, whatever those rules might be (it doesn't help that these companies publicly flaunt the rules either). Third, and most importantly, there is far more perception of the people losing their jobs, rather than the gain these companies are making in terms of labor flexibility.
There are plenty of greenfield companies out there (Nest, DeepMind, Climate Corporation are acquisitions in the last month that come to mind). But the region is not exclusively doing that kind of progress anymore, and so we shouldn't be surprised when people aren't immediately positive about the changes taking place anymore.
I think that you're painting "the public" with a very broad brush. A more accurate model might be that people are happy when new options become available to them, ambivalent when stuff goes on that doesn't impact them, annoyed when people speak negatively about what's important to them, and angry when what is important to them is taken away from them. This is a pretty universal model, but the specifics differ depending on what is important to a person.
My girlfriend and I love AirBnB. It's allowed us to visit some pretty remote locations on very short notice at very reasonable prices. I have a friend who is surviving off the income from AirBnBing out her apartment. Probably, her neighbors don't like it. The hotel industry certainly doesn't like it.
I have friends in SF who similarly love having Uber available, because it's got them home late at night after a night at a few bars. As part of the yuppie tech demographic in the Mission, they are also hated by some of their neighbors.
What's changed isn't what's going on in the world, it's who is now angry enough to speak to the media. Somebody who finds a great weekend getaway on AirBnB isn't going to write a story about it or talk to a TechCrunch reporter; they will write a review on the site so that other people can have a similarly great experience. Somebody who loses their job because their hotel can't compete against AirBnB is both plenty angry and now has plenty of time to complain to the media.
I'm reminded here of reading Foucault in college, and specifically the role of the discourse in society. Foucault's central theory was that control of what can be said in the public sphere reflects power dynamics in a society. When public mindspace like the media starts leaning in a certain direction, it doesn't necessarily mean that reality has changed underneath. Rather, it means that certain interests have organized and care deeply enough about a certain issue that they're willing to spend time making sure that public belief swings a certain way on that issue.
It's pretty rough out there right now if you're not a techie, something that's easy to forget. The people responsible for this are the political and lobbying business class who have driven a larger share of the nation's wealth towards that same lobbying business class in a feedback loop that seems to have no end to its rapaciousness.
So you've got a bunch of people who work service or working-class jobs feeling the squeeze even more than the middle-class which is rapidly disappearing. We are the 'available' symbols of their real targets. Maybe it's time to pick sides, or encourage 'both' sides to work something else out. Otherwise it will be plenty of techie cannon-fodder for the mobs while the private helicopters make like Saigon.
There is so much lifestyle media shoving wealth and opulence in everyone's face 24/7. It's one thing when it seems like maybe you might access that at some point in your life, and another where it seems to be there to taunt you.
Am curious as to what the "public beaches" thing is in reference to (being as the links don't seem to be working in the original article):
Some of the blows have been self-inflicted,
like venture capitalists who compare progressivism
to Nazism or who block access to public beaches.
I mean, I know that libertarian types (in SV and elsewhere) don't seem to put much stock in this "public property" concept, generally, but is there some particular local controversy they're alluding to here?
There seems to be a lot of people here who think that technology ate up all the jobs.
Actually the largest number of jobs that have disappeared are from the manufacturing industry. There is a few reasons behind this. Trade agreements, heavy regulation of pollution and over demanding unions made it far cheaper to have China (and the rest of the world) manufacture everything for us. The other reason is that people in the US have changed. They don't want to do these jobs anymore. They are lazy and feel entitled to better jobs (though they aren't qualified for them). People would rather go an permanent disability or welfare. There are literally thousands of labor and manufacturing jobs sitting unfilled in the US today. Jobs that US citizens used to do.
Couple this with the lost jobs that illegal Mexicans do today (jobs that "American's won't do"), and we have found 3/4 of these mysteriously disappearing jobs. This has nothing to do with Silicon Valley or technology in general. It is about policy and attitude.
It is ridiculous to make claims that Technology has displaced 18-20% of American workers in the last 15-20 years. Why do I say 18-20%? Because the true unemployment today (by more traditional US counting) is currently at 30%. I'll, give you 10-12% for being in a bad economy - thus a loss of 18-20%.
Show me how this is the fault of technology (and I don't mean from a sociological standpoint - that is a whole other argument).
Everything you just wrote was ignorant and fairly abhorrent, but provides a pretty great caricature of the arrogance of Silicon Valley, so for that I applaud you.
They don't want to do these jobs anymore. They are lazy
and feel entitled to better jobs (though they aren't
qualified for them). People would rather go an permanent
disability or welfare. There are literally thousands of
labor and manufacturing jobs sitting unfilled in the US
today. Jobs that US citizens used to do.
Couple this with the lost jobs that illegal Mexicans do
today (jobs that "American's won't do"), and we have found
3/4 of these mysteriously disappearing jobs.
Of course there is only 250,000 jobs open, It's a declining industry. You don't see the Sears, Home Depot, Dell, or HP (to name a few) doing much hiring while they are doing layoffs (contracting) do you? This was partially my point (thanks for backing it up with sources).
My other point was that even when these jobs exist, people don't fill them. If we had 5 million of these same jobs open, how many people (besides legal and illegal immigrants) would fill them.
We have lost 7m+ manufacturing jobs and have 11m unemployed. That is a big percentage. It is estimated that innovation cost only 20-25% of those jobs. The reasons that I mentioned before cost us the rest. Also consider that US consumption of manufactured goods since 1990 has tripled. Even if Technology and innovation cost us 50% of manufacturing jobs, the rise in consumption should have more than compensated for it.
Don't forget the other jobs that are lost when a factory town loses it's factory. The barber, the local tax guy, the corner market ETC. They all go out of business and the employees and owners have been going on unemployment, then welfare, then disability for years. For every two lost factory jobs, there is at least one axillary job lost.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make here. There are still an estimated 12 million illegals here. More than half arriving while the US was riding the dotcom and housing bubbles (They came here for jobs while the perceived wealth was plentiful and no citizen "needed" these jobs anymore)
30% is a bit of a stretch, I admit - but don't believe the Census Bureau cheaters. The numbers they give are all based on careful and changing criteria and technicalities. This sheds some light on what I am talking about.
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/11/real-unemployment-rate-30/
Now just imagine in govt size/jobs had not grown by 40%+ in the last decade. Unemployment would be way worse.
Not sure how your post proves that my statements are ignorant and fairly abhorrent. You only go on to reinforce what I am saying.
30% is a bit of a stretch, I admit - but don't believe
the Census Bureau cheaters.
So you'd rather trust a random site that confirms your biases? The only source for their 30% number is a poll by IBD/TIPP. The same firm that predicted John McCain would win the youth vote 74% - 22%. I'll leave that takedown up to Nate Silver: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/whats-wrong-with-this...
Of course there is only 250,000 jobs open, It's a declining industry.
You don't see the Sears, Home Depot, Dell, or HP (to name a few)
doing much hiring while they are doing layoffs (contracting)
do you? This was partially my point (thanks for backing it up with
sources).
You literally said Americans were too lazy and entitled to fill all of the open manufacturing jobs. Now you agree there aren't any manufacturing jobs?
My other point was that even when these jobs exist, people don't
fill them.
Not sure how your post proves that my statements are ignorant and fairly abhorrent.
Your view that people aren't working because they are too lazy or the illegals took all the jobs is not backed up by any facts whatsoever. Please attempt to develop the slightest bit of empathy and respect for your common man.
I like how you pick and choose numbers to suit your points. Are you a statistician or a marketer? By size/jobs I am referring to contracted jobs also. I would almost throw fake disability on top there too (that the current administration almost actively encourages so cooked up unemployment numbers look better).
>You literally said Americans were too lazy and entitled to fill all of the open manufacturing jobs. Now you agree there aren't any manufacturing jobs?
Huh? What part of "250,000 jobs open" means none open?
Rate relative to what? changing and skewed unemployment numbers? I can't even read your acronym described statistic charts. They are wrong half of the time and have reasons beyond the context of the survey the other half. Here is a statement from a great article from Mike Rowe (I would dare say that not many have more hands on experience with laborers) on the state of today's workers.
http://profoundlydisconnected.com/cnn-viewer-has-questions/Last week, I spent a few hours with the head of labor relations for one of the largest engineering firms in the world. He has thousands of positions open right now. Literally, thousands. After Katrina, his firm poured many millions of dollars into workforce development down in the Gulf. They trained — for free — hundreds of workers in a variety of positions that offered all kinds of opportunities to advance. The pay was fair. The benefits were solid. But the program ultimately failed. Why? Because virtually every single trainee decided it was just too damn hot. I’m not even kidding. They just didn’t want to work in the heat. And so … they didn’t.
In the next few years, this company anticipates 15,000 new openings for welders and pipe-fitters in the southeast. And the head of recruitment has absolutely no idea where the workers will come from. That should scare us all.
>Your view that people aren't working because they are too lazy or the illegals took all the jobs is not backed up by any facts whatsoever. Please attempt to develop the slightest bit of empathy and respect for your common man.
Well if you have 245k jobs sitting there, and you have a bunch of people (many with families) practically going hungry, I would say that is lazy, not sure what you would call it. People in America have traditionally moved to the jobs. A company could build a factory out in the middle of nowhere and a town would spring up around it. No longer. Today people move to the local welfare/disability office. There is no arguing that the fundamental work ethic of Americans has changed dramatically over the past 30 years.
IF I see 12 million illegals in the US and 3/4 of employable ones employed - then I see 10 million citizens crying out for help because they cannot find a job, Who an I supposed to be empathetic for? Someone who broke a law and entered our country illegally? or someone who came here or was born legally?
I never stated that we should deport illegals either, I am just stating what happened to jobs. If 8m illegals are employed today, and 20 years ago it was 2m - to me that means that 6m jobs were filled by them that could have been filled by citizens. Does that simple math add up? Maybe those jobs wouldn't be filled because Americans won't pick peaches anymore. That is why I said that they are lazy. They would rather be a leech on their fellow citizens then be a janitor. How is that not lazy?
I am getting sick of this thread. You are going way off topic of my statements and taking them way out of context so go ahead and have the last reply. I won't be looking at it.
I'm providing facts that directly refute your claims and you're responding with anecdotes from partisans while ignoring all the evidence. It's rather sad.
I agree that nothing productive will come out of this 'debate', so good day. I hope you find some compassion in your life.
My understanding (I have seen this stated before on HN, but don't have a source at the moment), is that there is currently more manufacturing in America than ever before. It is just of the more mechanized sort, it does not require nearly as many unskilled or low-skilled laborers as it once did.
>We're doing 2.5x the manufacturing with 40% fewer employees.
This is very misleading. The reason is because we largely only choose to keep the factories alive that we can almost fully automate. The goods that don't lend themselves to cheap, low maintenance automation are imported.
This makes the most economic sense from a business owner's perspective. Free trade from sweat shops that have little or no regulations (environmental or other) or labor laws... yeah that is easy to compete with.
There is some value in it. The focus of the current crop of VC darlings is competitive. Instead of "let's build something new", it's "let's use VC rocket fuel to blow up something old, and get rich amid the chaos". That culture exists because of the VCs' emotional need to feel superior; it's not the fault of the engineers.
The overarching theme of betrayal and decline in Silicon Valley is worth noting. California used to represent a Middle Path between the historical extremes of class warfare (culminating in violent revolt) and acceptance of subordination (culminating in persistent, generational slavery). You could Go West, find clean air and cheap land, build something awesome, and win just by outperforming. You didn't have to fight or cower, you could walk away and do your own thing and be really good at it. You weren't trying to destroy or humiliate or "disrupt" incumbents. You just went to a place where they were irrelevant and (to borrow from Havel) lived in truth.
That living in truth probably ended around 1990. Now, Valley startups are the new face of status quo assholes, except with several times the arrogance and hubris. Let's make one comparison based on how departing employees are treated. Banks (and law firms) give severance when they fire people, and consider those who leave to be alumni. VC darlings ruin the reputations of those who part them. Banks have honest layoffs when business is bad. VC startups have bullshit PIPs. That's just one example. On external and internal matters, whether your focus is on customers or employees or the environment, Wall Street is far more ethical than any of these VC darlings are. It's not even close. And unless you end up as an architect or data scientist or in R&D, the work in tech proper isn't actually any more interesting than what's in finance (and the latter is compensated much better). Most software engineers end up as drones churning tickets they don't care about, which is far worse than being a quant at a hedge fund. (The work in finance isn't inspiring in the "I'm changing the world" sense, but it's tolerable and often fun.)
Wall Street also is not afraid to reward excellence, while Valley companies form no-poach pacts that put a ceiling on engineer compensation and force the best ones either into management or into hedge funds once they have kids.
What is Silicon Valley now? It's a finishing school for the spoiled, snot-nosed, spawn of the old establishment, whose parents pull connections to make it look like their mediocre progeny actually built something while all the work was done by H1-B indentured servants and clueless 22-year-olds getting 0.01% equity while working 90 hours per week.
Silicon Valley deserves to be Public Enemy #1 (although, in fact, I don't think it is; it's not nearly as hated as we in the HN bubble believe) but the reasons are far more numerous and much deeper than what the OP describes.
There's a lot of historical revisionism here. Silicon Valley was built on the defense industry. Lockheed Martin established a factory here to build Polaris nuclear missiles to literally "blow something up" (specifically, Russians). Fairchild Semiconductor got its funding from Fairchild Camera and Instrument, which got its start making bombsights and gunsights for the U.S. military.
Going back farther, manifest destiny was all about stealing land from the indigenous people who weren't as technologically advanced and gifting it to settlers to spread our cultural values.
If you look at the large-scale history of the world, it basically consists of "blowing up something old", usually literally. On a micro-level there's a lot of good that goes on in the world, but if you want to be big enough to get into the history books it usually consists of crushing your opposition enough that they don't get to write the history. Usually if someone spins a narrative of idealism that involves doing good for the world, they're trying to manipulate you. We can be good to each other, but when it comes to the whole world as a closed system, it will remain the world, which is the sum total of all the good and bad and jockeying for power that goes on in it.
> That has been a fair assessment historically, but that is no longer the case. Today’s companies are increasingly destroying the value of existing companies to create the next generation of products and services
The automobile destroyed the value of existing companies, too.
We are not heroes out of an Ayn Rand novel. We don't live in a bubble, we live within a rich and complex society. We better learn empathy towards the rest if we don't expect to get forced to give back. There are many social issues, youth unemployment being one of the worst.
And we, techies, are in a great position to promote social development instead of short-sighted and selfish corporate profits, to promote a free internet where users are in charge, to help out others who don't have our talents.
A lot of technologies we use (Internet, Web, Unix/BSD) were financed in good part by the public.
Or you can keep aiming for 6-figure salaries with a sports car. And a bottle of anti-depressants.