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Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

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Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#111

Post by Aurornis »

sublinear wrote: post #68
Aurornis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim of the article is that expectations increase at a faster rate than the work becomes easier. It probably feels that way to someone who got comfortable doing their job the old way wishes the world could go back to when they had it all comfortably figured out. If this does happen, it’s a second order effect from reducing the barrier to entry. Now that anyone can make some code with enough prompts, it’s no long…

> Now, it’s hard to justify having a lot of those easy ticket solver developers around. This is such a flawed, but common take. Are you seriously going to claim you were never a junior dev that nobody trusted with "hard tickets"? Note that I am not making a statement about what your skills were like when you started getting paid for dev work. I'm saying that the "easy ticket solver" devs are an illusion. When they re…

> This is such a flawed, but common take. Are you seriously going to claim you were never a junior dev that nobody trusted with "hard tickets"?

No I was talking about the older devs who got comfortable not progressing, just taking those tickets that should have been going to the juniors.

If the easy stuff is going to older workers who don't want to rise to the level of seniors, you should replace them with juniors who are interesting in growing.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#112

Post by scotty79 »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #81
hparadiz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those problems had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with economic mismanagement. And the commies were the worst at it. The US never had famines even at the worst of the great depression.

How much of the last ~25 years of outsized capital returns in the US came from selling our industrial base to the Communist Party of China?

You mean exploiting labor of Chinese poor for the benefit of American customers and investors?

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#113

Post by WalterBright »

Fricken wrote: post #105
WalterBright wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now compare that against: 1. working conditions before 200 years ago 2. working conditions under feudalism and communism 3. explain why ships laden with scores of millions of people came to the US, and went back empty

Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers, and we did it sustainably for millions of years, longer than we've been human. 200 years is nothing. It's nothing, unless that is, we try to think about what the mess we're currently making will look like 200 years from now. Then 200 years from now is a terrifying prospect. It has to be sustainable. If it isn't sustainable it's a joke.

> Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers

Agriculture ended that thousands of years ago. Even the Indians practiced farming. So did the Pilgrims, and the first settlement, Jamestown.

Hunter gathering can only sustain a small population.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#114

Post by WalterBright »

miyoji wrote: post #97
WalterBright wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure the "adult" clothes weren't made for young boys or teens, or women? Yes. I read the informative cards at the display. Some were for officers. George Washington was a giant in his day. Look at the short beds and low ceilings. Watch your head walking through a doorway! Tour a navy ship of the time. If you like, look up historical US statistics on height. BTW, I saw Henry VIII's armor in London. Looked li…

Everything you're saying is nonsense. > If you like, look up historical US statistics on height. Yeah, people in the 1700s were, on average, 2 inches shorter. Not the tiny dwarves you're describing. > BTW, I saw Henry VIII's armor in London. Looked like a boy's armor. This? [0] Dimensions: H. 72 1/2 in. (184.2 cm); W. 33 in. (83.8 cm); D. 14 1/2 in. (36.8 cm); Wt. 50 lb. 8 oz. (22.91 kg) Apparently a six foot tall ma…

About 4 inches shorter than today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#18th_century

The armor you cited is not the one I saw in London. It's possible that the one I saw was not actually his.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#115

Post by WalterBright »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #108
WalterBright wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. It is always the result of deficit spending. Bob earns $20 every day. He buys 5 eggs $2/ea and 5 apples $2/ea every day. Now, due to supply shocks, egg prices double. He still has only $20, and so he now buys fewer eggs and fewer apples. What happens when he buys fewer apples? The price of apples goes down, due to the Law of Supply and Demand. There is no inflation. What happens when this economy is flooded wit…

People had to put up with deflationary shocks and yet robber barons built their empires all the same. Hard money doesn't stop r>g, it doesn't stop expected returns from growing increasingly burdensome, and it doesn't stop assets from appreciating relative to wages. It doesn't actually deliver the things we care about. It delivers plenty of things we don't care for, though. History provides the most lurid examples, bu…

> deficits aren't the root of all evil

I didn't say it was. I said it was the root of inflation.

> robber barons built their empires all the same

Kerosene prices dropped 70% while Standard Oil prospered. Rockefeller was benefiting people, not robbing them.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#116

Post by WalterBright »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #96
WalterBright wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A housing development nearby my home was built in the early 1960s (I think). If you look closely at the homes, they are all of two designs, made into four by mirror images. But it's pretty clear that over time the homes were remodeled, gut remodeled, extended, garages added, and so on, so they are significantly improved over the original. I've been in a couple, and the hallways are pretty narrow and everything is ver…

"Narrow and cheaply built" isn't enough to make houses affordable in an age where crack dens with busted utilities go for over a million dollars. The ability of material to become cheap is capped far below the ability of location to become expensive.

google sez: "The median home sale price in Seattle is approximately $853,000 to $879,000, depending on the specific neighborhood mix and recent monthly data. Listing prices sit slightly lower around $750,000 to $775,000, placing Seattle among the highest-priced major metropolitan housing markets in the United States."

I assume a crack den with busted utilities would go for less.

I've lived in this area my adult life. Pretty much all the open spaces and lots have been infilled with houses over time. Prices go down the further away from the business core. Being within commuting distance to Microsoft comes with a big boost in price.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#117

Post by eli_gottlieb »

nubg wrote: post #76
noosphr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2026 - 200 = 1826 Yeah no. It's only since 1950 that conditions improved for everyone. Before then everything from sewage, to coal smoke, to chronically low wages made life worse for everyone involved. The most miserable people to live in history were the British working class in the mid/late 19th century.

> The most miserable people to live in history were the British working class in the mid/late 19th century. I find this topic very interesting, do you have any reading you could recomment on this?

_The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844_ would be a classic on the subject: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17306

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#118

Post by eli_gottlieb »

Fricken wrote: post #105
WalterBright wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now compare that against: 1. working conditions before 200 years ago 2. working conditions under feudalism and communism 3. explain why ships laden with scores of millions of people came to the US, and went back empty

Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers, and we did it sustainably for millions of years, longer than we've been human. 200 years is nothing. It's nothing, unless that is, we try to think about what the mess we're currently making will look like 200 years from now. Then 200 years from now is a terrifying prospect. It has to be sustainable. If it isn't sustainable it's a joke.

> Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers, and we did it sustainably for millions of years

Neither clause in this sentence is true.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#119

Post by noosphr »

WalterBright wrote: post #86
noosphr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap cloth didn't mean cheap clothes. You had to wait a century for the sewing machine for that to happen.

Of course it meant cheaper clothes. Spend some time with a hand loom and you'll see why.

Cheaper doesn't mean cheap.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#120

Post by tomhow »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #48
maxbendick wrote: post #19

Marx actually has a bit about this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm... The most interesting point here is relating machine speed to intensity. Plenty of tech folks are both working longer hours and overseeing more responsibilities thanks to AI. There are other factors at play though (interest rates and AI-addiction, for two).

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