To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors • Hacker News Board

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#61

Post by Decade » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:14 PM UTC

1_2__4 wrote: post #5

anovikov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in both cases, it's just the market. There is a demand for engineers which is more than for janitors, and with more limited supply. Everything else is just moving money from one pocket into another, it doesn't have economic significance.

"It's just the market" is such a lazy reply. Did entrepreneurs not like making money back then? Or did they realize that a healthy society was just as important as healthy companies?

There were tax implications. Paying the top executives a gazillion dollars wasn’t attractive because that was also a gazillion dollars given to Uncle Sam. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15161755

Another change since then was the rise of the corporate raider. Used to be that you could run a public company without profit as the primary motive. Parable of the Mexican fisherman, and such. (https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...) But now people like Carl Icahn (and Mitt Romney in his private sector days) actually hunt for companies that are not maximizing return to investors, and remake them into companies that do. Apple actually had to fend off Carl Icahn recently. (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/carl-icahns-2-billion-apple...)

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#62

Post by newforice » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

robteix wrote: post #20

newforice wrote: post #11

"If you’re educated, you’re in command." I'm not college educated, I've made a comfortable living as a coder. It took over ten years of self-teaching in my 20's while working a FT job but I knew this is what I wanted to do. So I agree with the statement but there's more than one way to become educated. Academia is just one way and possibly not the best way.

Coding is a very particular case, though. You can't self-study your way to becoming a lawyer or a doctor. And even in coding, more companies are slowly requiring formal education as a prerequisite for even applying for jobs. We know someone like you can be just as productive as someone from a great school, but that won't matter if you're cut from the selection process.

Agree on both points. It's ironic, my pay is the same or less today than it was 5 years ago and it was lower then, than it was during the dot com boom.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#63

Post by BeetleB » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #37

cmiles74 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Large wealthy companies are working hard to directly employ as few people as possible. Part of what they gain from this is the ability to pretend that the companies they hire to perform this "non-core" work are entirely separate black boxes. It would be embarassing to Apple to be treating their employees this way so they hire an outsourcing firm to do it for them. As large companies, like Apple, race to s…

But if the outsourcing companies were providing opportunities on their own, their employees could afford classes, living expenses and work on skills to eventually work at Apple. Apple gets quality janitors and security guards while paying the outsourcing company more. The outsourcing companies are the actual ones running the race to the bottom. Stop that, and Apple will have to reconsider (at which point, we get to a…

>Apple gets quality janitors and security guards while paying the outsourcing company more.

I suspect Apple will then go and find another contracting company.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#64

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

mathiasben wrote: post #36

The underlying cause of this whole issue is the changes in tax policy instated in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, previously income was taxed at higher rates unless deductions were utilized which forced those earnings back into the economy creating jobs funding research, etc.. As it's become easier to retain more earnings there's little incentive not to optimize an entire corporation solely with the purpose of generating…

What incentive would anyone have in making more then 400K a year if you were going to be taxed at 90%?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#65

Post by newforice » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #15

newforice wrote: post #11

"If you’re educated, you’re in command." I'm not college educated, I've made a comfortable living as a coder. It took over ten years of self-teaching in my 20's while working a FT job but I knew this is what I wanted to do. So I agree with the statement but there's more than one way to become educated. Academia is just one way and possibly not the best way.

This doesn't work so well anymore. There has been an influx of millions of coders. You can do it, but why? It's easier to just go through the college grinder and pay off your loan over the next decade. Plus you might meet a cofounder.

It I were starting out today, there's a good chance I'd go the college route too. Back then, it was tougher, I'd been accepted but couldn't afford it without working FT and doing college FT. In retrospect, I'd have gotten to where I wanted to be faster though it wouldn't have been the same journey. ;-)

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#66

Post by mmierz » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #64

mathiasben wrote: post #36

The underlying cause of this whole issue is the changes in tax policy instated in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, previously income was taxed at higher rates unless deductions were utilized which forced those earnings back into the economy creating jobs funding research, etc.. As it's become easier to retain more earnings there's little incentive not to optimize an entire corporation solely with the purpose of generating…

What incentive would anyone have in making more then 400K a year if you were going to be taxed at 90%?

Because of the 10% they keep, which can still be a huge sum.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#67

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

princekolt wrote: post #31

newforice wrote: post #11

"If you’re educated, you’re in command." I'm not college educated, I've made a comfortable living as a coder. It took over ten years of self-teaching in my 20's while working a FT job but I knew this is what I wanted to do. So I agree with the statement but there's more than one way to become educated. Academia is just one way and possibly not the best way.

But the simple knowledge of this fact is so scarce that it makes almost no difference. And since most schools don't care about coding (or, where I'm from for example, about anything not related to get the most students to pass the equivalent of SATs), this is not going to change soon. I was so surprised when my father told me that back in the 80s, in a small city in the interior of Brazil, in a public school, he was…

I went to a small town public school in the late 80s and early 90s and we had an AppleSoft Basic course. I'm amazed that schools don't have that now.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#68

Post by nickthemagicman » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

chank wrote: post #39

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story is evocative of Trent Reznor's success story.

Not even close.

Agreed, he was in a bunch of bands and had classical piano training his entire life. He was recording on the side and happened to be working as a janitor at a music studio.

Trent is more similar to Good Will Hunting than this story.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#69

Post by ghaff » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

cmiles74 wrote: post #23

eof wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was definitely closer to the former than the latter. Things that are obviously profitable now were not hip or obvious, nor was the infrastructure to commoditize everything available.

I think this idea that it's okay to have most of the employees at a large plant working for smaller outsourcing companies (instead of, say, Apple or Kodak) wasn't acceptable. I wonder if there was some tangible benefit that was derived from having many full time workers that has either evaporated or has been overshadowed since the 70s.

There are probably some specific factors--like the rise in healthcare benefit costs. But, overall, there's just an increase in specialization throughout the economy. As you go back in time, you just generally had fewer services companies that were available to fill every need that was tangential to the main focus of a given company.

To give one example that goes back a little further, companies used to handle the whole payroll process themselves. Now they use ADP or whoever.

There's also been a lot of automation/self-service of mundane tasks. You don't really have the stereotypical "starting the mailroom" job any longer nor do you have the steno pool.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#70

Post by aplaice » Sun, Sep 03, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

Entirely irrelevant to the content of the article, but is there a solution to the problematic interaction between sticky headers and full-page scrolling?

At least in Firefox, if you press Space or PageDown (to scroll down a "page"), on the linked article, you'll lose several lines of the text, as they're obscured by the header. Illustrating:

Chrome isn't afflicted by this (on the linked article), due to the fact that its page scroll is slightly shorter than Firefox's (on a webpage without any sticky headers, Firefox gives you about 1.5 lines of context from the previous "page"/screen, when you page-scroll; Chrome gives you about 5). However, if the height of the sticky header were greater (as often is the case), Chrome would also be affected.

This is obviously in addition to the annoyance of the sticky header wasting vertical screen space, but the latter is just an aesthetic preference, while the former is broken functionality.

Yes, I know that on Firefox I can just use reader mode, but it seems sad that after almost 30 years of the development of the web, going back to a design that could easily have existed in the 90s, is an improvement.