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Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

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Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#61

Will there be low wages with huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent? Young people know the future is not bright, and I encourage them to enjoy their lives while they still can.

This world view seems like a potential death spiral. As world views become bleak, is encouraging people to say "fuck it" and maximize for enjoyment really the best move? Whatever happened to working hard to build a future for oneself? Yes, I understand there are higher powers that be and people with much more powers than you and I that are ruining the future but is the answer really to lay down and be engulfed in the…

Once the captain abandons ship, why should anyone else be manning their posts? If you do not have the power to change the situation, the best move is to adapt to it, and in times of societal collapse that means looking out for yourself.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#63
I have worked with a lot of people that escaped from fab jobs here in the US during my career. The biggest issue I see is that manufacturing has an absolutely grueling schedule and the pay is half or less than what equivalent level software jobs pay, with worse working conditions.

If you want young Americans to work these jobs, you need to pay /more/ than software jobs, because the conditions are worse. Otherwise, you only get the people who can't escape. Anyone who can escape eventually does.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#64

Will there be low wages with huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent? Young people know the future is not bright, and I encourage them to enjoy their lives while they still can.

This world view seems like a potential death spiral. As world views become bleak, is encouraging people to say "fuck it" and maximize for enjoyment really the best move? Whatever happened to working hard to build a future for oneself? Yes, I understand there are higher powers that be and people with much more powers than you and I that are ruining the future but is the answer really to lay down and be engulfed in the…

>This world view seems like a potential death spiral.

It's not a death spiral, it's competition.

When people leave shitty jobs and vacancies can't get filled, businesses either improve conditions and pay or they lose to competitors who do.

The only way you can really negotiate is being ready to say no and leave when you get a bad offer. People actually doing that make a difference.

Suddenly a job has to be better than "fuck it" and people are making "fuck it" seem glamorous.

You'll get a lot of business people whining and whinging about it, but only actions actually matter.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#65

Will there be low wages with huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent? Young people know the future is not bright, and I encourage them to enjoy their lives while they still can.

This world view seems like a potential death spiral. As world views become bleak, is encouraging people to say "fuck it" and maximize for enjoyment really the best move? Whatever happened to working hard to build a future for oneself? Yes, I understand there are higher powers that be and people with much more powers than you and I that are ruining the future but is the answer really to lay down and be engulfed in the…

If life is ultimately meaningless then why not? The world you are talking about where people work to better the future for themselves and their progeny is reliant on life having some kind of purpose or meaning. If the universe is the result of random chance and life itself is the result of accidental chemical processes then life doesn't have inherent meaning.

Why SHOULD someone who believes the things I've mentioned do anything except attempt to maximize personal pleasure?

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget the metaverse, try LSD and psilocybin. I think the only reason Zuck is pushing this VR nonsense is that he took too much and now he thinks he can put ads in your VR trip.

I think it’s the opposite; he’s such a square which explains why his imagination is stuck on literally creating Snow Crash. Anyone who has tripped balls and come out OK is not so addicted to literalness as Zuck. They realize a multiverse of perspectives lives within them. It doesn’t need to be made “real”.

That's a neat way to think about it. I think a lot of the hype about AI or whatever is just because so many techies have tried these substances and realized that the brain is such a weird thing, and now they think they can emulate it, commodify it, and sell it for a monthly subscription fee. The truth is, we have no idea how the brain _actually_ works.

In "The Doors of Perception", Aldous Huxley describes it very well: it's like these drugs remove a sensory filter we normally have in place which makes the world feel like...well...reality. When you remove that filter, you're suddenly flooded with the sense that there's so much more to the universe, but in actual fact it's all just in your head. It's just your brain cells doing a lot of communication with each other in a way that is most likely nonsensical.

Some people come out the other side thinking they've found some magic, but more likely they've just experienced what was always there without the filter, and once it wears off you're the same person you were but perhaps with a sense of feeling like you're part of a big system (which we all are, called biology).

From a strictly biological perspective it makes sense, given that most life is based on DNA and we share a lot of DNA with things that we are very different from. We share about 60% of our DNA with bananas.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What came first? Societal collapse or the willingness of its citizens to lay down and take it? The previous poster's description of the problem isn't by force of nature. It's by other people ("huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent"). Perhaps the CEOs should offer some concessions to the young workers.

Indeed. Eventually there will be a revolution if the wealth concentration trend continues. I'm on the side of the working class forever and always, as I grew up dirt poor (and got exceptionally lucky because of my early interest in computers) and my family is still dirt poor today, so I have a good idea of what it's _actually_ like to starve.

> if the wealth concentration trend continues

Or unsustainable housing costs

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all real issues. That's why I used the term "exacerbate". Those who do the bare minimum to get by in life are only hurting themselves in the long run. This remains true despite a gloomy macroeconomic outlook.

> bare minimum But a lot of people aren't even doing that. They're choosing to pick more lucrative career paths such as pushing JavaScript for cat photo social networks, working on ways to increase engagement for users to see ads, and whatever other ways FAANGs previously propped up by low interest rates, or startups propped up by VC funding, make money. That work isn't necessarily easier, but it's not semiconductor…

I hear these arguments all the time.

If software engineering is such a cushy, desirable, lucrative job, why don't more people do it?

It's easy to forget the thousands of hours it takes to become competent in this field once you've been in it for a while. Most people simply do not care enough to take the time to learn to do it despite being fully capable. It ain't rocket surgery.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#70

Will there be low wages with huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent? Young people know the future is not bright, and I encourage them to enjoy their lives while they still can.

This world view seems like a potential death spiral. As world views become bleak, is encouraging people to say "fuck it" and maximize for enjoyment really the best move? Whatever happened to working hard to build a future for oneself? Yes, I understand there are higher powers that be and people with much more powers than you and I that are ruining the future but is the answer really to lay down and be engulfed in the…

I think what is most insidious about this world view is that working on solutions to the issues appear as support for the viewpoint. We're all problem solvers here and we all know that the first thing to creating something new is recognizing a problem that can be solved. It can then be broken down into many sub problems that can either be worked on individually or need to be solved in tandem. But breaking down our problems and revealing its complexities are often not seen as the first steps towards solutions, but rather seen as a larger force that we need to overcome. It ignores the momentum that we see every day in our solutions: hardest at first, but once the ball is rolling things start to fall into place (often making progress, unfortunately, difficult to measure. Especially when you're in the thick of it). That frustration and setbacks can make it hard to move forward, but we always find a way in the end. We wouldn't be problem solvers if we didn't.

I don't know about you all, but I'm not willing to say "fuck it." There's enough beauty in the world to enjoy and seek to preserve. We've clearly made changes in the past and made things better. While we stand on the shoulders of giants, they are in reality 3 dudes in a trench coat sitting on one another. Personally, I take pride in trying to build a better future for my (non-existent) children and generations to come. We're all in this together and I think a lot of us want to build that Sci-Fi utopia that we read about and dreamed of as children. We can still make that world, but not if we say "fuck it."

The reality is that our decisions determine if we live in the Cyberpunk Dystopia or the Sci-Fi Star Trek-esk Utopia. Giving up is choosing the former and actively participating in its creation.

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