111–120 of 144 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are other ways to commute. There are better places to live. See what I did there? Not everyone has better options to commute.
Better places might be more expensive.
Really fascinating to see such a mix of blind spots, insecurity and, yet, good insights on full display here. It’s almost as if he’s a normal human being at the end of the day, despite his circumstances.
The biggest difference between him and a "normal smart person" is they realize they have blind spots and choose not to publicly spout opinions on them.
Put that aside, Eric Schmidt did told the truth (maybe except AI and NVidia stock thing) and offered the public a glace of how things actually work within the industry.
One important thing he mentioned was (after simplified) "just steal, and deal with justice later", which actually mirrors what Steve Jobs once said "Great artist steal". This should remind everyone, that if you want to have significant achievement in this industry, you at least needs to guard against thefts, because there WILL BE (maybe ALREDY are) people who comeout with a "be shameless or be dead" mindset after been educated by people like that man.
(Also, I found it quite funny that one of Eric's girl friend has probably took his lesson too)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest difference between him and a "normal smart person" is they realize they have blind spots and choose not to publicly spout opinions on them.
By definition people are not very aware of their blind spots
I.E. taking a driving lesson and learning that there's a blind spot in your rear view mirror
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no point in arguing with people on HN. The same people downvoting you are the same people who refuse to use AI because it’s “not perfect”. They would rather work from home and be made redundant and unemployable than be productive and valuable.
No, the people arguing with the parent are the ones who have actual life experience of living in places where there's no reasonable access to public transit (read: most of the USA) and who aren't naive to think that everywhere is a perfect little urban world where you have usable choices in your method of transport. I live inside a major metro area. My closest public transit is a 10 minute drive by car, or a several…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the people arguing with the parent are the ones who have actual life experience of living in places where there's no reasonable access to public transit (read: most of the USA) and who aren't naive to think that everywhere is a perfect little urban world where you have usable choices in your method of transport. I live inside a major metro area. My closest public transit is a 10 minute drive by car, or a several…
No. You make a choice to live far or unconvinced from your place of work. And that is totally fine. But it doesn’t change the fact you are less productive working from home than in the office. Can argue all you want but it doesn’t change the facts.
In fact, there was this whole WFH experience some 4 years ago, and companies saw no loss in productivity. That is fact.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point, someone is going to realize that people are not going to slave away for the privilege of living in a rental and drinking meal replacement shakes because they're too busy to eat. People who worked at Google early on were always going to get rich, people who bust ass for Google now might wake up to a 10,000 man layoff in the morning. /me shrugs
Then somebody younger will happily do it until they too have the same realization. Then another batch.
We raised a generation who learned companies have no loyalty and no consideration for their wellbeing, or the wellbeing of the society they're a part of.
I don't think the next generation is always doomed to repeat the past, otherwise we'd never have invented labor laws. Life would still be as horrible as it was, but seeing as it isn't, I would say that is evidence that it can get better, and I think we're now in the process of learning to make it better.
- Alphabet have made a switch from a (mostly) tech-driven company to a pure finance-driven one, when this happen you can expect a bit of growth, even a sharp one for a little time, than an inexorable decline;
- the more and more centralized web means search engine became dysfunctional beasts try to pour water to specific mill instead of being open search and for a company living on search more than anything else it's a problem, of course there is GMail a project born when Google was tech-driven, but again GMail is search, so Drive, and in that "specific domain" they have substantial competitors and they can't have innovation being financially-driven now;
- LLM-push a way to reach a kind of dummy semantic holy grail of research while very popular is a substantial failure. Yes it have a certain wow-effect, but results are such low quality that the wow effect will not last longer and current "better-than-Alphabet" competitors in that field still have to see any meaningful and durable growth and profit.
Long story short the anti-remote-working is just another droplet in a substantially lost PR/élite battle to force people in the city, the sole way they have to remain alive because finance and services can only live at large city scale where they own anything and they rent/sell services to anyone. In a spread world they simply die killed by SME innovation and personal ownership that value substantial innovation against services.
IMVHO the big-tech model, a cleptocracy born out of Xerox tech once they have found a way to make it anti-user, is at it's end. I do not know what could happen next because so far ALL élites want such model to rule slaves, and we have lost much of intelligence, competence of the Xerox time, and no one else in the world seem to be there, China included, who was able to surge as an industrial power but still lag behind in software, even in the current sorry state of IT. But it's clear that the service model of big tech is dead. Or they found a way to reinvent or they are done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But the people who keep the lights on at most companies especially big ones like Google are a sea of average, steady, stable employees who do their tasks and not much else, go home at 5 or maybe earlier and have no interest in burning themselves out so that the CEO can have a second private jet. This was my moment of clarity during the pandemic. I was working insane hours and it just occurred to me then - why am I…
Your CEO may very well be working those hours too except for good reason since he's value aligned+ highly leveraged and able to capture the benefits from the extra work
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But the people who keep the lights on at most companies especially big ones like Google are a sea of average, steady, stable employees who do their tasks and not much else, go home at 5 or maybe earlier and have no interest in burning themselves out so that the CEO can have a second private jet. This was my moment of clarity during the pandemic. I was working insane hours and it just occurred to me then - why am I…
Your CEO may very well be working those hours too except for good reason since he's value aligned+ highly leveraged and able to capture the benefits from the extra work
The perfect example of this is Elon Musk. If he’s the CEO of 5 companies, the position of CEO is clearly a part-time job.
Have you taken a vacation to go wind surfing this year? Mark Zuckerberg has!