Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#331

Post by throwawaymsft » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:04 AM UTC

wasdfff wrote: post #322

throwawaymsft wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I care if someone has 1000x the artistic talent I do? Is there a shared river of inspiration we're all drinking from? You seem to believe there's a fixed pile of money in the world that every human competes for (e.g., 16th century Mercantilism). Go into the woods and turn a tree into a chair. Where did that value come from? Will it run out?

Eventually you will run out of wood to make chairs or people who want chairs, you can’t make infinite value as every product ever made requires commodities going in one end and customers with disposable income on another. The problem is when a company makes x, ceo takes 0.1x in compensation, while everyone else on the payroll combined also takes 0.1x in compensation just because they didn’t show up to work with the s…

(As people use forests, others will notice and start making tree farms.)

I don't see how it's inherently wrong for a CEO to take 10% of revenue and employees split 10%. And why do companies have a fixed pile: shouldn't an effective CEO grow top-line revenue? What if employees are splitting twice the revenue compared to a year ago? (If the company isn't growing, replace the CEO for someone who earns their 10%.)

Money-making inequality, on its face, doesn't seem different than artistic inequality. Should I be angry that Warren Buffet gets 20% annual return on his investments while index funds only do 8%?

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#332

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:05 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #189

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

"That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive?" Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for. If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons. It should be about exposing you to new ideas and thoughts you hadn't b…

Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for. If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons.

I keep seeing this on HN. Only the privileged can afford to go to college to “expand their minds”. The middle class and even the upper middle class are not spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to go to college to “expand their minds”. They are doing it so they can get a job.

Where are all of these students with “expanded minds” going to get a job? I specifically told both of my sons that I would not support them in getting a degree that didn’t have an outlook for a decent paying job. I specifically had them look at the starting salaries of graduates, the placement rates, and the five year salary averages for the school and the degree they choose.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#333

Post by throwawaymsft » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:06 AM UTC

wasdfff wrote: post #326

throwawaymsft wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word 'allocate' presupposes a fixed pie that we're expected to split in a zero-sum game. That works for redistributing the fraction of wealth captured in taxes. But the parent's argument is about the process of accumulating wealth itself being zero-sum somehow. Thinking "someone earned money which would have gone to me otherwise" is like thinking "someone got in shape and that physical fitness would have gone to…

Where does the dollar come from? A printer in a U.S. mint building. Every single one. No dollar can come into existance without being printed in one of these buildings. This is not like working out or singing a song, you can’t will money into existance and into your pocket, ultimately someone in charge of a larger pile of money wrote you a check. There is a finite amount of money in the world.

Banks will money into existence every time they issue a loan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation

When I deposit $1k in the bank and you take a $500 loan, $500 is created out of nowhere. You are using my deposit yet I still have a balance of $1000 on the books.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#334

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:07 AM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #269

pgwhalen wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years? Do you really think software development as we know it will be gone in ten years? I think it’s important on hacker news that we have perspective on our place in society and history and that we don’t think of ourselves (speaking for software engineers mostly here) as gods or something, but it seems very extreme to suggest that what we do will be gone or severely reduced in ten years.

The timing is a guess. But I do believe that we’re not far away from a point at which computers are much better at generating a CRUD app, or finding the most efficient algorithm, etc, but are still far from crossing the uncanny valley of making a truly moving piece of music, or work of art. I don’t think programmers will be obsolete; but I think the skill set will shift away from the analytical and mathematical trait…

The timing is a guess. But I do believe that we’re not far away from a point at which computers are much better at generating a CRUD app,

People thought the same thing in the 80s....

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#335

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #146

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

I really wouldn't compare learning a very specific technology with college. The idea with college level education is that you get the foundations of what you study and a learning method, so that you can adapt to changes (eg new technologies) faster and better. Of course you can learn the foundations without college and not learn them with college, but on average it's much easier to do so with that.

I really wouldn't compare learning a very specific technology with college. The idea with college level education is that you get the foundations of what you study and a learning method, so that you can adapt to changes (eg new technologies) faster and better.

That’s all well and good until they find themselves competing with people from other countries who are being trained to hit the ground running and are willing to work for less....

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#336

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:13 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #111

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

> That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? Well, colleges used to be for the elites (either rich or very talented) to learn science and to do research. It wasn't meant for vocational training for the general salaried worker. Now it's mostly that.

And if you just take the cert without the understanding of the underlying technology, or any practical skills you will be embarrassed when you interview. Certs by themselves are worth next to nothing.

I ask one simple architectural question that weeds out many of the paper tigers:

“We need to deploy a website that is fault tolerant, secure, can handle one AZ going down and scalable. How would you do it using AWS technologies?”

I’m saying this as someone who has 5 AWS certs and interviews AWS Devops candidate. But I also have 20+ years of professional software development experience, a degree, and before that I was a hobbyist for 6 years.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#337

Post by dan-robertson » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:19 AM UTC

ivalm wrote: post #237

netcan wrote: post #10

" middle-class life to those without a college degree " Anytime you start delving into what has changed for a subset of people, over decades, the most important piece of the puzzle is decided ding who qualifies for the subset. I mean concepts like "middle class" or "without a college degree." A lot more people get degrees, in 2018. Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people?…

>Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people? According to this [0] article from 2017 only 33.4% of Americans over the age of 25 have finished their undergraduate education. As such, MOST people are still without undergraduate education, and thus a median American does not have undergrad education. Since middle class should represent a median resident, it would follow that peo…

I don’t think middle class refers to median income. At least it certainly didn’t used to. How else could a population have a small middle class? I don’t think the answer is by having equally large upper and working classes.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#338

Post by Mikeb85 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:24 AM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #316

Mikeb85 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. failing restaurants, that's a result of bad business planning. If you can't find staff, pay more, pass those costs on to customers. If people can afford to live in high-rent areas, they can afford to pay more for food.

I don't disagree, exactly - I'm strongly opposed to most rent-control measures other than scrapping protectionist zoning rules. But I do think can versus will is a thorny question. Restaurant and delivery dining are highly elastic in general, and big cities aren't necessarily an exception. People who can stably afford to live in downtown SF, NYC, LA, Boston, etc. are still frequently paying >33% of income in rent, an…

> Restaurant and delivery dining are highly elastic in general

Elasticity of demand depends on whether or not there's readily available substitutes. If you're a mid-end restaurant, you can be replaced easily by fast-casual concepts (food quality doesn't differ much from fast-casual to casual full-service). However if you're high end, your competitors will be other high-end restaurants, with the same staff and space constraints as you. This is why in higher-rent markets such as NYC, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, high-end restaurants flourish.

> there's no rule saying that a given type of restaurant has to be viable at any price point.

Of course not. But in a dense, urban, high-rent area, there's likely a model that does work.

> maybe mid-tier restaurants with lots of staff are just an inefficient use of valuable urban space

They are. Rent is your main fixed cost, staff is your main variable cost. COGS matters, but you need a product to sell in the first place, and every restaurant brings in similar products. Having too much staff and too much space is a recipe for disaster.

To conclude, here's some statistics for you concerning household expenditures on food: https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/consumerexpend...

> San Francisco-area households spent $4,487, or 50.3 percent, of their food dollars on food at home and $4,431 (49.7 percent) on food away from home. In comparison, the average U.S. household spent 56.3 percent of its food budget on food at home and 43.7 percent on food away from home.

In San Francisco, households are spending a higher percentage of their (already higher) income on food away from home than other Americans.

Anyhow, in my experience, restaurants fail because there's a lot of shitty restaurant owners out there. Not knowing their demographics, costs, labour situation, etc..., qualifies them as being a shitty restaurateur.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#339

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:25 AM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #337

ivalm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people? According to this [0] article from 2017 only 33.4% of Americans over the age of 25 have finished their undergraduate education. As such, MOST people are still without undergraduate education, and thus a median American does not have undergrad education. Since middle class should represent a median resident, it would follow that peo…

I don’t think middle class refers to median income. At least it certainly didn’t used to. How else could a population have a small middle class? I don’t think the answer is by having equally large upper and working classes.

> I don’t think middle class refers to median income. At least it certainly didn’t used to. How else could a population have a small middle class?

Well, it could if it meant “near median income” if few had near the median income. Median doesn't mean particularly common (or even the most common, which is the mode.)

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#340

Post by Mikeb85 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 12:27 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #329

Mikeb85 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. failing restaurants, that's a result of bad business planning. If you can't find staff, pay more, pass those costs on to customers. If people can afford to live in high-rent areas, they can afford to pay more for food.

The reality doesn't agree with you. In SF, for example, fine dining is doing well, while the mid range is slowly failing and being replaced by fast casual, where they focus on fast turnover. The only way to pay the bills seems to be to either be super high end (fewer customers overall, but at a much higher service level and price point), or just above fast food, where you serve a reasonable-quality menu, but items th…

Funny, I just wrote a reply to another post which explains exactly what you wrote.

> In SF, for example, fine dining is doing well, while the mid range is slowly failing and being replaced by fast casual, where they focus on fast turnover.

It has to do with readily available substitutes for a given price point affecting elasticity of demand. The type of food offered by a casual dining concept can be replaced by fast-casual, whereas higher end food has relatively inelastic demand, because it has fewer substitutes.