I see a lot of protestant mentality here in comments valuing any kind of even inhumane labour which does not allow to meet basic needs over not having a job, but also not suffering from hunger thanks to the social support system.
In my opinion, we as a society should aim to work less and less, collectively making use of automation and technological progress. But it will be hard when we label this as being lazy and not valuable member of society.
I didn't mean to start religious discussion, rather used this term as in writings of Mark Weber (value of hard work etc.). This is more about set of principles that shaped Western and American societies, not really being related to religion anymore.
Alas, it's still related enough to religion to easily lead to religious flamewars on the internet. The burden is on the commenter to pack the point in less flammable packaging. "Protestant mentality" is too generic a phrase not to have religious associations for many readers. If you said "Protestant work ethic" that would have been better, and if you had made it clear that you were referencing Weber, there would be no problem. Far fewer internet users are likely to start a flamewar against Weber.
dang, please try to read charitably into the comments you choose to moderate. The concept of Protestant work ethic in the US is centuries old and is effectively divorced from any religious associations it might have had in the 1600's.
It's not centuries old, but comes from Max Weber's surprisingly readable and brilliant book on the topic. But from a moderation perspective we have to look at effects, not intent. If you lead with a comment like that, the odds of somebody getting triggered—for whatever reason—and taking the thread into flamewar go way up. This is not a deep or very interesting point, it's just basic fire prevention.
Another issue is who owns these automation processes. If I used my vast financial resources to develop (i.e. pay people to develop) a new automation process, what rights do you have to my gains? Why should I share it with you?
This mentality and ownership really needs to be rethought.
Imagine if all improvements over the course of history would be kept in secret for gains of owners of capital. Who own rights to the invention of an axe? Probably the first one who put a stone on a piece of wood. Should he has all rights for it forever? I couldn't really agree.
There’s a difference between having the right to the concept of an axe and having the right to my specific axe. I think GP was speaking more towards the latter.
It seems, sadly, that in software we have conflated the two. My specific iPhone is a brick without a government-recognized license for a copy of Apple’s sequence of numbers that instruct it.
You're making a lot of assumptions about ownership. "Your" vast financial resources are just measures of debt (money is not personal property) secured by the government. We can always collectively decide that what you did to accrue that owed debt was not worth its valuation and take steps (e.g., taxation) to correct. "Your" automation process is built on publicly-funded research and using publicly-funded resources; the public can decide to recoup its investment, and whatever else it needs to secure its mission of providing for the general welfare.
Feudalism is over, dude. You're connected. You're beholden.
You have to wonder why we don't just tax a little more? Do we have plenty of resources already and we just don't give it to the people struggling who need it? Or do we really not have resources to help the overworked underpaid masses out here in opioid infested flyover country? If we don't have enough resources, why not tax a bit more to get the resources? If we do have the resources, why are we not helping these people out more?
Sometimes it's just baffling how everyone can see an obvious problem and no one moves to try to at least ameliorate it. Not even asking that it be completely solved, just try to make things a little better for those people.
This line of thinking ("we can tax you however we like") is backdrop of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. In the book, the creatives/creators go on strike rather than suffer the taxes. Whatever you believe about the reality of that story, successful tax collection is a negotiation, not a diktat. It's probably best to have everyone believe in taxes, so it's important to have a discussion around it.
The feasability of the circumstances described in AS aren't a triviality, they're the crux of your argument. Tax collection has been unsuccessful even with the fig leaf of "negotiation"; what's better is to have everyone believe in what happens if you don't pay your taxes.
Generally-speaking, I'm betting that the wealthy would rather live in a world where they still have essentially unfettered freedom of movement and resource access with slightly less collective wealth, than one in which they have to hold back their gifts and always have to be looking over their shoulder.
You having vast financial resources depends on the rest of society agreeing, otherwise what you have are numbers on a server somewhere and an angry mob around your house.
Exactly. The definition of 'employment' is the crux of the matter. Is a 30-hour week at minimum wage with no retirement or health 'employment'? Were serfs of feudal lords 'employed'? Is someone making valuable contributions without wage or recognition 'employed'? Are those serving the poor voluntarily 'employed'?
The term is mechanical, reductionist, and carelessly 'employed'.
there is a catch though: automation and technology is not free , but there a high overhead cost that many businesses cannot afford. Also, may low skilled jobs cannot be automated.
Conservative perspectives often involve some sort of built-in need to proselytize, because they view life as a triumph of ego over intrinsic human weakness. There's an idea that all people need to hear the message of personal responsibility.
Sadly data is weaker than any bias of perspectives, and people find it impossible to think causally without some larger brittle philosophical framework.
Please don't take HN threads further in generic ideological directions. It leads to generic ideological flamewar, which is tedious and which we don't want here.
>Conservative perspectives often involve some sort of built-in need to proselytize, because they view life as a triumph of ego over intrinsic human weakness. There's an idea that all people need to hear the message of personal responsibility.
If we're reducing political parties to extreme stereotypes, then perhaps the pressure of the distant right is an appropriate counter to the pressure from the distant left which encourages hedonism and infantilism well into adulthood, shuffling responsibility onto the magical collective to solve problems.
And in this way society isn't totally lost, on average, if it exists somewhere in the middle.
I do not find liberal philosophy more accurate. On almost every issue one can make reasonable evidentiary arguments for either perspective. The problem is people can't even make policy decisions on the basis of controlled statistics and the experimental method (when that's possible).
I just think that conservative thinking lends itself to an evangelical mindset, while liberals tend to view their philosophy as inevitable. Often they are content to wait for people to evolve to their level. Hillary's inaction in the previous campaign is a perfect example of that mindset.
> In my opinion, we as a society should aim to work less and less, collectively making use of automation and technological progress. But it will be hard when we label this as being lazy and not valuable member of society.
If the society had taken this view in 1950 and encouraged "laziness", then we wouldn't[1] have had as much technological progress since then. It would probably have created a great lifestyle for 1950's people. It is indeed a great question to ponder - do we want to optimize social setup for today's population or for future generations to come?
[1] I also think low-wage jobs are sometime essential to move the society forward, Uber being a good example. Taxi-based system was horrible in the US. Uber used a lot of low-paid workers to shake the status quo and the situation has improved remarkably since then. I don't think the solution offered by Uber is perfect and the setup should be improved further, but simple improvements like hailing a cab via an app, credit card payments or driver/passenger ratings were inconceivable with the taxi system (again, in the US). That progress might not have been possible in a system with UBI because no one would have driven for Uber for low wages. Again, presence of UBI would have certainly helped Uber drivers a lot but collective society would have been stuck with a shitty taxi-based system.
Thats total nonsense. Technological progress and capitalism are intertwined, but we didn’t achieve advancements because of the pure necessity to put food on the table or simply “work hard”. Weve advanced enough so we can provide the same basic needs like food and healthcare to everyone, just like everyone can now entertain themselves or travel anywhere in the world.
I don't really agree with commenter above, but this argument is blatantly wrong. Executives are paid the way they are just because they are in charge of, among other things, compensations.
I migrated about one year ago and this is a feature I really love. Every service has unique address and goes to separate folder via rules.
Also, there are automatic aliases when you use your own domain. Say, you have name@domain.com, then all *@name.domain.com are also working aliases, like spotify@name.domain.com. Really neat feature.
That feature is basically the killer feature for me. I sign up for each service with a custom email and password, and save both in pass or any other pwd manager.
It makes it super easy to see which service leaked your email when you get unrelated spam. I wonder whether such an occasion would be grounds for a court case against said company under GDPR.
It's not exactly a catchall; it's per user, and you can also set up rules to route to different folders based on receiving address. If there are 2 users 'joe' and 'bob' on the domain 'foo.com', joe can use any '* @joe.foo.com' address and bob can use any '* @bob.foo.com' address. Fastmail pricing is per user.
Individually, it doesn't seem convincing, but if you find multiple instances (individuals), in their own different styles, and all the addresses are in the same mailing list... I think it can have significant weight. Alternative would be what? Someone framing the service provider? Or joe and bob and maybe others staging it? Possible, but frankly, not very likely. I think the service provider would have at least have some explaining to do.
> but your pay is roughly correlated with the value of your labour.
It is not. The value fire-fighters, teachers or nurses provide is much higher than, say, an enterprise developer, yet in most places the other earns more.
What's the marginal value of hiring another fire-fighter? I suspect it's a lot lower than the marginal value of hiring another enterprise developer, since firefighting is already fairly well staffed and since hiring professionals cuts into volunteering firefighting organisations.
The same seems like it's true of teachers and nurses. They're seen as a cost centre to be reduced rather than a scarce resource to be fought over.
Firefighters can make bank.. overtime and all that. Teachers are underpaid and nurses are probably too but they too can do well working overtime etc...
There is something seriously wrong the with the idea that its ok to underpay these very important jobs because they can eek out a living wage by working every hour of their waking life, sacrificing mental and physical health to do so.
Firefighters and teachers are normally overtime exempt salary.
And it's not really fair to nurses to say "you only get a fair wage if you're putting in 60-80 hours". It's also not fair to their patients, as care quality drops pretty hard when you over work nurses and doctors.
That leads to less full-time employees. People will get their hours cut.
Maybe we need to consider someone who works more than 15 hours a week full time. Or perhaps the benefits scale for employees based on number of hours worked.
I wasn't clear. In Europe, part-time employees get their time off pro-rated based on working hours, while full-time ones get minimum required by law (20+ days per year, depending on country). Plus additional ~10 paid public holidays for everyone.
The US is pretty much the only developed country without mandatory vacation time. This is a solved problem. Just look around how other countries do it.
If it's such a bright idea, why can't NY and CA do it? They're literally the size and population of many other countries. In the US, the states are free to do whatever they want with wage and employment laws, so long as it doesn't violate the constitution. If CA wants to set the minimum wage to $30/hr + 2 weeks mandatory PTO, they are 100% free to do it. It's pretty much a single party state at this point.
Other countries are able to support higher labor rates because they have protectionist tariffs, such as the VAT. But if the US wants to raise tariffs, all of a sudden we're racist idiots.
Anyway, a lot of what's perceived to be wrong with the US can easily be solved at the state level, but turns out nobody actually wants to foot the bill for these things.
Compared to a transaction at a bank, via PayPal, a credit card, or just about anything. Is there a more expensive (financial and environmental) way to make a transaction?
I'm especially fond of his description of boundaries and the trade-offs of different kinds of contracts between bounded contexts. There's also a lot of good insight into how we abuse the database and couple ourselves to it for the convenience of CRUD. Really feel like I should've picked up this book months ago.
It's always refreshing to see a writer that's honest about trade-offs, instead of spouting their preferred method as the one-true-way which will solve all your problems.
A manager went to the Master Programmer and showed him the requirements document for a new application. The manager asked the Master: "How long will it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"
"It will take one year," said the Master promptly.
"But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it take if I assign ten programmers to it?"
The Master Programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years."
"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"
The Master Programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be completed," he said.
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but
it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to
organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The
manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and
I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.
The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they
could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months,
three more than the schedule allowed.
The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they
could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating;
it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule.
Futhermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling
their thumbs for ten months.
To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control
program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time,
but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and
it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual
integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would
estimate that it added a year to debugging time.
That sounds specious - grass is greener fallacy. The evidence was that the CP team failed at the job. But where is the evidence that the architecture team would succeed?
The general suspicion of TMMM is that it extrapolates from failure but assumes that some untried else would be better.
>That sounds specious - grass is greener fallacy. The evidence was that the CP team failed at the job. But where is the evidence that the architecture team would succeed?
Anybody who has worked for a couple of decades of large software project, doesn't need any, cause they have seen this play out time and again. Brooks doubly so -- he literally wrote the book on software development timelines.
Sure, technically you're right.
But it's not like every piece knowledge needs to come packaged in a fancy LaTeX, with confidence intervals, and control groups. Sometimes experience alone is enough to assure us that the rain is wet and that a team of 150 will invariably fail in this way when assigned such a task compared to a team of 10.
Seems like a good way to go would be 15 isolated teams of 10. Some teams might make the schedule. Pick the best project at that point. Big bonuses for the people that get it done and extra for the final winners. Seems like a huge waste of effort, but it looks like that is the way to go. This would be similar to what happens when a company just buys a small startup that has created what they need.
Fred Brooks probably had reasons to think the untried else would have been better. His experience, hindsight from later cases, and also the architecture manager's predictions, which did turn out correct.
When someone makes three predictions, two turn out to be correct, and the third ended up not tried, we would do well to think twice before dismissing that third prediction.
Why didn't he work internally to prevent these issues? It sounds like he was pleased to let them fail, so he could be correct with no effort.
Why are we taking advice from someone who lets others fail so he and his team look better? This kind of internal competition destroyed Motorola and damages many other organizations.
> Why didn't he work internally to prevent these issues?
What makes you think he didn't?
> Why are we taking advice from someone who lets others fail so he and his team look better?
From the quote, Fred brooks was clearly the boss of both the architecture manager and the control program manager. He wasn't part of any one team. I don't see the kind of conflict of interest you're hinting at.
> It sounds like he was pleased to let them fail, so he could be correct with no effort.
To me, it sounds like he simply made a bad call, and was saying "oops".
Let's make "better" the enemy of "good enough". Then we can blame anything on the CP team, making the architecture team look better without any effort or proof on their part.
Where is the koan where the Master tells the manager to hire better programmers? The Master doesn't because it's bad advice up chase waterfalls, unicorns, and 10x devs.
I see what you're saying, but the alternative would be to say that you could never learn anything from real-life in-the-trenches experience, because business organizations rarely if ever do something two different ways.
Management at one of my companies actually used this metaphor (expressed as below), along with another favorite: "If you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig."
"If it takes nine months for a woman to deliver a baby, getting nine women will not deliver a baby in one month."
That's the famous definition of a project manager :). The person who thinks that if a woman can deliver a baby in 9 months then 9 women should be able to do it in 1. It's the "throw more men at it" strategy.
Years ago, an investor and I had about the same conversation. He was adamant about needing a spreadsheet that would allow him to model hires vs. cost vs. time.
Fortunately not exactly. It was such a massive project that everyone from my current team touched (or actually was touched by) it - including our current tech lead who had the misfortune of being assigned there briefly.
The topic came up on one of the introductory meetings and we shared our respective theories.
My take was that had this project had half the staff, it would take half the time to complete.
All and all there were over twenty people there doing daily standups.
Then again, the master programmer could have assign 5 people to this project and other 5 to different tasks (hello more detailed tests or research frameworks or even another team doing the same task independently) finishing the whole thing in one year with those 10 people.
So maybe it is more story about how we fail when we think about organization and negotiation. (The master programmer making sure estimate so easily suggest they won't be at time anyway).
I enjoyed long articles from the ye olde early days of the world wide web, when long articles were long because the author had a lot of interesting things to say. Now, too many articles are long just for the sake of being long. And often peppered with animated / video advertisements for products I do not want.
In my opinion, we as a society should aim to work less and less, collectively making use of automation and technological progress. But it will be hard when we label this as being lazy and not valuable member of society.