Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#101

Post by R_haterade » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

wott wrote: post #95

tomjen3 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a valid complaint if grand parent was arguing that we should move every six weeks, but here the argument might be that we should move every dozen years or so -- which should be plenty of time to figure out if your neighbours are worth keeping around as permenant friends or were just aquentences of accident.

> if your neighbours are worth keeping around as permenant friends Social bonding =/= friends

In fact, social cohesiveness requires being able to maintain relationships with people who aren't your friends, and who you didn't choose.

No organization that lasts long relies on 'friendship'.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#102

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

jboggan wrote: post #88

bmwe30is wrote: post #30

>Some are rooted, embedded in their communities; and some are trapped — because housing is unaffordable where the better paying jobs are. And the jobs that are high paying are not the jobs they built their lives on. There's some texture and nuance to this statement. I remember on NPR, they interviewed a lady whom mentioned similar sentiments; her and her husband had built a family, worked in the blue-collar industry…

It's really not easy to uproot and move from an economically depressed area to an active metropolis. I've done it (Athens, GA to San Francisco in late 2012) and it was incredibly expensive and involved a large amount of personal credit use, cash assistance from family, and time. It was a huge stretch at the time for me to move across the country and break into a new industry, and I did it as a single man, willing and…

What I don't understand is why people don't use the time they have in the low cost-of-living area to develop the skills (via the Internet) that would make them attractive to employers in big cities? That was my approach - I lived at home with my parents after graduation, basically did nothing but program (both for work and after work), and after 3 years Google came knocking and paid for my move out to Silicon Valley. This is fairly common among tech companies, or even any sort of wealthy corporation - if they want someone remote and the person is willing to relocate, they'll pay for the move.

I have several friends here with similar stories - they're from even more economically depressed areas (Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Cleveland, etc.), but spent their free time coding, and then Google came calling.

Honest question here - what's going through peoples' heads when they decide that reading Breitbart or watching TV is a better use of their time than developing the skills that will make them desirable to those evil corporations that are making all the money?

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#103

Post by asteli » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #56

One of the main reasons I don't live in SF is the conversation. The first time I visited, I heard tech talk in bars, cafes, on street corners. If I can't get a beer or a coffee or take a walk without hearing about work, it's not for me.

I was on BART a few weeks ago and had two tech dudes strike up a conversation about JIRA directly across me, shouting over the din of rail noise. It can get obnoxious.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#104

Post by maxxxxx » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #96

koonsolo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole credit card system in US is made to rip off "stupid" people, extremely so. Nobody writes about that, probably because everyone from US thinks it's normal, and nobody from the rest of the world knows about it. But that system is made to screw all the people who are not good at personal finances.

The root cause of most American problems is poor public education. We're still over-emphasizing passing grades over effectively growing new American citizens... Personal finance is rarely offered and never mandatory, yet we collectively bare the burden of financial ignorance. The same applies to other subjects like statistics or civics.

I didn't learn finance in Germany in school but we all knew that taking on massive debt is stupid. It's the advertising and easy access to consumer credit. Wage increases have been replaced by easier access to credit.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#105

Post by cvsh » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #96

koonsolo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole credit card system in US is made to rip off "stupid" people, extremely so. Nobody writes about that, probably because everyone from US thinks it's normal, and nobody from the rest of the world knows about it. But that system is made to screw all the people who are not good at personal finances.

The root cause of most American problems is poor public education. We're still over-emphasizing passing grades over effectively growing new American citizens... Personal finance is rarely offered and never mandatory, yet we collectively bare the burden of financial ignorance. The same applies to other subjects like statistics or civics.

>We're still over-emphasizing passing grades over effectively growing new American citizens...

2/3rds of state legislatures are actively hostile to basic tenets of science, let alone the government teaching "effective American citizenship".

We just recently legalized malpractice for financial advisors. The rules preventing them from screwing their clients out of their retirement savings were spun as hurting consumer choice. Imagine how it'd be spun if there was a movement for public schools to teach "effective citizenship".

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#106

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:38 PM UTC

R_haterade wrote: post #100

yborg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your village is a hypercorp that sells all your social interactions for profit This, to me, is a "Truman Show" level dystopia.

The common theme in dystopic stories is the protagonist's unraveling unawareness of just how bad things are. Enjoy!

The irony is that many classic dystopian stories are actually written about today, the time and place where they were written, and not about some hypothetical future. 1984 was based on Orwell's experiences as a propaganda writer for Britain in WW2. Animal Farm was about the Soviet Union. Fahrenheit 451 was inspired by McCarthyism. Saruman's orcs and trollocs in Lord of the Rings were supposed to represent industry, the factories and smelters that were destroying the English countryside in the 30s. The Hunger Games was about the Iraq war and how we numb ourselves on reality TV.

If you believe Jared Diamond (and I think he at least has a point), the point where we entered dystopia was when we invented agriculture 10,000 years ago. That was when humans began to accumulate surpluses that they could use to lord over other humans, and men began to serve men (and women to serve men too). Humans have a remarkable ability to adapt, though. Most of us don't think of agriculture as an evil soul-crushing machine, even though it was the beginning of large-scale repression, because it's so ingrained in our experience of how we live.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#107

Post by ringaroundthetx » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #104

losteric wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause of most American problems is poor public education. We're still over-emphasizing passing grades over effectively growing new American citizens... Personal finance is rarely offered and never mandatory, yet we collectively bare the burden of financial ignorance. The same applies to other subjects like statistics or civics.

I didn't learn finance in Germany in school but we all knew that taking on massive debt is stupid. It's the advertising and easy access to consumer credit. Wage increases have been replaced by easier access to credit.

German culture has a mass distortion on the perils of consumer credit. The "debt is evil" crowd is just an extreme as the people that irresponsibly use debt.

Maybe you should learn finance.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#108

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

darod wrote: post #43

I wonder how long it will take for this thought to fade from Steve's mind once he returns to SV. It's easy for people come to these realizations after getting outside of their comfort zone but just as easily return to the status quo. I think one of the biggest myths about tech in general is that it's here to help people. It's really not. It's job is to remove barriers to make workflows more efficient, typically to th…

Well, it is there to help people. It's there to help the people who are paying the tech company. This is often not you, and your interests are often not aligned with your employer.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#109

Post by rmason » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:45 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #3

Second sentence starts with: > We have a summer home ... Is this common for people living inside the tech bubble?

When I was growing up here in Michigan it wasn't at all unusual for a worker on the line at GM, Ford or Chrysler to have a summer cottage up north on a lake.

Now it's extremely rare for even two income upper middle class couples to do the same. A lot of those cottages are now owned by people from out of state who visit a few weeks per year. Folks who live the rest of the year in NYC, Chicago and Boston.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#110

Post by ChemicalWarfare » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

bmwe30is wrote: post #30

>Some are rooted, embedded in their communities; and some are trapped — because housing is unaffordable where the better paying jobs are. And the jobs that are high paying are not the jobs they built their lives on. There's some texture and nuance to this statement. I remember on NPR, they interviewed a lady whom mentioned similar sentiments; her and her husband had built a family, worked in the blue-collar industry…

I can totally see this happening to an "older" generation - people who get decent jobs locally but then in their late 40s or so are forced to deal with the uncertainty if the industry they are in gets into a shaky state.

Also, these things are periodic in some industries. Construction, for example, is booming where I'm at right now - you have to wait a few weeks for anything semi-major to be done because there's a shortage of contractors. Back in 08 they'd come sweep your porch on a 5 min notice :)

One other point/observation - I personally know quite a few ppl who live/work in the country - all of them had their kids move to either a large metropolitan area in the same state or farther out after graduating from college. Kids who graduated HS also left for the most part, some stayed but mostly in situations where there's a family business for them to partake in.