You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#81

Post by pishpash » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

headmelted wrote: post #44

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

“I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always endless meetings and poorly trained people that nevertheless earn well above the median wage so the incentive to improve onself is almost zero” This was actually painful to read because of how much truth there is in it.

Entitled incompetents who are not only highly paid but expect scheduled promotions as if given a sinecure have really run amock in this sad sad industry.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#82

Post by balaam » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #70

> “Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems” I think it may partly be because most of human civilization is still basically slave labor. You indenture some people and you tell them what to build. People don't care about problems they're not supposed to take care of. It's a detriment to them if they do. This kind of makes it tricky to take on tasks like say, space elevators or arcologies or extraterrestrial colonies. You need…

I agree with this. A basic income program could have an unexpected dividend of a new innovation boom.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#83

Post by Rerarom » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #33

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

> I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. What is this in reference to? Where do buying cars and holidays in Greece come into this article? Is there a stereotype of programmers…

He's from Romania, where people don't usually afford vacations abroad, and when they do, Greece is the canonical choice. Also, a lot of people's existences there revolve around car ownership. In addition, IT people have relatively high salaries (they even have an explicit tax exemption).

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#84

Post by mundo » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

How much of this is due to venture capital? Like, if it were possible to make a billion dollars by investing in 100 plumbing companies even if 99 of them turn out to have been dumb, would plumbers make $250K out of college?

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#85

Post by jbay808 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

I think the reason software pays so well is because the world is simply littered with computers.

Today's software developers are earning a fortune from the fertile soil that has been spread around in the form of computers in everyone's pockets. Making those computers x% more useful to y% of their owners scales as a function of the number of computer owners. The fruit keeps hanging lower and lower to the point that it's hard not to step on it.

It's easy money because most of the work is done as the byproduct of investments by other industries, like telecom, but the extra value is unlocked by the software developers.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#86

Post by numair » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can access in any meaningful amount of time where the “grass is greener” than the places we’ve already been.

This is profound, semi-depressing, and enlightening at the same time. Rather than seeking something new somewhere else, our new obsession is in improving what we’ve got, where we are right now.

I know a lot of you are going to make hand-wavy claims about space mining and things like that, but our population curve seems to indicate a very minimal benefit to all of that. If anything, the fastest-growing environmental concern seems to be space and sky pollution. Starry-eyed young engineers have been sold on the idea of interstellar space travel, when the reality of the commercial application of their work is that it’s more likely to lead to an over-proliferation of satellites and help rich people get to places faster via space plane.

The final argument someone’s inevitably going to make is, survival of the race. Yeah, okay. You might want to self-reflect on our existence as deeply terrestrial beings that are intrinsically connected to the Earth. Even if you spend all of your day hidden in a bedroom, you can’t escape your bond with this planet. Instead of trying to find a mistress in the form of another moon/planet, we need to spend more time working on the marriage.

I think space technologies are fun, and that rich people obsessed with suicide missions to other planets should be able to do what they want, but let’s not kid ourselves on the moral superiority of these sorts of things. There is no shame, and no inferiority, in working to optimize our Earth-bound existence.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#87

Post by chr1 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #39

NASA hasn’t been actively trying to drive down the cost of space. If the had it would of unlocked space for all of us decades ago. It took SpaceX investing their own profits into building a reusable booster. And now they’re doing the same for the entire vehicle with Starship. NASA does pay SpaceX for flights to the IIS, but most of that money goes into building Dragons and the rockets to support them. What if NASA ac…

NASA could not do that decades ago because then we didn't have good enough computers to model the process of burning in the engine, or to control the engine to land vertically.

So i don't think that effort spent on facebook and other computer related things was a waste.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#88

Post by munherty » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

To provide an edgy answer, we live in a rather peaceful time...

We haven't had a good old fashioned War to accelerate our technological advancements. As humans were rather adept at finding new and creative ways to kill each other and then ultimately repurposing it for good later on...

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#89

Post by molteanu » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

photonios wrote: post #58

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

I always wondered whether this phenomenon was something local or whether it holds true outside eastern Europe as well. I saw that you're from eastern Europe and I checked out your website. You're in the exact same city I am in. I moved here a couple of years ago from western Europe. What a small world.

If these, and others of its kind, are the things that also keep you awake at night, feel free to get in touch. It's hard to openly express them around here (edit: here, meaning the city where I live, not HN) as I always seem to get into trouble for that. Thought police is always on the lookout.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#90

Post by undefined3840 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

I’m surprised this article is so upvoted.

1. The author took this nearly word for word from Thiel/Eric Weinstein, who have both discussed this point extensively, most recently on Weinstein’s podcast.

2. The author is using this click bait headline to discuss his own industry/company, and this looks like some content marketing piece.