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Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

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Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#321

Post by s73ver_ »

deadmetheny wrote: post #290
crush-n-spread wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tone-deaf or not, you have to go where the work is. You might have to pick up a laptop and learn to code. Maybe that means uprooting your family and finding new friends. You have to make it work. To not find work is to not survive.

We don't need more people churning out more webshit. Some of us actually give a shit about wanting to better our local communities instead of running off to SV or NYC to build Tinder for Dogs.

You don't have to run there. If you wanted to better your local community, you'd be working to better opportunities there, instead of decrying the idea that the economy is changing.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#322

Post by ameister14 »

leggomylibro wrote: post #260
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And anyways, dire imprecations of fire and brimstone if we don't do things your way is so 1700s. You think if the majority of people in this country continue to experience a declining quality of life, there won't be riots in the streets? This method of shifting blame from economic issues to social issues won't work forever. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Am I wrong in some way?

That has nothing to do with Silicon Valley; don't conflate issues. The widening wealth inequality in this country is a product of much larger forces, don't blame people simply because they've happened to have found a modern-day trade which lets them eke out a middle-class lifestyle in the current economy. It seems like you're the one shifting blame, onto people who have no power to change the situation. How about tak…

4 of the top 5 most valuable companies in the world are tech companies. Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon. Hundreds of millions of people use their products every day.

You don't think that's power?

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#323

Post by Clubber »

s73ver_ wrote: post #318
Clubber wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the main reason the Democrats got swept, and will probably continue to get swept. They aren't offering what most people want, honest pay for honest work. They are offering welfare, which most people are to proud to take, let alone want. This isn't just a problem in the Midwest, this is a problem for almost anywhere that isn't a large city on the coast (with some exceptions). This problem affects proba…

That's not true at all. Clinton had plans with job retraining for coal miners. They were offering jobs. They got swept because Trump came in and said, "We'll keep coal mining," despite having no actual plan for what to do.

Yes, but coal miners are such a small subset of middle America. I'm talking about all the blood letting between VA and CA. And (I'm not being snarky) but what would you retrain them to do? Unless those cities grow an economy, they will just be retrained, still unemployed people.

Unless you have a massive migration to large cities, it's not going to do much good.

I mean think about that for a few steps. You have millions of people in small towns all over America in ghost towns. Training will help, but until these towns start growing businesses, then what? I mean read about the Walmatization of America. Read about all the factories moving to Mexico after NAFTA. It's all dead.

The Democrats used to serve the middle class, but they stopped after Carter got demolished by Reagan. Bill Clinton pushed that retrain idea, but the blood kept flowing. Why would it be any different now?

Like it or not the default vote for most of middle America is GOP. The Dems have to actually come up with something that works to get these smaller cities and towns vibrant again if they want the votes. I don't think the establishment Dems understand America outside the coastal areas.

The latest plan from Schumer is the same. Would probably do a lot of good for the working poor in cities, but won't do much for middle America. Same ole same ole. Like I said, it's a problem neither party knows how to solve, or doesn't have the political will to solve it.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#324

Post by Klockan »

jacalata wrote: post #317
Klockan wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't worked at a single team without at least one woman, why wouldn't people just ask them instead of going out of their way to get more? I mean, if we reduced the amount of sexism then the voices which are already in the field would suddenly be heard and we would no longer have the problem you are describing.

Wow, really? That seems unusual - how are you defining "team"? I use it to describe a group of about 7-10 people and I have definitely seen many of them with no women.

20% are women in the places I have worked so you would expect there to be around 2 on average then. The probability then that a team of 10 has zero women would be around 10% so not that common.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#325

Post by Clubber »

CalChris wrote: post #302
Clubber wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've ever heard someone call themselves elite outside of a gaming session. You should probably use the numbers 1337 though. Wouldn't calling yourself elite, seemingly unaware of what that projects to people count as elitism?

If Michael Jordan calls himself elite, is he an elitist? If a quite successful Valley engineer calls himself elite, am I an elitist? These are different words. Populists will call SV elitist. That doesn't make them right.

That's kinda the point. I don't believe MJ ever called himself elite. He didn't really need to, did he?

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#326

Post by sctb »

nsxwolf wrote: post #105

Middle America is not too keen on your "basic income" solution to all the problems you are creating. It brings to mind a future of living in a 300 square foot government apartment in some hideous Brutalist concrete block of a building, eating our daily Amazon rations, knowing that's just how life is going to be, forever, no need to have dreams anymore. There will be torches and pitchforks coming for you.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15434340.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#327

Post by vasilipupkin »

mixedbit wrote: post #251
vasilipupkin wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok, but those 19 investments didn't have to take VC money. if they produced great and useful products, then why couldn't they grow organically, borrow from a bank, etc.? I mean it's just complete nonsense to complain about the fact that you failed using someone else's money.

They could grow organically and there are plenty of companies that do, but this is not the Silicon Valley way, and this is what the article is complaining about.

well, to be honest, I don't get that criticism. Why does it need to be the silicon valley way? you want to build a 10 million dollar business? you can do that in Boise, Idaho without VC funding. I mean the article is just clickbait.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#328

Post by bb611 »

tome wrote: post #281
jonbarker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's stated goal is to have no margins (Bezos 'your margin is my opportunity'). So yes if they are following their zero margin strategy they should be lower than WMT, whose only claim is low price. If something is cheaper elsewhere it is because Amazon has not figured out how to deliver that particular item to the consumer at cost yet. So for example if you find something cheaper at WMT it may be that WMT has a g…

Huh? So how does Amazon actually make money?

They don't have no margin (i.e. nothing is 'at cost' as GP presumes), they just have very low margins which they make up for with high volume.

It's not that novel, but Bezos has created a company with tolerance for lower margins.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#329

Post by kevmo »

existencebox wrote: post #314
kevmo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The avalanche I'm referring to there has to do with whether the company itself is for-profit or non-profit, and the legal, institutional, and PR ramifications thereof. The non-profit competitive salary question is one which people endlessly debate. Some people think it is ridiculous that the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center makes a $300k salary despite SPLC's tremendous success and the fact that he could clear…

Thanks for the response, To be more precise to the second part of my question: I was more wondering how the 300k would be decided; e.g. why not 400k or 200k? (Personally that seems like a very acceptable salary, but if non-executives are scaled down to something commensurate as opposed to squeezing the distribution, that becomes harder to sell.)

Haha, as I said - The non-profit competitive salary question is one which people endlessly debate!

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#330

Post by binarymax »

Mefis wrote: post #144

>and eight men control half the world’s wealth. This is wrong. Eight men control as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the world's population. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/16/w...

The grammar is ambiguous. "half the world" == "the poorest 50% of the population". "half the world's wealth" == "the wealth of the poorest 50% of the population"
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