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Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

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Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#31

Post by harimau777 »

Aerroon wrote: post #29
harimau777 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I was trying to get at. It would be unfair to not give capitalism any of the credit for the advances that we have made (after all, people certainly blame it when things have stagnated), but it's probably also not fair to give it all of the credit. There were technological advances long before capitalism and many (most?) basic research takes place outside of capitalism in academia.

But there's a pretty long way to go from basic research to usable technology for regular people. Of course advancement would happen without capitalism, but would it happen at a similar pace? Society socialism didn't seem to be able to keep up (eg computers).

The Nordic countries do a lot of research & product development and they are social democracies which is a moderate form of socialism.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#32

Post by riehwvfbk »

akdaaaaadensb wrote: post #21
replygirl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we pay software engineers 3x median income to barely know react service jobs and skilled trades all over are facing labor shortages

We do? I'd really like to see where these jobs are at the moment because I'd like one so I can stop busting my ass in embedded for 1.5x median income. Every time I search it looks to me like all the jobs that take people that just barely know React have a big long list of other requirements that are unstated and/or nutjob hiring practices and other hoops to jump through. Maybe all you need on the job is React but it…

Yeah, everyone on this site and places like Blind says they are making a lot of money. Reality seems a bit different. Any startup has something of a hard cap at just around $200k salary for a senior. That's in the Bay Area, and for specialty occupations (AI infra, Linux internals, and the like). That number is not 3x median. Pretty sure those rich React devs exist only in dreams.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#33

Post by sokoloff »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #32
akdaaaaadensb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do? I'd really like to see where these jobs are at the moment because I'd like one so I can stop busting my ass in embedded for 1.5x median income. Every time I search it looks to me like all the jobs that take people that just barely know React have a big long list of other requirements that are unstated and/or nutjob hiring practices and other hoops to jump through. Maybe all you need on the job is React but it…

Yeah, everyone on this site and places like Blind says they are making a lot of money. Reality seems a bit different. Any startup has something of a hard cap at just around $200k salary for a senior. That's in the Bay Area, and for specialty occupations (AI infra, Linux internals, and the like). That number is not 3x median. Pretty sure those rich React devs exist only in dreams.

> That number is not 3x median.

You are inadvertently correct, but in the opposite way than you probably think.

$200K is more than 3x the median individual income in the US.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N

It's slightly under 3x the median household income, but it seems strange to compare a median household income to an individual's salary.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N

If we confine our comparison to only California, I couldn't find median individual income, but median household income is only 14% higher than the nationwide median, so it seems likely that individual income in CA tracks similarly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSCAA646N

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#34

Post by riehwvfbk »

sokoloff wrote: post #33
riehwvfbk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, everyone on this site and places like Blind says they are making a lot of money. Reality seems a bit different. Any startup has something of a hard cap at just around $200k salary for a senior. That's in the Bay Area, and for specialty occupations (AI infra, Linux internals, and the like). That number is not 3x median. Pretty sure those rich React devs exist only in dreams.

> That number is not 3x median. You are inadvertently correct, but in the opposite way than you probably think. $200K is more than 3x the median individual income in the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N It's slightly under 3x the median household income , but it seems strange to compare a median household income to an individual's salary. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N If we conf…

I don't think it's a weird comparison at all: households include dual-income-no-kids households too, and they would skew the average higher. To raise a family in the Bay Area one parent has to stay home, or a lot of money has to be paid for childcare (to the tune of 20-30k per year per kid).

I don't think this is quite the "gotcha, you are actually rich!" that you wanted this to be.

And hey, I googled the numbers too before posting ;)

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#35

Post by xetplan »

EchoChamberMan wrote: post #7
afpx wrote: post #4

About 1.5 billion people were raised out of extreme poverty over about 30 years arguably because of capitalism. Similarly, large global middle classes have built up over that time. It feels like we should keep doing what we've been doing?

If you define wealth as having money, maybe, but if you define it as having food, shelter, and mental health, then less so. The middle class is collapsing, so maybe we should do things a little differently?

It doesn't make sense when the major health problem in the US is obesity.

Always these childish and clueless economic takes on this board.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#36

Post by rufus_foreman »

mikhael28 wrote: post #24

What does talent even mean anymore? What did it ever mean? Trying to quantify it through tests is such a… bullshit proposition. If you had Steve Jobs take a math test in third grade, I don’t think he would have done very well. Or maybe he would have - I don’t know. Some people only discover math later in life, some people can do trivial math in elementary school very well but completely fail once they get into geomet…

>> If you had Steve Jobs take a math test in third grade, I don’t think he would have done very well.

He apparently never passed a single test or even completed an assignment in fifth grade.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#37

Post by hirvi74 »

mikhael28 wrote: post #24

What does talent even mean anymore? What did it ever mean? Trying to quantify it through tests is such a… bullshit proposition. If you had Steve Jobs take a math test in third grade, I don’t think he would have done very well. Or maybe he would have - I don’t know. Some people only discover math later in life, some people can do trivial math in elementary school very well but completely fail once they get into geomet…

> What did it ever mean?

Probably the same thing it has always meant -- whatever people want it to mean.

> Trying to quantify it through tests is such a… bullshit proposition.

I completely agree.

I think one of the biggest disservice of modern-ish thinking is how quickly we are to write-off individuals. Humans are creatures that are full of endless surprises, and sometimes it merely just takes being in the right place at the right time to achieve greatness. A person with an IQ of 100 is considered to be of average intelligence.

However, I think it would be laughable, and a downright disservice, to claim that a person with an average IQ is only capable of average accomplishments because some proprietary test that has been arbitrarily slapped together with an equally laughably low correlation coefficient of 0.20 or whatever says so.

I find all this idea to be so damaging to people. One does not have to be "greater than" to be great. How many successful musicians have had great careers despite average abilities? How many virtuosos have accomplished nothing noteworthy? Jimi Hendrix and Bach are both talented, but who is more talented? I think the better question is, "Who fucking cares? Why does it even matter?" They both created music that millions enjoy, and that is what truly matters. At least, to me.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#38

Post by EchoChamberMan »

xetplan wrote: post #35
EchoChamberMan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you define wealth as having money, maybe, but if you define it as having food, shelter, and mental health, then less so. The middle class is collapsing, so maybe we should do things a little differently?

It doesn't make sense when the major health problem in the US is obesity. Always these childish and clueless economic takes on this board.

What does obesity have to do with anything? People are eating unhealthy?

> Always these childish and clueless economic takes on this board.

"Avoid swipes" and "Please don't create new accounts regularly."

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#39

Post by EchoChamberMan »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #28

Not only is talent everywhere, but opportunity is everywhere too - it just takes different forms and the resources necessary to capture that opportunity are not evenly distributed. I live in small town America. We have a ton of opportunity here, but there's no question that the labor, capital, and similar resources needed to unlock that opportunity is far more challenging to gather here than it would be in large coas…

"...and the resources necessary to capture that opportunity are not evenly distributed." If the resources to capture opportunity are not available, do those opportunities actually exist?!

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

#40

Post by atlantic »

EchoChamberMan wrote: post #3
philiphodgen wrote: post #2

Opportunity is everywhere. Talent is not.

Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

If you claim talent is everywhere, the onus is on you to prove it. Disproving a sweeping generalization requires a single instance. For instance, I'm looking out of my window, and I don't see any talent - ergo, talent is not everywhere. Facetious, but not entirely.
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