Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed • Hacker News Board

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#251

Post by JohnBooty » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

haroldp wrote: post #192

JohnBooty wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, or maybe not. Suppose you accept 1.5x or 2x or even 3x your annual salary to take a COBOL job. Nice... for now. What happens in 2, 5, or 10 years when this COBOL gig ends? Now your skills have withered or disappeared and you're 2, 5, or 10 years behind when it comes to "modern" technologies where 99.9% of the job opportunities are. In a sense, that COBOL job is a gamble. You are gambling that you can ride that…

> What happens in 2, 5, or 10 years when this COBOL ends? What happens in 1 or 2 years when the current hottest new full-stack, mvc, reactive 3.0 whatever is old and tired and you have to learn the new thing? You learn the new thing.

Sorry, I forgot a word there. Post now edited.

I meant, "when this COBOL gig ends", not "when this COBOL ends" which is what I initially typed.

I agree that COBOL will outlive a lot of these modern flash-in-the-pan frameworks.

However, the number of COBOL jobs will dwindle over time, and if I took a theoretical COBOL job today it's not clear to me that I would be particularly employable if/when that job ended. Particularly if I am unable/unwilling to relocate as I suspect COBOL jobs may be much less likely to be remote.

Whereas, in comparison, if one stays current in Ruby/Python/JS/.NET/Java then one's prospects would remain strong for the forseeable future. "Staying current" on the tech treadmill is of course its own special hell, but it is probably the safer road.

    What happens in 1 or 2 years when the current 
    hottest new full-stack, mvc, reactive 3.0 whatever 
    is old and tired and you have to learn the new 
    thing? You learn the new thing.

OK, but how employable are you at that point?

It's going to take some significant effort to catch back up.

Perhaps more crucially, your resume is not going to be appealing to potential employers. If they're looking for hotshots in the latest framework, do you think they're going to look kindly upon a candidate who's spent the last X years working with COBOL?

There are ways to address that, such as getting up to speed in Trendy Framework XYZ and making some portfolio pieces, open source contributions, etc. But, that's not always a smooth road.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#252

Post by melomal » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #232

There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why. The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected. Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this. And yet thousands of people are stu…

If it's a strike then it 9 times out of 10 means the airline will have to payout for delayed and cancelled flights. I would imagine they are trying to spin this every which way possible to eliminate the inevitable bill that will need to be paid. Financials are probably out of whack too since covid so this situation could really cripple/break them.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#253

Post by raphlinus » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:45 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #208

babyshake wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think vaccine mandates should be unlawful from private companies, but IMO it would be better if they gave a choice between a vaccine and having a recent test. If you need a vaccine or a negative test administered in the last 72 hours to attend work, it's very inconvenient to choose the test route but at least employees wouldn't be able to make the argument that they are being "forced" to get the vaccine.

The rapid test isn't very accurate especially in the absence of a full blown infection. The annual cost of doing a PCR test twice a week to ensure you always have an actually accurate test within 72 hours of working would be around $15,600. This is about 43% of the gross individual median income. For practical purposes employers can't afford to pay near 50% more for the least reasonable employees, the government isn'…

The rapid antigen test is considerably less accurate than a PCR test if the goal is individual medical treatment, but if the goal is public health, it's potentially more effective. Michael Mina makes the case for this persuasively in a recent UCSF Grand Rounds[1].

These tests could be made available at scale and cheaply, as is the case in many European countries, but we have chosen not to do that. This is a mistake we can fix, but it's agonizing how late we are - I was pushing my congresspeople to unblock it in January or February.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWDGNrOqQfQ

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#254

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

throwaway224466 wrote: post #78

Southwest's pilot union sued the company over its Covid-19 vaccine mandate a few days ago[1], this is clearly related. The media isn't reporting this because the media owners don't want the masses hearing about others beginning to revolt against the draconian and illogical vaccine mandates (i.e. Why wouldn't a naturally derived antibody test be allowed in place of a vaccine, considering that's the whole point of gett…

You and I are free to speculate as are lower quality publications less concerned with their reputation but the timing is insufficiently persuasive by itself and what we ought to want from journalism is sound investigation and factual reporting even if this necessarily lags speculation.

It might come to pass that the speculation turns out to be correct and people shall be free to call out the news for not calling it like it is but if it turns out wrong the same folks would be quick to call out the "fake news" I'd rather they be careful and I'd rather you interpreted such care charitably.

> if you don't support employees demanding medical freedom because they see through the corruption taking place, you don't need to fly on airplanes.

In place of arguing on the internet or at least in addition to I would suggest that I simply lobby my government to take away their medical freedom in service of protecting my life and my families lives. A minority of individuals may disagree but if the alternative is poverty almost all of them will ultimately take the measures that will ultimately protect them, their families, and mine.

We will win but ultimately so will they because they wont be in a hospital room suffocating on a ventilator. Seems like the definition of a win win.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#255

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:48 AM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #253

michaelmrose wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rapid test isn't very accurate especially in the absence of a full blown infection. The annual cost of doing a PCR test twice a week to ensure you always have an actually accurate test within 72 hours of working would be around $15,600. This is about 43% of the gross individual median income. For practical purposes employers can't afford to pay near 50% more for the least reasonable employees, the government isn'…

The rapid antigen test is considerably less accurate than a PCR test if the goal is individual medical treatment, but if the goal is public health, it's potentially more effective. Michael Mina makes the case for this persuasively in a recent UCSF Grand Rounds[1]. These tests could be made available at scale and cheaply, as is the case in many European countries, but we have chosen not to do that. This is a mistake w…

These tests are much less effective alone than vaccination.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#256

Post by jeffreygoesto » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:49 AM UTC

doctorwho42 wrote: post #187

smsm42 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure I somehow notice a lot of this lately, in many different areas. I wonder if there isn't a common cause behind those. Is it just covid or something bigger?

It is large due to corporations taking on lean-business models from MBAs over the last decade+. When a business runs lean, it becomes more fragile to disruptions. Unfortunately due to our economic system, there is a semi-regular boon-bust cycle, so if it wasn't COVID, it would have been something else that kicks the stool out from under the legs of these corporations. In the past this wasn't as big as an issue becaus…

But isn't this the exact point of operation, controlling and finance in any large corporation wants to find? Extract from bottom to the top until it breaks and then hope to steer back a tiny little bit and keep operating in that state?

Finance never did produce, it's whole purpose is to extract.

Run a gasoline engine to lean and it will start to heat and stutter...

As for the growth, in a peaceful society you can grow as much as the amount of people you supply, so without war there will probably no other way than saying goodbye to growth.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#257

Post by creato » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

soylentnewsorg wrote: post #219

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #19

Seeing stories like this makes me wonder if we'll ever see a company actually go bust based purely on the instability of its decades-old, duct-taped architecture. I have a relative who works for a large credit card processor running on mainframe systems and I hear over and over again that they're all retiring and unable to fill the newly opened roles. This problem is compounded by the fact that their offshore contrac…

Decades-old does not mean duct-taped. It means every edge case has been hit, it's rock solid, and it works. There are many patches on top of patches, and the system is hard to comprehend for someone new. But it's a heck of a lot more stable that something redesigned. The real issue here, is during bad weather and understaffed ATC, for some reason the airforce decided to do some training in airspace used by commercial…

If the cause is the military, why is southwest so disproportionately affected, and being affected in so many cities?

> “The problems weren’t concentrated in just one particular region. The cancelations affected the entire Southwest network. People living in cities where Southwest has a big operation, like Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and where I am in the San Francisco Bay Area, saw cancelations in the double-digits.”

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#258

Post by logicchains » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:54 AM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #229

logicchains wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These vaccines are also more dangerous. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-pauses-use-mode... Finland and Sweden have now halted Moderna vaccination for under-30s due to side effects.

Not sure there are any conclusions to draw from this information tidbit. Nordics halted Moderna, true, but Pfizer is offered instead of Moderna.

The conclusion is that because the approval process was expedited, the safety risks Moderna posed to under-30s were not discovered until millions had already taken it. I.e. these vaccines have gone through a much shorter time period of testing than previous ones.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#259

Post by logicchains » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

jhugo wrote: post #220

logicchains wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a non-peer-reviewed discussion of some graphs from Our World In Data. A discussion published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. It doesn't just look at those two countries; its statistical analysis covers 68 countries and 2947 US counties. You don't think that if the vaccine were effective at preventing spread, there should be at least some evidence of this effect when comparing vaccination rate and sprea…

The discussion completely ignores basically all the potential confounding factors. Two huge ones are lockdown measures and level of testing. Even in a largely vaccinated population, if you do widespread community testing you will find a lot of asymptomatic cases. If you don't do widespread community testing you won't. So you can have wildly different caseloads in two highly-vaccinated populations, yet no meaningful m…

Even ignoring all confounding factors it should still be possible to detect an effect via regression. It's like if you try to price S&P off just one of its constituent stocks; you're still going to observe some correlation even when only looking at a single large constituent.

The results of the other article I linked, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7, showing that vaccination does not reduce viral load, supports this notion.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#260

Post by angelzen » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #258

angelzen wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure there are any conclusions to draw from this information tidbit. Nordics halted Moderna, true, but Pfizer is offered instead of Moderna.

The conclusion is that because the approval process was expedited, the safety risks Moderna posed to under-30s were not discovered until millions had already taken it. I.e. these vaccines have gone through a much shorter time period of testing than previous ones.

I am not familiar with the Nordic legal environment, but this could be that because Pfizer has a better safety profile than Moderna, so they'd rather use Pfizer. At the same time, both Pfizer and Moderna are much safer than raw covid according to all direct data that I've seen.