I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too - <AUTHOR> https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/dot-com-bust-programmer <comment><USER2> I started during the 2008 recession. I think the people who hurt the most back then were the people who'd just attended 6 week Ruby on Rails bootcamps and gotten 70k/year jobs (which was a cliche at the time). Suddenly, that was no longer realistic.

And even among them, the passionate people found a way. I got into tech with no education during the recession just on psychotic passion alone. I was working at <physical job> but hacking all night. Eventually I convinced someone to hire me as a sysadmin and it was game on.

I intuit that if you are insanely dedicated enough the universe has a weird appreciation for that kind of thing, and eventually throws you a bone. I know it's wrong and irrational but everytime I've tried that it's worked, so there's some anecdotal personal truth.

Conversely, the (completely respectable and valid) 'I just need a solid way to provide' people get fucked the hardest every time. Cosmic irony.

Maybe there's some real psychology behind it though. Doing something for practical necessity is a weaker motivation than personal obsession. According to the Overjustification Effect, extrinsic rewards harm intrinsic motivation ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)).

Meh, who knows. I know some people hiring Python devs in Mexico if anyone is hurting and lives here.

<comment><USER3> " I intuit that if you are insanely dedicated enough the universe has a weird appreciation for that kind of thing, and eventually throws you a bone. I know it's wrong and irrational but everytime I've tried that it's worked"

Also known as survivorship bias.

<comment><USER4> Or rather the old adege of:

"The luck favors the prepared"

<comment><USER5> People just remember that there are no guarantees. Dedication and hard work help a lot but you may still fail.

<comment><USER6> It's so hard to know when to give up on something you're dedicated to when it has high pay off but a moderately low chance of success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the age of RSUs, graduating in the middle of a recession is financially incredible IF you managed to get the job before all the hiring freezes AND it is at one of the publicly traded big N companies with good trade volume. Your RSU price is lower, you get more stock units for the same dollar amount at the time of joining in your initial grant (arguably much more important than refreshers).

I have a friend who recently got his MSFT joining RSUs at $130 a few weeks ago.

<comment><USER8> Don't count your chickens before they vest, in 6 months somebody might be getting them at $90

<comment><USER7> It's advisable to hold your RSUs for at least one year for a favourable tax treatment, so the 33% discount he got is still very good; he's likely not going to sell his RSUs in six months.

He got the offer and decided on his start date way back in August of last year so any luck he happens by is good luck. He could've chosen to be luckier if the stock price goes down further, but I'd say this is pretty lucky as it is already for something he can't control.

Edit: ignore the tax part, I think I'm wrong there.

<comment><USER9> Isn't the favorable tax treatment only on the appreciation from the vest price?

<comment><USER7> Ah I'm not too sure. That might be the case.

<comment><USER10> RSU is taxed at vest, exactly like cash bonus for tax purposes. If you sell it immediately, it's _really_ exactly like cash.

<comment><USER11> And you can't offset your capital losses with RSU vesting, _really really exactly_ like cash haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Programming for the web is my primary career. I first got into it late 1997. I am astonished at how incompetent it is. The fact the OP made a career out of it and made some money is hardly amazing. For the level of talent required contrasted against the average compensation I am surprised not everybody is trying it. You too could be earning 6 figures in a low cost of living economy after completing a boot camp and 2 years experience not being any good.

Don't really know how to do your job? No problem. After 30 years web technology standards have largely solidified and cross browser concerns are no longer noticeable. If you work on the front end a large framework and 10000 NPM packages can be pushed into a website to do all the heavy lifting. If that's not enough jQuery is still a thing. If that's still not enough the business will simply hire additional bodies to fill the gaps of accessibility and any original problems that might come up. The backend is pretty similar with Spring MVC, Maven, and tons of data packages that perform data or service handling for spring.

The last half of my corporate career has been spent trying to untangle the spaghetti mistakes of other developers who probably shouldn't have writing any unsupervised code as opposed to writing original feature logic.

I know many developers have lost their jobs in the current economic crisis. This includes both good developers and really bad developers. In all the bad and disruption that comes from that I hope businesses will become more thoughtful about simply throwing money away on web technologies and developers.

Historically businesses have vaguely realized just how bad and incompetent their web technology is but never did anything to fix it. Some businesses, even large mega .coms, would go bust than fix it (and their business). Really the only answer ever applied was _hire better talent_ without defining what that is and without any plan on what to do with or how to apply that new talent. That is a leadership/business problem and not a technology or talent problem. Hiring is not the answer but instead only feeds the problem. It makes sense though, bad leaders aren't going to blame themselves for problems like this and it's generally not their money they are throwing away on bad decisions and empty solutions.

Other industries have solved these problems long ago. They have things like broker/agent relationships, licensing, continuing education, and personal liability. The incompetence of software does not want any of this. They want the least possible effort to immediate high income.

<comment><USER13> The tech industry is a class-, gender-, and race-biased inter-generational wealth transfer scheme masquerading as an industry. Past a post of base-level competency, and excluding strategy-level technical roles, employment and compensation is based on identity and not proficiency.

It's the same as with industry labor in the last half of the 20th century. Every person who retired with a pension was not an unequivocal value-add to their employer; there was a need to support and enable the consumptive lifestyles of the public (but only the "right people"), lest the entire system implode.

No one wants to admit that they're mere cogs, compensated for not gumming up the money machine. They want to believe that they have value. And they do, but it's implicit in their identity, not necessarily their productivity. If you don't believe it, ask how much your colleagues in India make.

<comment><USER14> >ask how much your colleagues in India make

My colleagues in India, on average, make less than me. My Indian colleagues in the US (who grew up and went to school in India) make about the same as me.

I dont see what point this thought exercise was supposed to illustrate, aside from demonstrating that labor markets in different countries are different, and so is the cost of living.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I too graduated with a CS degree from a highly ranked technical University.

It was probably the worst time for recent graduate with a CS degree. You hear news of all jobs going to India. Nobody in the US was hiring developers. In fact, they were getting all laid off.

I had to scrape by taking odd jobs here and there. I worked as a short-order cook, made jewelry in a factory, worked at a UPS warehouse, etc. It felt hopeless and felt like I wasted money and time getting a CS degree.

Eventually I joined a tiny web-shop for super low pay. I was underpaid for many years afterwards. In 2006, I joined a "real company" but still was underpaid. I quickly left that company and started making more money elsewhere. I got nervous in 2008 since that recession came right when my career started to get good and stable. But I was safe, and it was smooth sailing.

My story has survivor bias. But it took a lot of hustling, grit, depression, etc. from 2001 to 2007. It can take a long time to get back on your feet, at least in my case.

<comment><USER16> This is part of the reason we are / were paid so much recently. Hardly any young people went into technology from dot-com until around 12 or so (unless they were passionate about it), precisely because everyone was telling kids that programming was so easily outsourced that you'll never make money at it.

There's a distinct dips in the number of 30-40 year olds in technology. There are plenty of older people, and there are now tons of younger people, but few in between. From age 20 to about 30, I was always the youngest person on my team. Now this is no longer the case, but those who are younger are 10+ years younger.

People today are amazed when I tell them I only made $10/hr in my first programming gig. People who graduated in the 90s were making $40-50k out of school and today it's not uncommon to get 70k+ in the mid-west. The early 00s were a different time.

<comment><USER17> $15/hr at mine, although if I include freelancing prior to that it's probably closer to $8. It's kind of nice. My floor is so incredibly low that the "scary times" don't look so scary.

CS was a contrarian career bet in the few years after dotcom; you didn't do it if you were listening to the wise old men and wanted a good paying job. Realizing that opportunity -- or, more commonly, doing what you wanted to and not worrying about the $, paid off incredibly well for those who took advantage from between 2004ish and today. I don't think fortunes will change for our cohort; there's still a huge dearth of principal engineers in pretty much every subarea of software engineering.

The enrollment surge also hasn't yet effected CS PhDs, because undergrad enrollment wasn't matched by a corresponding growth in phd enrollment. That might change in the next 5 years.

But the entry level positions seem extraordinarily competitive at the moment; I've _never_ had this many qualified applicants (and that goes for before covid19 as well). The only saving grace is that more and more non-programming positions require some programming skills, and those folks seem to have a hard time recruiting/hiring.

<comment><USER15> I think it's true. Around 2010 is when CS got hot again.

A few years ago, we interviewed some new graduates. I couldn't believe how smart they were. They seemed a lot smarter than I was when I graduated. Heck, they seemed smarter than me right now. There are definitely a ton of highly qualified, recent grads these days.

I think the main thing we ( as in our generation of late 30's to 40's) have to worry about these days is ageism. We might become obsolete quick if businesses think the new, smart, cheaper kids can replace us aging ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This brings back so many memories. I graduated with a Comp Sci degree from a well-regarded university. I had friends who graduated a year earlier return to school for a different degree because there was just nothing available with a degree in CS. So demoralizing.

I graduated a year later and took a job making a little over minimum wage. At that time, the most influential executives at my workplaces said software engineering in America was dead, to be replaced by cheaper outsourced Indians, and then other countries once they became too expensive. It set the course of my career. I am in tech but not a Software Engineer. Had I graduated a year later, I am sure I would be a Software Engineer today.

The fear and feeling of instability in this industry never left me.

<comment><USER19> I'm pushing 40, graduated high school in 2000. I heard a lot of the same "wisdom." For some reason I just really wanted to be a software developer so I stuck with it even though the dot com bubble was in full catastrophe mode. I'm glad I did, but I can't claim magic wisdom. I don't know how kids are supposed to get good life/career advice. I surely didn't.

Perhaps the only thing I can reasonably suggest is that people create a "skill stack" instead of a skill. I'm a good coder, but coding is probably among my least economically valuable skills. My most valuable skill, by far, is communication. I can explain technical things to non-technical people and do so in a way that doesn't make them feel dumb. Part of the key there is I know they're not dumb. That wins you a lot of favors. My second most valuable skill is having a basic understanding of economics/business, how incentives work, how business decisions are made, etc. This helps me anticipate the needs of others at work and help solve their real problems which they may not even see clearly themselves.

If the stats offer any credibility... I work from home full time and have for nearly a decade. I've got 2 concurrent contracts going on right now. I'm expecting to make >$300k this year. I live in a 2nd tier city with a low cost of living, you've heard of it but it's not NY/LA/etc. I've never even applied to a FAANG type place.

<comment><USER20> What kind of job do you do? You sound like me, with the exception that I'm at the start of my career and am getting rejected everywhere the past year.

I've been a coding bootcamp instructor and was praised by students for my communication. My friends are mostly entrepreneurs, consultants and business people and I talk quite a bit about business with them and my coding skills relatively to that are alright.

<comment><USER19> I don't really have a specialty. The last 3 years I've been doing Identity and Access Management. Before that I've done everything from physical security systems, insurance, enterprise web development, truck dispatching, point of sale... all over the place really.

I'm aware of how awful this is going to sound, but I'm totally unfamiliar with the process of applying to tons of places and getting rejected. When I'm short work I call up a gig company like TekSystems and most places I interview I get an offer. I am not particular about the kind of work I do, so if someone meets my $ requirement, I usually accept the first offer I get. It was always like that, even in the early days before I had a resume/experience. I wish I had some wisdom to offer in that regard, but I got nothing. I'm not particularly charismatic or anything. In fact, I'm a bit on the spectrum. I'm smart, but not crazy smart, about 120 iq if that's a thing that concerns people. I'm also a college dropout.

To add a minor expansion on the "skill stack" concept, I'd introduce the phrase "think like a ____." The thing I spend the most time with mentoring is teaching people who to think like a programmer. You'd think that would come with the degrees, but it really doesn't. Regarding your skill stack and spending time around consultants/entrepreneurs, do you think you can think like an entrepreneur? A person can know a lot of history facts, but not know how to think like a historian. This is a really important threshold to get past in the building of a skill stack. Think about something you're really good at and think about what it means to think like one of those. Maybe you're a gamer. Do you understand what it means to "think like a gamer?"

<comment><USER21> Hey I am a bit younger than you but have a very similar resume of working contracts, never applying to FAANGs and reaching out to people/networks when I am looking for work. I definitely feel like I'm doing well but it would be great to speak to someone else who has succeeded at this sort of "alternative" career path. Is there a way I can reach you to ask for some specific advice? Or would you contact me? ritchiea at gmail dot com

<comment><USER22> I'm someone who's started the traditional career path and doesn't like it. I've halfheartedly started a consulting firm, and I'm spending time shifting my focus to that. I'd also love to chat with you.

thomas dot spader at gmail dot com, if you'd like to

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was part of the dotcom crash. I went to community college which made things more difficult than university grads. Many people left the field in my year. Not really sure how many programmers are left in the group today either.

After living in java throughout school I managed to get a minimum wage 6 month contract in php and never looked back transforming that into 6 more months and fighting out a 2500 month wage for my last 3 month contract with them.

The interview for that was tough. In the end it was myself and another person from university who spoke in more advanced terms. The final piece was a take home assignment and I did it quickly and the other person couldn't so I got the job. After I got the role I would see the candidate she would come in and have lunch with the a co-founder she connected with during the interview process. When she found out she didn't get the role she cried in the middle of the room for so long, very uncomfortable. There was always a bit of hate from that co-founder after, you could tell the co-founders were fighting (they were a couple founder team). My advice know your stuff and when you get the call give it your all even if it looks/seems impossible.. I applied to so many jobs before I got even that interview.

<comment><USER24> Wow, giving you hate for a decision they made. A couple founder team is a red flag for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was in the same situation as OP. I got "lucky" in getting a job in operations analysis instead of software development due to my poor GPA. A lot of my friends had their much higher offers delayed or rescinded while I kept my not-so-glamorous job at a Fortune 500.

I would say that 100% of my friends recovered and most have better career trajectories than I. You will make it through this. One bit of advice: don't be overly picky. Opportunity seems to favor those who do instead of sit on the sideline.

</comment><comment><USER26> All of a sudden my unsexy junior dev job at shitcorp isn't so bad.

<comment><USER27> I'm perfectly happy at my job at a very small established company. Unbelievable freedom, no mandatory overtime, everybody is on a first name basis with the CEO, no stress, no "PIP"s, no worries about my equity going down the toilet, and I got my own office.

My total compensation might be half of what I could get at large corps but I don't need to live in a city (lower rent and housing prices, fresher air) and money isn't everything. I can commute the short way to the office via bike which takes off even more time I spend at work.

Working at small companies can be really good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I graduated from university at the exact moment the dot com bust occurred, and the job market went from fizzing to non-existent in the space of a few weeks.

I ended up working at a local charity, and then entering into a business incubator but for a couple of years I had no money to speak of. If I felt rich, I'd have McDonalds for lunch.

On the other hand, I was living in a cool part of town with a group of people who I still keep in touch with - those days were the best in some ways.

So yes, it does get better, but people's expectations will need some major adjustments. I do firmly believe that it's a good opportunity to set yourself up for when the recovery occurs.

<comment><USER29> I imagine its worse now with the Student debt bubble - too many people with 100k in student loans.

<comment> barry-cotter The average Bachelor's graduates has $38K in debt in graduation, the price of a new car. To get to $100K you usually need to go to graduate school.

<comment><USER30> My college had a 30k/year tuition. 4 years of that comes out to 120k. Your figure assumes >70% of costs are paid without debt. 30k/year is common now for an undergraduate degree from a state school with dorm.

<comment><USER17> 1\. 30k/year is REALLY high for tuition. Most state flagships -- which are some of the best universities in the entire world -- aren't that expensive. UIUC, definitely one of the best CS departments in the world, has tuition that's about half that per year [1]. And that's a top-tier state flagship research university; a bit of an overkill for any but the most ambitious (phd or md or jd or elite co.)-bound students. The regional campuses, which do an excellent job at preparing you for typical entry level industry gigs in most fields, have tuition closer to $10k/year [2]. If you want a "normal" life -- decent salary in exchange for a 40 hour work week, in a relatively normal stress environment, and without attending a top-tier graduate program -- don't go to a top-tier state flagship.

2\. Most private universities do have sticker prices in that range, but a) why go non-elite private (e.g., mid-low tier liberal arts colleges) since they're usually not even as good as comparable public schools, and b) almost no one actually pays the sticker price at private universities. The average discount factor at private universities is around 50% [3].

3\. It's definitely possible to make >$10K each year while doing university full time. Even very conservative estimates -- state minimum wage and only working summers/weekends with no overtime -- put the number north of $8K [4].

4\. Living at home is often an option (not always, but the percentage of people who can't live at home and also don't qualify for need-based aid has to be pretty small).

5\. Four years is an _upper bound_ , not a requirement! College-ready students can and should transfer credits from high school AP, IB, or college credit courses; one of those three options is available in the vast majority of US high schools. Students who are not college-ready should start off at community college, which, again, brings the price down substantially.

So, for example, if you:

* go to your local branch campus of a state university like SIU-E or UMSL,

* live at home,

* work a minimum wage job for 40 hours over the summer and on the most weekends during the school year [4], and

* come in with sophomore standing OR do you first year at community college

then you can graduate with a very modest amount of debt (less than a used car, or possibly none at all). Cutting any one of those assumptions still keeps you well below $100K and possibly much lower than even $30K.

Plus, some of those assumptions are conservative. E.g., for most of that time you should be able to make substantially more than minimum wage by taking internships, tutoring ($20/hr+ is typically a "low" rate), etc. Scholarships and fellowships are typically available as well.

College is far too expensive in the USA, but you really have to be a huge outlier to graduate from undergrad with $100K in debt. And it's still possible in many parts of the country to graduate with "used car" worth of debt or even no debt at all.

Part of our "college affordability" problem is real, but part of the problem is a "buying luxury goods with a credit card" problem. Attending one of the best universities in the world _and_ living in their dorms _and_ staying for four full years _and_ not working full time over the summers + weekends during the school year... that's the most expensive option possible. There are plenty of much less expensive options for most college students in the US.

[1] [https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/tuition](https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/tuition)

[2] [https://www.siue.edu/paying-for-college/tuition-and- fees/und...](https://www.siue.edu/paying-for-college/tuition-and- fees/undergraduate/)

[3] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/30/nacubo- report...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/30/nacubo-report-finds- tuition-discounting-again)

[4] (40 _8.25_ 12) + (16 _8.25_ (52-12-3)) = $8,844

<comment><USER31> > 1\. 30k/year is REALLY high for tuition. Most state flagships -- which are > some of the best universities in the entire world -- aren't that expensive.

So what? Prestigious schools are notoriously egalitarian toward the students. If you get accepted to Cal Tech, you are guaranteed to be subsidized. Nobody "can't afford" to go to Cal Tech, but there are people who don't test well enough.

> 2\. Most private universities do have sticker prices in that range, but a) > why go non-elite private

Because most people aren't even average collegiate level intelligence.

> 3\. It's definitely possible to make >$10K each year while doing university > full time.

Not sure what this is supposed to say, but surviving is hard out there. Especially around any school (public or private). Most people in massive debt, try to work it off.

This whole post seems a little holier than thou. Least of which is the perspective that people could (or would) attend "best universities", which is more than a little presumptuous. This debt hole is so common it appears in US media from TV (eg Grey's Anatomy, Devs, etc) to the newest films.

<comment><USER17> _> So what?_

So, people are _choosing_ to go to expensive universities that don't subsidize their tuition. It's a choice, and there _are_ much cheaper options for most of the country.

If you're paying $30K in tuition and planning on a "normal" career path, then you're paying way too much.

 _> This whole post seems a little holier than thou_

Well, if sound financial advice is perceived as a personal attack, then we're never going to solve this problem.

People whose parents can support them by allowing them to live at home for free during college can graduate with almost no debt by attending a cheap institution, working while going to school, and getting a head start in high school or community college. And most people whose parents cannot allow them to live at home will qualify for state and federal grants.

This country does have affordable college options for most people. The problem is that most people who go to college choose the more expensive options (state flagships and non-elite private universities) even though their local state university branch campuses are capable of providing a perfectly adequate education at a third of the price.

More importantly, the _only_ way we'll reduce the debt burden on undergraduates is by providing more subsidy to state branch campuses. That will only work, however, if people _choose to go to those state branch campuses_. There's just no world where the taxpayer subsidizes a big chunk of room&board&tuition at research institutions for the majority of college students. For the top ~5% of students by merit, sure. But that model just doesn't make any sense when there are far cheaper options.

 _> eg Grey's Anatomy_

Medical debt is an entirely separate issue. Intertwining it with the undergraduate debt issue confuses things -- the solution to med school debt will be different from the solution to undergrad debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The dot com burst was way worse than today. One reason is that back then the industry was 10% of what it is today, or even less. The other reason is that social distancing is creating the need to start selling online for a lot of small brick and mortar shops. Most of web development companies I know are overwhelmed by the demand in the last weeks. So we might be one of the few industries that benefits from all this mess.

<comment><USER33> The dot com bust was awesome for me, although it was the first time I had ever been fired from a job. I internalized blame for a while but then my girlfriend, who had been laid off before me, was like fuck it let's have fun in NYC and collect funemployment. We saw so much culture and had so much fun. Then that buttlock Bin Laden had to ruin it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Financial crisis is nothing new to the current working generation. We're getting kind of good at it I think..

<comment><USER35> It's been every 7-8 years for me for my entire life. I find it very difficult to make large bets.

<comment><USER36> If you'd been betting along the market you'd be up big by now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I mean I understand where he's coming from, but this is peak survivorship bias. No, not everyone makes it. People can't get jobs, they can't pay rent and people will suffer and some will die as a result. That's a fact of how recessions go, and I think papering it over with 'everything will be OK' just further normalizes the boom/bust cycle and all of the damage it causes to working individuals.

<comment><USER38> The people screaming survivor ship bias are the least likely to make it. Now is the time to be doubling down your hours, focusing on whats important and proving your worth. Believe in yourself and make it through to the next boom. If you're lucky with your money you may even never have to worry about the cycle again

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I survived the Dot Com bubble pop.

I was at the DoubleClick Willy Wonka party where they rented out Centrofly, had topless Chelsea male models made up like Oompa-Loompas. One high up executive said to me "The sushi finally arrived, it's late. $80,000 for food and it's late.".

I saw questionable startups give away $50,000 trips to Monte Carlo as some sort of weird Silicon Alley user acquisition strategy.

When the tide goes out that's your time to strike. If you have downtime start on your passion project. It might even become a product one day.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is that..it?

Where's the story? The paragraph about September 2001 is followed by April 2020, with nothing about what happened during the nearly 20 years in between? I don't even know what kind of work the author does currently. Maybe he's well known in tech circles, I don't know.

This is a blog post from a job board site; at least put in something resembling a narrative. Yesterday we had a similarly promotional post about how using Google Analytics was problematic, but it went into depth and mentioned a competitor before finally promoting their own analytics solution.

This is the blog equivalent of a "motivational" post on Instagram.

<comment><USER40> Meanwhile the US has seen over 16 million new unemployment filings over the last three weeks. The new filings are more than an order of magnitude greater than any previous filing. The difference is impossible to miss when graphed together with previous filings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why do you guys assume that this crisis will hit software development?

As far as I can see software development will be one of the fields least hit, possibly even benifiting, by the fallout of the Corona-virus.

<comment><USER42> Everyone loses in a recession.

<comment><USER43> Not everyone, some people prosper enormously in a recession - or more specifically, some people make bold investments during the worst part of a recession when everyone else thinks the world is ending. Those investments typically do very well when we exit the recession.

<comment><USER38> Agreed, recessions are when money is made. If you look at '00 and '08/09, investing in the down years is incredibly profitable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> There's kind of a resume gap there between 2001 and 2020.

<comment><USER45> He was engineer, senior engineer, and then cto at active campaign..

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Disgusting prevarication in an attempt to sell the idea that it's perfectly natural for the world to balance on a knife edge of investor confidence. Don't swallow it.

</comment><comment><USER47> The tech situation in y2k vs today is incredibly different which makes them somewhat hard to compare. E-commerce was minuscule, telemedicine didn't exist, social media wasn't a thing as we know it today, ridesharing didn't exist, cloud computing wasn't a thing. It seems highly unlikely that we will regress to a state where such services are not required.

</comment><comment><USER48> I graduated at the height of the dot com era and haven't made it - you may too.

</comment><comment><USER49> I like this kind of articles. I graduated during the 2008 crash and thrived as a programmer. It is probably because i spent most of my youth on IRC learning about all sorts of topics, mostly web related, while others waited for knowledge to be handed down by professors. If you are passionate you are likely to gain deep knowledge about your topic of interest. Deep knowledge makes you highly desirable for most employers. Anyone sitting out there anxious about what may be, now is the time to sink deep into your domain and become better at it.

<comment> non-entity > Deep knowledge makes you highly desirable for most employers. Anyone sitting > out there anxious about what may be, now is the time to sink deep into your > domain and become better at it.

Is this not _more_ risky during a recession, when you're niche may not be very desirable in the economic climate?

<comment><USER49> Thats a good question - but I dont think it would me more risky than being anxious. Ideally one would chose a domain likely to be in demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Things will get better but the complete lack of a social safety net here is completely ridiculous.

The hoarding of capital by the super rich and business elites is disgusting. There are better and more ethical ways to structure out economy.

<comment><USER40> Agreed. This should be grounds for declaring "trickle down economics" disproved and downright bankrupt. How many times do we need to see stock buybacks not help the problem while also not creating jobs? Or hospitals firing people for talking about life threatening work conditions? Or hospitals closing because treating covid patients isn't profitable enough? Etc etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> My take on this - the guy's not boasting about accomplishments here, just trying to reassure some young people who will be feeling pretty anxious about their future. Why the hostility?

<comment><USER40> For one, the US just announced 6.61 million new unemployment filings last week to being their total to over 16 million over the last three. Meanwhile the stock market is on a rally this morning. I can't emphasize enough how tone deaf that looks to me. I imagine those unemployed would feel pretty invisible and left out today in comparison.

<comment><USER51> But he's not saying "everything's currently super" he's saying "things are truly crappy right now but they will get better".

I don't see what's tone deaf there. He's pitching a message of long-term- reassurance at a time when many people might find that comforting - specifically the younger folks who've never seen cycles of down/up/down- again/up-again.

<comment><USER40> The fundamental lesson of the Great Depression was that there are no cycles. Being down does not mean a later upswing with certainty. That we haven't had a GD since 1929 is in large part due to an ability to constantly grow markets with cheap oil energy and new markets. But more importantly the US had a lot of power and regulatory oversight to keep it from happening. All of that is no longer the case, and we're in danger of having another GD that could be even bigger from some estimates. Normalization "arguments" are bad arguments that disallow the discussion of deeper and more worrisome arguments. That's why this article shouldn't be welcomed too warmly.

Stanford economist explanation: [https://www.fastcompany.com/90486801/top- economist-the-1930s...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90486801/top-economist- the-1930s-depression-was-great-this-one-might-be-greater)

<comment><USER17> _> due to an ability to constantly grow markets with cheap oil energy and new markets. But more importantly the US had a lot of power and regulatory oversight to keep it from happening. All of that is no longer the case_

Growth: emerging markets have decades of gangbusters growth ahead of them. More people will exit extreme poverty than ever before in the coming decades. China will transition from middle income to rich in our lifetimes, introducing hundreds of millions of new rich country consumers.

Federal power and responsiveness: The fed expanded its balance sheet in a rather incredible and history-making way. The CARES act is one of the largest subsidies ever.

Cheap oil energy: POTUS is currently begging SA and Russia to _increase_ the price of oil. Meanwhile, alternative energy sources get cheaper every year.

A GD is possible, but not for those reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I also lived through the dotcom boom and bust and even remember the recession that impacted hardware vendors in the 90s. What we might see now is certainly more like dotcom than 2008.

Dotcom was a time that a lot of investment chased a lot of speculative business in technology which led to very high demand for anything looking even remotely like computer skills and paying them well plus stock options. It had to run out of steam and come tumbling down at some point, the end of Y2K was when it ran out of new coal and the steam stopped not long after that.

Investors then had to beat each other to the door. It impacted everyone in the industry but the first to go were the businesses not actually making money, then those who had clients which consisted of a lot of businesses not making money.

There were plenty of survivors, those who made money or those who could trim their expenses and make money or those who could make money out of helping others trim their expenses. People who worked for these kept their jobs. It also became easier for them to hire people. Pay was depressed, but it emptied out the industry from people who weren't actually that interested in or that good at technology.

I joked that those people who got themselves Microsoft certifications just for the dotcom salaries could go back to being real estate agents. That turned out to be bad joke.

</comment><comment><USER35> What's the basis for this recession being dotcom level for tech and engineers broadly?

<comment><USER53> It's likely to be dotcom level+ for all industries. At this point, casual and low level employees have been laid off, businesses are conserving cash and negotiating with their lenders.

This is not a financial recession, its a completely different beast. We are in uncharted waters of a connected global economy being affected globally by the pandemic.

The unemployment numbers are at least 10 million in the last 2 months for the US. Similar proportional numbers are applicable in all economies.

This is likely to continue for the next 6 months and is likely to have recurring volatility as areas relax or increase social distancing to protect life and maintain the health system.

Assuming best case of a vaccine being available for general use this time next year, it will take 3-6 months to roll out before things are back to "normal". So that's not until Q3 2021 at _best_.

In the meantime, we can hopefully have palliative and curative treatments for those infected and, with luck, the virus doesn't mutate sufficiently to cause lack of immunity to those who have survived infection.

We're about to test out MMT vs current supply side vs (neo-)Kensyian macroeconomics. World trade was already affected by the stupid and misguided US instigated tariff barriers.

In addition, we have to deal with the existing US mal-administration and the volatility of an election with all of the ridiculous nature of the way US states conduct their election process.

<comment><USER40> 6.61 million new unemployment filings last week bringing the total to over 16.6 million.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I didn't graduate at all, and still made it. You can too!

</comment><comment><USER55> It's funny how the author only concerned about YOUNG programmers worrying.

<comment><USER56> We all worry now. But I think someone with 10-20 years experience will be better off than someone with 5 months experience...it's better to fire all juniors and leave out a few seniors from a software engineering perspective. juniors are a long term investment and often cause more trouble than provide value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Of course you will. Some jobs are more prone to periodic layoffs than others. STEM jobs are pretty safe compared to the people who work 9-5 in retail (the people who are actually suffering right now).

</comment><comment><USER58> College degree is not really a factor in making it or not.

</comment><comment><USER59> What bust? The stock market is surging. The economy is doing great! There's no economic downturn! Don't you know, stonks only go up?

</comment><comment><USER60> The line I like - I decide to go to a job fair on campus, still feeling awful. - Don't do that with COVID19, you might end up killing the person who hired you, so when you show up for your first day, there might not be anyone to welcome you there.

</comment><comment><USER61> Except the scale of the current crisis is more comparable with 1930 than 2000.

</comment><comment><USER62> Let's not minimize the difficulty of graduating or coming-of-age in the midst of a recession based on the anecdotal evidence of a privileged few. That's basically inspiration porn.

</comment><comment><USER63> The fundamentals of the economy are strong.

</comment><comment><USER64> You graduated in one of the most well paid, expanding industry of the last 40 years and made it. Excellent.

<comment><USER65> Survivorship bias. Our system is broken, humanity needs a way to encourage success without punishing failure. Failure shouln't be hunger and homelessness...This will be another generation of hopeless dreamers lost in the looming financial depression.

Why is our antidote hope against the adversity of going against all the odds?. Congrats to those who made it but more recognition to those who failed and managed to overcome misery

<comment><USER12> > without punishing failure

Why not punish failure?

<comment><USER66> 1\. Because most people fail a lot in a lot of things.

2\. Because failure often doesn't depend on you, and extremely often is at least partially dependent on external factors and context.

3\. Because it's not that useful (psychologically) as opposed to other engagement approahces.

4\. Because it can and will be misused to punish those who are disfavorable to the punishing establishment.

and last but not least:

5\. Because the social systems which need to be in place in order to punish failure, and the ethos necessary for the punishers and for legitimization of the punishers' concrete acts, are themselves repressive to the general populace and make life a worse experience for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there any content in this?

</comment><comment><USER67> We should qualify "made it"

</comment><comment><USER68> This is a logical fallacy

</comment><comment><USER69> programmers are making it since the dawn of the field.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is just a personal anecdote. It is the very definition of survivorship bias.

<comment><USER71> I don't disagree with the logic. But a bit... wet blanket, no? I'm having a good laugh imagining the motivational oomph that's lost when adding the caps below.

"To all the young programmers worrying about the uncertain job market, I promise things will get better FOR SOME OF YOU."

<comment><USER72> That's what life is. There are no happy endings or do overs. It is only the raw truth of your circumstances. You can either look at that truth head on, or avert your eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Just one term: "survivorship bias"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Survivorship_bias...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Survivorship_bias&oldid=948047578)

<comment><USER74> I've seen a lot of comments like this and it is kinda missing the point of what the guy is trying to say.

He is saying "things look bad now, but things can get better".

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Start coops. New graduates typically produce billable projects that generate far more than they are paid.

</comment><comment><USER76> If you can't read a hopeful, personal story without screaming "Survivorship Bias" and plunging headfirst into self-victimhood, good luck with the rest of your life!

<comment><USER77> Seems cruel to say that to a young person who is struggling with a serious issue. Lots of people graduate from college without coping mechanisms tuned to the realities of adult life ... including you perhaps? Maybe it would be better to just say that things are rarely as bad as they seem and the world will continue to need young, enthusiastic programmers despite any economic downturn.

<comment><USER76> I am the child of a "mixed marriage" from a poor family that faced a lot of real adversity. The worst thing anyone could have done for me was to encourage the idea that I was a victim of circumstances. You don't develop coping mechanisms without adversity. Adversity is a good thing so long as it's not perpetual.

<comment><USER77> You're absolutely right. But you don't need to add anything extra to the adversity by being mean. People are perfectly capable of generating enough suffering for themselves to grow as a person without help from someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> classic case of survivor bias

</comment><comment><USER79> Anecdotal and not universal.

<comment><USER80> I thought so too - if you're solidly upper middle class, then you'll usually stay solid upper middle class. The author went to Loyola Uni, a private US uni, which according to this site at least is 50% more expensive than the national average non-profit uni [1], indicating a well-off background. Wealth begets wealth in form of connections, which is what the author shortly refers to:

>I do know someone who works at Loyola, whose husband works at a real estate company. They need a database programmer.

So yeah, if you're 'outside' these groups/classes, chances are you may not make it.

[1][https://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/illinois/loyola- univers...](https://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/illinois/loyola-university- chicago/)

<comment><USER81> > The author went to Loyola Uni, a private US uni, which according to this > site at least is 50% more expensive than the national average non-profit uni > [1], indicating a well-off background

Your conclusion isn't necessarily wrong, but many private universites offer fairly good financial aid packages for students whose families wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. At the university I went to, there were definitely a lot of upper middle class students, but plenty who weren't as well; one of my good friends there actually didn't end up having to pay any tuition due to his family having fairly limited income (his father was a part time construction worker, and his mother couldn't work due to health issues). That's not to say that there weren't other advantages for students who came from more connected backgrounds, but attending a private university with a high cost isn't necessarily limited to only those from higher-income families.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Anyone thinking of starting a company to see if this idea is viable? Asking for a friend

[https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/devs](https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/devs)

</comment><comment><USER83> This is much worse than the dotcom bust. Unless you were working for an unprofitable company that depended on VC funding or a company that was profitable only because it was dependent on startups (ie Yahoo) you were fine. There were still plenty of jobs out there. In 2000, I had been working for three years and was looking for my second job and there were plenty of opportunities in corporate America.</comment>


Ask HN: How common is it to independently invent/discover things? - <AUTHOR> I recently realized that I independently invented/discovered a lot of the things I know.
For example:
- I figured out the Pythagorean theorem before it was taught to me at school.
- When I look at software and design patents, a lot of them are obvious things I already imagined before.
- Most startups, including those asking you to sign a NDA, are ideas I've had before.
Usually, I'll think of a problem, imagine the solution, and only then find out if it exists and how it's called.
This way of thinking lead me to believe that hard problems don't exist, and that formal education where you learn a fixed set of concepts over a long period of time is a waste of time, as I can just figure them out on the fly as needed.
The downsides are that my vocabulary is limited, my knowledge isn't formalized, and I can't tell what's easy/known (common knowledge) from what's hard/unknown (new idea).
Am I describing a unique trait that can be leveraged, or am I just rationalizing a learning disability? <comment><USER2> I think people discover something new soon after a set of preconditions are met. Then once people know about it, it becomes easier for later people to discover it, because this knowledge starts to be incorporated in speech, other fields of knowledge, and culture.

The concept of zero did not exist before a certain time. Now my four year old gets what zero is, without me ever having to really explain it.

Perspective in painting did not exist before a certain time. Now 10 year olds can draw using perspective, without having to be taught.

Distinctions between certain colors did not appear to exist in various cultures before they suddenly did. Blue and green were considered different shades of the same color.

Certain harmonies did not exist in music before a certain time. Now tiny children make up new songs with those harmonies.

Double entry bookkeeping didn't exist before a certain time.

Barbed wire didn't exist before someone invented it. Until then ranchers in areas with little wood had to use shrubs and hedges to try to keep cows from getting out, or just herded the cattle around semi-nomadically.

The way you are able to think about a problem is influenced by language, perception of the things around you, art, and culture. In a world that understands the Pythagorean Theorem, it's easier to figure out the Pythagorean Theorem.

Also I agree, a lot of software design patents are bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tangential.

I have always been a very imaginative and creative person, even as far back as my single digit years. Over the years many of the ideas that I mused privately have become reality a few years after. In my late teens I was convinced that I was leaking idea into the universe and someone else was capturing them, until I had a ceramic throne thought that asked me what if all the ideas I ever had were leaking from someone else.

</comment><comment><USER4> I similarly independently re-discover things, such as recently when I re- discovered the Fermat primality test. Years ago I remember independently deriving the Black-Sholes pricing formula. These things tend to happen when you are intellectually exploring in a previously explored area. It is much easier to explore the Grand Canyon when travelling through northern Arizona by modern roads than it was when John Wesley Powell led his expedition. In the same way, it is much faster and easier for those of us who benefit from the work of those before us to find important intellectual landmarks. The path has been cleared, so to speak. But hard problems exist. There are problems where the path is still quite thorny, as no one has gone there yet.

There is a word for the trait you have: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism)

You may find it helpful to google to find advice for how to handle your way of learning and fill the holes you will have in your knowledge that you end up with by exploring rather than following the canon.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ideas aren't worth much, execution is everything.

I would like to encourage you to act on those ideas because the real art is in translating those ideas into practical solutions. Everyone has their own ideas of what would solve a problem, but 99% of those ideas will not work because they are not grounded on reality.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that I can't tell which of my ideas are novel.

<comment><USER6> It's not about them being novel. ux4's point is that businesses don't get their worth for doing things nobody thought of before. They get their worth for properly executing ideas nobody properly executed before.

> Most startups, including those asking you to sign a NDA, are ideas I've had > before.

Ideas you've had before, but haven't taken the steps those startups have in implementing them.

> Usually, I'll think of a problem, imagine the solution, and only then find > out if it exists and how it's called.

That's just the global market being big. It's probably very common. There's a lot of cool stuff out there most people have no clue about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Solutions to 'hard problems' are formed using very basic concepts. Do you have documentation that you established a theorem such as your first example PRIOR to EVER participating in formal education establishments?

If you feel that you have a disability, contact your primary care provider and seek professional opinion for closure.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Do you have documentation that you established a theorem such as your first > example PRIOR to EVER participating in formal education establishments?

No. Why?

> If you feel that you have a disability, contact your primary care provider > and seek professional opinion for closure.

My preference for inventing over learning is what I hypothesized as a learning disability. Does this really require the opinion of a _________ specialist?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People think ideas are special but anyone can come up with more ideas than they can possibly act on. If they do act on it they must see the idea as special.

If a human can figure something out another human can too, theres nothing special about the person.</comment>


Ask HN: supporting code post-contract for freelance jobs? - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR: do you charge for ongoing support for completed freelance work?
I'm relatively new to freelancing. I just finished a gig that I did for about $6500. I spent over a month on this thing full-time, so it wasn't the most lucrative job, but I was trying to get my foot in the door. In the end I produced over 10K LoC.
The client had a lot of mid-flight changes, which I tried to handle as gracefully as a I could, but it really ended up extending the timeline.
After code-complete, the client had a 1-week beta period with some testers. I fixed some small issues, the client blessed it, and off it went to production.  Now it's in running under a heavy load in prod, and of course issues are starting to crop up. App server running out of PermGen memory, some Hibernate issues, etc.
Tracking these issues down takes a lot of my (unpaid) time. I'm not perfect, so some of them are likely bugs in my code. But many of them are bugs in libraries (GlassFish PermGen space in particular has been a thorn in my side).
When free-lancing, how do you handle the issue of handle ongoing support? I want to be responsible and ship a high-quality product, but there are always issues and bugs when dealing with software. When working for a company, there was always the understanding that there would be ongoing maintenance, and time was budgeted accordingly.  How does that work in the contracting world? I just feel like this could drag on forever. <comment><USER2> It doesn't help you with this project, but ongoing support should be something addressed in your initial contract -- e.g., "20 hours of post-shipping support are included. Additional support may be purchased at a rate of no less than $XXX per hour, subject to availability, and may be declined for any reason."

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. I like that it includes a reasonable amount of support, but also puts a cap on things. I wish I had thought of that ahead of time. Also encourages the customer to test things out in their environment early, rather than assuming it'll just work fine under any circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We are trying to find the balance between selling on-going support contracts vs doing as needed support later. It looks like ~90% of our customers don't believe they will need to support the technology later and choose not to pre- purchase (at a lower rate).

<comment><AUTHOR> And does "support" include bug fixes in your own code? Not asking to be snide; I really want to understand how most people approach this.

<comment><USER4> Yes, support includes bug fixes.

If you want to put bug fixes into the price of the contract, you need to also put the cost of proper QA, test plans, and defining correct behavior, which often means a spec. How do you know the calculation is wrong if you don't have it on a piece of paper?

This all costs money.

Otherwise, you need to be paid. Now, many times you will make a small change for a good customer that takes a trivial amount of time, but this should be priced into the long term value of the customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a good example of why charging by the hour works out better.

If a potential customer wants me to do a fixed priced job that is not very straightforward to estimate, that is both a warning sign that they don't understand the consultant's position and that it might be a good idea to pass on the work.

</comment><comment><USER6> You simply can't give unlimited post-contract support -- it's unreasonable for them to expect it and it's unreasonable for you to give it.

In a better situation, as zck said, you should have this written into your contract. Lesson learned. The next lesson is the client should not -- and you should not -- have blessed a version without having it experience production loading, as it will shake out different issues than qa.

If I were in your situation, here's what I'd do. First, no more free time. Second, you're going to have to charge for your time fixing these issues at a rate in line with what you originally charged; it's not fair to suddenly jack your rates up now that they're kind of stuck. Still, I think you can have a happy ending here as long as your client is reasonable.

You need to write them a letter and politely say that this went through acceptance testing and you're happy to support ongoing issues at $X/hour. If I were you I'd actually make $X about 2/3 of what you originally charged to make it clear that you aren't making out on this. Just be politely clear that you can't give them unlimited support for free and be very clear where your time goes when you send them billing reports. Also, some permgen errors can simply be fixed by increasing permgen and throwing ram at the problem.

Good luck, and make sure that in future contracts, you break out acceptance testing, qa, load testing, and put in a firm price for ongoing support. I like to make my ongoing support price about 4/3 of my contracted price but with the first 10 hours free. Of course larger blocks can be pre purchased at reduced prices.

Also, once a client accepts code, _all_ changes cost -- bug fixes too. If you want to make a living you simply can't hand people blank checks to your time. Now particularly egregious bugs might get fixed for free, that's a judgement call, but be firm. Good clients will understand.

<comment><USER7> Even better, say that you will give them 20 hours more for free (at a "value of X$"), and after that support will be charged at X$. Don't discount support, or you'll be working for months/years at that discounted rate. On the opposite side, you should charge more for support than for regular work.</comment></comment>


Paper prototyping is a waste of time - chestnut-tree http://www.gv.com/lib/paper-prototyping-is-a-waste-of-time

<comment><AUTHOR> I used paper prototyping for one project, and found it useful. But my case was rather different than what the author describes. It was an in-house project, with the actual end-users down the hall from me, and with no competitor. (Compare, eg, to when author said it was hard to schedule time with representative end users.)

In our case, we developed a few scenarios and ran through a couple of iterations with the end users. The feedback helped simplify the final design. For example, we thought we would need a way to page results, but it turns out everyone used the "download to Excel" option to see the full results table.</comment>


Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income - <AUTHOR> http://nerdinvest.blogspot.com/2016/02/powerful-political-forces-are-aligning.html <comment><USER2> A rarely discussed benefit to minimum income: The higher the social benefits, then I think the greater the labor market liquidity, for both employers and workers.

Currently everything else depends on your job: Either you have one, and you have income, benefits, and all that goes with them in a society where everything costs money; or you don't and you have nothing (or very little). But if you don't lose you house, still can afford decent healthcare, and your kids still eat and go to college, etc., then employees can be more flexible:

Firings and layoffs are less of a crisis; when everything doesn't depend on having that job then I expect there will be fewer lawsuits. Protections for jobs in law and regulations can be reduced.

Also, workers, especially those with mortgages and kids, would be less desparate to keep their jobs. I think that is a healthy thing; they can take more chances and invest more in training and skill acquisition. Also, they are not compelled to do odious or unethical things (such as working off the clock, tolerating abusive environments, particpating in and/or not reporting illegal activities, etc.) due to a sort of employment extortion. It probably would be better for managers to get more honest feedback too (though some would have to learn ways to motivate people besides abusing them!).

Some of that is speculative but I believe a European country, I think Denmark, worked out a compromise of high and long-term unemployment benefits in return for making workers easy to terminate.

In part it's also a political solution to the concentration of wealth: If you are going to accumulate so much of the wealth due to the way the economy is structured, then in return pay for these social benefits and we all can retain labor market liquidity and maintain political harmony. U.S. workers have less to bargain with: They gave away many of their labor market protections and lost negotiating power by weakening their unions.

<comment><USER3> Yet nowhere has this been "field tested" for any length of time. Unless one makes the case that it has been tested in the form of several countries in the 20th century. Places like the the Soviet Union, China, etc. We see that it failed in those places and in Soviet countries it failed fantastically. The fatal flaw in all of this...who is going to pay for it?

<comment><USER4> That and what economic activity will be suppressed as capital moves away from prior uses. Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment. The seen and the unseen indeed. Unless there's more than hand-wavy dismissive talk about the negatives such schemes bring, one is foolish to think that this does anything positive at all.... and that's just the utilitarian perspective.

Morally, that any one person, by virtue of their relative wealth alone, is judged a provider, at gunpoint if necessary, to others who, by virtue of their relative lack of wealth alone, is considered worthy of substance, is such an inversion of right and wrong as to warrant some serious soul-searching about what makes one worthy of punishment or reward. Yes, poverty is a problem. Yes, there are institutional barriers to getting out of poverty. I don't see how doubling down on those problems does anything than ease the conscious of the haves.

<comment><USER5> > Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure > consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment.

I've been talking about how minimum income can make the minimum wage obsolete and thus allow for the existence of a wider variety of jobs (and creation of wealth) that was previously unviable while also fixing the market inefficiencies created by putting an artificial price floor on labor.

> Morally, that any one person, by virtue of their relative wealth alone, is > judged a provider, at gunpoint if necessary, to others who, by virtue of > their relative lack of wealth alone, is considered worthy of substance, is > such an inversion of right and wrong as to warrant some serious soul- > searching about what makes one worthy of punishment or reward.

No, completely wrong.

> by virtue of their relative wealth alone

Wealth exists only within an economy and thus is a social construct that makes it's owner intrinsically beholden to that society. Wealth thus increases the moral obligation to the society from which that wealth is derived.

> by virtue of their relative wealth alone, is considered worthy of substance

It is not their lack of wealth, but their mere existence that makes them 'worthy of substance'.

> warrant some serious soul-searching about what makes one worthy of > punishment or reward

Taxes on wealth are not a punishment, they are the cost of maintaining and improving the society and allows the wealth to exist.

Minimum income is not reward since it is given to everyone.

<comment><USER6> > Wealth exists only within an economy and thus is a social construct that > makes it's owner intrinsically beholden to that society. Wealth thus > increases the moral obligation to the society from which that wealth is > derived.

This notion pops up quite a bit in HN discussion of basic income. Can anybody provide some references to any sort of scholarly work on this concept? Presumably it has been described and discussed in depth and I'd like to be able to understand it better or even associate a name to the concept.

In any case, I'm not sure I follow the logic in this particular description. Why does wealth being a 'social construct' make the 'owner intrinsically beholden' to that society? What does 'intrinsically beholden' mean? These seem like arbitrary and poorly defined assertions to me.

> Minimum income is ... given to everyone.

Define minimum income. Do you imagine it enough to provide food, shelter, clothing? If so explain what other mechanisms would prevent the emergence of a large group of people who simply lived off the efforts of others as a choice. What mechanism would keep that sort of system in equilibrium rather than the consuming group growing and the producing group shrinking and the resulting tensions escalating? And don't we want to construct a system that moves towards a state that maximizes the number of self-sufficient people rather maximizing the number of dependent people?

<comment><USER2> > Why does wealth being a 'social construct' make the 'owner intrinsically > beholden' to that society?

A stab at it: 1) Money is a social construct, as are many other things necessary to make wealth valuable and meaningful; 2) Any person's wealth is due to the 'society' they live in, to a great degree. Consider the roads, laws, political system, safety, education (of the wealthy person, their employees, and customers), wealth of customers/vendors/investors, science, etc. Compare the prospects for wealth and the value of it (i.e., uses for it) for someone in Syria with someone in the Bay Area, for example.

I agree; I'd like to find something more authoritative bout the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, which "powerful political forces"? A Canadian newspaper?

In keeping with HN guidelines, I don't like to comment on why I flag articles, but I'm going to continue to flag the nearly content-less Basic Income posts that seemingly rocket up the front page a few times a week.

I'm sure there are comprehensive, insightful articles on BI out there. If they're ever posted, I'll probably vote them up.

<comment><USER8> The article stated that the party that won Canada's most recent election has proposed BI. That's "powerful political forces", at least within Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's something I like to see some discussion on from Basic Income proponents. Does BI need to be rolled out everywhere-all-at-once, or is it possible to do small scale experiments to look at the effects? If you think it is possible to have meaningful smaller scale tests, how small can it be? 1000 participants? 100,000 participants? 10,000,000 participants? And then the big question, would there be any outcomes from these smaller scale tests that would convince you that BI isn't feasible? Can share your list of those undesirable outcomes that would change your mind about the desirability of BI? (No sense in running tests if no one will change their mind). Also, what do people think of the Social Security retirement situation as being a fairly large example of BI, that has been running for the last 80 years on a subset of Americans. Does the fact that they are older invalidate it as an example case in your mind?

<comment><USER10> I don't think you can do small scale experiments, unless you do it using an entire small country. The idea is that you raise taxes too, and naturally you'll have winners and losers. I don't think the losers (wealthier people) will tolerate being forced into the program while others are left out of it. If you let people choose, then only the winners (poorer people) will choose to participate, which will deeply distort the results.

If you can do such an experiment (by, for example, instituting BI in a small country) then there are certainly outcomes that would indicate BI isn't feasible. The big questions are whether people in a BI scheme will continue to work, and whether the higher taxes needed to pay for it will kill the economy. If everybody quits their jobs and the taxes strangle the economy then that indicates BI isn't feasible. If everybody keeps working and the economy proceeds as usual then that indicates it is.

I don't think Social Security is a useful example precisely because it's aimed at retirees. You don't get much useful information about people's willingness to continue working when you target it at people who have retired. The tax rates needed to support it also look artificially low because the SS tax base is much younger than the SS recipients, and population growth means the former group is disproportionately large. Finally, it doesn't really look much like a BI scheme, because what you get out of SS is based on what you paid in, it's not at all universal.

<comment><USER9> >I don't think you can do small scale experiments

What if you started everyone out at $50/month, and increased it slowly over the course of say 10 years or 20 years, or 100 years to whatever target you liked? Or do you think a gradual introduction would invalidate the results, or that you couldn't extrapolate from people's behavior at $300/mo, what they might do when the payout is $1000/mo?

Or what if you started walking the social security age backwards gradually, making people eligible at the age of 60 in the year 2020, and 55 in 2025, and 50 in 2030, etc.?

Can anyone shed insight on Indian reservations and basic income. For some reason I thought that some reservations with casinos had payments to all the tribe members?

>You don't get much useful information about people's willingness to continue working when you target it at people who have retired.

What about the other claims that some people make with BI, like an explosion of new exciting art/music/novels, etc.. Is that testable with SS recipients (say looking at how many novels they write the year before, and the year after they retire, counting the number of hours they watch TV before and after retirement). Or are they an invalid group because they are old? Or are the "other" category of BI claims mostly just feel good claims that no one really believes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's say that currently rent is $1,000 per month, food is $500, and Alice is earning $2,500.

Now UBI is implemented and Alice and all fellow citizens receive $1,000 per month. What will keep the market from easing the entry level rent up to $1,500 and food to $1,000 since the money is available? At first glance it seems like we'd just be choosing a different number representing "broke".

<comment><USER12> Draw it out into the absurd to watch it work:

Consider a society with 2 members, Mr Rich (net worth $10M) and Mr. Poor (net worth $100). Mr. Rich is 100,000 X richer than Mr. Poor right now.

Institute a ridiculous UBI of $1M/year for everyone. At the end of the year, Mr. Poor has $1,000,100 and Mr Rich has $11M but Mr Rich is now only ~ 11 X richer than Mr Poor.

Now sure cheeseburgers at Micky-D's are now $700 but the fact has changed that before, Mr Rich could buy a hundred thousand burgers for every one Mr Poor could buy. Now he can only buy 11.

UBI works like gravity. Continually pulling the unequal towards a center. The rich will still stay rich, but unlike today where rich automatically makes richer, the force will be reversed. It will take "energy" to stay rich.

<comment><USER13> Mr Rich will have $9M because his taxes would have gone up by $2M/year to pay for the program.

And the cheeseburgers are still the same price. Mr. Poor was buying cheeseburgers before he got BI and he's still buying cheeseburgers; neither supply nor demand has changed. Mr. Rich bought caviar before and after.

If McDonald's gets greedy and raises its prices because it thinks it can, Burger King is still making money selling at $5.

<comment><USER14> Except McDonald's can't find any workers that are willing to work for $8.15/hr any more. I think prices of most things will go up, not because of inflation, but because you have to pay more for the people to serve them. On the other hand, customer service will probably go up, because nobody is there any more because they _have_ to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you are in Quebec - join us at [http://revenudebase.quebec](http://revenudebase.quebec) In Canada: join us at : [http://biencanada.ca](http://biencanada.ca)

<comment><USER16> What do you think about Jean-Robert Sansfaçon's critique in Le Devoir ([http://www.ledevoir.com/economie/actualites- economiques/4624...](http://www.ledevoir.com/economie/actualites- economiques/462452/revenu-minimum-simple-ou-simpliste)), where he calculates that to give only 10,000$ per inhabitant in Quebec per year, you would need 68 billion dollars, ~22 times the amount currently spent on social welfare. Also, that would constitute 70% of the current tax revenue of the Quebec government.

<comment><USER17> Does that take into account that for middle class people it's effectively a wash?

i.e. Your taxes go up $10,000, but you get a $10,000 payment. I haven't seen a cost calculation that explicitly factors this in. I imagine it's still expensive, but perhaps less than it seems?

It's a good article though. A lot of people vastly overestimate current social payment expenditures. They're much lower than I thought, and I am not in the camp that thinks basic income will be costless to implement by replacing social programs.

<comment><USER18> "Does that take into account that for middle class people it's effectively a wash?"

I guarantee that if/when this gets implemented, it won't be a wash for the middle class. The middle class is where the tax money is, and they'll be the ones bearing the brunt of the bill, as usual.

<comment><USER19> This is mostly true because we have made forms of non-wage income tax advantaged while capping out how much income we consider during welfare-tax- directed calculations (like social security). This doesn't have to be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One big benefit to minimum income that I never heard discussed is the wonderful ability make the minimum wage obsolete. (Since minimum wage is merely an alternative route to achieve minimum income without using direct taxes and that doesn't help those with no job.)

Each time we hit a rough patch we could boost the minimum income to increase liquidity, and drop the minimum wage to stimulate job creation.

This has the potential to fix some of the inefficiencies of the job market. There are jobs that people enjoy or find fulfilling that don't provide enough 'value' to exist (or only exist in the black/barter market where minimum wage is not enforced). There are also jobs that nobody enjoys or find fulfilling, that should have been automated already, but haven't because we force people to work to support themselves and thus create a glut of cheap labor with the minimum wage as the price floor.

As far as to how we pay for minimum income, I love the idea I ran across on HN of directly and progressively taxing capital/assets rather than income.

</comment><comment><USER20> In Brazil, we have a law[1], from 2004, implementing UBI, but it is not nearly applied for all population. This law determine a gradual implementation and I believe that the the full one is far away. There are some benefits for poor people, unfortunately there are frauds and IMHO some mass manipulation from government.

[1] [http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2004-2006/2004/lei/...](http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2004-2006/2004/lei/l10.835.htm) (Portuguese)

<comment><USER21> Are you referring to bolsa familia? Or is this something else? (I don't speak Portuguese)

<comment><USER22> No, this is about universal income (bolsa família is means tested).

I've never heard about it, I don't think it has gone anywhere.

<comment><USER20> Actually, in theory Bolsa Familia should be kind of step to reach UBI. The referenced law talks about gradual implantation, initially by poor people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Honest question - how does UBI address hikes in the cost of basic necessities (food, shelter, clothes) by companies knowing that everyone can afford them?

<comment><USER24> The UBI can be scaled by the cost of living index which will shelter it from inflation. We have a sovereign money supply for a reason. Let's use it!

<comment><USER25> I keep seeing people say use the cost of living index. Do any of you realize what a fraud that is? They have taken out the two most expensive categories people spend money on to _survive_. Food and energy. And it's been like that for decades. That index is as useless as tits on a tree.

<comment><USER24> It can be tied directly to inflation or even to GDP. See details here: [https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional- basic-...](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income- just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7#.kz2s8ze9d)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My prediction for Basic Income is that even if it gets introduced a few years/decades later a lot of people will complain (rightfully or not) about all those parasites not doing anything while "job creators" have to pay for it. At least in the US it won't work long term looking at the current discussions about tax rates.

<comment><USER24> If it is also sold and paired with an elimination of the general income tax I think it could have wide support on the right and left. And how would we pay for it without a national income tax? A value added tax and a carbon tax.

<comment><USER27> We need to return to a wealth-oriented tax. Neither income tax nor VAT are taxes on wealth.

But even as someone without a lot to worry about, I can't think of a fair way to tax wealth outside of land taxes, which would greatly disrupt the economy.

<comment><USER28> The estate tax is one mechanism we have now to tax wealth.

<comment><USER27> The estate tax is bullet-hole ridden, unfortunately. Overall the US tax system is a mess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> While I am a staunch advocate of UBI as a solution to a massive swath of present and emerging problems around the world, I also do not see the experiments around it leading to its mass adoption in at least the span of decades.

Things have to get much worse (and they will) and we will need some active social unrest (on the scale of Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter, except informed about UBI and fighting for it in a unified message) before the wealthy will acknowledge that if they want to stay wealthy, they need a society to be wealthy within, and we won't have one if people are destitute and starving by the millions because traditional capitalist expectations of work and compensation break down in the face of growing automation.

<comment><USER30> So that's the question, isn't it. Will it go down smoothly, or will we go through another round of revolutions and unrest everywhere, complete with burning down the mansions and whatnot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Powerful political forces interested in staying in power by bribing electorate with other people's money?

</comment><comment><USER32> Haha, I love how the tech community is so liberal and critical against government when it comes to privacy and meddling with our private lives, yet that exact same community is mostly in agreement with UBI which in turn means being completely dependent on the state. If the state thinks you do something it does not like (you're a ''terrorist''), your UBI will be striked - you know that, right?

<comment><USER24> Liberals understand that we are the state as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Probably we remember this from grade school and also we don't instinctively fear the 'other' like you guys.

<comment><USER32> I am not the state. And when I look around, a lot of states certainly aren't 'for' or 'by' the people. Maybe you have to start thinking independently, rather than smugly reciting one-liners from school. The state is a large entreprise that gives us some things and forces us to do things and pay money under the threat of violence and incarceration. I argue for voluntaryism, the notion that people enter into contracts and relationships by their own free will and without force, which is fundamentally at odds with most of what the state does.

<comment><USER24> What you argue has been tried in the early have of the 20th century in the United States where workplace safety laws and minimum wages were ruled unconstitutional based on the theory of free contracting parties. It failed MISERABLY and by miserably I mean it left working people in ... literally ... misery.

BTW, my 'smug one liner' I learned in school was uttered by President Abraham Lincoln who is widely regarded as our nations greatest President.

<comment><USER33> Why do you say it failed miserably? Compared to what? Why do you think the conditions of that time were a result of legislation being insufficient as opposed to quality of life simply being lower in that period of time?

By the same logic I can say that not having minimum wage in the 12th century was the reason why people were suffering. It's entirely true there wasn't a minimum wage at that time either, but it completely ignores that: \- It would have been impossible to implement during that period because of the way the job market worked and because of the technology of that time. \- Their suffering is attributable to other things than the lack of legislation.

Until advances in technology makes safety regulations and safety equipment cheap, legislating them means putting people out of a job because the employer cannot pay for all of that, so they can't operate their business anymore. Have you ever considered that perhaps that was the case in the early half of the 20th century?

As far as I can tell society and the market does all the heavy lifting and then the government comes and enacts laws for things that were already becoming safer and better. Graphs like this are what lead me to the conclusion I've mentioned:

[https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/assuming- yo...](https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/assuming-youre- intellectually-lazy-theres-a-very-strong-argument-for-command-and-control- regulation/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if there is a way to structure it as a dividend from the profits gained by unemploying people via automation. That way, fixed-income voters have a double incentive to advocate for policies of more automation:

\- It goes into their pockets

\- It reduces their cost of living

If they vote in large numbers, as retirees do, that creates a large constituency to remove red tape.

The problem is making sure there is still enough profit motive to invest.

</comment><comment><USER35> It is inevitable that the threat of withholding 'basic income' will be used to modify behavior. Didn't pay a fine? Didn't do your taxes? Post "radical" comments on the internet? On the no-fly list? On the no-drive list? Don't have a gov-issued InternetID™? No soup for you. How long until China couples it with it's human scoring system?

<comment><USER36> So are you saying that basic income requirements will be very different than welfare is today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > No, because they would still have Milton Freidman's famous helicopter money > drop. Previously, this took the form of quantitative easing.

QE was _not_ the same as the "helicopter drop". The helicopter drop (HD) is much closer to basic income (BI), except that HD might be a one-time thing, whereas BI is ongoing.

QE is creating money to buy bonds. This raises the price of bonds, and injects money into the system. But _where_ does it inject the money? To everyone? No, only to those who currently hold bonds - that is, to the wealthy, and to financial institutions. HD and BI, by contrast, give the money to everyone.

QE didn't do much to solve the problem of inadequate demand. HD and/or BI may do better. They may do it at the price of increased inflation, true. But under the current circumstances, the Fed would welcome a bit more inflation...

</comment><comment><USER37> Serious question for folks here - do you believe we can successfully institute a meaningful basic income in the US with the current immigration policies? How would policies have to change given the increased incentives from UBI?

<comment><USER8> Serious answer: I don't think we can institute basic income with the current immigration policies without rioting in the streets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems like an idea that is gaining a lot of momentum. When I see prominent Republican voices speaking about it as "reform" of the welfare state, then I'll know that the time is ripe in America too.

</comment><comment><USER38> The powerful political force behind minimum income is the rentier class who will ultimately capture it as rent.

Replacing existing programs with "free choice" is a well-worn playbook. See also: pensions vs. 401k plans.

<comment><USER39> Eer, I don't get it, why wouldn't I want a 401k over a pension?

You can't trust pensions. Companies can go bankrupt, and even governments have been going bankrupt and have renegotiated pension plans. I'd much rather slowly tuck away a portion of my own income and have it be labeled as mine, rather than have it be a future debt on some organization's account book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Prediction: if universal basic income starts to become an imminent possibility, the existing public and private sector welfare bureaucracy will lobby against it. Because it will put them all out of a job.

Not coincidentally, this is also how you can sell the idea to people with libertarian leanings: _universal_ basic income means much less discretion for unelected administrators, and more discretion for each individual on how dollars get spent.

<comment><USER27> You're already right. See: universal healthcare. No one has been lobbying harder against universal healthcare than insurance companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > A socialists pipe dream, you might say.

A common misunderstanding. BI is not socialism.

        Socialism: A political theory advocating state ownership of industry.

<comment><USER42> BI is certainly the type of thing many actual.socialists have proposed, and the definition of socialism you post is, while perhaps what made ght be found in a particularly compact general dictionaries, not particularly accurate or complete, even by the standard of general dictionary definitions.

<comment><USER41> Then post your definition and its source. I just googled six of them and they all matched mine.

<comment><USER42> Google's is pretty typical of not-unusually-compact general dictionary definitions, "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

Unlike yours, it encompasses regulation (which redistributive taxation is generally recognized as a form of) and the focus is on "the community as a whole" (for which the state may be the tool used, or may not) and not just the "the state" as the focus (which is important, since without that it wouldn't include libertarian socialism.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Jeez I wish people would quit this.

Minimum income means guaranteed maximum prices for things like rent and food that you cannot live without.

You think your $500 a month apartment isn't going to become $800 when the landlord knows everyone is getting at least $1000?

<comment><USER13> [https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional- basic-...](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income- just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7#.chjvf9gk6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> A lot of the minimum income people are also for open borders and I rather doubt you can have both.

</comment><comment><USER45> "But more QE may not be politically palatable, as it disproportionately benefits the wealthy, hurts pension plans, and may lead to banks simply hording cash."

ok, so the author clearly hasn't got a clue how qe works.

</comment><comment><USER46> I am inclined to think all this is posturing. UBI has the potential to reduce the friction involved in changing jobs. This alone makes it unpalatable to the corporations. When corporations don't want this, they will lobby and scare people till UBI becomes contentious. I can already see the ads... Booming voice narrator " UBI is tax on the small business. Say no to UBI"

</comment><comment><USER47> I support it personally. And I think it should be funded with pollution and waste taxes (all air+water pollution, no myopia on CO2).

This way money taken from people for taxes is funneled right back to them instead of having government decide what to do with it.

The main complication I see is handling taxes for import+export, you'll probably have to refund taxes on exports, and harder, figure out pollution levels for imports.</comment>


What the Bubble Did to Technology - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mises.org/archives/010450.asp

<comment><USER3> I don't really think that article contributes much, and it sounds like sour grapes. People still actively share and work on hard cool things.

In fact, I think the more people involved in technology whatever their personal reasons is a good thing. The more technology developed by others the less I have to develop myself.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I agree with his point but I can see it. There are projects that require a long term commitment to bring to fruition and there are very few people in the Valley these days who are willing to take on those projects. The "get options and get rich" mentality has everyone trying to build the next quickie web service or iPhone app rather than looking at real improvements.

Worse people seem to be putting their faith into large companies and their R&D departments to deliver innovations and that strategy has a shockingly poor track record. Other than Xerox Parc and the early AT&T labs there aren't really many R&D success stories. Microsoft, for example, spends $7 billion a year on R&D and you have to ask yourself "what do they have to show for it?" I mean, I actually like MS Surface but when you've spent $7 billion dollars and the best you've managed to come up with is an iPhone the size of a table something's gone wrong.

Again, I don't think the situation is as terminal as he makes it out to be but I do think the opinion has some merit in getting us all to look at areas our industry is neglecting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe the author is idealizing the pre-bubble era a little too much, but he is right about the destructive effects the bubble has had on the technology industry.

For more on this, see:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=726174>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=727396>

and especially <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652562>

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is essentially arguing that the recent bubbles have eroded the entrepreneurial community's sense of creating value. He seems to suggest that in the recent bubbles it was apparent value rather than actual value that was being created. The latter can only be achieved through hard work (he argues).

In part, I see his point. Though I don't think that hard work is necessary for innovation and creating actual value. In particular I think you can create a lot of value by combining things in previously unforeseen ways which may not be a lot of "hard work" is certainly innovation.

I think his fundamental gripe about businesses not creating value is true and much wider spread than the technology industry. I've noticed a rising trend of what seem to me to be almost fraudulent revenue models by some companies that certainly don't seem to create much value for the consumer but certainly take their money (like the rebate programs with onerous filing procedures, or banks changing account types and sneaking in fees). There seem to be lots of things that you can pay for if you are a sucker (or just less informed). These schemes seem to be distorting the notion of creating something or doing something that actually has the value advertised for the consumer.

<comment><USER7> You point out that his argument is a rather simple one: hard work is the only path to innovation and therefore value. I totally agree with you regarding this simplicity, but I also understand the inclination to idealize hard work. In part because, as the article emphasizes, hard work has become unfashionable and tremendously underrated.

There's a reason the great innovators of the past are ripe with cliched quotes about "inspiration and perspiration." You are right that combining things in unforeseen ways is a legitimate path to innovation, but additional effort could only serve to enhance the process, don't you think?

The difficulty is that what I consider "hard work" may differ from you. One can work "very hard" selling toxin-removing footpads by inventing clever stories and concocting fictitious demonstrations. They may even become the best damned footpad salesman in the northeast and others will laud them for being such a go-getter. Though they're in the business of deception, they have no problem putting food on the table. They're acting wholly rational under the rules of capitalism.

Many people, even the highly-educated and successful, no longer consider these "bigger questions" in a thoughtful and introspective manner. Instead, they neutralize them with denial in the form of some unbelievably prevalent utilitarian cliches like "whatever floats your boat" or "there's a sucker born every minute."

My point is that gripes about businesses not creating value can actually tap very deep philosophical nerves, but, in an almost Orwellian sense, contemplation of these things is not what modern societies consider a worthy use of time.

<comment><USER6> I think you are correct, but I'm disappointed about that.

I think the crux of my disappointment is your statement:

 _They're acting wholly rational under the rules of capitalism._

Yup, they are. Unfortunately companies have many more resources (time and money) to expend creating this kind of value than most consumers have to guard against it.

If we could remove this kind of "value" from our system we would all have a lot more free time (and less jobs). A good or a bad thing depending on your perspective on the necessity of having a job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice article. I should pass it along to everyone who tells me I need to raise prices and spend more on marketing.

Edit: I mean, I see the 'don't focus on value, focus on perceived value' attitude every day, and I find it irritating. that's not the business I want to be in. I'm pretty happy with the current profitability of my company. Sure, I could double or so, and I'd be much happier, but I think there is value to trying to provide a product that is of the same quality as the competition, but at a lower price. Commodities are good things. I think it is reasonable to focus on building something better rather than on selling something better, and ultimately, a 'commodity' service is far better for the consumer than something proprietary.

</comment><comment><USER9> It may sound a little like sour grapes, but I think the author's analysis of the VC-underpinned "web economy" is fundamentally very correct.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is the key thought:

"The fallout of the bubble persists today."

Indeed. And it will take a long time to clean up this radioactive mess - <USER2> believe we're not even half way there.</comment>


Tesla Model 3 Becomes UK's Third Best Selling Car in August - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/05/tesla-model-3-was-uk-third-best-selling-car-in-august <comment><USER2> Should be measured yearly not by month, to be honest

But good for them</comment>


A Very Meme Phone Tree OR a Practical Web App Built with Flask And Twilio - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/e-ht/89memes <comment><AUTHOR> 1-833-89MEMES while it's up</comment>