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Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

economist.com

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Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#51

Post by robertlagrant »

nostrademons wrote: post #18
fredgrott wrote: post #16

Taleb would say it's time to short the whole SV tech market due to the wrong party being set up to be rewarded for economic disasters present and future. If you really want to understand economics, his books are a must read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

Depends how deeply Taleb understands his own theories. You build antifragile systems by creating networks where the failure of any one component is not just expected, but actively welcomed and designed for. Distributed systems engineers understand this intuitively; any highly reliable system is constantly failing internally, but the system is set up with multiple independent paths to success, such that failure just r…

> You build antifragile systems by creating networks where the failure of any one component is not just expected, but actively welcomed and designed for. Distributed systems engineers understand this intuitively; any highly reliable system is constantly failing internally, but the system is set up with multiple independent paths to success, such that failure just routes traffic to the non-failing components.

Antifragility is benefitting from things breaking, not just coping with things breaking.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#54

Post by scottLobster »

spaghettiToy wrote: post #45

The time of innovation is over, the time of cashing in and preservation has come? I think of the automotive industry. Big tech will start to diversify, start banks, buy appliance companies, buy suppliers/vertical integration. I believe that happened to Auto in the 60s and 70s, about 20-30 years after the boom. If we (irresponsibly) use that timeline, we should expect dark days for the next 20 years. Most innovation w…

On the contrary, I look forward to innovation that actually has to be profitable at the end. All these bright-colored-plastic startups without a real business model will die, and ageism will lessen as experience and the ability to make money takes precedence over "culture fit" and "vision". Maybe Silicon Valley can even consider working with... the GOVERNMENT!!! You know, those institutions that actually have the authority to directly solve the problems Silicon Valley tries to make money off of? There's already some signs of this, thankfully. But I still roll my eyes hard every time some SV engineer has a moral outrage/stages a walkout because they discover their company has a DoD contract. It's long past time for SV to be brought back down a couple of levels, maybe not so far as to force them all the way back into the real world, but tree-top-level might be a good idea.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#56

Post by tech_tuna »

CalRobert wrote: post #19
cardanome wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole area running out of fresh water. Not exactly the place even more people should be flocking to. It will be an absolute shit-show in the coming years.

Maybe we should give it to people instead of lawns and orchards.

In the First World, that's called "xeriscaping".

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#58

Post by tomrod »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #50

Economists are flocking to jobs because there isn’t one in economics is a more appropriate title.

Like many things in life, "it depends."

The market for new PhDs in economics is wonderful and getting better.

I haven't looked at figures in over 7 years, but the general trend has been there are ~900 PhDs minted per year, about 100-200 academic tenure track jobs, and about 1200 industry jobs (that number has probably increased now that NABE, not just AEA/ASSA, handles recruitment conference at-scale for the techonomics/industry roles). I expect the PhD minting is approximately the same and the economists roles have boomed because economists make for great data scientists, with some reasonable onboarding and tech training.

It's a good market, generally.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#59

Post by FollowingTheDao »

spaghettiToy wrote: post #45

The time of innovation is over, the time of cashing in and preservation has come? I think of the automotive industry. Big tech will start to diversify, start banks, buy appliance companies, buy suppliers/vertical integration. I believe that happened to Auto in the 60s and 70s, about 20-30 years after the boom. If we (irresponsibly) use that timeline, we should expect dark days for the next 20 years. Most innovation w…

Yes, this is a bad sign IMHO. Economists are like hitmen, they do the dirty work when you are desperate.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#60

Post by newaccount2021 »

spaghettiToy wrote: post #45

The time of innovation is over, the time of cashing in and preservation has come? I think of the automotive industry. Big tech will start to diversify, start banks, buy appliance companies, buy suppliers/vertical integration. I believe that happened to Auto in the 60s and 70s, about 20-30 years after the boom. If we (irresponsibly) use that timeline, we should expect dark days for the next 20 years. Most innovation w…

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