Are you paid to look busy? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#71

Post by TylerJay » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:12 PM UTC

hawkharris wrote: post #54

This reminds me of a study focusing on soccer games. It analyzed A) how often players shot goals toward the left, middle and right sides of the net; and B) how often goalies responded by jumping toward the left, middle and right sides. The stats revealed a surprising phenomenon. Though opposing players shot toward each area of the goal evenly — about 33% of the time — goalies jumped toward the left or the right 80-90…

As a counterpoint, I remember being taught in a Game Theory course that both the shooters and the goalies acted in accordance with the Nash Equilibrium which (IIRC) happens to be equal amounts to each option. You would think that if such a vulnerability actually existed, coaches and analysts would have figured it out and it would be exploited.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#72

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #7

I've had this concept rolling around in my head occasionally...the best path in becoming a better programmer is to sincerely desire to automate yourself out of your job . Instead of backing up a system via GUI every week, figure out the API calls needed to hook up via a script. After a few weeks of triggering that script by hand, write a cron job and a logger that logs the relevant transactions. After awhile of manua…

This is actually why programming gets harder. The more you automated, the more you distill the automation-resistant parts of the job.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#73

Post by chasing » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

You appear to be getting downvoted, but you've struck at the heart of the issue:

If we want to do away with meaningless jobs, people will still need resources to survive. And that "one-in-ten-thousand" (or whatever) will need to be taxed very heavily so the wealth can be spread. We can't have all of our financial resources siloed into an increasingly small number of people's wallets.

A great benefit to this system will be that people can do important work that might not necessarily reward them financially. The downside is that, well, those who do financially well will have to share their earnings. And we'll have to detach the notion of financial success with the notion of power, which will be difficult.

And all of this runs anathema to the usual sort of libertarian financial-might-makes-right of the tech world, unfortunately.

[Edit, since I can't reply to zo1, yet, below: No, I wasn't trying to tie libertarianism to "financial-might-makes-right." I meant that the tech world seems to slant libertarian, and people in this world seem to aggrandize money as the supreme metric of success.]

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#74

Post by zo1 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

"We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed" You make it seem like there is some entity or group of entities that thinks "Hey, let's go make up jobs". For what reason, you ask? Well, because he has to "justify his right to exist". That puts your argument in the same bucket as "karma", "quantum wellbeing", "deepak-nonsense" and "homeopathy".

Seriously though. What is that rant even about? People don't have a right to exist. They just do. What they do have a right to is to be left alone and unharmed.

If you can come up with some general system where 1 out of a thousand individuals willingly gives up his productivity so that the rest can "go back to school", then by all means go ahead. The keyword there being "willingly", and it pretty much means you won't ever come up with such a system.

Until then, please stop telling other people what they should or shouldn't be doing. It's none of your business.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#75

Post by hippich » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #51

zanny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue (as would most of the free software community) the creation of proprietary software is entirely bullshit. Because you have to eventually reinvent it with either permissive or copyleft licenses to just avoid the huge black hole that is legal bullshit and bureaucracy around licensing rights to a number that is not even scarce once its made. And until it is foss, you are just denying the users their freedoms t…

While I'd agree with that sentiment for most sold software, there's another aspect to consider. There are some jobs that don't ever really go away, and software is one of them. It's similar at times to the traditional "trades" such being a plumber or electrician. So while "proprietary" (i.e. closed source or limiting who has access to it) may not be the precise description, a LOT of software is (and will be) "in-hous…

That's where I see place for local integration companies for business model around open source software. They essentially provide tuning for stock software and if certain "tune" look like nice generic feature - release it back to community to leverage.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#76

Post by pliny » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

>Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?

Because the business itself is important to you, or because that's the only way to get more than other people have.

It seems like this is essentially the case today and people still build million dollar businesses and still get rich, in America and in Europe and in a lot of places with more or less aggressive wealth redistribution policies - but all of them do the thing that is taking a large share of your earnings and giving it to non-working people.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#77

Post by pgeorgi » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

LeafyGreenbriar wrote: post #16

glesica wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "...work is valuable in itself." This is it. We have been fed a lie that "work" has intrinsic value and that people who don't want to work constantly are somehow inferior or immoral. Worse, "work" has come to be associated more with occupying a particular area in space during particular times than with actually accomplishing anything. I work relatively little (I'm 31 and I've literally never worked 40 hours a week)…

Out of curiosity, how are you able to work as little as you do?

I asked for a part-time position (3 days a week).

It helped that I could truthfully claim that I pursue a college degree on the side (distance learning, so it's possible to schedule work and study), but it went through with surprisingly little effort.

Meanwhile my coworkers are wondering that this is even possible (and sound mildly envious, in a good way).

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#78

Post by jeena » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:16 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

> This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society.

It is already like this, only those who do valuable work support the resto of sociaty, so this wouldn't change. The only change would be that the other people, who now do bullshit jobs wouldn't need to do them anymore.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#79

Post by pavel_lishin » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:16 PM UTC

TorKlingberg wrote: post #70

xr09 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When reading stuff like this I wonder, how do the Windows folks manage to do the same? A browser disguised as Visual Studio? doubledesktop.exe? I'm so thankful for my *nix with all these little toys.

http://codereddit.com/ Reddit that looks like source code. For opening in Visual Studio's built-in browser. I am not a Windows dev.

Wow, the load-comments-inline functionality is beautiful.

In fact, the whole thing actually looks better than some of the subreddit styles.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#80

Post by turnip1979 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

I'm not someone who downvoted you but would like to discuss your points. Lets start bottom up.

1) You cannot legally collect berries in the woods. That may have been possible a few hundred years ago. For all my life, I've lived in concrete jungles where pretty much every shrub was manicured and every tree was allowed to survive for aesthetic reasons. More so that that, we don't have commons any more. In the stone ages, I could go and cut a tree or hunt deer. Doing that - without paying for permits and usage rights - would get you in a heap of trouble. Now, in the stone ages, you'd have to worry about bears and neanderthals coming and ending your existence. We don't have to worry about that since the state has a police force, courts, laws, animal control, etc. And that's the same state that's requiring permits. So it is a choice the current and previous generations have made.

2) I hated the idea of the welfare queen growing up. My parents never took welfare and I'd take it as a failure if I ever had to do the same (personal choice). If you do a bit of research, you might be surprised to learn that welfare queens don't exist in the vast numbers you think they do. Not anymore and not for a while.

3) Starting any business requires capital. You were lucky because you had access to it. A lot of people have no savings at all. That's the reason they work hard jobs (typically unskilled) for very small compensation.

4) Thought experiment. Lets say, you go to Africa. You see a village that's suffering from famine. You can take 10 bucks and that feeds them for the day. Would you feel disgusted that these people are mooching off of your hard earned cash? I don't think you would. I think you (and I) would feel grateful that we had the opportunity to help our fellow human beings.

This is a complex topic that's not black and white. I wish people didn't downvote you. This is the kind of stuff that should be discussed.