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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#201

Post by tomslick »

adamc wrote: post #87
sp0rk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal? I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride in…

Agree that part of it is the increasingly toxic work circumstances. Many people get no health care, poor wages, and zero job security, so... they are pretty demoralized much of the time. And many work multiple gigs, so they are also tired all the time.

> And many work multiple gigs

I don’t think this is much different now than in the past, arguably less so. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620

Re: The Who Cares Era

#202

Post by lelandbatey »

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?

Being an economic powerhouse or not isn't required for the idea to be a reasonable and workable one.

But given the high levels of dysfunction/conflict that led to the breakup of the country, I doubt they'd meet whatever bar you set for "economic powerhouse".

Re: The Who Cares Era

#203

Post by babyent »

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.…

Why not just filter out those kinds of people?

I filter out people like that because

A. They’re not on the same level

B. I won’t hire them and I wouldn’t work with them

C. They serve no purpose to me in my life because I don’t even want to hang out with them

Re: The Who Cares Era

#204

Post by XorNot »

KronisLV wrote: post #51
bandoti wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I hate to say it because it’s become an annoying topic—but the problem is social media. Full stop. People are so distracted, scrolling ad-nauseam, that the only hope and dream they have is: to become an “influencer.” They’ll sell a view of their children and family life to the highest bidding sponsor. Then, peddling products to a fresh batch of spectators who think, “Ah! Wouldn’t that be the life? I should…

> that the only hope and dream they have is: to become an “influencer.” I might be too introverted for that sort of thing in the first place, but that sounds like hell, having to pretend in front of a bunch of strangers just to get clicks, all for clout. Then again, I did delete Facebook too because I didn’t quite get posting bunches of vacation pics either: if there’s a cool picture or a few I can share those in the…

Vacation pictures are a great use of Facebook though. If that's all it was (and say, cats) then it would be worth using.

I have an uncle who takes interesting holidays and writes great updates on what he's seen as he travels. This is all A+ what Facebook should've been...but not what it became.

Because that entire experience...would be equally well serviced by a group chat bar some interface issues. And that's what Signal actually provides for super short form stuff now - I mostly lament that it can't quite fill that longer update niche.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#205

Post by grumpy_coder »

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.

Boeing has consistently underperformed the market massively since the MD merger. Making maybe 3% after inflation

Re: The Who Cares Era

#206

Post by chrisco255 »

jplusequalt wrote: post #43

This is late stage capitalism at work. Our economy and political systems incentivized the behavior that lead us here, and the current apathy we see is the working class realizing the rot in the bottom of society.

There's no such thing as late stage capitalism. There's ebbs and flows, businesses that were formerly great (like newspapers), fade out and go out of business. New forms of media take their place, the cream rises to the top, the train keeps going.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#207

Post by pixl97 »

b112 wrote: post #78
greedo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the rate of wage growth compared to inflation, it's pretty clear that wages have stagnated for a long time, with periodic bumps. The goal of most businesses is growth and increased productivity. The easiest way to have higher productivity is to constrain wages.

I will agree that in certain parts of the world, this is quite true. However it's not a universal. China has had immense wage growth, and the emergency of a "middle class" income bracket, where no such bracket existed before. Of course it's an economy still in the throws of massive transformation. Yet regardless, "staring at phone instead of doing job correctly" isn't going to reverse that trend. Or I guess it could…

>However it's not a universal. China has had immense wage growth

Yea, showing transforming economies to established economies isn't really a great comparison at all. You have two huge things happening at once. A massive transfer of wealth from those 'rich' economies building new factories to use the cheap labor. This drops wages in the rich economies by shipping the jobs out. In the meantime the people in the rich economies have to move to service style jobs away from manufacturing.

In a few decades the same will happen with China as it converts to a service economy.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#208

Post by thewebguyd »

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…

> Wondering what the other "bike shop" jobs are now.

I'd say software & tech were those jobs before more and more folks just started going into it for the money. Working as a sysadmin and sysadmin adjacent roles my whole career, I've seen it shift in real time from skilled craftspeople whom had a true curiosity and interest in computing, to folks who have zero interest in the field at all, many of whom hate their job, but stay in it purely for the money as very few other careers pay as well as what you can make in tech without advanced education.

Oter "bike shop" jobs I think you'll find in mostly hobby places - photography/camera shops, outdoor gear shops, local/independent bookstores, and craftmanship work - woodworking/hand-made furniture, musical instrument repair, some mechanics.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#209

Post by WalterBright »

layer8 wrote: post #191
WalterBright wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Yugoslavia an economic powerhouse?

Do we need economic powerhouses to live well?

Yes. Or would you prefer working dawn to dusk picking bugs off of your crops, with the constant spectre of crop failure and famine?

Do you prefer living in a mud hut to a house with air conditioning, central heat, hot and cold running water, electric lighting and flush toilets? All courtesy of economic powerhouses.

Maybe you'd prefer spending your free time spinning thread with your spinning wheel, making cloth, and sewing all your clothes? (The first industrial target was textiles.)

Re: The Who Cares Era

#210

Post by j2kun »

chrisco255 wrote: post #199
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 w…

+100 get advice from people in your life who care about you and can contextualize your situation.
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