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9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

blogs.forbes.com

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Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#111

Post by sixtofour »

pak wrote: post #105
sixtofour wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Hey poor and struggling unemployed Americans, you need to find new skills?" Seriously, Forbes needed to run a whole article dedicated to this? That is exactly the message that the unemployed and the rest of the country need to hear and take to heart. No business should expected to take on people unskilled for a job. Some businesses will do so, to grow talent, and some of those will show an ROI, but no business sho…

>That is exactly the message that the unemployed and the rest of the country need to hear and take to heart. I bet they and the lady at Rite-Aid regularly read Forbes magazine, right? Don't kid yourself--this article is meant for the echo-chamber. And that's why I think it's a waste of space.

The discussion can be started anywhere. Most helpful when it eventually (if it hasn't already) trickles down to the non-Forbes reading masses. If nothing else the article seeds a talking point for Forbes readers.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#113

Post by jfoutz »

huherto wrote: post #84
jfoutz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists are just like Machine learning pixie dust. It's fun to say, but you'd be hard pressed to find a small business that needs an astrophysicist. I don't mean to pick on astrophysicists by the way, pick any random phd, a small business probably doesn't need that.

May be one small business doesn't need a PhD. But the PhD can solve problems that many small businesses have.

Right, because PhD is like pixie dust you can sprinkle on a problem.

Sorry, the point i'm trying to make is it's easy to be intellectually dishonest about the complexity of problems people are facing (sorta like the ML article earlier). If your small business needs new research to survive, you've lost. Very few small businesses are limited by complicated third order effects. they're limited because the owner doesn't feel like doing inventory (or writing more tests, or calling more potential customers) over the weekend.

Sure, you can find counter examples here and there, like special hedge funds or old hippies with geology shops, but most small businesses know 5 things they could fix to make it better.

If they're really that super-efficient and organized, they're either a large business that turned into a small business because the field is dying or they're not a small business.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#114

Post by redthrowaway »

>And we can communicate with our outsourced help, wherever they are, more quicker and easier than before.

This, and quite a few grammatical whoopsies like it, has reminded me of one thing: blogs.forbes is not forbes. It doesn't have any editorial oversight (or at least not much), so you can't ascribe to any story you see on it the kind of gravitas or respect you would give a story in forbes. It's an opinion page, very much like huffpo. While I largely agree with the article, it's important to realize that its placement on blog.forbes is no more credible than on x.blogspot. It may be reliable, or it may not be, but it should in no way be thought of as having undergone the kind of editorial oversight that its domain suggests.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#115

Post by damienkatz »

zwieback wrote: post #63
knieveltech wrote: post #47

"New developments in flooring, painting and construction are resulting in longer use of our homes." I know that this is at best tangential to the OP's point but this poked me in the eye. Can the OP really be this naive about modern construction materials and practices? 150 years ago it wasn't uncommon to build a house out of hardwood planking, with a stone foundation. Post in beam construction using 2ft square timber…

Materials are much better now than in the 60s or 70s but not as good as in the more distant past. My house was built in the 40s and looks better than 10 or 15 year old houses in the area. On the other hand, insulation was crap or non-existent then and furnaces were less efficient.

Survivorship bias. Poorly built houses from long ago are no longer here, reminding us how poorly they were constructed, only the best examples survive. In 150 years, only the best houses built today will still be standing, and people then will be compare these houses with flimsy mass produced homes and say the same things.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#116

Post by [deleted] »

billybob wrote: post #22

"I know you want to be hired full time by me. And I want to be doing my part. But please understand: I’m running a business. I want to make profits. And these tools are letting me make more profits by employing people only when I need them rather than carrying them on my payroll." This is why every time I hear a politician talk about "creating jobs," I grimace. A business will hire someone if and only if they think t…

[deleted]

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#117

Post by diminium »

billybob wrote: post #22

"I know you want to be hired full time by me. And I want to be doing my part. But please understand: I’m running a business. I want to make profits. And these tools are letting me make more profits by employing people only when I need them rather than carrying them on my payroll." This is why every time I hear a politician talk about "creating jobs," I grimace. A business will hire someone if and only if they think t…

>Government cannot create jobs.

It's the government, it can create any job it wants to because it is the government. If your looking form a useful or productivity or economic standpoint, that's a whole different story but jobs in itself - the government can create as many of those as it wants. Look at Cuba where everyone has a job and unemployment is low.

If the government wants to, it can open positions for 10,000,000 computer typists to type "Hello World" for 12 hours a day. Since our government prints money, all it needs to do is just print more money to pay them. In fact, after those 10 million people are hired, it can create another 100 million jobs to twist wire from dusk to dawn should they desire.

The government has the ability to create as many jobs as it desires because it's the government. Now whether the people are better off or not because they have a "job" that's another story. Either way, jobs are easy to create.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#118

Post by sixtofour »

WalterBright wrote: post #99
derleth wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Queue I'd understand this better if people didn't always pick the longer word when the short one would be correct.

I believe this particular usage of queue is correct english. You can see it on the TV show "So You Think You Can Dance" where Nigel will often say "queue music" meaning "start the music." 'Queue' is not quite a direct replacement for 'see', there is an additional nuance that what follows it is obvious or inevitable, which is why I used it. I also understand that many HN readers are not native English speakers, and ha…

"I believe this particular usage of queue is correct english. You can see it on the TV show "So You Think You Can Dance" where Nigel will often say "queue music" meaning "start the music."

In the way that you used it, I believe it was wrong.

"Cue whatever ..." comes from movie and other media production, as in "Cue the Gimp!" It's a notice that the actor playing the Gimp should assume his next physical location in the production and be ready to act. See scythe's explanation.

This kind of mistake is very common, and comes from having heard phrases without having seen them in print. We then fit whatever written word we're most familiar with, or assume, on to the phrase. I'm guessing that's what happened here.

The analogue is reading an unfamiliar name or word and then, never having heard it in speech, not knowing how to pronounce it. This happens to me enough to notice.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#119

Post by knieveltech »

damienkatz wrote: post #115
zwieback wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Materials are much better now than in the 60s or 70s but not as good as in the more distant past. My house was built in the 40s and looks better than 10 or 15 year old houses in the area. On the other hand, insulation was crap or non-existent then and furnaces were less efficient.

Survivorship bias. Poorly built houses from long ago are no longer here, reminding us how poorly they were constructed, only the best examples survive. In 150 years, only the best houses built today will still be standing, and people then will be compare these houses with flimsy mass produced homes and say the same things.

Your assumption being poorly built houses from long ago haven't survived due to some flaw in construction. I'm not so convinced. 80 year old barns cobbled together from rough planks with no foundation to speak of aren't exactly rare in this corner of the world (Southeast US), and I'm pretty confident folks paid more attention to the construction of their homes than their barn. In population dense areas old houses have a tendency to get torn down to make way for new construction.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#120

Post by sskates »

I feel the downvotes coming, but this article is unbelievably tone deaf.

Who's the audience for the article? People who are unemployed and put out of work because of technology that's displaced them? What's their reaction to this supposed to be? "Oh I guess the author uses some valid reasoning to demonstrate why I'm unemployed because I lack skills." Yeah right.

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