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I hereby pardon all junior engineers

taylor.town

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Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#11

Post by D_Alex »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #2

> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be able to build very high quality things fairly quickly. It seems like it's the Americans that are struggling. We have for a long time, actually. I would argue we just have a shitty building culture. We chase trends, cheap out on materials and salaries,…

>> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore.

>The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree.

It's funny, after riding the Chinese HSR network, this quote from the article had me shaking my head:

"California is spectacularly behind schedule and overbudget on its quest to build the world’s slowest high-speed rail.

It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore."

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#12

Post by surprisetalk »

xrd wrote: post #8

Taylor was one of my favorite people at strange loop this year. His outfits were fantastic. I love his blog even more. And he's a courageous and deep thinker.

Aww what kind words! Come stay at our place if you're ever in the Southern California area :)

If you want to copy my outfits, I find all of my strange clothes at Anime Expo every July! I just purchased an egg sweater from a vendor I found there:

https://shop.kinwamonster.com/products/cardigan-egg

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#13

Post by wewtyflakes »

FredPret wrote: post #9
alex_lav wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't generalize then you can't think If you blindly follow others' generalizations without question, you can't think.

Compression is a form of intelligence

Sure if it isn't a losing material information in that process. It is easy to compress anything to true/false if you're willing to live with information loss. I think material information was lost in the aforementioned "Country X can't build anything" hot-take.

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#14

Post by mulmen »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #2

> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be able to build very high quality things fairly quickly. It seems like it's the Americans that are struggling. We have for a long time, actually. I would argue we just have a shitty building culture. We chase trends, cheap out on materials and salaries,…

America has the most productive economy in the world by dollar. We make everything from rockets to disposable forks. Don’t confuse meeting a price point with a lack of ability.

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#15

Post by hibikir »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #2

> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be able to build very high quality things fairly quickly. It seems like it's the Americans that are struggling. We have for a long time, actually. I would argue we just have a shitty building culture. We chase trends, cheap out on materials and salaries,…

It's ultimately about practice: Spain's first high speed train was massively over budget, and seen as a boondoggle. If building had stopped there, it would have been a curiosity, but the government kept asking for more track, and with practice come better results.

It's difficult to succeed in early projects of all kinds, but it's not just people that learn: organizations do too. Set up good incentives, and be OK with early failures. And if you lack expertise, but someone else has the knowledge, just hire a few experts away.

On most problems where America is very inefficient, it's either a matter of lack of practice or horrible incentives. If there's a cultural failing, it's unwillingness to deal with those bad incentives.

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#16

Post by NBJack »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #2

> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be able to build very high quality things fairly quickly. It seems like it's the Americans that are struggling. We have for a long time, actually. I would argue we just have a shitty building culture. We chase trends, cheap out on materials and salaries,…

I'd love to try the software products from these countries, but I can't deny that some of the very things spoken of in the article came from the origins of which you speak.

Samsung made Tizen, and many of the 'TVs with eyes and ears' out there.

BMW was apparently the flagship for heated seats as a service.

To be fair, Nintendo is pretty good at innovation in both hardware and software, but not so much at cutting edge power these days. Or, like, people trying to have fun with friends (whether online or in tournaments).

I can't speak for China on your list; would love to hear of some battle tested counterexamples though.

All of that said, greed is undoubtedly a leading cause for many of these industry wide ailments. Why innovate when you can coast? Why invent something in your spare time for nothing when someone can pay you good money to transform JSON?

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#17

Post by imchillyb »

> How fast should programs boot? How long should it take to make bug-free software? How long should a smartphone stay relevant? How much mining should it take to live? How many steps should it take to get to my local grocery store?

None of this is really relevant. None of these questions 'need' answers.

What do the customers need? Where is the market for my goods/services? These questions are relevant.

People know and love to build things. The things they build and invent are then taken over by middle managers, project managers, high level executives, and politicians.

It's not the builders or makers that can't build things, it's the budget constraints, board-room death spirals, and project management to death that makes projects hot-garbage.

We can't build things because they won't let us. We show the powers that be a 7 course meal, and they make it a McRibb. Sure it's tasty, but it sure ain't what we wanted to build...

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#18

Post by gonzo41 »

D_Alex wrote: post #11
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #2

> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be able to build very high quality things fairly quickly. It seems like it's the Americans that are struggling. We have for a long time, actually. I would argue we just have a shitty building culture. We chase trends, cheap out on materials and salaries,…

>> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore. >The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree. It's funny, after riding the Chinese HSR network, this quote from the article had me shaking my head: "California is spectacularly behind schedule and overbudget on its quest to build the world’s slowest high-speed rail. It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore."

Well China may have a HSR. But it's sort of bankrupt on arrival outside of the main metro's. China has the luck in this scenario of being free of oversight, and able to create it's own money. Most western Infrastructure isn't built in a vacuum that allows it to arrive as a gold plated entity.

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#19

Post by ryoshu »

NBJack wrote: post #16
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #2

> It seems like nobody knows how to build things anymore. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, etc might disagree. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be able to build very high quality things fairly quickly. It seems like it's the Americans that are struggling. We have for a long time, actually. I would argue we just have a shitty building culture. We chase trends, cheap out on materials and salaries,…

I'd love to try the software products from these countries, but I can't deny that some of the very things spoken of in the article came from the origins of which you speak. Samsung made Tizen, and many of the 'TVs with eyes and ears' out there. BMW was apparently the flagship for heated seats as a service. To be fair, Nintendo is pretty good at innovation in both hardware and software, but not so much at cutting edge…

Nintendo purposely doesn't focus on cutting-edge or power. Hasn't since the the mid-80s. Having fun with friends is a core concept of what they do. Hand a Switch to a group of people to play party games. It's really interactive and social.

Re: I hereby pardon all junior engineers

#20

Post by FredPret »

wewtyflakes wrote: post #13
FredPret wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compression is a form of intelligence

Sure if it isn't a losing material information in that process. It is easy to compress anything to true/false if you're willing to live with information loss. I think material information was lost in the aforementioned "Country X can't build anything" hot-take.

So people compress to the point where the speed vs information loss tradeoff makes instinctive sense to them.

You can dramatically increase your computing power if you're not constantly deriving everything from the fundamental physics and instead rely on some stereotypes.

This ranges from "objects that look like that are chairs" to "I can sit on chairs" to "Americans can/can't do X"

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