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How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

economist.com

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Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#161

Post by nmfisher »

birdymcbird wrote: post #129
danaris wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin's version of "negotiations" has always been "give me what I want, and I might not kill thousands of you." If Ukraine is "pressing its advantage", it's to take back the territory that Russia has illegally attempted to annex. Please stop spreading Russian propaganda.

Which part of ops statement is Russian propaganda? At the onset of the current war, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey immediately to begin diplomatic talks. You do realize we intervened and told Ukraine to walk away? This whole narrative that Putin is irrational, that Russia is just plain evil, and any contrary perspective is “Russian propaganda” reminds me of 2003 when questioning the Iraq war effort would get you la…

Poland and Germany were in diplomatic talks prior to the 1939 invasion, too, and Britain told them not to make concessions and that they would back them militarily in the event of any invasion.

"Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#162

Post by birdymcbird »

shubhamkrm wrote: post #159
birdymcbird wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overly rosy take on big tech. I’ll use Google as example. Their execs are in full panic right now over OpenGPT. What was last major innovation at Google.. chrome? 20% of company drives profits while 80% is a decorated R&D lab chock full of benefits, upset about cutbacks in their free oatmilk lattes, even though they’re not coming to office anyway. these guys will double their attrition targets if not have full blown…

> What was last major innovation at Google.. chrome? 20% of company drives profits while 80% is a decorated R&D lab chock full of benefits, upset about cutbacks in their free oatmilk lattes, even though they're not coming to office anyway. Transformers were invented at Google, which is the underlying tech on which GPT is built. I would say that counts as innovation. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_(m…

This misses the point.

Google has done interesting stuff. Ideas, research papers, R&D in AI, Glass, Stadia, leading in all kinds of niches… Google Docs with real time collab editing for example. I’m not arguing against that, and to respond on that thread is a straw man.

But they can experiment all day and come up with all kinds of cool stuff but at end of day you need to monetize and make money. Not grow endless headcount, not build more and more empires of a professional managerial class who care little about actual value and more about their fiefdoms and promotions.

To make money, Google depends entirely on X and unless they quickly course correct, they risk massive disruption to their biz.

Google lost their way. The culture stagnated into one of corporate bureaucracy, red tape, and employees feeling persecuted because the contractor responsible for chocolate crepes on Thursday didn’t show up one week.

They have to start getting in shape. There’s no way around it. Yeah they’ve entrenched themselves but unless they change it will be a slow painful decline. Focus on a few things and do them extremely well instead of 50 different things that ultimately go nowhere. And figure out how to get off the ads lifeline

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#163

Post by birdymcbird »

nmfisher wrote: post #161
birdymcbird wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of ops statement is Russian propaganda? At the onset of the current war, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey immediately to begin diplomatic talks. You do realize we intervened and told Ukraine to walk away? This whole narrative that Putin is irrational, that Russia is just plain evil, and any contrary perspective is “Russian propaganda” reminds me of 2003 when questioning the Iraq war effort would get you la…

Poland and Germany were in diplomatic talks prior to the 1939 invasion, too, and Britain told them not to make concessions and that they would back them militarily in the event of any invasion. "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.

Russia isn’t Nazi Germany.

> "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.

And Russia isn’t trying to conquer Ukraine.

Russia doesn’t want neighboring countries, particularly Ukraine to join NATO. They’ve been repeatedly vocal and warning about this for over a decade. NATO kept that door open and said last year Ukraine entering NATO was a certainty hence the war.

Certainly, it’s easier to ignore the past two decades of context, how we got to where we are now, and just draw Nazi Germany comparisons. No one in their right mind would defend Nazis, and so you can use that tactic to ignore facts and quickly shutdown the debate.

IMO you can decide not to put in the research and go with the distorted NYTimes propaganda, but the Nazi comparisons are just intellectual dishonesty and bad faith.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#164

Post by VirusNewbie »

birdymcbird wrote: post #106
screye wrote: post #86

I believe the doom-n-gloom around all of tech is rather overblown. There are sectors of tech that will absolutely struggle. Gig-economy companies won't ever meet their valuation. Negative PE ratio startups are realizing that hyper-scaling is not as infinite as they believed, and that means their earnings might never catch up to their price. Social media companies are finally facing stiff non-American competition (Tik…

Overly rosy take on big tech. I’ll use Google as example. Their execs are in full panic right now over OpenGPT. What was last major innovation at Google.. chrome? 20% of company drives profits while 80% is a decorated R&D lab chock full of benefits, upset about cutbacks in their free oatmilk lattes, even though they’re not coming to office anyway. these guys will double their attrition targets if not have full blown…

After july, the vast majority of new reqs are going to GCP and Android, two places that aren’t ads that have pretty strong revenues. I think the G has finally decided to put more wood behind fewer arrows.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#165

Post by danaris »

birdymcbird wrote: post #163
nmfisher wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland and Germany were in diplomatic talks prior to the 1939 invasion, too, and Britain told them not to make concessions and that they would back them militarily in the event of any invasion. "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.

Russia isn’t Nazi Germany. > "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it. And Russia isn’t trying to conquer Ukraine. Russia doesn’t want neighboring countries, particularly Ukraine to join NATO. They’ve been repeatedly vocal and warning about this for over a decade. NATO kept that door open and said last year Ukraine entering NATO was a certainty hence the war. Certainly, it’s eas…

This is part of the propaganda.

I've read multiple analyses, very cogent and well-sourced, that concluded that what Putin wants is not just to conquer Ukraine, but to reassemble the USSR, or the Tsarist Russian Empire before it, with him at its head. He sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a stain on Russia and on him personally, and he wants to restore his/its "dignity".

As part of this, he believes that Ukraine is Russian, and that any Ukrainian who does not see themselves as Russian is wrong, and likely either an American-sympathizing traitor, or mentally ill.

"He does't want Ukraine to join NATO" is true, of course, but in the same sense as "he doesn't want to lose his power." He wants to keep both of those things and gain much more. Making it all about NATO is 100% part of the propaganda he has been spreading.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#166

Post by mopsi »

birdymcbird wrote: post #163
nmfisher wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland and Germany were in diplomatic talks prior to the 1939 invasion, too, and Britain told them not to make concessions and that they would back them militarily in the event of any invasion. "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.

Russia isn’t Nazi Germany. > "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it. And Russia isn’t trying to conquer Ukraine. Russia doesn’t want neighboring countries, particularly Ukraine to join NATO. They’ve been repeatedly vocal and warning about this for over a decade. NATO kept that door open and said last year Ukraine entering NATO was a certainty hence the war. Certainly, it’s eas…

> it’s easier to ignore the past two decades of context

Your so-called context is a strange kind of provincialism that makes everything a result of US actions (and thus sets a blame on them), and ignores history and recent developments in Russia and Eastern Europe in general. Neutrality was tried in 1930s, didn' work, countries got picked off one by one. It wasn't an option anymore in 1990s, EE countries weren't going to make the same mistake twice.

Eastern Europe lost any illusions towards "new Russia" when the first Chechen war started 1994. THAT was the turning point in European diplomacy that your pre-packaged "America is bad" narrative ignores because it doesn't fit the timeline. From how the war was waged, it was obvious that nothing had changed and that Russia was still the same shithole with an inferiority complex that uses genocidal wars against neighbors as a coping mechanism. In 1995, the first Chechen president Dudayev predicted that Russia's ambitions would not be limited to them alone[1], and it was clear to everyone else too. From then on, the clock was ticking: either build strong relationships with free countries (and become one) to acquire as good security guarantees as you can get, or get left out in the cold alone to be mauled by Russia.

As to comparisons with Nazi Germany, I see no reason to soften phrasing anymore, any differences have become superficial. Russia is openly a Nazi country. It has an intense personality cult around its leader, a pseudohistoric expansionist racial ideology of "Russian world" in theory and in practice as it wages a war of extermination against its neighbor, with the goal of destroying Ukrainian statehood and people, ultimately forcing the whole Europe under its influence. Lebensraum, Herrenvolk, Volksgemeinschaft, and so forth - it's all represented. What differences are there left, that they don't build freeways as much? It's a country where prime-time TV, under direct government editorial control, discusses bombing London, drowning Ukrainian children and setting their families on fire - none of it would look out of place in Völkischer Beobachter in 1942.

That shows like this[2] are deemed fit to air in Russia (and even represents the mainstream) tells everything you need to know.

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

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lkshypC2Rk

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#167

Post by laidoffamazon »

starkd wrote: post #117
givemeethekeys wrote: post #2

When the DotCom bubble burst, and after 2009, traffic in the Bay Area cleared up. Commuting time got cut by half. Homes in many neighborhoods, apart from the very best school districts, became attainable. This has yet to happen. Unemployment is still quite low. The music is just starting.

Is unemployment still really low? Job growth was less than it was originaly reported. By a lot. From 1M to just 10K. https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/biden-administration-overstate...

The fact that this Philadelphia FRED link keeps getting passed along indicates the people passing it along don't really understand it.

What exactly is the unemployment rate if it's not ~3.7%?

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#168

Post by laidoffamazon »

fosk wrote: post #18
birdymcbird wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Soon” is mid 2024 at the earliest. The start ups haven’t really even begun to trim fat. Big tech like amazon, meta, google will increase attrition targets in addition to actual layoffs. I could turn out to be wrong but id bet there’s many more waves of cascading pain before before things turn other way. Turning other way doesnt mean we immediately go back to excess hiring, empire building, lack of focus, free uber r…

Contrarian signal, for the sake of having a conversation: - I think we will experience a massive deflationary bust. The inflation narrative is over, it’s all about a potential recession now. - By Summer 2023 we will experience YoY deflation and the Fed will cut then, or even sooner in anticipation to that. - We may see hikes pausing as soon as February, and cuts starting in the summer as a result of rapid disinflatio…

Oil prices already eased, we're refilling the SPR at a significant profit at the ~73$ floor.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#169

Post by laidoffamazon »

willcipriano wrote: post #46
birdymcbird wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Soon” is mid 2024 at the earliest. The start ups haven’t really even begun to trim fat. Big tech like amazon, meta, google will increase attrition targets in addition to actual layoffs. I could turn out to be wrong but id bet there’s many more waves of cascading pain before before things turn other way. Turning other way doesnt mean we immediately go back to excess hiring, empire building, lack of focus, free uber r…

Right after the election, we learned that the employment numbers turned out to be cooked ( https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/12/22/philadelphia-fed-sugge... ) that was in large part the justification for the rate hikes, I think they end in the next few months and start to decline this year.

Employment numbers aren't cooked, these are just calculated a different way.

I highly suggest you provide an alternative number if you really think the US is in a high job loss recession that's somehow being hidden from the American people.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#170

Post by laidoffamazon »

screye wrote: post #86

I believe the doom-n-gloom around all of tech is rather overblown. There are sectors of tech that will absolutely struggle. Gig-economy companies won't ever meet their valuation. Negative PE ratio startups are realizing that hyper-scaling is not as infinite as they believed, and that means their earnings might never catch up to their price. Social media companies are finally facing stiff non-American competition (Tik…

From the way people talk on this forum about economic conditions in this country you'd imagine the unemployment rate is 10%, nobody is hiring, and the market is down 50%.
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