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Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

nytimes.com

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Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#81

Post by angersock »

metaphorm wrote: post #60
3pt14159 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of…

You have just exemplified the issue completely. Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos. Spend more time thinking about how to solve hard problems. Spend less time thinking about "us" and "them" and more time thinking about "everyone".

Yeah, fuck that noise.

"Spend less time thinking about getting sex" hahahahaha yeah okay.

Look, maybe when you're in your 30s or 40s and you've got the wife and the kids and the minivan and the bills and the mortgage you can focus on the more noble things in life, like making the world a better place so that your progeny will have an easier time of it.

But, in the meantime, for those of us without children, fucking is a pressing issue.

EDIT:

I'll be still more blunt--the people who gain the most from us "making the world a better place" are those with kids and a stake in society. You are trying to take advantage of us.

You should've gotten us healthcare, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us a safety net, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us cheaper student loans, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us more affordable housing, but you fucked it up.

So, no, I'm not going to help you beat cancer so you can spend an extra year with your kids (who are going to be bankrupt the rest of their lives because of your medical bills).

EDIT2:

You couldn't even manage to kick out the bastards in office who are running the alphabet-soup agencies that are ruining our country. There. There's your fucking legacy.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#82

Post by rhizome »

3pt14159 wrote: post #57
michaelochurch wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are systemic problems with governments contracting out software. The substance/cool chasm is real (find my other post in this thread) and vicious.

Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of…

Isn't photo-sharing a solved problem? Getting sex would seem to be, as well, but to the degree it isn't, then why aren't the youth of today inventing real solutions? I'm not sure Tinder/Grindr/etc. are a confident step in that direction.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#83

Post by dalke »

raldi wrote: post #76
dalke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

frivolous - "1a : of little weight or importance; 1b: having no sound basis (as in fact or law) " from Merriam-Webster. #1: an argument based on the overall goal - reduced car traffic and enhanced used of commute time - is of little weight or importance for those who are locally disadvantaged and when there is an equitable alternative which better balances the different factors. These people who were left out of the…

If I drove a car to and from work, and kept it parked in the street at night, would you consider that frivolous?

Now you've switched topics. I said there are reasonable arguments for saying that the thesis - that private buses reduce the number of cars and make more effective use of commuting time - is frivolous.

Now you want me to make a specific judgment about a generic use of your car? Why the topic switch?

My view is that my taxes should not help fund a personal garage for you to store your car. If it's kept on the street then you should pay market rate for it, and the city shouldn't subsidize the cost for everyone with a car.

So, are you paying the real costs for the parking? Then no, it's not frivolous no matter how you want to use it.

Are you driving because you don't feel like walking two blocks every day and would rather drive that distance instead, and you want the city to guarantee that you have free parking on both ends of the trip? Then yes, it's a frivolous reason.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#84

Post by aspensmonster »

72deluxe wrote: post #44
datamatt wrote: post #37

"without Nvidia’s graphics processing unit, your BuzzFeed GIF is not going to make anyone laugh." Err....

Surely GIFs are hardware accelerated these days? Great article, right?

Oh FFS. Where's the principle of charity when you need it?

YES. Without graphics processing of one form or another, on one chip or another, over one cable or bus or another, to one screen or terminal or another, your GIF absolutely won't be visible. Or your PNG, or your JPG, or your desktop or movie or e-book. Nothing will be visible.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#85

Post by ryandrake »

zenbowman wrote: post #73

The author fails to see that while a large number of apps may be frivolous, we've also ended up with a world that allows collaboration at a global scale. The nature of engineering is changing, and what the last decade of "software innovation" has done is evolve an engineering practice that is superior to any that came before, even if it has only been used to build frivolous apps. I've worked as a government contracto…

> jet planes, submarines and the like. And I think it is fair to say that the tools they use and the way they use them are clearly from the 70s - this is not a criticism, they create impressive technology, but I believe that once the practices of modern software development begin to take root in those industries, we'll be exposed the innovation we've actually created.

Or, we'll just end up with jet planes with zero day exploits and submarines that have to be patched every month when the next sprint gets pushed to deployment.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#86

Post by metaphorm »

angersock wrote: post #81
metaphorm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have just exemplified the issue completely. Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos. Spend more time thinking about how to solve hard problems. Spend less time thinking about "us" and "them" and more time thinking about "everyone".

Yeah, fuck that noise. "Spend less time thinking about getting sex" hahahahaha yeah okay. Look, maybe when you're in your 30s or 40s and you've got the wife and the kids and the minivan and the bills and the mortgage you can focus on the more noble things in life, like making the world a better place so that your progeny will have an easier time of it. But, in the meantime, for those of us without children, fucking i…

who are you even talking to? me? you don't know me. I'm not a baby boomer with a wife and kids. I'm in my late 20s and work at a tech startup in New York. I just happen to have some perspective.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#87

Post by dpweb »

As a 40 something Gen Xer, it's tough to generalize about the younger generation. I detest arrogance and self-entitlement and that's definitely in the air, but I admire how smart these kids are and their energy. It's a wide world, there's room enough for both curing cancer and sexing apps.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#88

Post by angersock »

metaphorm wrote: post #86
angersock wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, fuck that noise. "Spend less time thinking about getting sex" hahahahaha yeah okay. Look, maybe when you're in your 30s or 40s and you've got the wife and the kids and the minivan and the bills and the mortgage you can focus on the more noble things in life, like making the world a better place so that your progeny will have an easier time of it. But, in the meantime, for those of us without children, fucking i…

who are you even talking to? me? you don't know me. I'm not a baby boomer with a wife and kids. I'm in my late 20s and work at a tech startup in New York. I just happen to have some perspective.

Not "you" specifically, the sort of "You" (insert appropriate audience/strawman).

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#89

Post by selimthegrim »

aspensmonster wrote: post #33
applecore wrote: post #7

> The talent — and there's a ton of it — flowing into Silicon Valley cares little about improving these infrastructural elements. What they care about is coming up with more web apps. Is there evidence that this problem actually exists? This seems likely to be a manufactured story. The press simply isn't going to write as much about Meraki as they would a popular, consumer-oriented web or mobile startup. $1.2 billion…

Well, I'd love to be doing work on the hardware side of things. I'd love to even intern --despite the fact that I'm graduating-- at a company like Freescale or Intel or Qualcomm or Cisco or AMD. As long as I could continue to pay the bills --and feed the student loan monster-- I'd continue to live as a student. I'd consider it a fair trade-off while I was grinding for XP in a field that, for all intents and purposes,…

I used to work in verification at Intel; I was 25. I was the youngest member of the team by easily 8 years. When the tumbleweeds are a blowing, you look around and take the hint.

The last straw was when I overheard two older engineers (not from my group but on the same floor) in the hallway asking themselves where all the younger people were. "Why, they're all doing exciting things like startups, what would they be caught dead doing here?" I took the hint.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#90

Post by fantnn »

Vervious wrote: post #68
powera wrote: post #50

I stopped reading this when I got to "Why do these smart, quantitatively trained engineers, who could help cure cancer or fix healthcare.gov, want to work for a sexting app?" - there was the cover article in Time Magazine not less than 2 weeks ago about these very engineers fixing healthcare.gov, and describing why they don't do it permanently (government procurement is awful and almost always unrelated to actual ski…

> The whole article reads like a narrative that is grabbing random anecdotes to support a point, even when the facts say otherwise. I'm curious what facts you're talking about. The very problems you point out about healthcare.gov support part of the author's argument - that today's tech environment rewards the creation of a sexting app over more groundbreaking work, and therefore youth do the former. From my perspect…

Government projects of x size require companies with a, b, c qualifications, such as size, income and other factors. I've worked for 2 such companies before, and it was a nightmare of micromanagement, changing requirements, and general feeling of "what I do isn't having an effect on the world." You clearly have never worked at such a place before or you'd understand.
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