The Who Cares Era • Hacker News Board

Re: The Who Cares Era

#301

Post by pixl97 » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #105

This is the entirely predictable and avoidable impact of hyperscale bureaucracy. Its not because people aren't paid enough (though, most aren't). Its because people in these systems aren't given enough agency. Humans crave authority, agency, and creativity. Here's something I implore tech business leaders to think about: If you believe AI to be the world-changing technology you say it will be: It follows that you mus…

You say bureaucracy, but what I think you mean is complexity.

Bureaucracy is a type of complexity that occurs once systems become to big for a small well trained group of people to manage.

AI/humans managing the system will work for a while, we'll be able to manage the current complexity better, but it won't last. We'll make even more complex systems that become unmanageable.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#302

Post by kridsdale1 » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #150

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.…

I did some business with the a city department at one time. I discovered that from Thanksgiving to New Years, no work was done at that department. Everyone was "out of the office" or will "be back later".

Google works this way too. We don’t include Q4 in our plans.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#303

Post by WalterBright » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #264

WalterBright wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is they could have probably kept going up if they hadn't done that. No company goes up forever. They all eventually strangle themselves with bureaucratic inefficiency.

Forever is a long time, but eg Nintendo has been around in some form or another since 1889 , so that doesn't seem like a given.

> in some form or another

I.e. they've been reinventing the business. They were probably burned to the ground in WW2 and had to rebuild the business from scratch.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#304

Post by sam-cop-vimes » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

e-topy wrote: post #294

sam-cop-vimes wrote: post #120

It comes down to what is "popular" culture. When I was young, society presented mostly people with intellectual achievements as role models which spurred a generation to strive. Hard work, humility, respect for others were actively inculcated into the growing generation. Children had few external influences other than their immediate circle of family, friends, neighbours and the school community. Now we have reality…

> I read somewhere that every augmentation is also an amputation. Progress in tech means we are constantly lobotomising a majority of the population. Just thought about something: There are a few sides to this. There is innovation that just makes things easier but doesn't amputate, like typing machines vs word (took me a while to come up with an example, essentially just evolution). Then there are things that are so…

Interesting point, I'll try and plot such a graph!

Re: The Who Cares Era

#305

Post by lapcat » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #250

lapcat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why is it a surprise that, when employees are not supposed to take work personally, they stop taking work personally? I'm a bit puzzled about how this reply is supposed to relate to or add to my comment. For example, I already said, "The question is, in the face of such job insecurity, why should employees care are their jobs? Their employers clearly don't care about them." What I don't see in the reply is any k…

One example that comes to my mind: I had my first job in 1974. The expectation back then was that if you wanted to leave your job, you always gave at least two weeks notice. I'm slow so it took me a very long time to realize how ridiculous this was. If the company was going to lay you off, they never gave you any notice at all. You were just told not to come to work the next day. So this is not just about current eco…

> I had my first job in 1974. The expectation back then was that if you wanted to leave your job, you always gave at least two weeks notice.

Why do you think that was? Expectations don't just arise out of nothing. In 1974, there was more job security and less frequent layoffs.

> I'm slow so it took me a very long time to realize how ridiculous this was.

Alternatively, it wasn't originally ridiculous, but the economic conditions slowly changed to make it ridiculous.

> It's about an imbalance of power that has been going on a long time.

Of course things didn't change overnight. I never said they did.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#306

Post by skeaker » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #209

layer8 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You responded to a rhetorical question with the wrong answer (you can obviously live well on only modest means as arguably the majority of people do, even in the US), and then proceeded to lay out maybe the most egregious false dichotomy I've ever seen right after. I'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you hold a definition of "economic powerhouse" that aligns more with "a first world country" rather than "a shareholder-maximized corporatocracy".

Re: The Who Cares Era

#307

Post by h2zizzle » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

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.…

>Where I live, it seems like half the streets don't have street signs (this isn't a backwater where you'd expect this, it's Boston).

I've noticed that this is a New England thing. Driving up for the first time, I got lost repeatedly. Signs were placed too close to exits, hidden behind trees, etc. I came to the conclusion that there must be some local aversion to proper signage, probably based in the area's age and relative insularity. "Keep things the way they are and have been for hundreds of years," and, "If you're supposed to be here, you'll know where you are," attitudes, respectively. Boston, Providence, etc. are cosmopolitan, but I'd wager that the people who control public works iniatives are decidedly not.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#308

Post by zdragnar » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

nthingtohide wrote: post #300

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…

This is why Institutions are important. They should be truthful and unbiased and undogmatic. But given intentional pollution of information environment. The same lessons being learnt again and again. New generations growing up and trying to navigate this new polluted environment, all of this is taking a toll. Hence delulu is the solulu.

You're asking for more from the institution than we can ever expect from the individuals within the institution. Humans are fallible.

Rather, we should expect that institutions are never so powerful that we have no recourse when we have been wronged by one, and that we have options when one lets us down.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#309

Post by bumby » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #286

bumby wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the time horizon of investors.

The value of a stock is based on long term results. If the investors catch wind of the company sacrificing the long term for the short term, the stock price will go down accordingly.

Not really. It’s based on expected future results. Sometimes that’s based in reality, sometimes it’s hopes and dreams. How else do you explain companies that have never made money being having any positive stock price? There are no “results” just projections.

We probably agree that the stock will eventually reflect value. I think we’d quibble about how long that takes. As the saying goes, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. In other words, don’t bet on the market always reflecting reality.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#310

Post by alexjplant » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #114

lapcat wrote: post #86

The author talks about the phenomenon like it's just an individual failing and exhorts people to "be human". But I think that "who cares?" is in fact a natural human reaction to the incentives. We need to look at how our society is structured and how the incentives are set up. I would highlight two factors that I think are consequential in the current economy: corporate consolidation and job insecurity. Increasingly,…

You're not supposed to take work personally. That is a lesson that I've been taught many, many, many times over the years. I've been told that within the last 24 hours. So why is it a surprise that, when employees are not supposed to take work personally, they stop taking work personally? I do not understand anyone's confusion about this. We are a resource to be used in companies now; replaced, shunted, and changed a…

> Why would I give a flying fuck about my employer, other than the baseline expectation of what I was hired for?

You should care about the people whose lives are affected by the result of your work at the very least.

If you work in property management, for instance, you shouldn't repeatedly bill your tenants after charges are due then accuse them of late payment. Ditto for double-billing them for a month and doing the same anyway... if these bogus "late payments" end up on one's rental history then it's a lot of work to fix even for a completely honest person that's never paid a bill late in their life.

Or, if you're a doctor, you should probably read a patient's blood test results correctly so that you don't prescribe them the wrong medicine or tell them to take an incorrect supplement. If you have somebody take the wrong chemicals because you can't read a piece of paper then bad things could happen to them.

I could go on and on and on but the bottom line is that you need to give at least an iota of a shit when your fellow people are at the mercy of the quality of your work. Missing a topping on a sandwich is whatever but messing with somebody's finances, shelter, or health out of lazy defiance is outright sociopathy. The fact that you don't like your boss is your problem; stick it to your employer on your own time.