Why Going Home at 5:30 Brings in Top Talent - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3008553/takeaway/why-going-home-530-brings-top-talent

<comment><USER2> > Like many super-successful execs, he goes home, has dinner with his wife and > kids, and then works in the late evening.

This idea that everyone is "going home at 5:30" sounds like a misnomer here, if you're heading straight home at a reasonable time only to log in remotely as soon as you're done dinner. Is this really a policy significantly different than any other given company? Or is it solely because he's a "super-successful exec" that he does extra hours?

<comment><USER3> To be very honest with you, if you are claiming you did some thing spectacular working 9 hours/day in software. You are either really a super developer or you are cheating some way.

<comment><USER4> 9 hours / day is about 3 hours / day more than what has been confirmed by studies to be efficient for a knowledge worker.

So if you're working over 6 hours/day, you are most probably wasting your employer's time and your own life. Infrequent longer streches of work are a different thing, of course, they work, but they need to be countered by vacation time which brings the average to about 5-6 hours /day anyway.

<comment><USER3> >>9 hours / day is about 3 hours / day more than what has been confirmed by studies to be efficient for a knowledge worker.

May be, but nearly every successful person I know falls into two basic categories.

1\. Either cheats/is-lucky, is active in corporate politics and can get job done because of being in the circle of a higher manager's yes men. Gets out of turn opportunities etc. Or in short your usual cheating.

2\. Works very hard, gets stuff done. Solves problems which people want. Makes it rain and takes the rewards back home at the end of the day.

I haven't seen any exceptions to these scenarios.

You can point factory assembly era type studies, where incentives for both succeeding and failing are none. The rewards are very linear to efforts. And you get only incremental hourly income for more effort. Obviously in such cases productivity will fall with extra working hours. Because motivation falls, the person begins to associate working extra with slavery and being paid bones for slogging to make somebody else rich.

But if the reward and work relationship is non-linear. And you get good enough money for taking a risks and working real hard. The motivation peaks and corresponding work done and profit from that rise.

<comment><USER5> _1\. Either cheats/is-lucky, is active in corporate politics and can get job done because of being in the circle of a higher manager's yes men. Gets out of turn opportunities etc. Or in short your usual cheating._

OK, lesson time. There are people who make corporate social climbing a full- time job. Their code (if there is any) isn't great. They don't have real software accomplishments. Yet they rise. It has nothing to do with what they build, because they don't build anything. They take a lot of credit and endure (or call) a lot of meetings. That's a fundamentally different game from building software.

 _2\. Works very hard, gets stuff done. Solves problems which people want. Makes it rain and takes the rewards back home at the end of the day._

You don't have to work 70-hour weeks to make things that people want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How sad is it that this article needs to exist?

It boils down to one final sentence: "The Takeaway: If you create a company that encourages people to lead full lives, you can land a full roster of talent."

Or translated: treat people as... PEOPLE and you can hire people!

Are management drones really that incompetent that they need this explained to them? (rhetorical - clearly the answer is yes)

<comment><USER7> It's unfair to blame this on management drones - this propensity for mindless overwork is a key component of geek culture. We brought this upon ourselves, in many ways, though unscrupulous companies certainly have taken advantage of it.

How many other fields and subcultures glorify and celebrate caffeine-fueled binges and lack of sleep? How many subcultures _form competitions_ around how horribly you can abuse your body for nerd points? Hell, as a nerdy kid growing up, how many of your fellow nerds shunned you for daring to branch out and do non-nerdy things on the side? For a bunch of ostracized people we sure as hell do a lot of it on our own.

This translates not just to big companies but to founders too. There is a pernicious perception that if you're not mindlessly devoted at all hours of the day (waking or otherwise) to your startup/work that you are unworthy.

The geek subculture has never really known moderation. It's sad that this article needs to exist, but bad management is really only the surface. This goes pretty deep.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We had 40-hrs work week rule from day 1 (well, nobody followed it in the beginning though). Now we have 50 people on board and it is really important to maintain a good balance to keep energy. So we have 4 working days and 1 day (Friday) dedicated to learning and personal projects. We have no overtimes for years. It is an incredibly rare event.

</comment><comment><USER8> "[H]e goes home, has dinner with his wife and kids, and then works in the late evening."

So basically he gets a small break to have dinner and then goes back to work. That's not really what the title is suggesting. Not sure what the article is trying to suggest. Eat your veggies?

</comment><comment><USER9> Working more than 40 hours a week doesn't mean you are more productive. See "Bring back the 40-hour work week" [http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...](http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately there are tons of examples which say otherwise. Nearly every start up is an example of this.

Working a lot, gets a lot of work done. Ofcourse you need rest and recovery time to time.

But on an average a guy who does 16 hours/day will inevitable achieve more than somebody who does 8 hours/day.

Don't look too surprised if that happens.

<comment><USER9> Are they successful _because_ they work 16 hours/day, or _despite_ working 16 hours/day?

<comment><USER10> Maybe they work 16 hours a day because they are successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would be interested to know how many people leave work at 5:30 but do extra work after hours.

<comment><USER12> Prior to accepting the role I'm currently in I had a prerequisite that I get to finish at 4.30PM on the button every day without fear of reprisal as it enables me to spend at least an hour with my son every evening before he goes to sleep. Once he's down I usually get one or two more hours of work in before I spend quality time with my wife.

I have a lot of respect for people who work 60/70/80 hours a week however to some (myself included), quality time with my family is infinitely more valuable than anything any employer could ever offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my experience top talent is available pretty much 24/7. Not necessarily in the office, but "always on". In order to really climb up the ladder, they incorporate work into almost every part of their lives, and most of them seem to enjoy it.

<comment><USER6> Bit of a misnomer - talent is not directly tied to hours spent working, especially in knowledge industries.

This simple, basic fact escapes most of our industry managers who still use management practices developed a century ago to manage steel mills.

So yes, we may be "always on" but that means inspiration and thought could come at any time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Normally multimedia adds to an article, but I thought the formatting in this story was distracting. It broke up the flow of reading, especially because the text was short and the TL;DR explanations were as long as the text itself.

</comment><comment><USER15> With 2 young daughters, for me it's usually:

9-18:00 working

18:30-21:00 dinner+bath+bedtime story

21:00-22:00 ~ free time

22:00 - 00:30 - second shift @work (from home)

<comment><USER16> Eleven and a half hours a day is a lot of time. Are you an employee or a business owner?

<comment><USER15> Startup founder :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a believer in the 3-hour work-day. "4-hour work week" is impractical for most jobs. 40 hours is a reasonable average, but expecting anyone to put in an 8-10 hour contiguous block (that often ends up being ~11, including commute) is inhumane. Why, on the one 55-degree, sunny day in January that (by the weather's lack of concern for us) lands on a Tuesday, should people be stuck inside during that four hours of nice weather?

At least, if I were running a business, I'd plan on a 3-hour workday. First priority: get us to a point where we can survive on a 15-hour time commitment from each person. Project planning is based on that assumption. This puts slack in the schedule and reduces the slippage problem, because people working 9 hours per day in a "crunch" are pushing at 3x the planned rate, yet still working at a sustainable pace.

However, I'd only hire people who had enough interest in CS and software-- and, as importantly, whatever business I was in-- that they'd naturally fill to 40-60 (based on their ability) hours. I think people should leave _the office_ before dark, but I'd want to hire the guy (or gal) who spends his/her stray hours thinking about and working on technology, even if I don't collect direct benefit. Think of it as "65% Time". You're not obligated for more than 15 hours per week, but you really don't fit if you aren't constantly looking to learn more.

I'd also have:

* an expectation that people eat lunch together. That's not to say you can't duck out to have lunch with a friend a few times per month, but your default behavior should be to eat with colleagues, not alone in a hurry. Definitely don't eat at your desk. (This may be my "Ah, yes" New England ancestry showing, but I really dislike eating at desks. To me, it's like eating in a car. You do it occasionally out of necessity, but you're supposed to feel bad about it.)

* 4:00 Tea, with snacks and board games. This isn't because I'm a nice guy, but because it gets people sharing ideas and encourages extra-hierarchical collaboration and mobility, and that makes both project quality and communication better. The somewhat devious thing here is that, after Tea's over (of course, it would never be called "over" because people are free to go) they'd have a lot of new ideas to try out and prove, so a lot of people would want to stay late anyway to experiment with the ideas they discussed over Tea.

<comment><USER17> If I was working for you, I'd wonder why I should put my interest in CS / software in the hands of your company. If the necessary minimum to work for a paycheck is 3 hours per day, I'd work 3 hours per day and spend the rest of my time doing my own projects at home or in a place of my choosing.

This has at least two advantages:

\- I get the benefits of whatever I create (e. g. sales)

\- I choose the projects that I want to work on and I never ever have to justify anything to anyone.

Your plan works only if people are as passionate about the stuff your company does as you are without having any interest in pursuing their own ideas. Developing own ideas in a company environment and outside of it are two entirely different things.

I believe employment ends up in a Nash Equilibrium. The most rational thing to do for an employee is to work the minimum amount of time required for a paycheck (and considering working overtime mostly for career advancement). For an employer, the rational thing to do is to somehow "motivate" people to work more on company-related stuff, because it makes the company more money.

<comment><USER18> I think you answered your own question.

To align interests, you give employees a meaningful ownership stake, or at least profit-sharing. If you hire people who are already interested in your field/industry, you make it easy for them to put their best efforts toward your shared goals.

This isn't sneaky. Some (many!) people want to work hard (and expect to be rewarded for success) but prefer to avoid taking all of the risks personally/handling the janitorial work of a business by themselves too.

Offer a good balance, and remember that regardless of what you _require_ from your staff, they always _volunteer_ the most important parts.

Hiring is hard, and these kinds of conditions make it even harder. But getting it right is transformative.

<comment><USER5> _Some (many!) people want to work hard (and expect to be rewarded for success) but prefer to avoid taking all of the risks personally/handling the janitorial work of a business by themselves too._

Exactly. If you're older than 25 and it's no longer socially acceptable to mooch, you recognize that personal financial risk is toxic sludge to be kept out of your life if at all possible.

Why do people take it on when forming businesses? They have no other choice. Bank loans require personal liability, VCs run a reputation economy that's almost certainly illegal.

However, you can give people an environment where they can be truly "intrapreneurial" (this doesn't work in most companies for political reasons, but it can in an open-allocation environment where doing work is more important than controlling it) and participate in the upside (profit-sharing, bonuses, increasing interestingness of work) partially but don't have to take on any personal risk. People won't leave such an environment lightly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I was able to get her because she was four months pregnant

I love that this is the thing that sold her on his company.

Let's be honest though, the vast majority of businesses are hard, tedious work. Not many founders are smart enough to work smart and so they just work hard. This is why pregnant women get treated as untouchables and it's not their fault, it is the business's fault for being unable to develop the right model.

The knee-jerk reaction by feminists would be to legislate this away but you are more or less asking for businesses to go out of business by hiring employees that are overpaid relative to their coworkers. Productivity cannot be provided by JUST the employee, the business needs to help as well and most do not.</comment>


Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-highly-intelligent/ <comment><USER2> I've met plenty of incredibly intelligent people in my life, and very few mentioned Mensa. Those who did had a yearning for being recognized as smart or exceptional. Perhaps using Mensa membership to draw inferences about smart people in general isn't statistically applicable. It could be that people who want to be recognized as smart have those mental issues, which other smart people don't.

<comment><USER3> I tried out Mensa briefly some years ago. I was just looking for new social circles. I have some pretty sharp older buddies that I play Go with weekly, they're a blast to talk to, and I thought I'd find some more of that.

It was bad. Really, really bad. The local chapter had a tiny handful of post- retirement members. I knew a ton of folks in my community at the time, a bunch of them were smart, active people, and none of them were members. It really looked like the only thing the Mensa folks had going for them was having done well on a test.

The newsletter was hilarious. One of them had a feature article on which was the better superhero, Batman or Superman? The article and the responses to it mostly centered around which of the fictional comic book characters had a bigger IQ. The writing was juvenile (and not because it was written by kids), and there was a regular feature that would pick some kind of trouble in the world and ask readers how they'd solve it. None of the responses ever argued from any kind of expertise or domain knowledge or offered any new insight; the theme tended to be, "well, I'm pretty smart, so this seems like an easy problem to solve..."

The discussion on HN on any given topic -- and the topics themselves for that matter -- tends to be a heck of a lot more interesting. I keep coming back here because of the people that just randomly show up in discussions who are actual experts on the topic. That doesn't really happen in Mensa.

My takeaway from that whole thing pretty much agrees with what you're saying. People who are Mensa members are members because their IQ is really important to them to an unhealthy extent. That would seem to correlate well with other psychological and physiological problems.

 _Probably_ anybody who reaches the level of 1 dan or higher in Go has at least a Mensa-level IQ. Researchers wanting to do further work in this area could try polling those folks too.

<comment><USER4> How good you are at Go (or chess for that matter) has no correlation with your IQ. There are plenty of examples of people extremely good at chess that struggle, seriously, with academics (e.g. world champion Jose Raul Capablanca, and the youtuber and grandmaster Eric Hansen). Kasparov doesn't have 180+ IQ, which is a common myth. At some point he took the test and it turned out he had a respectable but definitely sub-Mensa IQ.

<comment><USER5> Richard Feynman, one of the most respected geniuses of our era, tested as only having an IQ of 125. IQ tests are far from perfect, to say the least. This means our concept of IQ is likely inherently flawed.

Feynman seemed to take glee in sharing his "low" IQ of only a 125. He was one of the smartest men on the planet in the last 100 years. Surely, we should defer to his opinion that the concept IQ is sort of a joke. ;)

<comment><USER6> It always struck me as crazy to represent all that is intelligence in one number. Also AFAIK many things such as "social intelligence" are not tested at all.

I always smile at people putting that much weight into IQ numbers..

<comment><USER7> > Also AFAIK many things such as "social intelligence" are not tested at all.

As far as I've read about it (not an expert; I've just seen this debate more than once before and tried to educate myself on the basics), that's because every time someone proposes an actual objective test for one of the "other intelligences", it turns out to either be primarily dependent on training (i.e. measuring conditioned behaviors) or to correlate so strongly with IQ that the test is effectively an IQ test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Their entire high IQ sample comes from Mensa. So this should be restated something like "Inclination to join Mensa correlates with mental and physical disorder"

<comment><USER9> I guess I'm the control here, because I was briefly a member of ISPE. Not because I have an IQ in the 99.9+% (as far as I know), but because they couldn't figure out how to password protect their Ning group.

Based on the posts though, the members didn't seem any smarter than the _average_ person on HN and the discussions were generally less interesting.

<comment><USER10> For those like me who use duck duck go:

[https://www.thethousand.com/](https://www.thethousand.com/)

<comment><USER8> The slideshow on that website seems to be missing one on humility

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some of this reminds me of The Ph.D. Grind by Philip Guo [0] and my own experience when I was getting my PhD:

"For those few months, I morphed into an antisocial grump who shunned all distraction and became deeply immersed in my craft. All I thought about was computer code; I could barely speak in coherent English sentences except during my weekly progress meetings with Margo. Even though I appeared and acted subhuman (i.e., an unshaven disheveled mess), my emotional state was blissful. I was programming and debugging for over ten hours per day, but my mind was quite relaxed since my technical skills were well-calibrated for the challenges I faced."

> my emotional state was blissful

There was a huge disconnect between how happy I was and how I behaved and appeared. I gained 50+ pounds, lost normal hygiene, essentially only ate peanut butter, became nocturnal, and more or less didn't leave my apartment. My advisor was pretty explicit in their concern about my mental health, but, looking back, I was really happy.

I wonder how much of this mental illness : high IQ association is simply being obsessed with what you're working on?

[0] [http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD- grind_2012-07-16.pdf](http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD- grind_2012-07-16.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Achieving excellence has a personal cost. Imagine that.

The other thing is that the first test that gave rise to the concept of IQ tests was not intended to measure _intelligence._ It was intended to measure _school readiness_ for rural French children who often did not have birth certificates, so age could not be used as an indicator of school readiness. The problem was complicated by the fact that rural kids and city kids had different experiences that left the rural children less equipped to cope with the school environment. City kids were more likely to have already participated in preschool, among other things. So, there was a cultural divide.

The idea that some people are simply innately smarter is something that is very much debatable. IQ tests are highly influenced by deep cultural knowledge that is typically available to cultural "insiders." In the US, this is typically upper class and upper middle whites.

If an American takes a British or Canadian IQ test, they will tend to perform more poorly and show as having a lower IQ than on American tests, even though these are all English speaking countries. The effect gets worse if you are taking it in a second language. But it still exists even if it is merely a different culture, not a different language.

<comment><USER12> >>British or Canadian IQ test

Google Raven Progressive Matrices, there are accurate IQ tests are not associated with any culture

<comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888888)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't remotely _news_. Articles on this study have been posted to HN in recent months and _overexcitabilities_ and the idea that certain disorders are "comorbidities" of high IQ was a common idea in gifted support groups, conferences et al twenty years ago. A stronger argument that there is a real link between the two is from a study showing the Ashkenazi Jews are about 2% of the population but about 10% of people awarded Nobel Prizes. This population has a high percentage of genetic disorders, a number of which are known to impact brain function. A rebuttal to the idea that this proves anything is that _perhaps it is cultural._

"Genius" is defined by thinking differently. Should we be surprised if that has negative consequences, like not fitting in socially?

This is really old hat and adds nothing new whatsoever. If you are interested, there are plenty of existing resources to help you explore this topic.

</comment><comment><USER13> _People who do well on standardized tests of intelligence—IQ tests—tend to be more successful in the classroom and the workplace._

Where is everyone taking these IQ tests? In my entire life I've never come across one in the wild, just SAT, GRE, etc.

<comment><USER14> I dunno, my dad took us to get tested at one point when we were in school, iirc I was ~130. Low enough to still be pretty common, high enough to feel the pressure to do something with it.

Then again, when I got to uni I was classed with people who scored way higher than I did and they were... I dunno, "intelligent" but not "smart". I didn't see any correlation between entry exam scores and subsequent performance.

<comment><USER15> I think kids get such scores when they are ahead of their age in areas of mental development. I think in my case, because of attentive parents who had me reading early, etc.

As I got older I realized I'm not actually smarter than other people, I was just a little ahead, and the false belief that I am somehow exceptionally clever was damaging in a number of ways.

<comment><USER16> As a high school dropout living in the blue collar world after some rough time as a teen on the street, having left home at 15, I'd long forgotten about the potential I once had in grade school. Years later when I decided to go back to school and get a degree, I entered the CS program. Despite great performance I carried the delusion that I was not nearly as smart as everyone else. I was also often the only woman in the class and deep down believed that I was inferior. I had accepted that hard work was my only real tool for success. But I truly loved the material and chose to get a double major in Math. I was pretty isolated from my peers and was completely unaware to what degree I was outperforming them. It wasn't for several years out in the workforce where I actually started to realize I was actually alright in the intelligence department and I wasn't just fooling everyone (although I still have my doubts some days...). Nowadays, I frequently find myself in disbelief of where I am now, what my career is, what I get paid and what my life is like compared to where I was headed many years ago.

My brother on the other hand was treated like a genius from an early age and was never really forced to work hard. Even when he failed, there was reasoning that he was just too gifted and he was bored and never really had to learn how to truly apply himself or grow. My dad gave him a job and eventually gave him his company when he retired that he ran into the ground. He lived with my parents until he was over 30 and now approaching 50 he still struggles with keeping a job.

I think about the two of us and how we were both led astray by our adults thinking they already knew what we were capable of. What you say about your experience being damaging really resonates to me even if I'm coming from the opposite side of things. I feel like I got extremely lucky that my particular set of experiences even if they were tough to live through allowed me to land on my feet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the mood disorders are causal.

For instance, the largest mood disorder was anxiety. Let me recast anxiety as "overly caring". An anxious person may work 3x as hard at a presentation or an exam.

I don't want to glamorize mental disorders, but I think this might not be a coincidental connection.

<comment><USER18> I'm bipolar, on medication for it. During my manic periods I have unbridled creativity. During my lows I can't bring myself to do much of anything. It's a double edged sword, and one I would never want to willingly give up. The key is learning to recognize and manage your swings to as much of your advantage as you can.

I don't think recognition that there are blessings with every curse is glamorizing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Possible other explanation: People with higher IQ are just more often diagnosed with disorders, e.g. because they are more likely to go to a doctor

<comment><USER20> Flaws in those who are brighter also tend to be more visible, in my experience.

<comment><USER21> Could you elaborate on that?

EDIT: as in, you'd think a brighter person would be better at hiding 'abnormalities'.

<comment><USER20> Try to find examples in real life. Am sure you will see what I mean after checking

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How do intelligent people cope with the thought that we can die at any time and afterwards all existence as you know it comes to an end?

It makes things seem pretty meaningless. Even the top accomplishments that I aspire to do will, at the end of the day, be just a temporary thing.

Add to this the prospect that in 50-100 years everything we do now and build now will be as quaint as people who stiched clothes by hand. It will all be automated so even the jobs we do today are like playing with children's toys.

So what's the point of it all? As I got older, I started feeling all the social experiences and all the rooftop bars and so on are just more of the same. A bit like hearing similar jokes over and over. I still enjoy experiences but in the back of my mind I don't really see the point anymore.

I still really enjoy my work and making progress on it. But that dread is often there, especially during late nights. Especially after I finish a video game and the ending of that game world makes me think of being one level up.

Anyone feel this way? How did you deal with it?

<comment><USER23> I have had life experiences recently (great, great loss) that make me realise and see (quite clearly) that there is no 'point' to things either. Things just are, reality just is (you can do nothing about it, you can only accept it or try to fight against it), and 'purpose' is just meaning we choose to make of it - bullshit stories of our own self-delusion - whether knowingly or not.

It's thrown me into depression (as I'm not used to not being goal-based) and I'm kind of in a big existential limbo right now.

At this point, I'm realising that if there is no purpose in anything, don't live with purpose. Instead, focus on process, and action. Simply accept what is (observe reality), instead of imagining or striving for what isn't, and to me it seems a more logical and successful life, all previous things said.

Be more connected to reality. Simply, existentially focus on that. Reality is different to 'truth', in a way. Reality doesn't involve much thought, or actually any at all.

It's a mindfuck because I just gave a purpose or reason for living this way - but I've articulated the mechanism: don't live with purpose, just live with process. Just do, and yeah read some Eckhart Tolle. And Byron Katie.

And here's a thought: There's no point to anything, so you may as well feel love.

<comment><USER24> I'd highlight that these thoughts did not produce your depression, but your depression produces these thoughts. I end up believing similar perspectives on life when I'm stuck too deep in depression, too. If you want to be happier again, work on the root of your grief. With the help of a professional, at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it possible that the average person has as much exposure to these disorders, however: They are not aware of it. And maybe they weren't as lucky to have it diagnosed.

If smartness is genetical and I'm born with it, then the disorder should have been present from the get go. But for me, these diagnosis only appeared when I got richer: First, I had fewer issues to worry about (like bills or rent to pay). Second, I'm more self-aware.

Imagine you are standing. You have a serious injury bleeding on your left hand. I put a hot metal to your right one. Do you feel the hot metal burn? Nah, you are too distracted by the _serious injury_.

Now if you have no injury, then you feel the burn. Smart people are usually successful financially. It means they don't worry about what other people worry about (rent, bills, food, etc...). So instead they focus on other stuff like does life really make any sense.

That, and this is the first time I hear about Mensa. Maybe I'm not that smart.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a different theory, most cultures tell a kid that has mental issues or is unattractive that he's "smart" even if that isn't the case.because, after all,even with a good body and looks you can only go so far and if your social and emotional intelligence is low that only leaves academic intelligence.

So,my theory is that people prone to developing mental disorders tend to also get encouragement from their parents and community to seek academic intellectual success. I believe 80%(guesstimate) of "IQ" is a result of the individual working out their brain.

<comment><USER27> > _most cultures tell a kid that has mental issues or is unattractive that he > 's "smart" even if that isn't the case_

It's that really true? It doesn't ring true to my experience (which, in general terms, is born in the late 70s in Australia)

<comment><USER26> Sorry,should have said "most cultures that I have been exposed to." I was only speaking from the few cultures I have observed.

Although in some cultures I have seen,academic success and getting certain types of jobs is heavily encouraged by most parents and communities. I have also seen at least some US cultures that encourage extreme athleticism (sports scholarships and all)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Math is a language for describing anthropic systems and perceptions. The brain is neither an anthropic system nor a perception, per se. So naturally, attempting to quantify it would select for eccentricities at either pole.

Researchers say that "superior IQ" also correlates with lower-income and higher achievement, but greater happiness. The question of what IQ actually signifies is a good one.

Maybe we should create some more competing metrics to study...Who knows what the data will find?

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like some of the OEs they mention the article are a contributing factor, but it also seems very likely that people who were aware of their higher IQ are more likely to go to doctors and psychologist, and therefore more likely that any other conditions are also caught. A population with a disproportionate level of observations will yield more results.

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting discussion going on here. One thing I want to add that might serve as a confounding variable of intelligence and genetic disorders is parental age at birth. It has extensively been shown that especially the fathers age is linked to the chance of denovo genetic diseases in his children, due to mutations occuring in the ongoing cell replications. One the other hand older parents tend to have children that are better at school (on average), are more successful in their career etc. and therefore might be more likely to take an IQ test and join Mensa.

</comment><comment><USER23> I identify a lot with the general theme of this article. I've worked out from mindfulness-type observation inside me that most of my intelligence is just cognitive, problem-solving energy powered by massive anxiety complexes, which are the result of intergenerational trauma (of neglect, abandonment and judgement) passed down to me...so, do I keep my intellectual 'gift' yet suffer at the same time, or what? #existential

</comment><comment><USER31> Maybe in a saner world, smart people would be less depressed? It is hard to keep smiling if you know where we're heading.

</comment><comment><USER32> The mental bit is possibly related to Joel Spolsky's

      {smart, not-smart} X {gets things done, doesn't}

analysis [1]

>People who are Smart but don't Get Things Done often have PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical. ...

Also, the ADHD thing of course.

Definitely I'd like to get more done, and for my mind and body to hurt less, even if it costs me some IQ points.

So I experiment with neotropics: cold black coffee in the mornings and magnesium taurate at night for example.

Also interval training of course: swimming 40 x 25 metres on the 1 minute works for me.

Plus sun-bathing for mood when possible.

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla- guid...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guide-to- interviewing-version-30/)

<comment><USER33> I spend most of my time indoors and recently started forcing myself to go out during the day and staying directly under the sun while drinking coffee. It's amazing how much better I've been feeling. Just remember to wear sunscreen!

<comment><USER32> Yeah! It's great for mood isn't it!

>Just remember to wear sunscreen!

I just use extra virgin coconut oil - found a brand that doesn't make my skin go red.

Also, I cover up my face and arms (that get too much sun) and strip off to spread the sun over a larger surface area - need less minutes in the middle of the day to obtain vitamin D quota.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't believe in IQ, I believe in concentration.

<comment><USER35> Not to get all wikifidller on you but _cite_

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Maybe higher anxiety comes from a better understanding of all the potential negative possibilities.

Something like the old saying about "ignorance being bliss".

<edit>On actually reading the article it suggests something like this.</edit>

</comment><comment><USER37> These types of correlations are interesting on the global statistical scale. However, using them to derive conclusions about yourself is pretty meaningless. Assume you scored low on the IQ test (or even high), and the correlation between success and IQ is ~0.65 (not entirely sure what that means, and how is success defined here, but I've read something along those lines). Thats doesn't really yield any strong predictive power, so one should not take it seriously on the individual level.

<comment><USER12> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM) IQ is one the most well defined and predictive test in psychology

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you want to make really smart friends go to weird al concerts.

</comment><comment><USER39> Assuming the association between high IQ and various mental/physical disorders is true (evidence for which has been shown in several scientific studies), there seems to be a simple explanation: the hidden variable is gene networks which are responsible for both effects, which tend to lead to individuals who are on average as phenotypically fit wrt survival/procreation as those with simultaneously lower IQs and lower rates of disorders.

</comment><comment><USER40> I once posted on a message board plagued by an anti-evolution, anti-medicine idiot who bragged of his Mensa membership. So I looked at their website, and there's a test you can take to see if you're smart enough for them. I did the entire half hour test minus two questions while sitting on the toilet for five minutes, with (except for those two questions) a perfect score.

This was not surprising to me.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is why you got to be careful when properly distributing your points. I mean look at Raistlin, he is super powerful and intelligent, but at the cost of his horrible ailments, while his brother is a beast and super strong, but at the cost of being far more simple...

An even distribution is what's needed.

</comment><comment><USER42> My theory is that people with the mental and physical disorders measured in this study are more likely to regularly partake in activities that develop and accentuate traits that are used to measure IQ throughout their lives in order to cope with social exclusion and loneliness, starting from an early age. This social exclusion can come in the form of peer rejection, voluntary solitary withdrawal, or a combination of both.

If you're ugly, depressed, have an anxiety disorder, a personality disorder, or anything else that precludes you from engaging with other people and participating normally in "real life", you're going to spend more time resorting to escapism. If your form of escapism is something that contributes to a marketable skill later in life, and you engage in it from a very early age, then I think that this would correlate with a higher IQ, depending on the tests administered. Things like reading (books or the internet), videogames (certain ones), music, art, math, and programming of course.

</comment><comment><USER43> Everyone points out that the sample may have been biased. Is there anyone willing to say something about the idea from a neurocognitive perspective, and not about the data or method?

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe with some type of mental disorders, the condition may more easily let your brain to think differently to have a higher IQ

</comment><comment><USER45> IQ != intelligence

again...

IQ != intelligence

Reading through the comments I feel this needs to be expounded on. IQ is a barely useful metric in predicting achievement or success.

IMO thought structures and habits of thinking can be much more applicable in reality than a high IQ, leading to higher "intelligence" despite low IQ. See: Richard Feynman, idiosyncratic thinking ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr8sVailoLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr8sVailoLw))

<comment><USER46> _IQ is a barely useful metric in predicting achievement or success._

This has somehow become the standard wisdom, and it's just wrong. IQ is highly predictive of a wide range of outcomes; see for example [https://www.vox.com/2016/5/24/11723182/iq-test- intelligence](https://www.vox.com/2016/5/24/11723182/iq-test-intelligence).

That's just correlation, which could happen even if IQ is really just a function of your socioeconomic environment or other things that are not actual intelligence. Although there is strong evidence that is not the case.

<comment><USER45> Hey, thanks for the information! May be that I am misinformed, let me find out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Anecdotal but holy shit this fits me to a T.

<comment><USER48> These are my (anxious) people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> IQ is like an atom number. The higher ones are more often unstable.

</comment><comment><USER50> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886128)

</comment><comment><USER51> Maybe the problem is in the selection method. Would any intelligent and mentally sane person apply for Mensa membership?

</comment><comment><USER52> Robert Downey Sr's take on Mensa opens this film: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OPgId7RgQ2E](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OPgId7RgQ2E)

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't like this word "Superior". Just say higher.

</comment><comment><USER54> Sadly i only got the bad part of having adhd.

</comment><comment><USER55> [deleted]

<comment><USER56> Saying in 2017 environmental factors play the biggest role in IQ score differences is ridiculous.

<comment><USER57> What? Citation needed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It's just like my RPGs.

</comment><comment><USER59> So, is this "scientifiamerican" a serious publication, or what? I mean, it says that high IQ leads to various good outcomes (a fact that is obvious, well-known and easily explained) and then basically says the opposite because of a...Mensa survey. Like, uh, that's not how you do science. At all. Not at all.

<comment><USER60> You're saying that survey results that are contrary to an obvious truth isn't science? I don't think I understand your concept of science.

Moving past that, the bad outcome found and your obvious good outcomes aren't incompatible. They could be more likely to be successful and suffer from disorders.

<comment><USER59> I'm saying the survey results measure facts related to Mensa members, not people with high IQ overall. The top comments in this same thread point out the exact same problem, but what-the-fuck-ever.

<comment><USER60> Both the article and the study note that this may be exclusive to Mensa. Spelling out how you chose the participants and acknowledging a potential bias is how you do science.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Martin Ford Asks: Will Automation Lead to Economic Collapse? - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/15/martin-ford-asks-will-automation-lead-to-economic-collapse/ <comment><USER3> The idea that automation creates unemployment is ancient, and has been debunked over and over. How is it that people don't at least wonder why cars, manufacturing robots, computers etc. etc, haven't lead to mass systemic unemployment, but future technologies will?

The reason technology doesn't create systemic unemployment is that people don't just shrivel up and die when they lose their job. If someone is replaced with a piece of software they don't just say "oh well, I'm just gonna sit here and starve." They either find a job in a sector that requires minimal training, or they re-train. They have no choice!

The basic premise is this: there is no limit on the amount of work that needs to be done - there is _always_ room for more human labour (either in servicing other humans or creating goods for them, or whatever.) This is just another way of stating Say's Law (Wikipedia link: <http://bit.ly/pvD9Hz>) which is that goods are paid for with other goods. If $x is saved in one area, it just gets pumped into another part of the economy, creating demand/jobs there. The net effect of technological progress is: the same number of people producing more goods and services.

You don't even have to believe me - just look around! this is exactly what's been happening for thousands of years. Technology has never resulted in systemic unemployment - only temporary frictional unemployment as people re- train.

<comment><USER4> As I look around, I see mass, systemic unemployment taking hold.

This ever increasing march of technology may result in more goods being created, but due to the nature of our capitalist society, it tends to pool the capital in those who have capital to begin with.

The huge disparity between the rich and the poor in the US is not due to "technology" but it is not being helped by it either.

Technology creates efficiencies, but there is no natural way for those efficiencies to benefit those whom it puts out of work.

<comment><USER5> "As I look around, I see mass, systemic unemployment taking hold."

Only because we are paying people to not work, and because fair pay is illegal under a certain rate. Consequence is that work worth less than minimum wage cannot, by law, be given to people - and so automation moves in.

Stop paying people to not work and they'll find or make work. (There is a difference between a safety net and making lack of arbitrary wealth illegal.)

And "the poor", for most practical purposes, does not exist in the US. If you are living on more - a lot more - than the world median income, if you are flushing your toilet with drinking water, if you have a TV & car & cell phone & AC & thermostat heating & >1000 sq ft housing & ..., if you have over $1/meal/person/day[1], and etc you're not poor.

[1] - <http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com>

<comment><USER6> You're forgetting that many of the people who have those things you describe can only actually 'afford' them in the US because of cheap credit. If they were to sell all those things at the price they bought them, they would still be in debt, and thus _are_ , in fact, poor.

<comment><USER5> Cheap credit is a luxury. You're ignoring a host of mitigating factors.

If your choice is 850 days of food vs. a TV, and you opt for the TV, you're not poor. (Derived from [1] above.) With over two years of energy literally under your belt, paying off that cheap loan and earning far more, even under adverse conditions, leverages you well outside poverty.

"Poor on paper" is unconvincing, given the opportunity for wise choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's time for the HN Automation Thread Template:

      P: Robots are taking our jobs!
        ~P: No, because of:
          {{ lump_sum_of_labor_fallacy }}
          or
          {{ luddite_fallacy }}
          or
          {{ they've been saying this forever and they've always been wrong }}
           P: {{ various responses; invoke Martin Ford or Marshall Brain }}
             ~P: These guys don't know economics...
               while(1):
                  P: hand wave, generalize from anecdotes,
                     speculate in the absence of empirical evidence
                  ~P: hand wave, generalize from anecdotes,
                      speculate in the absence of empirical evidence

</comment><comment> DanI-S When you think of the phenomenal potential of the human mind to feel, explore and create (at whatever level the individual is capable of) the idea that most of us should spend most of our time doing things we dislike is pretty ridiculous.

My least favourite modern concept is the idea that everyone must have a job, and that the most mind-numbing job is better than any alternative.

The most dull and incapable human is still able to feel joy, wonder and excitement as powerfully as anyone else. Not all of us could spend our technologically-driven retirement writing like Shakespeare, painting like Monet and exploring like Richard Branson, but our average quality of life has a very long way to go.

There's some residual puritanical disgust at the idea of living mostly without work, but it's clearly going to become technologically possible in some number of years. This post-scarcity world is when we're going to really be able to shine as a species, even if our society will be radically restructured in the process. Radical restructuring can be a positive thing - think of how much the life of a woman has changed in the past 100 years.

</comment><comment><USER8> Being a (rational) software developer gives you an interesting edge un understanding this stuff. I've been involved in the automation of a number of things that have directly eliminated the need for human involvement and so it's something I think about often as kind of a modern Loom builder.

It's chilling to think that even if the state of technology would stop today that the level of automation would continue to rise rapidly. Every time I go out of the house I'm struck by the how many humans are not really needed and could be replaced with off the shelf technology that existed several years ago.

I don't think that we need to get to the point of extremely advanced AI before this starts making a dent in the economy.

<comment><USER9> Automation is already cannibalizing the manufacturing sector. Productivity is up yet employment is down dramatically. The assembly line worker is being phased out forever.

Will new jobs in robotics/automation account for the old ones? Not nearly enough. Aside from a few technicians on the shop floor, I think we'll increasingly see robots building and designing other robots. Any humans that will be involved in the process will be highly skilled and able to do so by remote location.

Bottom line: if you're in the manufacturing industry, you're now in the robotics industry.

<comment><USER10> In a sense the age of robotics has arrived in entertainment a long time earlier.

While nearly all machines in manufacturing required human operators until recently, radio and TV are machines that provide their services directly to the end user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From my analysis below, especially on simple math about taxation and the nature of democracy, it seems Martin Ford is wrong.

Suppose that the production of almost everything (clothes, furniture, etc.) and most services is automated to the degree that the process itself costs almost nothing, but still requires raw materials to produce. The scarce factors would be raw materials, energy, and key human resources (product designers, system engineers, roboticists, venture capitalists, etc.). (There will remain certain services that are not automated, but these require only a small fraction of the population to provide.) The main earners would be those key people and the owners of raw materials and energy resources. We can suppose they make up a small fraction of the population. These people will earn huge income and can afford many luxuries of life. Some portions of their income will be taxed and distributed to the mass.

Since much of the production and distribution costs will be eliminated, more and better products/services can be provided. Let's say four times more or better than in the current world. Even though the rest of the population receive only a fraction (say 25%) of the income through governmental distributive scheme, this could be equal to the total amount that the current production creates. In a democratic country, political pressure will mount to distribute enough income for everyone to be fairly satisfied with their material well-being and something like 25% is a rate that the riches will likely accept. Since the riches will comprise a small fraction of the population, they will be pampered in a lot of ways, not unlike in the current world. The key difference is that the middle class and the poor will become one and the same since the jobs of most current middle-class would have been automated away. (We are talking about the economic aspect, there might still be differences among these two classes based on education, family background, for example).

Overall, this would be a world where say 5% of the population designs, analyses, manages, and faciliates automation, 10% provides services that are not yet replaced by automation, 3% owns raw materials, 2% governs, and the rest lives pretty well-off at least for non-competitive products. The 80% might not get to own beach-front properties or products designed exactly to their personal tastes (which require work from good designers), but they will live materially better than most of us now. How they choose to spend free time would be an interesting issue to explore. I am optimistic though that the world where most people are free to pursue their own interests without needing to work on things they don't enjoy will be a better world. I'd love to see this actually happening sooner than later.

In conclusion, if the automation is significant enough to put the majority of the population out of work, it will also likely create such a large surplus that people will be materially better off through reasonable tax rates on the productive workers and capital owners. A caveat that might ruin this utopian scenario is in the case we and supercomputers in the future cannot find a way to live sustainably given the raw materials and energy resources we have access to from this earth (or other planets).

</comment><comment> mkr-hn I had to get this into an essay a while back to clarify my views on it: [http://bitoftech.mkronline.com/2011/08/05/the-information- ag...](http://bitoftech.mkronline.com/2011/08/05/the-information-ages-mid- life-crisis/)

The short version is that once we automate away all the manual labor, our cultural, economic, and educational priorities will shift to creative work and curating civilization's creative output.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a question of wealth distribution. Jobs have traditionally been a relatively fair way of doing this. I put in effort to produce something in the economy, my effort is acknowledged through some money, and I can trade that in for the fruits of some of your labor.

The question in the article is phrased as "what about when people can't find jobs?" However, when we get to that point, perhaps the question should in fact be "what about when people don't need to find jobs."

If automation and technology in general continues to increase like this, at some point we should be able to produce the equivalent of today's standard of living with very little human input. Hence, our current framework that incentivizes everyone to work becomes less necessary.

Should people be rewarded with a comfortable standard of living simply for being human, even if they don't _do_ anything, in such a scenario? I tend to think yes.

Here's my proposal: We implement a Basic Income Guarantee as a fraction of GDP. It can be so small as to be negligible right now, but as human capacity to produce increases, everyone reaps the rewards.

When we're so technically proficient that the Basic Income Guarantee is enough to sustain yourself with a meager lifestyle, some may just not work and live on it. Lucky them, for living in such an era, but that's something of a reward that humans could have earned through increasing technology.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if it would be healthy for the individuals and the society. Maybe the problem is not how to keep people alive and well, but putting them to do _productive_ work. So I find the proposed solution of creating _phony_ jobs backwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article makes an interesting, but flawed point: _The US is freaking out simply at the mention of socialized healthcare, socialized work would be dead on arrival...Ford's solution requires that the wealthy consent to (or that the public impose) increased taxes to avoid economic ruin._

The flaw is the assumption that taxes would need to be increased. In the hypothetical world being described, humans have been more or less completely replaced by robots. This is a world of staggeringly high productivity.

It's likely that in such a world tax rates could be extremely low, and nevertheless the "virtual jobs" could provide enough revenue for all the virtual job holders to have very high standards of living.

Similarly, the 2011 USA could easily provide large numbers of people with a 1911 standard of living even if tax rates were much lower than they are today.

</comment><comment><USER15> Possibly but economic collapse might be necessary to rebalance our economy and society to accommodate the newly freed labor. The labor force freed up from factory work needs to be redistributed to some other industry; not necessarily directly. We still educate people to be human robots but now we have real robots so we don't need people for factory work anymore. What we need are innovative and creative people for the cultural revolution. Ideally it would be nice if this transition didn't require economic collapse but our society is reactive not proactive.

<comment><USER16> The point of the book is that the jobs that are likely to disappear next are at the top end of the economic spectrum rather then the bottom. Think Radiologists who will probably be replaced by software within a decade as opposed to nurses who actually work with humans and are much harder to replace.

<comment><USER17> Interesting then that the Wikipedia article on Radiology says:

"The field is rapidly expanding due to advances in computer technology"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiology>

So it sounds like technology is allowing them to do more things better rather than simply replacing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's time that this book is being discussed more here on HN. A lot of topics show up from time to time which discuss aspects of Ford's thesis. Typically people who react in the affirmative that there is a problem are being dismissed as neo luddites. Everyone who read Ford's book knows that it's not that easy.

Even if this book is wrong, and I haven't found any good rebuttals, it's important that as many smart people and current and future employers are aware of the line of argument so that they can add the effect to their thinking patterns.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been wondering how we ended up having relatively low unemployment at all, and have come up with a theory: it is because of automatic population control. When people have good jobs, they tend to have more children. These children are being born into a reasonably good economy. Sure, sometimes entire job sectors broke away, but they average out (people in all job sectors do the population control thing).

This could stop working in the future, because technological cycles become so much shorter - much shorter than the change of human generations. Therefore the reaction time of human birth cycles is too slow.

Also, in some countries social wellfare is messing with it.

Think about from the other direction: would the world support an arbitrary number of humans? If 10 billion more humans would be dumped on earth tomorrow, would we find jobs for them? I think we would struggle at least a bit.

I think the job of the future might be playing characters in MMORPGs. When all physical needs are taken care of, people might resort to just playing games. However, it will be entirely voluntary to offer jobs to people - <USER2> certainly is no guarantee.

I used to be more optimistic because I thought the masses would stage a revolt if their situation would become too bad. But I forgot that the rich will probably also build fighting robots (self-shooting guns for building protection are the first stage). So the masses might not have a chance anymore.

</comment><comment><USER19> Imagine that you bought a robot that, using no energy and no raw materials, could produce all the shoes needed in the world, out of thin air. What price could you ask for those shoes? Also imagine that your neighbor could buy the same robot for the same price you paid it, let's say the equivalent of 1,000 times the price you wanted to sell your shoes at. What would happen?

Robots don't get paid for their "work"; it's their owners and their operators that get the money. Moreover, robots don't vote, but workers do. Between (imperfect) market competition and (imperfect) democracy, goods that are created with very little human work and that aren't very rare will always command very little prices compared to work-intensive goods, if the system is given enough time to adapt.

So we could end up in a world where one massage by a (human) masseuse will be worth 1,000 shoes. That wouldn't be such a big problem. The real issue is how fast we get there: People need time to adapt, to retrain, to give different relative values to different things.

What is really disrupting is a change that is too fast. But in the long run, even if we'll all be dead, as Keynes said, it won't be automation that will create world misery. On the other hand it could be a lack of energy to power all those automatons, or of raw materials to build them, or of storage to put away all the wastes they create...

</comment><comment><USER20> Econ 101 says "Incentives matter." In this case, if we remove the incentives to pursue careers in fields capable of being automatized (through automation), we will see a rise in demand for and pursuit of careers not easily changed.

For instance, you might see less traditional blue collar workers and more "robot maintenance" workers responsible for performing diagnostics and repair on malfunctioning automatons. You would also see an increase in the number of software engineers writing robot control software, not only out of demand, but also as a fail safe to keep humans in the loop.

The economy wouldn't collapse, it would shift and adjust.

</comment><comment><USER21> Markets (and jobs) are driven by scarcity: I have something that you want. We trade something or another so that you can have it.

This does not imply that I have something of tremendous value, or that is necessary for you to stay alive, or that is cherished by all. Simply that you want it, and I have it. It doesn't even have to be a tangible thing.

One of many huge philosophical problems I had with Star Trek: The Next Generation was a future that was imagined without money. Best I could figure, the idea being that once we reach some level, scarcity is no longer relevant.

This is ludicrous. Or, if it's not ludicrous, it supposes that we will reach some state that has never before existed in any complex market system that we've ever explored: a state of zero leverage. That is, even in a world where you can snap your fingers and get anything, people are going to value those who can think up the coolest things to make, right? In any world you can imagine, there are always trades to make. That is, there are always markets. To imagine otherwise would be to imagine a state of human existence that is perpetually happy and never wants anything novel. Does that exist outside of drug abusers and stagnant societies? Would we even wish such a life on our progeny?

I wouldn't.

Don't get me wrong: I think we have many hurdles ahead, and the road is going to get bumpy. In my future, mankind creates a new set of morals around what it means to be human. Do I really want my every thought shared with the collective? Every piece of data about my life to be available to everyone? Fuck that noise. But to each his own. I think this decision about the role of technology in our lives is going to be the turning point. Note that I'm all for trans-humanism: bring on the nanotech and augmented bodies. Just never take away my identity and value my own existence independently as something worthwhile to all of us. We need billions of independently-acting free agents. Not one hive mind.

But worst of all for this libertarian was where we ended up with in this article: the same old bullshit of "Find a problem. Find an academic. Describe the problem. Exaggerate a bit. Suggest some master plan for salvation." I have seen this pattern of article so many times somebody needs to come up with a name for it.

 _...we should take money from automating industries to fund a state guided program that gives money to consumers in exchange for working at bettering themselves. Sounds like a decent plan. Never gonna happen...._

Underline: we do not know how all of this is going to turn out. The entire purpose of writing books like he has (and writing comments like I am) is to _explore the problem_ , not get magic wands out and speculate on solutions. I don't think we're anywhere near understanding what the problems are, much less coming up with centralized systems for fixing them. And this is true in a lot more areas that futuristic fear-mongering. It's wonderful that he took the time to come up with some kind of socialized fix for a particular imagined future-world, but the fix is a little bit too predictable for me [insert long, drawn-out argument over the problems with these kinds of fixes]. I wish he would have just left it off.

<comment><USER22> In _Voyage from Yesteryear_ , the author (James P. Hogan) describes a post- scarcity society. Quote from a summary of the book:

 _Since the availability of power from fusion reactors and cheap automated labor has enabled them to develop a post-scarcity economy, they do not use money as a means of exchange, nor do they recognize material possessions as symbols of status. Instead, competence and talent are considered symbolic of one's social standing – resources that cannot be counterfeited or hoarded, and must be put to use if they are to be acknowledged. As a result, the competitive drive that fuels capitalist financial systems has filled the colony with the products of decades of incredible artistic and technical talent, and there are no widespread hierarchies. No one person or group of people can know everything, so no one person or group of people is expected to speak for all. They have no centralized authorities; some would say they have no government at all._

<comment><USER21> Ouch. Did this author ever watch a gaggle of teenage girls purchase things? "competence and talent" have very little to do with it.

That's why I mentioned the importance of not becoming a hive mind -- much purchasing (and trading) is done as the result of social pressure, not some futuristic idea of a meritocracy or even need. In the real world, with real people, if we don't keep our minds separate, we'll end up in this huge common mind where each little whim is judged socially, promoted socially, then manufacturing and trading decisions are made for everybody at one time, then on to the next thing. But even then, even in that terribly-imagined future, immediacy becomes a tradeable commodity. You just can't get away from trading.

Quite frankly, it's easy for somebody who fancies themselves an expert (and even I fit this category by pontificating here) to imagine some type of meritocracy, usually with their own values as universal. Plato started it, so he's in good company. But this is foolish in the extreme -- it assumes some ultimate value system shared by all mankind, it assumes some metric for that value system, and it assumes each individual would evaluate that metric the same way at all times. This is just too much. Way too much. If anything, if we continue to interconnect, it'll be social proof all the way down. Creativity and competence will have nothing to do with anything.

At some point, no matter who you are, you need to expose yourself and your ideas to those outside your little clique. Hence the importance of continuing to discuss these types of problems. These ideas strike me as highly provincial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Count me in the boat that says thinking about this now is too little, too late. Will automation lead to economic collapse? What do you think led to the present economic collapse? The economy as a whole has bounced back, like it does. Why can't the people who were laid off find jobs?

You hear a lot of talk about welfare "paying people not to work"— I think that neglects the fact that, in the United States, jobs _are_ welfare. The farmer who "grows" your corn gets paid to sit in an automated combine all day doing nothing. The factory worker gets paid to watch the robots all day to make sure they're doing it right, and most of the time, they are. Even the computerized desk jobs which are supposed to be the manual labor of our era: how many times have you worked with someone whose job was to sit there all day copying rows from one Excel sheet into another? How many times have you, as a programmer, written a ten-line perl script which makes an entire division obsolete, and watched as that division is tasked with the new job of running the perl script?

There isn't going to _be_ another revolution; we're only incremental steps away from these people having literally nothing to do. The farmer isn't going to get a job designing combines. The factory worker isn't going to get a job designing robots. The old lady in the office is never going to learn Perl, and _no one_ is going to get a job flipping burgers or washing dishes or stocking shelves.

They're going to go on welfare, or, if we haven't got our heads out of our asses by then, they are going to starve to death.

<comment><USER10> Your perspective might benefit from looking at the situation in other countries.

<comment><USER23> Unless there's a country where widespread automation has effectively replaced all forms of physical labor, I'm not sure what you mean. Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER10> I was responding to "The economy as a whole has bounced back, like it does. Why can't the people who were laid off find jobs?"

There are other countries that also had a recession recently and don't have such an unemployment problem, now. And there other episodes with long lasting unemployed in other countries, too, without technology being to blame in the way your post did.

So I don't think the current level of unemployment in the US says much about technology.

Your argument about jobs being welfare is independent of that. I recommend getting some hard data to see how prevalent that is.

So we do have enough resources to provide those goods right now. And if technology marches on, like we are speculating here, it will take less of an effort by the remaining tax payers. So it should be doable even with US levels of taxation.

You would need to reorganize your public spending to make it much more efficient, though.

(And I don't really think that level of welfare is necessary anyway, because unemployment won't reach 80%.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious but would not the move to automated factories in the long term negate any cost benefit of making it in China and move the emphasis to cost of transportation, energy and materials ?

With the rapid increase of wages in china and move towards more automation there if automation is bad for the west imagine the havoc it will cause in china.

<comment><USER25> When Chinese labor becomes too expensive, (some of) it will be outsourced to Africa. Chinese economy seems to be in pretty good shape for this, but political instability could ruin it.

Jobs moved to China are likely to be lost forever. Automation is still far from autonomous: some human interaction is required.

Factory automation was a trend long before China become "capitalist". If other costs are more important for some indistry, they wouldn't move to China in the first place. Besides, for most production transportation costs using container ships are neglible.

<comment><USER24> That's a theory I see a lot of people having but I'm not sure it will happen. Africa does not have the stable governance of Asia nor the infrastructure to support the rapid industrialization that China went through.

When it comes to transportation cost it would depend on oil prices going forward.

<comment><USER25> I would guess that China will provide infrastructure to some african countries in exchange for raw materials. Political stability will also improve as China will support the regimes regardless of lack of democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > The US is freaking out simply at the mention of socialized healthcare

Mass media and ensurance companies certainly are, But i don't think the majority of population is. Besides, US is not the whole world yet, and the book, afaiu, talks about the global economy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Our ability to overproduce seems nothing compared to our ability to overspend. The great dilemma of our time lies in the debt relationships between us and the ability to re-balance them of which automation might play a role.

<comment><USER10> > The great dilemma of our time [...]

... in parts of the rich world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My theory is:

\- In 20 years, 80% of the people in will be kept alive by welfare, supplemented by their hourly job. Enough to get a small apartment, utilities, cell phone, cheap but unhealthy food, and shopping at the dollar store. And free tv/movie/music/book/sports entertainment via the internet.

\- 15% will be the middlemen, extracting value from the others via service or thievery. They will be the new middle class. They can afford the sometimes luxury.

\- the other 5.5% will be specialized knowledge workers. They will be the one maintaining the software/hardware to make sure nothing goes wrong. They can afford lots of luxury, but will be taxed heavily, as they are the only workhorse left in the society.

\- 0.1% will be entertainers. They will make sure that people are entertained well enough not to riot.

\- and the 0.4% will rule everyone.

<comment><USER10> I'd guess that the material welfare of the 80% will be far better than what you described. Just their access to positional goods (e.g. social status,sea front property) that is good where being better than somebody else is part of their allure, will be scarce for them.

<comment><USER28> I would say that's too optimistic. What I am describing of the 80% is simply what is going on with the unemployed/underemployed (~16% today), the people on food stamps (12% today) and the retired collecting SS without savings (~3% today). I don't see why in 20 years, these people would have their welfare increased to such a level that they can live a middle class life (a house, nice car, good school for their kids, money to travel, visit to good restaurants)

Unless you're saying the 80% kidnaps the government and made the rich and the middle class give them more money. Which I can't see without massive civil upheavel and the population reduction of those 80%.

<comment><USER10> If, and that's a big if, you aren't a spendthrift you can live relatively comfortably on European levels of welfare. That means living in a modern apartment, car that gets you there (or public transport, which is actually feasible in Europe), some travel. Schooling is provided by the government mostly, and good schooling is not that much more costly to provide than bad schooling. Move to Finland or Sweden, if that's your priority.

The food in good restaurants is not really better than in adequate restaurants. Visiting a fancy restaurant is more of a positional good to show and enjoy your social status.

Oh, and before I forget: Those central and northern Europeans countries are not the countries that are currently in agonizing debt.

<comment><USER28> Most European countries (just like the US) have been living beyond their means, so I only could see a decreasing living standard from here on out. Look at what happened to inner cities London as a precursor to most European cities.

As for the few rich central/northern European countries, I do agree that those on welfare will live nicely compared to anywhere else in the world. Sadly, its quite hard for normal people to emigrate to those countries. And they won't be immune to the collapse if they keep propping up the other failing countries.

I would say the fancy food phenomenon is only specific to US; good food can be found anywhere in Asia and Europe. In US, the difference would be between Denny's and a michelin starred restaurant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I like the "virtual jobs" concept mentioned here. I recently wrote a post addressing this issue as an urgent matter.

[http://blog.stacktrace.com/2011/08/16/end-of-employment- eter...](http://blog.stacktrace.com/2011/08/16/end-of-employment- eternal-20-percent-unemployment/)

</comment><comment><USER30> "Will MDA lead to the obsolescence of programmers?"

20 years later, I'm still waiting for an "MDA analyst" to put me out of a job.</comment>


Why do the websites bother to show cookie warnings if europa.eu does not? - <AUTHOR> It may be a bit of a rhetorical question, but the regulatory body does set an example, so how come the others do not follow? <comment><USER2> Cookie warnings aren't a part of GDPR regulations but rather the ePrivacy regulation, which will come into force in 2019. So, as of today you don't have to show these.

However, europa.eu and ec.europa.eu overall are among the least GDPR-compliant sites I've come across.

Interestingly though, GDPR doesn't apply to regulatory bodies or authorities in general, for that matter.

All you could - quite reasonably so - indeed ask of them is to lead by example, which they apparently have chosen not to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is a easy feature for companies to implemented that feels like they made something new and important :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Because the regulatory body can't get fined

</comment><comment><USER5> maybe they are the only ones who understand their laws

</comment><comment><USER6> Is europa.eu setting any cookies?</comment>


Skype founders gunning for Netflix with Vdio - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/video/skype-founders-new-startup-vdio/

<comment><USER2> Hopefully this will do a lot better than their last attempt at video, joost, which turned out to be a complete failure.

[http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&i...](http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=joost+failure)

</comment><comment><USER3> As long as it can help beat the content providers more quickly into their only ultimately tenable position (all content available online, from one service or another), I'm all for it.

To be honest, I don't even care about price that much at this point in history. The fact that there are lots of movies and shows (Game of Thrones, anyone?) that are not digitally available _at all_ is absurd.

Having more competing VOD services negotiating with providers can only make things better.

</comment><comment><USER4> This could be an optimal moment for a Netflix competitor to step in given Netflix's recent issues.

Vdio will probably have the same content licensing and windowing issues. Not an easy hurdle to overcome.

<comment><USER5> If MSFT are backing them they $=infinity money to buy content.

MSFT is a little scared that Apple and Google will own all online content.

If MSFT can persuade Hollywood that Google is an evil monopolist and they are better helping a young MSFT upstart then they may get more content more easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a horrible name, trying to tell someone about the site would prove to be difficult.

<comment><USER7> I do think that's a valid concern. Whenever I recommend Rdio to people, I'm never sure how to say it. I usually say "R D O" but sometimes I think maybe it's "radio" or "Erdio".

<comment><USER8> R-dee-o.

Love the service, but I was confused about how to pronounce it for the first few months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an rdio subscriber, a streaming video service that offered some sort of integration with rdio would be pretty interesting. A single subscription plan that would allow for unlimited streaming of music AND movies could be huge.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure that content producers want to be involved in an upstart by the founders of the filesharing network Kazaa.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this and Rdio somehow related?

<comment><USER12> GigaOm now has a confirmation[1] with a short Q&A that says "VDIO and Rdio are run by separate teams".

[1] <http://gigaom.com/video/vdio-janus-friis/></comment></comment>


Wolfram Alpha Fails the Cool Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/wolframalpha-fails-the-cool-test/

<comment><USER2> So something new comes up, and people just want to beat it to the ground, over and over. I guess that's the only thing that sells, lately ¬_¬

</comment><comment><USER3> i'm getting a little tired of these types of articles. apples and oranges, people.</comment>


Kepler space telescope finds 1,091 new exoplanet candidates - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/29/kepler-data-dump

<comment><USER2> Kepler is the most exciting mission that exists anywhere right now. We've always assumed that there might be lots of Earth-like planets, but here's our _proof_ that the galaxy is littered with them.

However...

> In Barack Obama's proposed 2013 budget for Nasa, the president would cut > Kepler's funding from $19.6 million to $13.6 million next year, then cut > cash to the space telescope entirely from 2014.

Not okay. We need to fix this, asap.

<comment><USER3> Here's what I don't understand. How are scientific projects constantly having funding crises? The set of people who are most interested in seeing Kepler, JWST, etc. succeed strongly overlaps the set of people who have the sort of money needed to make these projects be successful without even significantly impacting their life style.

Asking as a stereotypically poor college student - why do these projects not have nontrivial amounts of "private" (not for-profit, just "private") funding?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _So what's causing this trend towards smaller, slower stars?

For a telescope in our solar system to see an exoplanet in transit, the planet's orbit must be lined up edgewise to us. "The probability for an orbit to be properly aligned is equal to the diameter of the star divided by the diameter of the orbit," a spokesperson for Nasa, explains. ... Kepler's looking at thousands of stars, but because big planets are more likely to be found, they're going to come up early in the data._

They didn't get that quite right. While it's true that the transit probability is greater for large planets and that we'll find more of them, that doesn't explain a _fractional_ increase in planets far from the star with time.

It's simpler. Planets far from the star take longer to go around. To confirm a transit and calculate the period, you need at least two, so the experiment must have gone on long enough for the planet to go around at least once. The long-periodicity planets are just beginning to show up because of this.

<comment><USER5> And we may have to wait even longer for the super long periodicity planets - for example, Neptune just finished its first orbit since discovery - in 2010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was a lady from SETI on All Things Considered last night talking about how they are pointing their scopes at some of these planets, pretty cool stuff!

[http://www.npr.org/2012/02/28/147590627/seti-site-up- again-a...](http://www.npr.org/2012/02/28/147590627/seti-site-up-again-and- searching-for-intelligent-life)

</comment><comment><USER7> Needs to be privatized and then we can keep Kepler up and get James Webb launched.

<comment><USER8> Privatized? What revenue model do you propose for making a profit finding extrasolar planets?

<comment><USER9> To be fair, nearly all ground-based observatories in the US are privately owned and operated. (Actually, they're almost all owned and operated by those evil corporations!) Most of the money that funds these observatories ultimately comes from the federal government, of course, but the fact that they're privately run gives them a great deal more flexibility than NASA-run observatories get. Although space-based observatories are generally more expensive than ground-based observatories, there are privately owned ground- based observatories being built of comparable size to Kepler.

<comment><USER4> Those evil corporations, though, are basically non-profits whose sole purpose is to manage the facilities.

For example: <http://www.aura-astronomy.org/about.asp>

"AURA is a consortium of universities, and educational and other non-profit institutions, that operates world-class astronomical observatories."

and <http://www.keckobservatory.org/>:

"The Keck Observatory is managed by the California Association for Research in Astronomy, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization whose board of directors includes representatives from Caltech and the University of California."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wiki-Watch: Geo-Located Wikipedia Articles for the Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> http://www.wiki-watch.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, author here. Initially, Wiki-Watch only allowed users to search for articles using their voice. I got some great feedback and made the app focus on geo-locating articles. This way whenever you're in a new area you can just touch "nearby" on your Apple Watch and see articles about places around you.</comment>


Ask YC: Hacking, Is it unethical to emulate others designs? - <AUTHOR>

I had to build a bespoke shopping cart, I looked about as to who was doing it right and loved the style of the etsy.com cart, thus I emulated their style, is this unethical in your opinion?<p>Here are the guilty results: http://www.vin-bio-vin-biologique.fr <comment><USER2> I think it's fine to get inspiration as long as you aren't stealing. I modeled mine after amazon. I'm not a guru designer and I took what I liked from about five sites total to create my mashup. Take the ideas/elements you like and make them your own somehow. People will appreciate the originality also.

</comment><comment><USER3> my first mockup takes inspiration from <http://last.fm> and <http://digg.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> Great artists steal.</comment>


Can some people critique my new service? - <AUTHOR>

This new service uses a passive alert system in order to alert people's emergency contacts when something bad may have happened. It's also coupled to a light blue force tracking system (using phones/apps), and is being tied into facebook for check-in purposes. it's at persn.com <comment><AUTHOR> btw there is a public test user i've made: U: email@example.com P: testcase010175</comment>


Ask HN: What config management system are you using and what are its pros/cons? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> We use Ansible because it's simple to write recipes (they are just YAML files) and simple to deploy (you just need a working SSH setup and you don't need a master server). We were reluctant to automate our devops with Chef and Puppet. Discovering Ansible was a relief.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We use chef currently but some of the new devops team have more experience with puppet, so looking for suggestions about how much success people are having with either (or others).

</comment><comment><USER3> Ansible. Easy to use, no client installation required.</comment>


Bart employee salaries CSV - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mariusz360/bart-salaries/blob/master/salaries.csv <comment><USER2> Wow, some of these public servants make as much money as a 19 year old college dropout in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER3> Did you mean the high end, or the low end?

A college dropout can make a killing in Silicon Valley, if they are also: _a talented software developer._

OTOH, some of the other dropouts might end up working as BART train operators, who seem to make between 12 and 15k/yr, which is likely for full time, in a city where it costs about 1/4 of that just to scrape by on a monthly basis.

It is not right to employ people at a wage that they cannot possibly subsist on. These people all ended up as bart train operators for one reason or another. Maybe they were lazy. Maybe they got shafted in life. Maybe they're dumb. But does that mean they should be paid a substandard living wage? No.

Meanwhile the luckier, more industrious, or combination thereof, are making over 10x the amount of the lowest paid workers.

Min wage needs to be raised, a lot. Look at Australia.

<comment><USER4> Did you look at these numbers? Where do you think minimum wage applies here?

<comment><USER3> Yes, I actually looked quite thoroughly.

It applies in that the minimum wage is too low, so the bottom end of the workers have an extraordinarily unfair salary, in spite of the fact that they probably work 40+ hour weeks driving subway trains.

I have made a histogram to illustrate this problem: [http://pastie.org/8106373](http://pastie.org/8106373)

You can see from the data that the highest paid worker makes at least 25x the amount of the lowest paid worker.

This is not what I'd call fair. To be clear, it's not just the BART. We could do this with salary data from any municipality or corporation in the US.

I am operating on the assumption that many of the "train operators" are full time workers, which is not indicated in the data. I'd say it's a fairly good bet, though.

That is easily one of the most hazardous and unpleasant jobs, yet they are paid dirt. See, it doesn't matter how hard you work in our society. You can dig the dirtiest hole every day, sweat, and bleed, and you will be rewarded with a substandard wage. Instead, we reward the things that propel us forward, which does make sense: anyone can dig a hole. The problem is that not everyone has equal access to the means to acquire the skills which are so jealously rewarded. Yet, they do everything right anyway, work hard, and this is what they get. A 25x lower paying job than the highest paid executive.

We can fix this by _raising the minimum wage_ to something fair. Australia has theirs at around $16 USD.

<comment><USER4> Sorry. I didn't mean to be rude.

Some titles have PT in them. i assume this means part time.

If there were a large number of full time workers earning around minimum wage, I would expect to see a lot of salaries around 20k p/a. Only ~1% of total compensations are between $17-$23k and they all have job titles that can be found above and bell that band. About half have PT in the title and I assume others are something else other than full time.

Anyone above that band wouldn't be impacted by an increase in minimum wage. Anyone below that band is part time and may be earning near minimum wage, but most probably aren't.

I don't have a problem with minimum wages. But, it don't look like an increase would impact here anyway.

<comment><USER3> I will adjust my script to incorporate PT and repost asap!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why this state is in such precarious financial situations. Poorly managed over-time, resulting in excessive salary payouts, which ultimately accrues into pension liabilities.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow. Lesson number one from this list is that if you want to make a boatload working for the government, be a cop. Aside from top administrators, the top ranks of the list are dominated by regular transit cops.

Usually the very, very generous retirement benefits drive high police compensation. Well paid overtime helps, too.

<comment><USER5> In San Francisco, SFPD can retire with 30% of their average 3 year salary after just 10 years on the job AND 55 years of age. Usually, this is around 100k for a 10 year veteran of the force. So, if one starts at SFPD at age 45, one can retire with about $33k per year at 55. There is also a COLA adjustment per year. Average life span for a male is around 76 years. The pension benefit ALONE is worth about $700k not including the COLA adjustment.

People wonder why this state and municipalities are SCREWED, and they wonder why several cities have filed bankruptcy or have skirted bankruptcy. This is PART, a BIG PART, of the reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It'd have been nice to anonymize this data. I know it's publicly available but we should respect people's privacy. I don't think having people's name adds anything interesting to this data set.

<comment><USER8> In general, I'd agree. However, considering the collective action the union has taken disrupting a vital service, I think they forfeit a bit of privacy in this case. They are public servants who are holding the public hostage.

<comment><USER9> They are not "public servants" they are humans who took a job that happens to be under a unionized collective bargaining agreement. Many of these people may not care about the union, and are just happy to have a job. They are not in a place to affect change in the way the union operates or negotiates and shouldn't have anti-union stigma placed on them or be the target of public reprisals.

Have some respect for people that just want to earn an honest salary and do good work at a job which puts them in daily contact with the entire spectrum of the human experience. They simply want to maintain a level of compensation that they have negotiated for, and that, frankly, every other worker should also be demanding from their employers, but cannot due to the erosion of union effectiveness and trust over the last 50 years.

<comment><USER10> They voted to strike. And yes, they assuredly are "public servants." It used to be that in exchange for working for the public and taking a lower salary, you'd be cushioned and shielded from recessions, in exchange for more stability.

Now, public workers are better compensated than the private sector and still maintain guarantees for their jobs.

So which is it? Because the way I and many other Californians see it, our state is in such dire straits because unions have squeezed the public dry, run up huge deficits to fund ridiculous pension plans, and haven't done anything beyond baseline to help the People.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a google spreadsheet quickly thrown together: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsoY_yr0BJCVdHF...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsoY_yr0BJCVdHFRc0VxV2hhX1JqRk1ORnZjLXM4MkE&usp=sharing)

Pivot table is grouped by Subtitle/Job title

Chart is ordered by base salary descending, but doesn't show the lower base salaries, so don't freak on those.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting. How come there are a bunch of people with $0 base salary ? Are those contractors, interns ? Also, some of those low-base employees seem to have very high employer contributions to medical/dental/vision plans. How does that work ?

<comment><USER13> Perhaps they're hourly.

<comment><USER14> I believe almost all of the employees on this list are hourly. To pick a semi- random example from the list, a "train operator" with $60,257 in "salary" and $55,453 in overtime is not a "salaried" employee like most of the people on HN are used to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is just mean. Why don't you put your own name and salary up there for us to see, mariusz331?

Whether your employer is the government or a private entity and whether or not you participate in a strike you don't deserve to have your financial data exposed.

<comment><USER14> I support public employees, public employee unions, and the right of those employees/unions to strike. I also do not believe most of these salaries and other compensation are outrageous.

But I also support complete transparency in government. Ultimately, _we_ are their employer, and we have a right to know how much we're paying them. I know this will sometimes have negative consequences for the employees, but this is a balancing of interests, and in the end, I believe we're all better served by this.

We would be better served still, however, if we knew exactly how these numbers came to be, because some of them are very strange. I'm guessing we could eventually figure most of it out with sufficient research, but ideally a subject matter expert would come forward and save us some time by explaining it.

<comment><USER16> Why would you support public sector unions? They face a very different dynamic than ones faced in the private sector. Here's a good write up: [http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy- review/article/432...](http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy- review/article/43266)

<comment><USER14> The parts of that article I don't believe are factually incorrect are parts I fundamentally disagree with.

Trying to convince me public sector unions are bad by linking me to a conservative think tank rattling off a list of things public employees fight for/against is a bad idea. I fight for/against _the exact same things_.

So the answer to your question is, I'm a bleeding heart pinko commie bastard, that's why. Have a glass of vodka, comrade.

<comment><USER17> Thats the strategy, divide and conquer, make the private sector hate the public sector, make the nonunion workers hate the union workers, etc. As soon as they have enough haters to form a critical mass, the hated group gets shit on and they repeat the process with the next group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone define what the headers are to actually understand what is compensation and what are benefits private sector workers don't necessary think about as comp (e.g. health insurance)?

I realize that: OT = overtime MDV = medical, dental, vision

But what is ER, EE, and DC?

</comment><comment><USER19> I think pension entitlements would be an even more interesting file. These seem to be the expenditures that are crippling a lot of municipalities.</comment>