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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#191

Post by layer8 »

WalterBright wrote: post #161
saubeidl wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to this is worker's self-management, an economic model that was pioneered by Yugoslavia, but has mostly disappeared with its dismantlement. Any company with more than five employees had to be run as a worker-run coop. The board and execs were elected by the workers. Companies still competed on the market. This would solve for the problem of alienation while still having an environment of competition.

Was Yugoslavia an economic powerhouse?

Do we need economic powerhouses to live well?

Re: The Who Cares Era

#193

Post by palmotea »

WalterBright wrote: post #180
toomuchtodo wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GE [1]? Boeing [2] [3]? The stocks go up because management and shareholders pull forward the gains as financialization destroys the long term value of the enterprises. Works until it doesn't. [1] Power Failure: The downfall of General Electric - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44102034 - May 2025 [2] Fatal Recklessness at Boeing Traces Back to Long-Standing C-Suite Greed - https://www.thenation.com/article/poli…

Boeing consistently went up for many decades prior to the MAX crisis. So did GE. Companies have life cycles. They grow until they become unable to function efficiently anymore, then they go down. It's not about prioritizing short term results.

>> GE [1]? Boeing [2] [3]? The stocks go up because management and shareholders pull forward the gains as financialization destroys the long term value of the enterprises. Works until it doesn't.

> Boeing consistently went up for many decades prior to the MAX crisis. So did GE.

The point is they could have probably kept going up if they hadn't done that.

It's like how if you choose to eat your seed corn, you'll be fat and happy for a season, then you and your family will certainly starve to death next year. You'd most likely had lived if you hadn't made that short-term decision.

> Companies have life cycles. They grow until they become unable to function efficiently anymore, then they go down.

And how often are the "life cycles" really just the accumulation of bad short-term decisions catching up with the company?

You can kludge and kludge and kludge, but eventually that makes the app unmaintainable. Then you're in "total rewrite" or go under territory.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#194

Post by bombcar »

PaulHoule wrote: post #141
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

In my town they seem to have spent a decade building "luxury housing for seniors" in a project that seemed about as bungled as a building a nuclear reactor. They blame the pandemic but the project stretched on for years before the pandemic. Of course they find out when it is ready to rent that there is no market for "luxury housing for seniors" because seniors who have money either split for Florida or go to Kendal […

Once you realize the builders build for the lenders and for nobody else, everything becomes crystal clear.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#195

Post by [deleted] »

zippyman55 wrote: post #85
b112 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage stagnation always happens at the start of any economic downturn. However, once over and the economy resumes, typically the stagnation ends, and wages jump. The massive, huge cynic in me says, people make less because all they do is stare at their phones. Yes, I know, I'm overstating things a bit. But the other day I noticed the approx 20 year old garbage collector, was staring at his phone the whole time. I am n…

I visit my local hospital and am in the back getting tests, etc. and the number of employees on their personal phones bugs me. Supervisors could just request users to step out into the hall and check their phone. The amount of non work that occurs when people become glued to their phone is incredible.

[deleted]

Re: The Who Cares Era

#196

Post by korse »

SamBam wrote: post #130
0_____0 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in New Zealand a couple of months ago and today something crystallized about my experience there - I consistently encountered people who were good at their jobs there. They've got a shortage of people in the trades, but their tradies seemed highly professional and efficient, the folks at the bike shops were on point, the airport staff were quick to help and super informative (gate attendant explained visibility…

I think that observation stands in the US too -- there are certain professions where you're more likely to find someone who cares. You mentioned bike shops. At least in my area (New England) every person I've ever seen working in a bike shop was competent and cared about working in a bike shop. (They weren't necessarily the nicest and most personable people, but that's a different story.) Who works in a bike shop? Al…

Bike shops generally don't drug test, rarely have a dress code and attract a pretty select crowd.

Aside from that, you're a mechanic. Motorcycle dealers/car dealers/random car lots hire mechanics too any may or may not care what you do on your own time.

Plenty of maritime industries need that same skill set, as do mining operations, agricultural equipment dealers and all of the medium size shops that repair heavy equipment you've never heard of.

Fab shops are great, if you want a bicycle shop experience but bigger and with 100% more yeehaw. You can teach yourself how to weld for a pretty low sum of money if you've got a couple hundred bucks, some space and creativity.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#197

Post by Night_Thastus »

1dom wrote: post #149

I read the title and it triggered something I've been thinking a lot lately: there's too much for everyone to care about right now. Article didn't really touch on it directly, but: > something that sounded like every other thing: some dude talking to some other dude about apps that some third dude would half-listen-to at 2x speed while texting a fourth dude about plans for later. It's not that the dudes don't care, i…

>It's not that the dudes don't care, it's that the dudes have 15 other things expected of them, which weren't expected 15 years ago and caring capacity feels like a biological limit

I genuinely think this is a factor in some ways. 500 years ago, what were people worried about? Their immediate concerns, those of family, and neighbors. Realistically, there was no way to get caught up in the minute-by-minute concerns of people in other cities, other states, other countries, other continents. Things changed more slowly and the only time you heard about about a tragedy was if it was truly enormous - or very local.

Now, there is this constant vying for attention/support/outrage/etc. It's exhausting. People genuinely expect you to care about the back-and-forth between two celebrities you've never met, or some event halfway across the world, or some new thing that released now like literally now.

I think that a lot of people have subconsciously hit their limit. They can't muster the energy needed to genuinely think about or care about a lot of this stuff because they're bombarded with so much of it. And over time, I think that shifts thinking. "Why did I not care when X happened?" leads to "Those people don't matter/are less than human" instead of the real "Because I'm completely exhausted from so much happening".

Re: The Who Cares Era

#198

Post by saubeidl »

WalterBright wrote: post #161
saubeidl wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to this is worker's self-management, an economic model that was pioneered by Yugoslavia, but has mostly disappeared with its dismantlement. Any company with more than five employees had to be run as a worker-run coop. The board and execs were elected by the workers. Companies still competed on the market. This would solve for the problem of alienation while still having an environment of competition.

Was Yugoslavia an economic powerhouse?

It was a place where people lived good lives and had plenty of opportunities to succeed, along with free education and healthcare.

I'm kind of tired of being an economic powerhouse where most people live in misery.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#199

Post by chrisco255 »

buangakun wrote: post #74

Oh man, I gotta write a comment here. I'm gonna leave out a few details in case this guy or my tech lead/manager read HN. So, I am senior software engineer, got hired into this company. I was tasked by my manager/tech lead to work with another senior software engineer. Overtime I realized that this engineer did not have the proper background in this field. I asked him and I asked my tech lead, and confirmed he did no…

> I asked Reddit and TeamBlind how to best deal with this kind of situation > a lot of them, 99% of the answers go along these lines "Who the fuck cares man > So, that was my wake up call

Let me get this right, you discovered your team was mediocre, you then asked the clinically cynical folks at Reddit for advice, people you don't even know and people who certainly don't know you, and the conclusion you walked away with was that it wasn't worth caring because there's cynics on the internet?

If you're adopting a "Who the Fuck Cares" attitude, the highest form of it you can reach is not giving a flying fuck about what anons on the internet say.

Now, as an anon, I won't bother to give you advice, but I'll tell you what works for me. I found a team that is intelligent and passionate and enjoys their work, and a startup with talented founders that I respect, and I am far happier than I would ever be working at a mediocre company or team. I feel better as a person, I learn better, challenge myself more, and feel more accomplished by surrounding myself with other highly competent people.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#200

Post by bigtex88 »

SamBam wrote: post #139
bigtex88 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not sure where you read that in the quote above. Surely the person who knows the codebase inside out, the person who "jumps on every incident," the person who is willing to put in the long hours IS the person doing the daily grunt work?

Even that person is likely being underpaid for the work they are doing. And unless they're the ONLY PERSON AT THE JOB then they're not doing all the work. Everyone is important to make things work. And I guarantee those other people aren't seeing the fruits of their labor either.

Productivity gains going to the top 0.1% since the 1970's has caused the rest of us to not want to work hard, because we don't capture our own productivity gains. I'm not sure how this is hard to understand.

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