My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time • Hacker News Board

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#41

Post by zby » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

m_fayer wrote: post #40

pjc50 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Job' is the input side to which "rent/mortgage" are outputs. 'Job' is about continuity and stability; the ability to make commitments to regular expenditures required to maintain a particular standard of living. Highly variable income is bad for this. That's one of the reasons why people push back so hard on the "gig economy"; it brings the fear that you might not be able to make rent/mortgage next month and therefo…

I usually work as a consultant and my income is highly variable. Of course in our field when I earn it's nothing to complain about, and my average for most years is certainly nothing to complain about. Financially, I'm lucky. And yet. I'm disciplined with money. I'm not impulsive or indulgent. I can build a mean spreadsheet. Put all this together and still the uncertainty and variability is stressful. Running down a…

Someone always has to take the risks - when working for a company it is the company owners that take it. On average they probably are well compensated for it - but surely they must be more stressed. Or maybe when you are above some level you are not so stressed about the fluctuations - because you know that you'll not hit the bottom whatever happens?

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#42

Post by roymurdock » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

mhw wrote: post #37

One problem I can see in all this is that the trust networks that the sharing economy is built on are all (currently) privately owned and exploited, and network effects mean that it is very difficult for any competitor to get established in the same space because they have to establish their own competitor trust network. As a result the tendency will be for there to be a winner-takes-all outcome creating monopolies a…

>The only competitive strategy that seems to be working at the moment is having a vertical that is sufficiently different from the incumbent that you can attract existing users of the incumbent's network to use yours in parallel.

How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, health, etc.) and build up your own trusted brand.

I think we'll see the government slowly coming around to endorse/oversee/standardize digital trust networks as they always have through the FTC, FDA, FCC, etc. They've already started with Title II of HIPAA in an attempt to regulate how data flows in the healthcare system so that patients can trust healthcare providers.

But do we really need to oversee/nationalize a social network/content aggregator such as Linkedin or Facebook?

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#43

Post by geggam » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 1:55 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #34

sgt101 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the state owns the means of production. What if the future is red?

red doesn't sell well in the USA. We'll have full communism but we'll market it as something else. Probably still calling it the "free market capitalism". That's what we inaccurately call our current system and nobody blinks. Most likely it'll roll out like public libraries / utilities. I already drive on government owned streets kept safe by government paid cops and clean by government paid trash pickup to visit the…

All of those govt paid employees are paid by you... their employer.

Not the govt.

The govt owns nothing nor employees anyone.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#44

Post by gambiting » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 2:00 PM UTC

geggam wrote: post #43

VLM wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

red doesn't sell well in the USA. We'll have full communism but we'll market it as something else. Probably still calling it the "free market capitalism". That's what we inaccurately call our current system and nobody blinks. Most likely it'll roll out like public libraries / utilities. I already drive on government owned streets kept safe by government paid cops and clean by government paid trash pickup to visit the…

All of those govt paid employees are paid by you... their employer. Not the govt. The govt owns nothing nor employees anyone.

I genuinely don't see the distinction.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#45

Post by CaptainZapp » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #42

mhw wrote: post #37

One problem I can see in all this is that the trust networks that the sharing economy is built on are all (currently) privately owned and exploited, and network effects mean that it is very difficult for any competitor to get established in the same space because they have to establish their own competitor trust network. As a result the tendency will be for there to be a winner-takes-all outcome creating monopolies a…

>The only competitive strategy that seems to be working at the moment is having a vertical that is sufficiently different from the incumbent that you can attract existing users of the incumbent's network to use yours in parallel. How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, hea…

  How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years?

Well, I can always quaff a Pepsi, quite irrespective of what my peers chose to drink.

It doesn't work quite as well to use a different, say, social media platform, when all my friends are on Facebook.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#46

Post by coldtea » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 2:06 PM UTC

zby wrote: post #9

Maybe 'a job' is something that fitted a particular phase of our civilisation development and it just will fade away? A hunter gatherer (I bring this as my example - because as a species we spent most of our time in that phase) would do many things - but we would not call them jobs.

>Maybe 'a job' is something that fitted a particular phase of our civilisation development and it just will fade away?

Maybe freedom was something that fitted a particular phase of our civilization development and it just will fade away?

Bear with me, I mean that's the way slave owners would have wanted slaves to think in the 18-19th century. And I think enterprises (job owners or salaried slave owners) always try to get away with paying as little as they can, and increasing their margins regarding salaries as much as they can -- which is were this pressure in jobs comes from.

Maybe not that much in the IT sector yet, but in most part of services and manufacturing, yes.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#47

Post by padobson » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 2:06 PM UTC

Capitalism is about the flow of capital. Most people don't have capital, so they have to trade their labor for a small amount with people that do have capital, who are only trading it to get more capital.

Articles like this assume that everything will change - except how capital works.

Bitcoin. Crowdfunding. Distributed banking. Mass market barter transactions.

I can't help but think that centralized stores of capital (i.e. the top layer, the rich, the capitalist, etc etc) are naturally going to become obsolete.

Unless, of course, they're kept alive by force.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#48

Post by coldtea » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 2:08 PM UTC

kbart wrote: post #29

thorin wrote: post #13

Looking at a lot of job ads they want 5 developers for one job: sys admin, dba, software dev, ui, design...

Don't be scared of secondary requirements in ads as most often they don't require expertise in the mentioned area. During job interviews, "database specialist" "becomes" someone, who can write simple queries, "a web designer" - someone who can tinker CSS, "web development" - update Wordpress page etc.

>Don't be scared of secondary requirements in ads as most often they don't require expertise in the mentioned area.

Expertise no. But they DO require you to DO the job.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#49

Post by jwomers » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 2:09 PM UTC

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #30

If you have in-demand skills then maybe the 'gig' economy can be a nice place to be: money and flexibility can create quite a nice lifestyle, if some comments I read on HN are to be believed. But for those not in the top-layer its going to be "welcome to the precariat" [1]. Constant hustling, unpredictable income and housing, moving-on a lot, fewer social ties. For those at the bottom it's zero-hour contracts driving…

I totally agree with this. It creates amazing short-term opportunity for many, but possibly at large cost to society long-term.

I also find it interesting that the two examples you gave, Uber drivers and Amazon shelf stacking, are two that will certainly be fully automated in the next 5 - 10 years.

I watched my trash collection truck last week, it had just the driver, and a robotic arm that picked up each trash bin and emptied it. I was just thinking "and it's the driver next".

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#50

Post by mhw » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 2:12 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #42

mhw wrote: post #37

One problem I can see in all this is that the trust networks that the sharing economy is built on are all (currently) privately owned and exploited, and network effects mean that it is very difficult for any competitor to get established in the same space because they have to establish their own competitor trust network. As a result the tendency will be for there to be a winner-takes-all outcome creating monopolies a…

>The only competitive strategy that seems to be working at the moment is having a vertical that is sufficiently different from the incumbent that you can attract existing users of the incumbent's network to use yours in parallel. How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, hea…

> How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, health, etc.) and build up your own trusted brand.

The trust relationship with a brand is a direct and personal relationship, and people can change their idea of trust at little cost. People can choose to drink Pepsi without having to convince their friends/business associates/renters/drivers/etc to also drink Pepsi. The same is not true in a market which is built on a network of trust. If I want to rent out space in my car to people I go to the provider with the biggest trust network because that's the biggest market. I can choose to join a new startup's competitor network as well, but there's little I (or the startup) can do to convince everyone else on the competitor's network to join too. And, crucially, if the people I want to offer rides to aren't on the competitor's network, my participation in the network has less value.

> But do we really need to oversee/nationalize a social network/content aggregator such as Linkedin or Facebook?

It depends how comfortable we all are with the private monopolies that seem to be the outcome of the way the economics play out at the moment. If everyone is happy being a freelancer working for multiple multinational trust network monopolies, then maybe not. But if the relationship between the individual and the network are exploitative (some recent articles about the reality of driving for Uber take this line) then I can imagine people calling for some kind of regulation to break the monopoly and restore some kind of competition in the market. At least if there are multiple Uber's operating on a shared trust network, drivers (and passengers) have some choice over where they take their business, for example.