21–30 of 35 posts
It's an opportunity for the younger generation to change how things are done.
Management is not necessarily incompetent for doing this. Good management also tries its best to replace old systems with new technology before the old people are even gone, but you can only do so much given the infinite pessimism from the team members below at all levels of experience as well as leadership higher up.
Part of the story is that we had a massive confluence of three deflationary pressures through the 90s to present: Labor deflation, Tech deflation, and Resource deflation.
Our biggest bulge in working-age westerners (Boomers) hit their peak skill years in massive numbers, keeping wages for skilled labor low & easy to source. The collapse of the Soviet Union dumped massive quantities of underpriced commodities and mineral resources on western markets, as their high-end manufacturing collapsed. And, shifting manufacturing to China & the far-east kept wages low for decades (on the low end). All of this, combined with the deflationary pressure of technology & automation (increasing worker productivity), brought prices for most goods down dramatically.
But, all of these trends are reversing in the long-term. Wouldn't call it a systems collapse though. Will probably disproportionately affect those on the margins.
This should create a lot of demand for even more systems which increase worker productivity– AI, automation, etc. -- which should be great for all of us in the tech industry, because there aren't a lot of other solutions to the problem (unless you can figure out how to massively lower demand while people are earning more than ever due to skilled labor shortages).
Even with the wage increases we saw in the last couple of years, a majority of these wage gains are probably ahead of us (potentially delayed by any cyclical activity).
It's probably nothing for you to worry about. But, it's likely to be a long-term trend that becomes the new normal for decades to come, and this will shape how we live for a few decades, at least.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno. I know a person who is an advocate for nuclear energy, who sincerely believes that it is "the power to save the world". He was an officer in the nuclear navy and spent some time working in procurement of naval reactors. When he retired from the navy he got a job working on small reactors (a subject that he's been passionate about) at a vendor that supplies naval reactors. The "revolving door" can have the ap…
I agree. What I mean is there needs to be something to prevent collusion and kickbacks. Maybe a group that follows up on former government officials to see if they influenced legislation that would then benefit them or their buddies. There must be something like this already, some type of anti-corruption group, assuming it has not been corrupted. So to use your example, if your Navy friend passed laws or voted on law…
Anyway... think about driving a car down the road. You're never more than a few seconds from crashing. (How long can you keep your hands off the wheel before trouble comes?) But you don't crash, because you keep steering. In the same way, we're always headed for collapse. Hopefully, we keep steering.
But you can look at this on two levels. On a societal level, yes, we're headed for collapse, like always, and hopefully we keep steering well enough to prevent it. But on a company-by-company level, a bunch of companies are headed for collapse (like always), and some of them will not prevent it (also like always) due to short-term greed or incompetence. (Maybe short-term greed is a kind of incompetence?) As I said, this is like it always is. Companies fail because they don't manage this kind of intergenerational knowledge transfer. It happens, it has happened, and it will continue to happen. That's not "systems collapse", though, unless one company fails that is so critical that the system can't adjust or recover.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. What I mean is there needs to be something to prevent collusion and kickbacks. Maybe a group that follows up on former government officials to see if they influenced legislation that would then benefit them or their buddies. There must be something like this already, some type of anti-corruption group, assuming it has not been corrupted. So to use your example, if your Navy friend passed laws or voted on law…
Seems premature to start investigating former non voting government officials working in the private sector when we have sitting congresspeople trading stocks based on the legislation they are voting on.
I can imagine that at the beginnings of Bronze Age collapse, immediately following generations deemed the waxings of their elders as merely the anodyne of old age (nostalgia), not real, not lived. After a century or three: not imagined, language and knowledge lost.
The pressure of survival becomes more pressing. True knowledge of the old ways becomes "magic". Those who want to continue to practice the old technical arts wander off, in preference to being scorned or worse stoned.
The revolution will not be televised.
Can we now build buildings that will last as the Coliseum in Rome lasts? Probably not. The people who knew how and why died. All these years later, we've cared enough to investigate, and it turns out to be because we don't use the same sort of volcanic ash those long-dead craftsmen did. But given enough time, we could.
Sounds like you work in an environment that burns people out. That's unfortunate. Fortunately, it's not system-wide. People are still out there doing great work, learning new things, developing new things, and so on.
Same it ever was. Same as it ever shall be. World without end, amen.
> TL;DR - Boomers ruin everything. None of this here, please. If anything ruins everything, it's flamebait, and generational flamebait is particularly avoidable. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html