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Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

economist.com

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Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#71

Post by vsareto »

spaghettiToy wrote: post #45

The time of innovation is over, the time of cashing in and preservation has come? I think of the automotive industry. Big tech will start to diversify, start banks, buy appliance companies, buy suppliers/vertical integration. I believe that happened to Auto in the 60s and 70s, about 20-30 years after the boom. If we (irresponsibly) use that timeline, we should expect dark days for the next 20 years. Most innovation w…

>Most innovation will be outside the US.

Nice, it's about time someone else had a go at it. Maybe they'll have visa programs and we can escape the rest of the US's problems

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#72

Post by tomrod »

ls612 wrote: post #70
tomrod wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many things in life, "it depends." The market for new PhDs in economics is wonderful and getting better. I haven't looked at figures in over 7 years, but the general trend has been there are ~900 PhDs minted per year, about 100-200 academic tenure track jobs, and about 1200 industry jobs (that number has probably increased now that NABE, not just AEA/ASSA, handles recruitment conference at-scale for the techonom…

Am in a top PhD program in economics, can confirm for the most part, although the past two years have been relatively tough. Hopefully the Job Market the next couple years will return to trend.

Good luck out there!

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#73

Post by danans »

robertlagrant wrote: post #51
nostrademons wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends how deeply Taleb understands his own theories. You build antifragile systems by creating networks where the failure of any one component is not just expected, but actively welcomed and designed for. Distributed systems engineers understand this intuitively; any highly reliable system is constantly failing internally, but the system is set up with multiple independent paths to success, such that failure just r…

> You build antifragile systems by creating networks where the failure of any one component is not just expected, but actively welcomed and designed for. Distributed systems engineers understand this intuitively; any highly reliable system is constantly failing internally, but the system is set up with multiple independent paths to success, such that failure just routes traffic to the non-failing components. Antifrag…

> Antifragility is benefitting from things breaking, not just coping with things breaking.

Coping with things breaking while fragile entities are collapsing is benefiting in the relative sense.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#74

Post by danans »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #25
nostrademons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't. He was sentenced to 18 months but never actually served; he was pardoned by Trump before then, and is currently serving as CEO of Pronto, a new autonomous vehicle startup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski

Then I'll rephrase my statement: how did he end up convicted in a state with supposedly lax enforcement of trade secret laws?

> how did he end up convicted in a state with supposedly lax enforcement of trade secret laws?

Because he was convicted of a federal crime, not a state crime, which is also why Trump had the ability to pardon him.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#75

Post by clpm4j »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #50

Economists are flocking to jobs because there isn’t one in economics is a more appropriate title.

Or said another way, economists are making a rational decision and choosing the highest paying industry, technology, which happens to be HQ'd in Silicon Valley.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#76

Post by t_mann »

personjerry wrote: post #11

I wrote a blog post about something similar - I think historians are next https://www.personjerry.com/posts/the-future-historians-of-s...

Frankly, this sounds more like wishful thinking to me. The sort of extremely high-level positions you're talking about there is maybe going to affect a handful of individuals, if at all.[0] But that's irrelevant for the average graduate. We might still see more history grads in tech, but that's purely because tech has become a sizeable portion of the US economy and is attractive to graduates of all disciplines - ie, it has (nice) jobs.

[0] I'm even skeptical of your argument that studying the history of technology is the best preparation to lead a tech company. The people who study past business decisions most in-depth are arguably MBAs, and I think they're far more likely to make it into senior management positions.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#77

Post by scottLobster »

spaghettiToy wrote: post #68
scottLobster wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I look forward to innovation that actually has to be profitable at the end. All these bright-colored-plastic startups without a real business model will die, and ageism will lessen as experience and the ability to make money takes precedence over "culture fit" and "vision". Maybe Silicon Valley can even consider working with... the GOVERNMENT!!! You know, those institutions that actually have the aut…

> roll my eyes hard every time some SV engineer has a moral outrage/stages a walkout because they discover their company has a DoD You have 0 input with how weapons of war will be used in the future. I can't say I disagree.

That and no one is forcing you to work on said weapons. If someone has a moral issue with working for DoD, I think that's a little naive but that's their right. Demanding the company you agreed to work for, as a subordinate, comply with your personal vision of morality when you're not even in a leadership position is just childish.

Corporations by design are almost never democracies, you are working as a laborer for a dictatorship/oligarchy that's licensed by the overarching government for meeting certain legal requirements. That's it. If you want to dictate corporate values then gain authority within the company or start your own, or leave and go work for someone you see as more aligned with your values. As a rank-and-file engineer you have as much say in corporate values as a plumber has in his clients' choice of religion.

Exception to this is if you're a founding member of a startup, or working for an extremely small company where your contributions carry a lot of weight. In which case congrats, you're on the ruling council of the oligarchy by default, and if the company ever grows to a certain size maybe some idealistic low-level engineer will get indignant about your values :)

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#78

Post by tdeck »

scottLobster wrote: post #77
spaghettiToy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> roll my eyes hard every time some SV engineer has a moral outrage/stages a walkout because they discover their company has a DoD You have 0 input with how weapons of war will be used in the future. I can't say I disagree.

That and no one is forcing you to work on said weapons. If someone has a moral issue with working for DoD, I think that's a little naive but that's their right. Demanding the company you agreed to work for, as a subordinate, comply with your personal vision of morality when you're not even in a leadership position is just childish. Corporations by design are almost never democracies, you are working as a laborer for…

If rank and file employees don't have a say, then why do you care what they demand? It seems more like they actually do have a say and they're figuring that out, and that's what you're objecting to.

Re: Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley

#79

Post by JediLuke »

scottLobster wrote: post #77
spaghettiToy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> roll my eyes hard every time some SV engineer has a moral outrage/stages a walkout because they discover their company has a DoD You have 0 input with how weapons of war will be used in the future. I can't say I disagree.

That and no one is forcing you to work on said weapons. If someone has a moral issue with working for DoD, I think that's a little naive but that's their right. Demanding the company you agreed to work for, as a subordinate, comply with your personal vision of morality when you're not even in a leadership position is just childish. Corporations by design are almost never democracies, you are working as a laborer for…

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