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Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

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Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#241

Post by buboard »

gwern wrote: post #202

To toss in a second-hand anecdote: I once asked someone who worked at/with companies screening Africans for diamonds in the rough, smart guys who could do programming but were being paid peanuts, like $10k/year, and paying them a multiple of that for outsourcing, why it wasn't such a great idea, when Africa seems to have so many under-utilized people. He said that despite expectations, they were not much cheaper to h…

> leave early, do no work, blow off jobs, half-ass the actual

sounds like specifically a work ethic problem, which is indeed an issue outside the US , Western europe, japan etc, assuming those programmers were indeed capable enough and getting paid above-decently. I don't know how you go about building work ethic in countries that don't have it

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#242

Post by rwallace »

throwaway4220 wrote: post #197
joelbluminator wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know any even in radiology/pathology that can rival a physician You're saying this based on..?

I'm a radiologist involved in machine learning research! I lurk on HN to feel like I know how to code :)

Great! Then you're the ideal person to ask something I've been wondering: We see the occasional headline about machine learning algorithms outperforming human radiologists. What's the catch? I'm prepared to believe they aren't really outperforming humans once you take all the unstated factors into account, just wondering what the unstated factors are.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#244

Post by heavenlyblue »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #233
pdimitar wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. This has been true throughout my entire career literally everywhere I worked, on-site and remote alike. What makes my experience a little more representative (or so my ego says) is the fact that I am from Eastern Europe. Ever since several years now (3-4) we are no longer that attractive IT outsourcing location because a lot of people around here learned their price and value and charge normal (if still b…

> Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is not a great example of productivity either. I can totally understand why employees from poorer countries disappear all the time - why wouldn't they? They know they're getting paid peanuts in your country (so you don't expect much) and you're paying them an incredibly competitive salary in their own country (which means their lifestyle is closer to upper middle class). Which means th…

The basic strategy is this: if I can work lazily at 20% the output and get a middle-class lifestyle at 80% my salary. Why would I bother to be better if the only companies from the west are here to cheap out on talent? I can always go work for a new “revolutionary” company that is trying to outsource their talent and barely do any work all over again.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#245

Post by heavenlyblue »

pdimitar wrote: post #234
heavenlyblue wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is not a great example of productivity either. I can totally understand why employees from poorer countries disappear all the time - why wouldn't they? They know they're getting paid peanuts in your country (so you don't expect much) and you're paying them an incredibly competitive salary in their own country (which means their lifestyle is closer to upper middle class). Which means th…

Well, that's a kind of a rude generalisation. :) Or maybe I read you wrong. You should know there's a lot of world-class talent around here. Sure there's tons of slackers but I posit that's true everywhere (maybe they can't squeeze through the cracks in the USA? but they still exist).

There’s in Africa too. But you would be paying them the same amount (or well, maybe 70% that?) if you wanted the same output.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#246

Post by belval »

pdimitar wrote: post #211
phkahler wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> you often have to agree, then have a sidebar conversation directly with that person so their negligence, ignorant mistake, or intentional malice isn't put on a large group or public display. That should be obvious. Most people I've worked for can be challenged in private if you've actually got a point - even if you're shot down in the end. The ones who are still assholes when handled correctly are usually not wort…

> That should be obvious. That's exactly what different cultures look like: it's absolutely not obvious in Eastern Europe where I live. We call each other out on our BS freely and directly, and almost nobody ever gets offended. It is quite the cultural shock for many of us when we suddenly have to sugar-coat and positive-tone-first every work criticism we express. It can feel like a huge waste of time and energy whil…

Man I wish it was more like that in the west, it's great to not glorify people being assholes, but when coworker X pushes a security fix on all production servers at the same time on a Friday afternoon, crashes the entire thing and somehow my manager talks about "the importance to avoid fingerpointing" in the post-mortem.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#247

Post by selectionbias »

I think this misses a possibly very important effect: agglomeration. Programmers in the Bay Area were not all born there, many (most?) chose to move there, some from elsewhere in the US, some from abroad. If those programmers who are more skilled tend to move to this area then the resulting greater productivity could explain higher pay. So why might more skilled programmers move to the Bay Area? Perhaps because other skilled programmers live there, and programming skills are complementary. A highly skilled developer may be worth more to a company with other skilled developers who can work together to create advanced products. Note that local PISA scores are irrelevant if people were not educated in the place that they work.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#248

Post by pdimitar »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #245
pdimitar wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's a kind of a rude generalisation. :) Or maybe I read you wrong. You should know there's a lot of world-class talent around here. Sure there's tons of slackers but I posit that's true everywhere (maybe they can't squeeze through the cracks in the USA? but they still exist).

There’s in Africa too. But you would be paying them the same amount (or well, maybe 70% that?) if you wanted the same output.

Sure, I don't see anything wrong with that. To me nationality bears almost zero correlation to productivity and this has been anecdotally proven throughout 18.5y of career.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#249

Post by belval »

koala_man wrote: post #178
Frost1x wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business culture in the US is also quite authoritarian. There have been decades of strategic peeling away of labor rights to put labor in a more leveraged situation, leading to restricted freedoms. Sure, you can tell your manager/director/CIO/CTO their choice is idiotic but the fact is, you'll be fired instantly and depending on circumstances, you may be in a bad situation financially and future career wise. The very…

>If your manager wants to put diesel in a gasoline car, you often have to agree If you are using this as a metaphor for a decision you personally consider stupid, then maybe. If it's actually putting diesel in a gas car, then no, I can't imagine any case in which an intern couldn't safely tell that to their director or CEO.

It puzzles me whenever a thread like this comes up on HN, how I either always had reasonable managers or people are exaggerating a lot.

When something is obviously not going to work akin to diesel in a gas car, I have never met someone who wasn't willing to at least take a second look at their "solution".

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#250

Post by pdimitar »

belval wrote: post #246
pdimitar wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That should be obvious. That's exactly what different cultures look like: it's absolutely not obvious in Eastern Europe where I live. We call each other out on our BS freely and directly, and almost nobody ever gets offended. It is quite the cultural shock for many of us when we suddenly have to sugar-coat and positive-tone-first every work criticism we express. It can feel like a huge waste of time and energy whil…

Man I wish it was more like that in the west, it's great to not glorify people being assholes, but when coworker X pushes a security fix on all production servers at the same time on a Friday afternoon, crashes the entire thing and somehow my manager talks about "the importance to avoid fingerpointing" in the post-mortem.

What I've heard VPs of Engineering and team leads saying to justify this over-protectiveness when screwing up was along the lines of:

"He/she knows they screwed up. No need to pour salt on the wound."

Which is completely fair. But I've also seen fairly clueless people in responsible positions screwing up again and again and again and never being called out -- and those scenarios are not okay.

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