Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#441

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

beefalo wrote: post #433

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with teaching is that there's many people who can do it. If you compound the issue with paying teachers $150k a year, not only would the cost of education skyrocket, you would be running into more and more people unemployed but with a degree specifically meant for teaching. I'm not saying everyone can teach equally. I'm saying most everyone can become qualified to teach. Please don't accuse me of say…

Many people can learn to program and companies that pay poorly will only be able to hire people who aren't very good and they will go out of business. Finding good teachers is very hard as well but the government will only pay terrible salaries and mostly hire poor teachers. The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets…

>The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.

This is true, but it's become a partisan issue, at least in the U.S, to talk about testing teachers in some way.

I believe a huge problem is finding a way to differentiate a good teacher from a bad teacher if you're not allowed to look at grades/some kind of standardized test. If you can take those into account, as long as a teacher comes into work on time I'm not sure how you could differentiate the good from bad.

An example I like to use is my AP Calc teacher from highschool, who had an average score of 4.7 for her students on the AP test. The average in 2012 was a 2.9 (the year I took it, it seems to be higher now, I can't say to as if they made it easier or if people got better though) [1]. In many school systems though, if your teacher has an average score below the national average, you can't do anything about it.

[1] https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Servi...

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#442

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #367

at-fates-hands wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> protected by law (no bullshit "unlimited vacation" policy can take it away). I've worked at two places who had this policy and it was remarkable how many people just burned themselves out by NOT taking a single day of vacation. There was always pressure from management to NOT take vacation, then you add in pressure from your co-workers to continually work late, push to get projects done on time, all at the cost of…

This is weird to me, because I work at a UPTO company and most of my co-workers take at least 3-4 weeks off a year of vacation time and they don't have to worry about it cutting into their sick leave. Whereas, I've worked at other companies and you may start at 15 days PTO and it's one bucket for sick time and vacation.

This always throws me off, too.

I've definitely heard horror stories about UPTO meaning "no time off", especially in crunch-happy industries where requests are simply denied. But people criticizing UPTO seem to describe it as an all around bad deal compared to allotted PTO.

Meanwhile, I mostly see companies (even successful, generous-benefits ones) offering extremely restrictive PTO. "Two weeks PTO for all uses, and you gain one extra day every few years" isn't an appealing offer in the slightest. I've definitely watched friends with graduate degrees and many years at one company try to decide whether to work sick or give up pay.

That doesn't make UPTO a reliable offering, but I'm not convinced that it's worse on average than the levels of set PTO on offer in the US.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#443

Post by ZeroFries » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #432

ZeroFries wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a company get bigger without providing value to their customers?

I'm sure amazon does provide value to it's customers, but it was at the expense of consuming and destroying local small business economies where the profit would have stayed and been spent there, not in Seattle, not on exotic mansions and watercraft, not on the latest Echo endeavor that may or may not ever come to fruition. Just as Nestle bottles water from local aquifers and sells that water elsewhere outside of tha…

If people choose to purchase through Amazon, it's generally because they provide a better experience (i.e. more value per dollar spent) than their competitors.

Sitting on cash is expensive, due to inflation and taxes. It's generally better to re-invest. People are generally compensated as a function of the value they add to the company. If someone else can do a better job for less money, it would be in the board's best interests to hire them.

I do agree, though, that unwise expenditure of resources (mansions and watercraft, et all) should be criticized, though not high net-worth per-say. The problem, though, is that the common man is also guilty of unwise expenditure of resources. E.g. taking a vacation instead of providing life saving vaccines.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#444

Post by ummonk » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

mr_overalls wrote: post #369

ummonk wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the point isn't it? European countries finally start catching up to the US in the size of their immigrant population, and all of a sudden you're seeing massive social upheaval and populist movements popping up everywhere.

> European countries finally start catching up to the US in the size of their immigrant population, No. Several European countries have had significant foreign-born populations for a long time. https://www.statista.com/statistics/549292/foreign-born-popu...

Percent foreign born isn’t really a good metric of the level of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#445

Post by barberousse » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #362

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes however the demographic diversity in the US makes it less likely for people to want to "spread it" around. If your entire country is the population of one large US metro and everyone is the same ethnicity and culture, there are fewer cognitive impediments to being empathetic at scale.

==everyone is the same ethnicity and culture== I think depends on how you define ethnicity and culture. Sweden foreign-born population - 17.0% [1] US foreign-born population - 13.7% [2] [1] https://nordic.businessinsider.com/swedens-foreign-born-popu... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-data/u-s-...

Isn't this expected when Sweden has a significantly lower population than the US?

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#446

Post by lghh » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #441

beefalo wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people can learn to program and companies that pay poorly will only be able to hire people who aren't very good and they will go out of business. Finding good teachers is very hard as well but the government will only pay terrible salaries and mostly hire poor teachers. The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets…

>The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse. This is true, but it's become a partisan issue, at least in the U.S, to talk about testing teachers in some way. I believe a huge problem is finding a way to differentiate a good teacher from a bad teacher if you're not allowed to look at grades/some kind of standardi…

Part of the problem with doing that, especially in younger grades, is that so much of it depends on variables outside of a teacher's control. A lot of reading at a young age comes from life experiences. For instance, someone who has never been outside of an inner city is going to have more trouble reading a story about someone sailing on the ocean because they are so far removed from even the most basic plot elements that the things in the story that are actually meant to challenge are not ever gotten to. Additionally, time spent outside of classroom compounds the effectiveness of time spent inside of classroom, but the teacher has no control over that. A teacher can't even control if a student shows up for school or not. Student's performance, especially cross-school comparisons, are nearly worthless and would unfairly punish those that teach at low schools.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#447

Post by specialist » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #260

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western European countries hardly take immigrants. When you live in a homogenous, solely middle-class country like Sweden/Denmark/Norway, of course everything seems nice and comfortable. But America accepts some very poor immigrants and allows them to make money and be lifted up. Those are many of the people you saw on the bus.

==solely middle-class country== Isn't it possible that the reason their middle-class is so large is due in some part on political decisions they've made? I think it is at least worth exploring before we jump to the ethnic breakdown of the country. Political choices are something we can change relatively quickly compared to demographics. The US has a higher GDP per capita than Sweden and Denmark which implies that the…

"Isn't it possible that the reason their middle-class is so large is due in some part on political decisions they've made?"

The USA previously decided three times to explicitly create its middle class. The New Deal, the Homestead Act, etc. Policy choices which were hard fought and narrowly won.

Wealth and Democracy: How Great Fortunes and Government Created America's Aristocracy by Kevin Phillips

https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Fortunes-Government-...

Without active redistribution, accelerating inequity is inevitable.

That the rich get richer is just math. Not a value statement.

Plan accordingly.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#448

Post by lghh » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

linkmotif wrote: post #297

lghh wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straw men don't exist, my wife does exist.

But you use her in logic based arguments and then appeal to emotion so.... which is it? Your gripe shouldn’t be with rich people, it should be with Americans en masse, who yelled and screamed all Sunday night in my apartment building about grown men running into each other on TV with such a passion you’d think they were educating their children. And then they’re poor? Boo hoo. Maybe if Americans cared about education…

> But you use her in logic based arguments and then appeal to emotion so.... which is it?

My appeal was to the amount of effort required between jobs.

> And then they’re poor? Boo hoo.

Poor people are allowed to have hobbies and interests just as well as the rich. This sentiment is disgusting and you should be ashamed.

> You get paid 3x your wife because Americans care about what you produce, and they don't care about what she produces.

Trust me, I have worked jobs where I have been paid very, very well where nobody has cared about what I produced except the couple of people who were paying me.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#449

Post by commandlinefan » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #299

systemtest wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what is happening right now. I'm a software developer for the Dutch government and I pay about €40.000 per year in income tax. My neighbor has the same lifestyle as me. Same apartment, type of clothing, food and sports. And she even drives a car, I don't. Yet I am gone for work for about 50 hours per week and she lives on the income tax I pay. She doesn't even try to have a job because she is happy wi…

Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then? This is what I don't understand about most Europeans. All of my friends in Europe all do exactly what your neighbor is doing, almost all of them just live on welfare and it is great. They have so much money from welfare they can come visit the states and hangout regularly and have endless vacation while getting paid. All of them use this tim…

> Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then?

Eventually, he will, just like everybody else will - which is why socialism fails ever time it's tried. Unfortunately, starting it is bloodless but ending it never is.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#450

Post by wvenable » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

aantix wrote: post #161

arandr0x wrote: post #156

I saw this when I arrived in America, and it's the reason I left. I take the bus and seeing literally every day that there were people with families who worried and laughed and were kind who spent 2 hours a day transporting themselves to service or manufacturing industry job when I sat in an air conditioned office making 3x their wages was making me feel terribly guilty. I eventually went back to a country with a soc…

Without incentives, there is no innovation. And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.

As others have said, tons of people work harder than me but make less than me. My wife works at least as hard as I do for less pay.

It's less about how hard you work and more about what you know. But sometimes it's even less than that -- it's about perceived value rather than actual value. You could lose an important secretary and the business might lose a lot of money but often that isn't perceived like that.