Antiwork – a radical shift in how we view "jobs" - <AUTHOR> https://contributoria.com/issue/2014-12/543d1c2487628e9a6500001b <comment><USER2> I've been fortunate to anti-work all my life. I've started companies, built technology, made sales, written books, and generally got paid well to do what I love. I've anti-worked very hard. Often 15 hour days for months on a new project. I have a spouse who is a homebird and provides me the flexibility and support I need for that. In return I support the household. I've been reasonably successful. Not rich, but I have a home, a residual income, assets, I can buy nice things, and buy nice experiences. I can provide for my children and give to charity.

There are plenty of people who work, who work more than one job. They turn up, are told what to do, are at the mercy of the politicking of the organisation, get paid poorly, are physically exhausted, are pressured into moral compromises, have little medical or mental health support, have no assets or qualifications to be able to escape, and are well aware they would not be able to find anything substantially better. Perhaps they work 10 hours a day, then go home, cook for their kids, put them to bed, do the laundry and clean and crash.

When people try to compare my effort against those people, and say "look at people like him, he's proof hard work is the road to success!" I find it morally obnoxious.

The lie that work is the road to success is perpetuated by those who are able to anti-work, to maximise their own success on the backs of those who can't.

<comment><USER3> > on the backs of those who can't

So, do you feel guilty ?

I have no mercy for people who work hard and pretend they deserve more because they're not unemployed. I'm unemployed, but I'm not living comfortably, and I honestly cannot fathom the idea of obeying someone because I should "contribute" because that's righteous. I live in france, there's a lot of welfare there, unemployment is at 10% (the U3 stat), workers are treated nicely, but there's a lot of hypocrisy about it.

I don't think most people cannot "antiwork". Work is not mandatory, work is consented. People can negotiate their salary. If nobody does, I'd agree to blame the entire society and its citizens for not standing up to higher standards. Slavery has been abolished, but slave wages show that people now consent to be treated like shit, so to me, people are responsible of their own situations.

In my opinion, if people agree to be treated like slaves, let them be treated like so, and let the other laze away. We live in the 21th century, people should not give up so easily on their life.

I'm tired of people arguing that capitalism and free market are virtuous, while a large majority of people are being paid at the minimum wage. Minimum wage doesn't feel like freedom, it feels everybody is treated the same no matter the contribution. It's not free market anymore, it sounds more like an exploitative society that can't lift individuals out of their poverty.

<comment><USER4> You are quite lucky to live in a time and place where humans are treated well and without the shackling notion of productivity. But it has less to do with your personal agency and more to do with your luck. People can be made responsible for their situation only so much. Individuals are powerless before the collective idea of normalcy of the society they live in.

Steve Bruce puts its nicely in his book "Sociology: A Very Short Introduction" \- None of us personally created the social institutions that shape our lives; we were born into them. The roles that structure our behaviour and encapsulate the expectations that others will have of us preceded our arrival and will endure (no doubt slightly modified) after we depart. Reality may be socially constructed, but, taken in its totality, it is not the work of any nameable individual and it certainly has little or nothing to do with any one of us.

<comment><USER3> > You are quite lucky to live in a time and place where humans are treated > well and without the shackling notion of productivity.

You say that, but when you're poor and society talks you down by arguing that you only get what you deserves, it feels like you're cheating and behaving like a stubborn thug.

At the end of the day, I put so much pressure on me, I ended up believing I was mentally ill, and it enabled all sort of self confidence issues and distorted views on society.

> Reality may be socially constructed, but, taken in its totality, it is not > the work of any nameable individual and it certainly has little or nothing > to do with any one of us.

I still have trouble projecting my lonely self in that big scheme that is human society. This whole civilization seems scary and often too full of things I'm scared of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Follow your bliss...to the poorhouse.

Not all work is created equal. What we have in reality is an information space where _allocation_ is firmly in the center (financial industry at the center of the overall economy; IT at the center of each and every business). People who make a living allocating money are happy people because they literally do nothing but pick from their options. And yet somehow these pickers (investors, bankers, executives) are some of the best remunerated people in our society. Note that the startup scene itself is just a high risk/reward set of options from which those same people get to pick.

(The crazy thing is that in a growing economy the "allocation class" domination is self-reinforcing because it's impossible to pick wrong.)

Meanwhile as children we're taught "follow your passion" and exposed to arts, crafts, stories, and other things that have nothing to do with allocation. Meanwhile the allocation class is dominated by a social structure defined primarily by college admission boards. "Legacy" students have an edge, this implies that our brand of capitalism is at least loosely hereditary. They are offered jobs on graduation that most of the nation doesn't even know exist.

<comment><USER6> On the "follow your passion" advice... There are a number of occupations that can lead to success. Many of those occupations require a certain amount of skill to pull off. And if you are passionate about a given skill, you stand a better chance than average of acquiring a high level of proficiency in said skill (at least in most cases). Therefore, the advice to "follow your passion" is to find the occupation that you are most comfortable with, and not pursue a job that you hate just because it pays well.

This even works for some of the "follow your passion" cliches, such as being an artist or musician. In those cases, you may not make it rich on stage, but you could do well in advertising (which requires artistic and/or musical talent). But you also have to refine some secondary skills, such as psychology (so you know the techniques to combine with your art that will be successful in getting people to buy product).

<comment><USER7> The broader point is those that run the economy are also those who need no "job" or "work" at all. They already have everything and are the arbiters of its dissemination. You are told to find a passion, but for the children of the privileged elite there is no need for passion or pursuit, because its already in your hands on a silver plate from birth or from graduation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" Ne Travaillez Jamais"_ (Never Work) - Guy Debord, 1963.

[http://oaj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/3/391/F4.large.jpg](http://oaj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/3/391/F4.large.jpg)

 _To the extent that automation and cybernetics foreshadow the massive replacement of workers by mechanical slaves, forced labour is revealed as belonging purely to the barbaric practices needed to maintain order. Thus power manufactures the dose of fatigue necessary for the passive assimilation of its televised diktats. What carrot is worth working for, after this? The game is up; there is nothing to lose anymore, not even an illusion. The organization of work and the organization of leisure are the blades of the castrating shears whose job is to improve the race of fawning dogs. One day, will we see strikers, demanding automation and a ten-hour week, choosing, instead of picketing, to make love in the factories, the offices and the culture centres? Only the planners, the managers, the union bosses and the sociologists would be surprised and worried. Not without reason; after all, their skin is at stake._

 _" THE REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE"_ \- Raoul Vaneigem, 1972

(Full text: [http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/v...](http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/vaneigem/rel/roel.html))

</comment><comment><USER9> The standard of living we all enjoy today is due to billions of people doing things they consider work and not "antiwork".

If we can live in a world like ours where everyone is doing "antiwork" instead of work, that would certainly be better. But it's not at all clear from this article how such a world would function.

Many of the actions necessary for clean water, plentiful food, good shelter, etc. (as they are provided today) are actions that no one would do "out of love, fun, interest, talent, enthusiasm, inspiration".

<comment><USER10> You are correct in so far as you are correct ;) The flip side however is the large quantity of jobs that are not really useful but are simply created for a variety of ignoble reasons. Worst among them is the creation of jobs for the purpose of improving "employment rates". Nearly as bad is the proliferation of bureaucracies --typically the creation of paper trails and overseers to monitor other paper trials and overseers. The "work ethic" can lead to perverse incentives, to "make work" where none is really necessary.

<comment><USER11> Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?

<comment><USER12> I would venture that many of the jobs in any large (where large means > 10,000 people) corporation are bullshit jobs. For example, take Human Resources. Yes, you need a certain amount of HR to make sure that labor laws are being followed and that hiring/firing paperwork gets processed. But at most large corporations, the vast majority of HR's output appears to have no justification save to justify spending more on HR. Employee "engagement" surveys come to mind as the prime example of this.

I would be willing to bet that you could halve the HR workforce at many corporations (especially with some effort invested into automating HR functions) and not notice any drops in productivity.

More generally, a lot of "middle management" falls into this category. From what I see, it really looks like a lot of management work is really just make- work created by... other middle managers. Yes, some level of management is necessary to coordinate teams, but from where I sit, I see my manager spending literally 8 hours a day creating PowerPoint presentations that have no meaningful content whatsoever. And the funny thing is, he hates it more than I do! He's a (ex)programmer. He'd rather be writing code! But somehow the organization has decided (as a consequence of some managerial fiat, far above my pay grade) that it is more "productive" for my manager to be making PowerPoint presentations than writing code.

Yes, the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is far worse in government than in the private sector. But it's still here in industry, and the larger and older the industry, the more prevalent it is. Software companies haven't accumulated as much cruft, but that's largely because companies in software tend to die before they have a chance to accumulate the cruft that's present in industries with higher barriers to entry.

EDIT: Tyler Cowen [1] has an excellent term for this phenomenon: "zero marginal product" work.

[1] [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zer...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zero- marginal-product-workers.html)

<comment><USER13> HR is an industry that could definitely be completely replaced by an algorithm + remote people + software. Anyone want to help me build this or does it already exist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find the analysis of the popular attitudes toward work very resonant. We (as a society) do treat the unemployed or unemployable as morally suspect. We do punish people for needing welfare. Many receive the idea of Basic Income with suspicion nearing to revulsion not on economic grounds, but on moral grounds: people would use it to "be lazy".

This, I think, is a particularly telling summary of the connection between Christian doctrine and attitudes to work: "The underlying idea is that you're endlessly undeserving – that reward, ie happiness, will always be contingent on the endurance of some unpleasant activity (eg "hard work"). Again, we could trace this notion to early moral ideas – eg original sin and redemption through suffering ..."

However I see two shortcomings in this essay. First, he doesn't make what should be the obvious economic connection. True, any job has value; this is evident from the fact that the employer pays for it to be done. There is a market in labor. However, the religion-derived morality that makes it deeply wrong not to work tends to drive down the price of labor. People will accept shittier jobs for lower wages than they would otherwise, when they also accept the belief that it is evil to be unemployed, and virtuous to have work regardless of the type or satisfaction of the work.

Thus the societal attitudes ably described in the essay serve the interests of the employers and work against the interests of the workers. If the workers didn't buy into this zeitgeist, they might not not-work, they might even work the same shitty jobs, but they would be more willing to drop them, and would demand higher pay in line with the shittyness. The necessary jobs would still get done (ya want fries with that); but the employers would have to pay more and provide better conditions because the workers would feel morally free to be more choosy about pay and conditions.

The second thing wrong with the essay is that it ends without even sketching a solution, or a direction that society might take if "antiwork" gained traction. It seems to be an empty term.

<comment><USER12> >True, any job has value; this is evident from the fact that the employer pays for it to be done.

Value to the employer != value to society != value to the laborer. We're using one word to describe three concepts, and running headlong into the confusion that results.

<comment><USER14> True. And I think that's the point of the subject essay: that "work" is surrounded by attitudes and mythologies that distort everyone's perceptions of its value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that "do what you want" is going to cut it. The world of ubiquitous-automation is going to need an ethics. Some principles to guide people toward wise activities and away from unwise activities. Addictive, abusive, and destructive patterns of behavior are bad. In the 20th century we explained their unwisdom by saying things like, "if you become an alcoholic, your children will starve because you didn't work to feed them" or "compulsively binge-viewing TV will keep you from your studies." These activities are still unwise, but "do what you want" doesn't give us the ontological or moral tools to explain their unwisdom to each other (especially to children).

<comment><USER12> >Some principles to guide people toward wise activities and away from unwise activities.

The paternalism inherent in categorizing some activities as "wise" and others as "unwise" is exactly the sort of thing the article argues against. If I want to spend my days playing a video game, and I find genuine fulfillment in it, who are you to say that it is a "wise" or "unwise" activity?

>Addictive, abusive, and destructive patterns of behavior are bad.

They're "bad" because you're coming at it from a reference frame that says that every hand and every mind is needed to ensure the collective survival and prosperity of the community. In short, no work, no food. But that hasn't been the case for quite some time. Moreover, it also looks like you're taking the view that addiction is a choice. Empirically, it is not. Drug users do not _choose_ to be addicted to drugs. They are addicted because of a poor choice they made years (or, in some cases, decades) ago. Thirty years of experience has shown that treating drug addiction as a moral problem is ineffective, expensive, and corrosive to society.

>"compulsively binge-viewing TV will keep you from your studies."

And why are we studying? To get a job, which is exactly the problem that UBI seeks to solve. If compulsive TV-watching (or heck, even compulsive novel- reading) is more interesting than your studies, then maybe the problem is with the studies, not the TV.

<comment><USER15> What happens when the majority of people can't phrase or spell what you've just written, having played video games all their lives? An Idiocracy kind of deal, something else, you think?

"Paternalism"...

<comment><USER12> As opposed to a future where the majority of people _don 't_ read or spell, because they've spent the last 8-10 hours doing the same repetitive thing over and over again and they're too tired to do anything other than vegetate in front of the TV? To be honest, I think an "Idiocracy" type of future is more likely from the path we're currently treading, where a large number of people will be forced to work long hours at rote, mind-numbing labor because society has predicated your value as a human being on whether you're able to perform some kind of work, even if it's make-work all day.

Historically, scientific and artistic advances have come once people get a measure wealth and free time that allows them to stop worrying about basic necessities and start wondering about the larger questions. I don't see why giving _more_ people that luxury would lead to a _decline_ in artistic and scientific innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article reads like a proposal for journeying to the moon that was designed without knowledge of the theory of gravitation.

For example, the author does not appear to realize that the reason most people work is to exchange their time and efforts for something they value more, which is usually money but could be experience or other things, in any combination.

<comment><USER17> The hegemony of consumerism is falling apart and the things people increasingly "value more" than work is free time and to be loved by the people they love. That's something work won't give you in exchange.

<comment><USER18> Work gives you free time when you are more efficient at your profession than by subsistence farming.

<comment><USER19> You are presuming access to land to subsistence farm upon, skills needed to subsistence farm, and tolerance by the institutions to retreating from the existing economy and engaging in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you divide today's GDP by the number of people employed, and adjust for inflation, you'll find that average worker productivity went up 4x since the 1950s, while wages stayed stagnant or went down.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup- american...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans- working-harder-charts)

Companies aren't hiring like they used to. There is no need. Automation and outsourcing have reduced the demand for local labor.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=185](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=185)

This is a good thing. Overpopulation is behind some of the biggest dangers that face the entire human race, including climate change, overfishing, ecosystem collapse (bees and others disappearing due to stresses introduced by changes in agriculture), factory farms (ethical issues) etc.

Countries have to break their dependence on the old style pyramid of more young people paying for old people's social security. It encourages exponential population growth, which just leads people into trouble later on and kicks the can down the road.

<comment><USER21> These studies are flawed as they use "median household income" but households have changed a lot since the 1950s. There's many many more single parent households than in the 1950s. If you compare individual wages instead of households you can better see the wage increase since the 1950s.

<comment><USER22> Also a cell phone cost $7000000 in 1950. So if we look at the change in terms of cell phones rather than in terms of pieces of paper with pictures of dead white guys on them, wages have gone up over a million time while productivity has only gone up 4X. (well, not really, but to make a point...).

In the 1950's families generally had one car. They didn't eat out as much. Less vacations. More work to manage a household. So amount of paper in hand is maybe less of an indicator than amount of goods and services that paper can buy. Which has increased I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We obviously have to work because goods and services do not suddenly appear out of the blue. And we should obviously try to spread the required work as evenly as possible across all the people so that everyone does his fair share of the necessary work. It also is obviously a good thing if we manage that as many people as possible can do work they like to make the necessary work even easier to do. But beyond that? Are there really people seriously believing that work is more than a means to an end? I have a hard time imagining this.

EDIT: Would someone downvoting this care to explain why? Because you are really believing necessary work has some intrinsic value or goodness or whatever? If yes, what is it?

<comment><USER18> You are speaking from a communist ethos that not everyone agrees with.

<comment><USER23> Communist ethos? In seriously don't get the connection. The premise is uncontroversial, isn't it? Until we automated everything humans will have to do necessary work to sustain our livings and doing unnecessary work for the sake of keeping everyone busy is a dumb waste of resources. After that I really don't care. If someone is not into fairly sharing this necessary work, go for it, work long hours. I will happily work less and spend my time with stuff I love to do if you really want to do all the work. If you want to do work you don't like, I won't stop you. What am I missing?

<comment><USER8> I think (s)he's referring to the part about "spreading the work as evenly as possible", though the post sounds like a Red Scare parody to me.

<comment><USER24> "Spreading the work as evenly as possible" is not communist ethos (likewise, evenly distribution of wealth is also not communist ethos). "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is the classic Marxism principle (it's the same for any other communism - they differ in the method to get there, not the principle).

There are a lot of problem in practice with trying to evenly distribute the work. And they're mostly the same reasons why we have to rely on free market to distribute the majority of wealth: the centralization and power issue, the inefficient issue, identity issue when your worth is tied to the minimum work you need to do (granted this is already a problem nowadays). And to determine a minimum fair share of work means to determine the minimum total work that a society needs to do, which is equivalent to determine the minimum amount of wealth to be produced. Ask 10 people and you will have 20 different answers on what is the "minimum living standard should be".

Also, it stops (or drastically slow down) society from technological progressing. Whether it's a good or bad thing is up for interpretation.

<comment><USER23> I am not sure if and where I disagree with you or if I just misunderstand you. I don't see the distinction you are drawing between "Spreading the work as evenly as possible" and "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". But I also don't think that this is the heart of Marxism but it is about getting rid of the possibility to exploit workers by the possession of the means of production by a small elite. Likewise I don't see that Marxism necessarily implies some kind of centralization or inefficiency, i.e. I don't think there is a contradiction between free or partially regulated markets and Marxism, they look almost orthogonal to me.

<comment><USER24> Everything you said is correct! There was just a few details I didn't have in my post that make it slightly confusing.

"Spreading the work as evenly as possible" and "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" differs because people's ability is different, and because the work itself is not interchangeable (specialization and what not). This is more of a technicality than anything else, because the former might imply that everyone has to be doing similar work (in term of wealth producing efficiency, time working etc).

Getting rid of the possibility to exploit workers by the possession of the means of production by a small elite is definitely the overarching motivation for communism. I can't remember it right now, but I think there is a line of practical reasoning that leads to the principle mentioned (which is to says that for practical purpose, one will lead to another). I will have to look it up.

Marxism (at least the motivation and principle mentioned above) by itself definitely doesn't implies centralization! It's unfortunately that this the insight is often missed by people. However, according to Marx, to get to communism, we have to transition through socialism first, which is the abolish of private ownership for major means of production (in Socialism society, means of production is owned by _public enterprise_ , as opposed to being held _in common_ in Communism society). This step poses a centralization issue (as the power that be won't relinquish their power), and inefficiency is just a byproduct of centralization (because of corruption and lack of creative destruction, mostly).

We have not found a way to transition directly to communism from a capitalism society (assuming that communism is desirable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was actually just reading Max Weber today. The radical change in Christianity over time is astounding.

Jesus: "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin thread"

...I don't think he meant that literally, but he definitely didn't mean, "work as hard as you can so you can give a little to charity yet still anonymously hire tons of people to make you nice things"

<comment><USER25> That passage is meant to keep you from worrying, not from working. Later on there's this: "Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands."

<comment><USER26> Christianity was never for the rich:

"Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor" and "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!" - Mark 10:21+

<comment><USER27> They also serve who only stand and wait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Anti_ work is a terrible name that just throws people off. Why not _self_ -work? It's the work you give yourself. I get the gist of the article: it's not Work vs Leisure, it's Their Work vs Your Own Work, with Leisure on the side.

 _Anti_ work makes it sound like it's the opposite of work. It's not the opposite of work; it's the opposite of _pointless_ work. If anything needs a new nickname, it's the _pointless_ work. Pseudo-work. And if we're going to be morally superior about one or the other, I think the author makes a good case for celebrating _self_ work, not pseudowork. (I don't know who celebrates leisure, it's usually the butt of a joke)

<comment><USER29> I wholeheartedly agree. This point irked me the entire time as the author did not condemn work itself.

I wish there was a way to upvote your comment more than once!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if I have a shitty personality, or if it comes from the fact that I live in france where there's a lot of welfare and unions, which results in workers being treated very nicely. On the other hand, U3 unemployment is at 10%.

I'm 30 and I've never been paid a salary in my entire life except for 1 month. Same for my father, and my mother is not so much better on that.

I tried being honest and tried the "reintegrate myself" option, but I have to say I'm not convinced.

If some people are ready to bite their tongue and subscribe to the obeying workforce, I would let them be, but I will never let them insult unemployed people as being lazy. But I think I belong to the portion of people who is not really actively doing something I think is productive, or is not being able to effectively progress towards that goal. I can't always stick the blame on me.

I understand that civilization and economics are something people hold dearly, like it's important for the well being of millions of people, but sometimes, you have to be honest and explore the sociology and psychology of it if you want to make real improvements. I can't honestly believe politics are completely insensitive to this. Or may they will be in 50 years.

</comment><comment><USER30> Work is an effort to do something meaningful with time. If our perspective on it is skewed, then that can change—and perhaps it should—but work itself is not evil, nor should we redefine the word to be so construed.

As W. Edwards Deming said, "All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride." Prideful, real work—work that produces joy for the worker and results in something of value— _is_ virtuous.

The real problem is structural. A requirement of working with pride is to be a part of an organization that treats employees well and enables that pride, and removes all barriers to it. They must seek a quality product and a valuable result as a primary goal.

This is why Deming advocated for Quality as a first principle, and why his system was so functional and correct. It took into account primarily the need for every individual in the organization to _take pride in work._ Learn more -- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

And to sum this up, never a better time for this poem:

To be of use – by Marge Piercy

[http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09...](http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09/04)

      The people I love the best
      jump into work head first
      without dallying in the shallows
      and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
      They seem to become natives of that element,
      the black sleek heads of seals
      bouncing like half-submerged balls.

      I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
      who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
      who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
      who do what has to be done, again and again.

      I want to be with people who submerge
      in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
      and work in a row and pass the bags along,
      who are not parlor generals and field deserters
      but move in a common rhythm
      when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

      The work of the world is common as mud.
      Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
      But the thing worth doing well done
      has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
      Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
      Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
      but you know they were made to be used.
      The pitcher cries for water to carry
      and a person for work that is real.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you think about this from first principles, it is clear that work is necessary. Considering that we (self-organizing collections of matter) exist in a universe where entropy tends to a maximum, doing work is necessary to maintain our existence.

As for the moral argument as to why people on welfare are often viewed negatively, I think the reasoning is fairly obvious - most taxpayers are doing work which they don't necessarily enjoy, and may become annoyed if they think they are being exploited by people who are not working. Hence why nobody cares if a person who is _not_ on welfare doesn't work.

Finally, I would be interested to know what specific jobs the author is referring to as "BS jobs". As far as I'm aware, people are only given money if someone else finds utility in what they are doing.

<comment><USER32> Consider this example:

I run the EMEA division of a multinational, I want to justify a bigger budget and/or get a bigger bonus and so I hire a data analyst to prepare some reports showing my division in a favourable light. The reports are well received and have desired effect for the first year or two until my competitor who runs AsiaPac realises what's happening and also hires a data analyst. The situation then returns to normal, but the company now employs two more data analysts than it did a few years ago. Neither one of us will fire our data analyst for fear of looking bad, but the data analysts are in competition and so have no net benefit to the company's performance or humanity as a whole.

<comment><USER31> I guess I was more looking for an entire category (or industry) of jobs that was deemed "BS" \- since that is what I thought the author was implying. But nevertheless, I have considered your example.

I have the following thoughts: -Are these data analysts preparing accurate (factual) reports? If so, then I would contend that they are in fact doing a useful service by allowing upper management to make better resource allocation decisions (i.e. more accurately determine which division is performing the best). -If the data analysts are employed to produce inaccurate or biased reports purely for the benefit of the division managers, then I believe this would be an example of illegal behaviour and an agency problem. For this reason, I would expect that the head office would employ (neutral) data analysts to avoid this problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hard work is the foundation of success. The best people I know are all hard workers. They love their jobs, they are competitive, and they work hard.

It is a privilege to be able to work in such an environment as it is so rare.

<comment><USER2> Work will set you free!

First define success in a way that isn't just "happy" (because then you're defining anti-work, as the OP was). Then take the set of all successful people, based on that criteria, and the set of all hard working people, and tell me how big the overlap is.

I suspect that many successful people are hard-working. But the other direction that hard work is the foundation of success will be transparently nonsense.

You're using the classic fallacy of affirming the consequent here.

This is exactly the point made in this article and others. We've uncritically accepted the myth that hard work leads to success.

The prime beneficiaries of this are the successful people who control masses of capital and are thus able to anti-work (i.e. they do what they enjoy, building their business, creating new products, competing). The prime losers are those who do hard work for them for squeezed wages.

<comment><USER34> So, it is a good thing to enjoy one's "anti-work". Which is to say, it's a personal and societal good to enjoy what you do for a living. Um, is this some new existentialism thing? Yes, attention attention: it would be best for everyone to like what they do, especially when what they do is hard. If you can't dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullsh*t, am I right?

Here's a fun what-if. What if in the next 10-20 years, robots and software begin automating away huge swaths of the non-creative drudgery jobs, doing the work safer and better than humans ever could. And, right around the same time, we develop life extending vitamins to give humans 500+ year lifespans at the physical age of 30. The vitamins soon become cheap to make, anyone can get them. Millions of people, suddenly vigorous and youthful, who used to have [bad/fake] labor jobs will now be priced out of the market. Grumble, grumble, they say. Life was better when I at least HAD a crummy job, grumble! Thank God, the anti-work problem is solved: the crappy jobs have been purged. Except now we've got a huge new powderkeg of a problem to deal with.

My question is, will we plan our future society ahead of time and peacefully enter this new era of plenty and health? Or, will we have wars and endless class strife between the have-jobs and not-have-jobs? Can we have a public debate about this before it actually happens?

When I read the OP and your message, I hear a negative view. Both of you posit negative thoughts about the current work scene that could lead a reader to doubt and resent their own job and position/status. You're simply stirring up trouble and unhappiness when you fail to also bring solutions to the table.

<comment><USER2> > If you can't dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullsh*t, am I right?

Given that your reply contained no data, you tell me.

> Life was better when I at least HAD a crummy job, grumble!

That very much depends on what they do instead.

Plenty of people enjoy gardening who don't get paid to do it now. Plenty of people enjoy making things, craft, art, writing, furniture making, these are largely leisure activities now. Forms of education for themselves and others going to the library, or the park, reading. Working on yourself physically. Cooking. Consumption of media. Volunteering.

The idea that someone would rather do busywork than those things is silly, I think. But if, in that future, we still base our judgement of people's moral worth, by whether they have a crummy job, then I think the lack of crummy jobs becomes an issue.

The future you outline is coming, in some form or another (at least the work part, the 500yr lifespan less certainly). The question is, in that world, do we want to keep tying people's worth to their ability to find drudgery work? Do we want to keep going with a society that would concentrate even more wealth in the hands of those who control the capital, with no meaningful ability for anyone else to raise themselves out of their 'lower-class' status. It is hard to see how a plutocratic capitalism is going to work then. So I think we need more of this debate now, not less.

The solution being brought to the table, a small step in the grand scheme, but a necessary one, is to stop the rhetoric that work of any kind is inherently virtuous, and to stop the rhetoric that work is the way to gain one's success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The thing I find most frustrating about periods of hard work is that it ruins your ability to think.

</comment><comment><USER36> Read the "Manifesto against Labour" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POHENPfWhi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POHENPfWhi8) [http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-against- labour](http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-against-labour)

 _Those who do not work (labour) shall not eat! This cynical principle is still in effect; all the more nowadays when it becomes hopelessly obsolete. It is really an absurdity: Never before the society was that much a labour society as it is now when labour itself is made superfluous._

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally, I try to differentiate between something that is work, something that productive, versus something that is keeping busy but not really accomplishing anything. Keeping busy will most likely be worse than being idle. It is wasting energy and occupying time. If you would not think of leaving equipment running for the sake of burning energy, why do it with people? If there is no concept of legitimate idleness or leisure, then there will be a lack of pressure to find meaningful work for people to do.

</comment><comment><USER38> "From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce." \- Thomas Edison

</comment><comment><USER39> I think the shift has already happened. All those people who talk about the "future of work" are the ones I'd quite like to send into the future. The far future.

Work has already changed, the future is here, but it's here because people need two jobs to make rent, or because people freelance so that they can realise their personal visions, not because robots are going to steal our jobs.

The real problem is finding out what you want to do and where you fit (hence [https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com)).

</comment><comment><USER40> > the pernicious culture of "hard work"

Yes, because productivity and determination are so pernicious.

I don't understand the point of this article; is it suggesting that we intentionally try to decrease humanity's labor output in the name of some poorly-defined notion of "work sucks"?

</comment><comment><USER41> It depends what you mean by work, doesn't it?

I'm quite willing to accept that the value I instinctively place on work and, to a lesser degree, success has a large societal component. When I try to evaluate myself, I cannot avoid those values, and it doesn't help that my predisposition to anxiety emotionally magnifies any idea of not doing something _useful_ with my life, of wasting time and makes it difficult for me to ever be truly relaxed if I feel like I'm in such a situation. That's been the dominant emotion when I think about my day job since I first started having day jobs some four years ago - anxiety.

And it's pretty arbitrary, isn't it? A common justification or explanation of caring about success is that it improves one's chances of being important and remembered. But I am not important; I hope to accomplish something interesting enough in life that people will remember me for time to come, but it's very unlikely to happen, and if I consider that there are ways to optimize for memorability - careers more associated with fame, or writing - that I am not taking advantage of, and that I don't mind that at all, I can see that that has nothing to do with my real emotional goals. I value work not as a means to any end, but because I've internalized it as an end in itself.

Even people who spend money to get buildings named after them - are they doing it to be remembered, or just because leaving one's name on things is part of our societal narrative of success, and doing it themselves makes their self- narrative better track that one?

But... then there are my side projects. The ones that even if I had the capability to work on full time, I wouldn't, because they don't seem important enough in the long run (there the anxiety creeps up again) - yet that I like no less for it. When I think about doing them as side projects, the associated emotions are pleasure, personal fulfillment, and connection. I value the intellectual stimulation I get out of them; I value being able to prove to myself my ability to complete them (which is a different, more idiosyncratic and egotistical emotion than the desire to matter); I value being able to help people, if the project is used by others, and to socially engage with them. I even value the feeling of being (mentally) exhausted after giving the thing my all, very similar to the feeling of having given a physical activity, say skiing, my all.

I think those desires are more intrinsic than the desire to work. Inherently those projects are so similar to work; indeed, I'm lucky enough to be able to perform for my job almost the same activities (reverse engineering, coding) I like to do by myself. But I think they are anti-work, because when I pop a project off the personal stack and onto the work stack, I can't help but think about it very differently. It grows all sorts of context that didn't exist before.

But at least it's similar.

</comment><comment><USER42> so what is it that makes antiworkers so successful? luck? market-fit awareness?

what special skill or trait do you need to become a successful antiworker?

I have this growing uneasiness about capitalism that its really about capital, not special skill, not some super insight, but mainly luck and/or capital. Not brains. Not muscles.

To me this realization throws the entire concept of working hard. It's easy to see that capitalism is not based on exploiting yourself or peddling your ass for wages. In fact the people who claim that hard work is road to success are the very people who benefit it.

It might be that this has become a widely accepted falsehood that was started by no good factory owners since the industrial age, that is being perpetuated to this day.

I honestly feel like I've been lied to all my life. Your startup or business failed, not because you were dumb or it was all your fault, a lot of it has to do with luck. Luck comes in many forms, sales, market timing, product fit etc.

I almost feel like you are almost entitled to spend some time without accomplishing much with antiwork but when you stick around luck will eventually come to you.

In the past month I've completely stopped _trying_ so hard. I just tuned out and let business happen. it was the best month I've had so far.

</comment><comment><USER11> _The facts and figures generally don't support the rose-tinted political view of work. Studies consistently show how jobs keep many of us poor while also making us ill, stressed, exhausted and demoralised_

This whole article is a ridiculous strawman. People don't advocate hard work for its own sake (or if they do, this viewpoint isn't politically influential). They promote hard work for what it brings, that is, whatever the worker produced.

Graeber's essay is wrong. There are no "bullshit jobs". From the employer's point of view, why would they hire someone if hiring that person wasn't profitable? Does he really think businesses put the ideology of everyone having a job over profit?

<comment> wes-k I think if you graphed money and work you'd find some cycles that weren't really benefitting mankind. There's definitely work that is not needed.

Additionally plenty of people are not working 100% of the time at their job. Many Amazon Turks are these people. Either they have work they are procrastinating OR they don't have much to do.</comment></comment>


BeyondCorp: How Google Ditched VPNs for Remote Employee Access - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/beyondcorp-google-ditched-virtual-private-networking-internal-applications/?_lrsc=736ef0f1-9e4b-4970-81fc-82957c3e6c0f <comment><USER2> Most companies need to be able to answer the question, "is this client one of ours," when protecting sensitive resources.

Most companies will instead answer the question, "is the client on our network," and pretend that it was the same question. The fact that it clearly is not has some very obvious security implications and attack vectors that we've been living with for decades.

Beyondcorp tries to more directly answer the original question about device identity rather than subbing in the network question in its place.

The fact that this approach is novel says a lot about the maturity of our industry.

<comment><USER3> Even the question "Is this client one of ours?" is a bad question to ask. A much better question is "Is this specific action authorized and authenticated?".

When you only authenticate a client, with a mechanism such as TLS Mutual-Auth, or ALTS, you still aren't really authenticating the actions, just the channel. That leaves the system open to request smuggling attacks, hi-jacking attacks, context-mismatch attacks (TLS is particularly cumbersome here, because authentication contexts can change mid-request), layering violations like credential lengthening problems (do you tear down a previously opened connection when the credential used to establish it expires or is revoked?), and vulnerabilities in the channel authentication mechanism (e.g. X509 and ASN1 are both notorious problem areas).

I work at AWS, so I'm biased, but it seems much stronger to me to use a system that AAA's each action, like a request signing protocol (ours is [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signature- vers...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signature- version-4.html) ).

Request signing systems like that authenticate each action, which is very granular, it permits strong offline signing (just like my iPhone banking app does), and it's agnostic to the details of networks and clients and things like hi-jacking and smuggling just can't work.

Of course, today's browsers aren't really set up for this; they don't support built-in request signing, but I still find it a little weird to see VPNs/networks traded for a model whose expiry date also went by years ago.

<comment><USER4> Request signing can be easily implemented in JavaScript for API requests with WebCrypto but it's not clear to me in what threat model it would be beneficial because even if they keys are not exportable users don't generally see what actions did they authorize and as such they don't know what did they exactly sign.

<comment><USER3> The main threats are protocol and network level. For example, request- smuggling and hi-jacking attacks can take the form of bugs in proxies and servers that allow requests to be smuggled because they don't escape newlines in headers and so on. With signing, these requests don't validate.

It takes a much smaller TCB, and no connection state, to AAA a signed request, but with mutual-auth you need a state machine and the TCBs for X509/ASN.1 validation tend to be huge. That's not what you want in a security critical control. Honestly, enabling normal TLS mutual-auth likely _degrades_ security in most cases, as it opens the server to whatever attacks the X509 processing is vulnerable to. ALTS mitigates this somewhat by using Protobufs, but that's still a very very big TCB. Compare that to say the TCB for validating HMAC or ed25519.

Then there's the basic stuff I already pointed out, like sessions lasting longer than their credentials are valid for. The layering violation invites these kind of issues.

<comment><USER4> Hmm... But you'll still use TLS for transport so adding mutual auth doesn't really increase the attack surface that much. (it still requires ugly ASN.1 and X.509). Or maybe you suggest using signed requests without TLS (plain HTTP)?

<comment><USER3> A TLS server without mutual auth doesn't need to do any online X509 processing, and only a tiny amount of ASN.1 (parsing the DH share, which is easy). It just serves certs, without parsing them.

Mutual auth increases the TCB by a lot, the Kolmogorov complexity increases by several orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER4> Good point. Although I think the design was chosen because of the complexity of infrastructure behind your TLS server. Adding more things for the client to do so that you don't need to trust any intermediaries inside AWS data centers. (I'm not complaining, just an observation from my POV).

(For the record in BeyondCorp all backend components are mutually authenticated but they still use sessions and U2F tokens so there are no trusted points).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The short and long of BeyondCorp:

\- Instead of a single VPN that will expose your entire squishy corporate LAN to anyone who gets VPN access, each application gets its own protected proxy.

\- The protected proxies query a centrally-aggregated auth/authz database, which can work with client-side software to ensure qualities such as private key possession, full disk encryption, software updates, etc. In Google's case, this is combined with a host-rewriting browser extension for usability.

\- Access proxies can easily funnel HTTP traffic, but some more clever solutions involving tunnels exist for plain old TCP and UDP.

By giving every application its own authentication and access control proxy, each application is secured on its own, hence "zero-trust."

<comment><USER6> Do you have more information on these 'protected proxies' that you mention? My understanding was more that it was each client was given a health check of sorts & was either allowed, or not allowed after meeting a certain number of criteria.

<comment><USER7> For commercial solutions take a look at zscaler offerings.

The biggest problem in such solutions is that you have to identify the applications you have and sure Google is a relatively new tech company. Try to identify all apps/services on big old companies. Until you do that or decommission them, hou have either to keep your old VPN solution up or proxy ALL traffic and use the analysis tools they have to identify apps/services, again no walk in the park.

Of course as mentioned Google has most of its apps/services anyhow on the Internet so you mostly just use the host checking and client identification functionalities of such tools.

<comment><USER8> You could probably keep the vpn and incrementally move services "out", starting with low-hanging fruit (few dependencies) and/or popular ones (eg: (Web)mail). Basically low cost/high benefit trade-off.

At some point you'll have a few dinosaurs on the vpn, and can take those services quietly out back and retire them permanently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > All the corporate resources are behind this uber-reverse proxy. Based on a > decision provided by its "trust engine," the proxy makes the decision of > whether or not to provide access to the desired application. If permissions > are in place, according to the tiered trust model, it forwards the requests > to the application, along with the security credentials.

To me this sounds like a firewall/vpn moved into the application layer.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like the difference between "authenticate, then access this application" and "authenticate, then access our network which has this application accessible on it."

<comment><USER11> I mean, what the OP said implies what you're saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know the approach described in the article is not particularly new [0], but I think it deserves to get more traction than it does (AFAIK).

I do have some other questions, though:

1) Does this infrastructure support BYOD, and if so, what does the provisioning process look like?

2) What permissions do employees have their devices?

3) How are device compromises handled?

[0] [https://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html)

<comment><USER2> The answer to both the byod and permissions questions is the "tiered" device trust part from the article. You, the policy-maker decide how certain you are that a device hasn't been pwned given its provenance and user access story, and you assign a "trust tier" accordingly, which determines what resources it can access.

I don't think beyondcorp necessarily changes your incident response story, assuming you already have one.

A lot of this discussion glosses over the fact that U2F really makes this a viable system. U2F solves the MITM problem and ensures that the anyone who logs in does so with a company-issued hardware authenticator in physical communication (usually USB, but maybe also NFC or Bluetooth) with the client device. This means that even in a byod story, there's a piece of corp-issued hardware always attached. This in turn means that impersonation requires physical device theft in addition to credential theft.

<comment><USER8> > A lot of this discussion glosses over the fact that U2F really makes this a > viable system. U2F solves the MITM problem and ensures that the anyone who > logs in (…)

Makes viable: certainly; solves: not so sure. Session hi-jack doesn't magically cease to be a problem.

<comment><USER13> It becomes much less of an issue if the connection is re-negotiated periodically, and a new key may require a physical action (touch) from the key generator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reasons your company will never adopt BeyondCorp:

\- Your company does not do real inventory management, or if they do, they do it partially, and poorly.

\- Your company does not manage all the infrastructure in a single place. Adopting this kind of authentication+authorization requires putting more trust in your local network in order to allow your internet gateway access to all your internal resources.

\- Your company's network traffic is made up of a bunch of random protocols, authentication+authorization realms, and edge cases, half of which won't work with this system.

\- You don't need it.

\- If you have a couple hundred thousand employees and a millions to burn on building universal integration systems, you're going to write your own stuff anyway.

<comment><USER15> > Your company's network traffic is made up of a bunch of random protocols

Basically anything other than HTTPS

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lots of things become simpler when everything is a layer 4 or 7 service, and protected by SSL, and you're enabled to mandate hardware and software upgrades across your entire device fleet.

Another reuse of this philosophy can be seen in the Istio project, which combines Kubernetes and the Envoy proxy to authenticate and secure communication within a microservice architecture.

</comment><comment><USER17> Um, I'm not Google, but I think for a typical small/medium-scale tech business we're not there yet.

> "The problem with the "castle" approach is that once the perimeter is > breached, the entire internal network, and all the associated applications, > are at risk. "Do not trust your network. It is probably already owned""

Considering an example of a common software development company, we may assume they use VPN to get into private network with their project management, git, devel, staging, backups, documentation and other servers/applications. Each of them requires user authentication, each user has its own privileges. VPN here adds an extra layer of security. But either way, being behind the VPN or not, services potentially carry the same level of risk. Implementing perimeter security doesn't imply a lack of security of services within.

> "Google's approach involves comprehensive inventory management, one that > keeps track of who owns which machine in the network. A Device Inventory > Service collects a variety of live information about each device […] > Employees get the appropriate level of access regardless of what device they > are using or where in the world they are logging in from. Lower levels of > access require less stringent checks on the device itself. […] The > applications themselves are routinely checked for breaches by vulnerability > scanners."

> "VPN was cumbersome to use, and slowed performance, especially for overseas > workers. And it is no walk in the park for admins either. To set up a new > user, the admin would typically have to configure the cloud network, along > with setting up the IPSec rules and firewall rules, the VPN. This is > followed by a lot of testing"

Again, I'm glad that it works for Google and that they're able to routinely check all hardware credentials and servers "for breaches by vulnerability scanners", but this whole passage and complexity scheme behind it causes me a headache. I think I'll continue to rely on the traditional VPN, but based on the modern lean WireGuard[1].

[1] [https://www.wireguard.com/](https://www.wireguard.com/)

<comment><USER18> You may wish to re-consider your position of relying on Wireguard. From their website:

> WireGuard is not yet complete. You should not rely on this code. It has not > undergone proper degrees of security auditing

<comment><USER19> I would trust my WireGuard significantly more than any installation of IPsec, if nothing else than because I will almost certainly configure IPsec in a manner that is completely insecure, but not obviously so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Last time this created a lot of discussion in HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14596613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14596613)

</comment><comment><USER21> Slides from our presentation: [https://conferences.oreilly.com/security/sec- ny/public/sched...](https://conferences.oreilly.com/security/sec- ny/public/schedule/detail/61327)

<comment><USER21> Video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAvDASLehpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAvDASLehpY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think there's two points of view here. On the one hand yes, if someone gets into your castle then they may have a lot of access you don't want to give them. However that assumes that things inside these walls are also not secured, which is often not the case.

The other point of view is that the castle wall gives you added protection against unknown unknowns that could mean there are security issues with your now public facing infrastructure. By just exposing everything publicly you create this potential big risk. Google's preaching here glosses over this fact.

<comment><USER23> It's not quite removing the walls, think of it more as a ton of tiny castles dotting the landscape with equally good walls instead of one giant wall around the kingdom and some unprotected wooden huts inside.

By doing this they want to force those managing internal apps to put up protection on the level they would for any other external service. Overall it's leading to better security (at least that's what they argue).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> BeyondCorp sounds great in theory, but deployment sounds like a nightmare without going to one of the several companies that are offering it as a service. It's certainly not as accessible as a decent VPN w/ 2FA, and I doubt we'll see mass deployment for smaller groups until then.

<comment><USER25> We wrote a lot more about what we did to ensure then end user experience was good in [https://research.google.com/pubs/pub46366.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub46366.html)

You're right that it's still early for companies that don't have the same resources of a company like Google, but products are slowly starting to emerge to make it more turnkey, so I have high hopes that this will be the norm for new companies in a few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's really nice that we see more and more awareness for Zero Trust and specifically Google's BeyondCorp whitepaper. If you're looking to experiment with this model yourself, check out the following open source projects. While they might not implement everything in Google's BeyondCorp paper yet, they are pretty close to the full thing, and address many issues raised in the comments.

-> OAuth2 Authorization Server [https://github.com/ory/hydra](https://github.com/ory/hydra)

-> Identity & Access Proxy (early access): [https://github.com/ory/oathkeeper](https://github.com/ory/oathkeeper)

If you have questions don't hesitate to ask.

<comment><USER27> These look great, a couple questions:

1) Are these deployed at scale anywhere?

2) Any known security audits?

Thanks!

<comment><USER26> 1) Hydra is deployed at scale, Oathkeeper is our new kid on the block

2) We have an OpenID Connect certification coming in, but no security audits so far

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Are there any decent open source implementations that a small company could deploy?

<comment><USER29> Check out scaleft.com. They have tooling to help implement this. It looks to be largely focused on ssh access but there is some stuff about controlling app level access also.

<comment><USER30> I'm from ScaleFT, thanks for the mention. True that our original focus was in SSH/RDP access, however we've recently introduced Web access as well.

[https://www.scaleft.com/blog/how-to-deploy-a-beyondcorp- styl...](https://www.scaleft.com/blog/how-to-deploy-a-beyondcorp-style-web- app-behind-the-scaleft-access-fabric/)

I agree with many commenters that it appears transformative, but that's only through the lens of Google. Centralized access controls at Layer 7 through a proxy service that can authenticate and authorize requests, while brokering encrypted sessions isn't that out of reach. Our goal at ScaleFT is to offer as much as a service as we can.

Where things do get tricky, though, is with the access policies and device attestation in a BYOD environment. Admittedly, we have work to do in this regard, but it may not require a full MDM layer. Really, you only need to query device state at a given time to make an authZ decision.

Love to see BeyondCorp get more coverage, and I hope to see further adoption outside of Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hi, I'm Max, one of the two people who gave the talk this post references. I work in Google Cloud and help publish papers about how we have done BeyondCorp. Ask me questions!

</comment><comment><USER32> Can someone explain what makes "corporate" applications so different.

Why does my corporate bug tracker need different security from Gmail? Does that different security do anything?

<comment><USER27> Typically the corporate environment includes many "line of business" apps, which are often a simple web interface onto a custom application. It's not common for these to have Gmail-level hardening, and so security is provided by restricting access to the underlying network with a VPN.

<comment><USER33> > It's not common for these to have Gmail-level hardening

Translation for those not in the business: They are custom J2EE applications made by the combined forces of over-expensive consultants and CEOs nephew, running on unpatched Windows 2003 servers with plain HTTP login form (obviously vulnerable to SQL injection) and DB listening on 0.0.0.0 with default admin credentials. But it's in the internal network, so don't worry, no hacker can get there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Maybe naive but can this sort of thing be accomplished with the likes of FreeIPA and NFSv4 (with k auth) or this is entirely another ballpark?

</comment><comment><USER35> This is great for "people" accessing server resources but not so much for automation / API access.

<comment><USER36> Why can't the "Uberproxy" (in Google terms) consume Authentication mechanisms like spiffe[1] certificates and allow access to protected resources via those?

Theres no reason a BeyondCorp architecture needs to make automation or API access harder?

[1] - [https://spiffe.io/](https://spiffe.io/)

<comment><USER4> Because for Google it's not enough that you have a certificate if your client is using an old unpatched OS and is potentially vulnerable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This seems very similar to what Microsoft is trying to do With Azure AD and Intune

</comment><comment><USER38> Why not just use Citrix?</comment>


Aeolipile - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

<comment><USER2> … but it was nothing more than an elaborate art project.

The Greeks and Romans certainly had it in them. I wonder whether their reliance on slave labor hindered bigger leaps. If you were rich enough to let someone construct such technology you probably already lived one of the most luxurious lifes in antiquity. Where is the incentive?

To be fair, though, building a toy is easy. Improving that toy in a manner that makes it actually useful for real world tasks is much harder.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Where is the incentive?

I guess you are right, here's where some had the incentive to use the technology:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you not mean "Ancient Greeks"?

I thought pretty much everyone knew that Hero invented this steam driven turbine, but there's no evidence any work was ever extracted from it.</comment>


Ask HN: When to not use Tor? - <AUTHOR> Tor is being recommended as the primary browser for normal internet users. When should normal users not use Tor? Should it always be used with a VPN? Should normal users use a different browser when accessing personal accounts (banks, email, shopping)? What are the problems with using Tor as my only browser? <comment><USER2> First off, Tor is not the Tor Browser. Tor is the onion network through which the Tor Browser (and any other client, for that matter) connect through.

> When should normal users not use Tor?

Since Tor has drawbacks such as speed, it may prove impossible or at least difficult to use Tor all the time. If you really want the extra anonymity, go for it. Personally, I don't care if Google keeps a tally of all my searches and piles cookies on me, I enjoy personalized search results. Anonymity is useful sometimes though. You could definitely use it 100% of the time though.

> Should it always be used with a VPN?

Tor provides an onion network, I don't see a need to ever use a VPN.

> Should normal users use a different browser when accessing personal accounts > (banks, email, shopping)?

The Tor Browser doesn't keep cookies and other identifying information, so it's as if you're using a fresh browser each time you access these services. Security-wise, SSL will encrypt banks and email (most likely). So accessing those services in a normal browser doesn't inherently put your privacy at risk.

> What are the problems with using Tor as my only browser?

Speed issues, as the network is pretty slow at times. Otherwise I can't think of anything really.

NOTE: I'm not an expert on Tor, I'm just speaking from personal experience.

<comment><USER3> > > What are the problems with using Tor as my only browser?

> Speed issues, as the network is pretty slow at times. > Otherwise I can't > think of anything really.

Well there's the almost ubiquitous CloudFlare captcha challenge everytime you try and use TOR for "ordinary" browsing...</comment></comment>


Explained: Knightian uncertainty  - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/explained-knightian-0602.html

<comment><USER2> I appreciate the shout-out to Frank Knight, an under-appreciated genius, but this is nonsense:

"Investment banks that in recent years regarded their own apparently precise risk assessments as trustworthy may have thought they were operating in conditions of Knightian risk, where they could judge the odds of future outcomes."

You can't get a position in risk management without understanding the limitations of the normal distribution baked into every risk calc (eg, 'fat tails'). The disconnect comes when executives ask: "so these numbers mean we can turn it up to 11?!?" and the risk managers who simply shrug and mumble under their breath are the ones who get promoted.

I'm not sure if you can solve this problem, Basel is attempting to by standardizing and publisizing risk calcs.</comment>


GM drops workers' health care during strike, a sign UAW impasse could drag on - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/17/gm-dropped-workers-health-care-during-strike-company-says-its-standard-procedure/ <comment><USER2> Yet more proof that our method of tying health insurance to employers is completely insane.

<comment><USER3> Yes, It is a national shame that the USA has such bad average health care. The rich havd the best in the world. The poor die young. Just look at the age stats for Cuba versus the USA in these charts etc. Yes, Cubans outlive Americans, so do Canadians. All dues to crooked Doctors, insurers, pharma companys, hospitals and... [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.dyn.le00.in](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.dyn.le00.in)

[https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publicatio...](https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/mortality/World- Mortality-2017-Data-Booklet.pdf) [https://ourworldindata.org/life- expectancy](https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When unions want contract obligations on job security it reminds me of a Jack Welch quote. To paraphrase: "GE doesn't give you job security, the market gives you job security"

How can GM commit to not reducing workforce if sales decline? Just running a deficit?

<comment><USER2> I think their biggest ask is for GM to stop using temp workers to get around union obligations. When you have a "temp worker" who has been working for you for 4-5 years, they should probably be classified as an employee.

<comment><USER4> However that doesn't impact current union employees. Is it just the union fearing for its own loss of power?

<comment><USER5> In part, though I think it's more complicated than just a loss of power. The responsibilities for employers are getting more and more expensive so they are doing the rational thing and switching to contractors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unions spoil workers in collusion with manglement. Manglement surrenders to wage demands and passes it on as higher prices and ups the use of robots which layts off workers. Those left are well paid and they are the older people and the company loses in the market place as imports enter. I recall a time with 500,000 workers at the big three. Now what? 35,000 or so left. The big problem is 4 year contracts and COLA clauses. a guy at $15 versus a guy at $35 with health and other benefits automatically paid as they climb. We need annual contracts, industry wide = no pattern bargaining where they harm the weakest to make them yield wage increases they can not afford and the USA weakens. max 1 year contract, You loes one month = a little over 8% of wages lost. No signing bonuses. 100% strike of all car makers so 2/3rds can not stay at work and cross subsidize the strikers.

and in the COLA increase, the COLA is based on the average of workers. Fringe benefits, health, pensions, legals etc can be $30 PER HOUR all tax free. Make those taxable and allow the workers to have that fringe benefit as cash. The UAW exists is such a distorted world... I would like to see Snowden post all auto worker contracts on line and see how they have sucked money from us all and hurt tha nation.

<comment><USER6> I hear this argument brought up a lot relating to minimum wage at McDonalds. "IF THEY RAISE IT THEY'LL JUST FIRE EVERYONE". Guess what, they already started replacing cashiers with touch screens. Those 400k would've been replaced by robots whether or not the union was there, all that happened was while those 400k jobs were essential to making GM money, those workers got to have a decent life.

<comment><USER5> McDonalds sees the writing on the wall with the minimum wage and living wage debates. They are proactively mitigating future issues with paying more money to employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This should be illegal. It's nothing more than a strongarm attempt by GM against the union.

<comment><USER8> How long should an employer provide health-insurance to a person who is not working?

<comment><USER7> If they're part of a union that's on strike? For the duration of the strike, or until their employment ends, whichever comes first.

<comment><USER8> Who determines when their employment ends?

The employer has the right to fire whomever it wishes. The employee has the right to quit whenever he wishes. Why would one expect an employer to pay compensation or benefits to an employee who doesn't show up to work? Unions have a right to organize. And employers have the right to fire every last one of them and go non-union. Do you not agree?

<comment><USER7> Employment ends when the employee quits or the employer fires the employee. However, you are wrong: they do not have the right to fire striking employees. That violates the National Labor Relations Act. In fact, dropping the workers' insurance policy might also violate the NLRA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am guessing GM has no plans to allow the current insurance to continue.

This is their way of saying the new insurance is going to be more expensive and more in line with national averages.

</comment><comment> detail-oriented No work, no compensation, seems reasonable.</comment>


NYC's Taxis Finally Launch an App to Compete with Uber - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/08/arrow-ny-taxis-app/

<comment><USER2> This is good.

More competition is what capitalism is about.

It also means more jobs for programmers. I hope every city and every country launches their own uber, google, tesla, airbnb, dropbox, reddit . . .

Treat it like a new space age.</comment>


Show HN: An experimental Python to C#/Go/Ruby/JS transpiler - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/alehander42/pseudo-python <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Pseudo (and Pseudo-Python) are still in early stages, so I'd love some feedback, ideas and critique :)

Here are some examples of not-trivial programs translated automatically with Pseudo:

Reading and parsing a file with soccer stats [https://github.com/alehander42/pseudo/tree/master/examples/f...](https://github.com/alehander42/pseudo/tree/master/examples/football) A verbal-expressions-like library [https://github.com/alehander42/pseudo/tree/master/examples/v...](https://github.com/alehander42/pseudo/tree/master/examples/verbal_expressions)

And fibonacci because _traditions_ [https://github.com/alehander42/pseudo/tree/master/examples/f...](https://github.com/alehander42/pseudo/tree/master/examples/fib)</comment>


New Color.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.color.com/#downloadApp

<comment><USER2> Wow! Video without audio, and I have to join to watch! They've just invented a less interesting Youtube, without audio, and non-public access. Well done on an ... interesting ... pivot.

EDIT: this one is for the files of social networks that hobble a feature of other networks to try and stand out. In this case, however, it's audio associated with a video. Um....really?

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't get stuck on the lack of audio part. It can't be too far behind.

<comment><USER3> pork, it's not allowing me to reply to your comments so I'll just reply here.

I'm not disagreeing with you that audio is necessary and if it's part of the development plan, it should have been a major priority and I probably wouldn't have launched without it.

With that said, it's an assumption on our part that audio is necessary, even for for short 30-sec videos and they are putting that assumption to the test. Without audio, I don't think it'll work... but who knows. Until you test, you can't tell for sure.

<comment><USER4> You have to wait to post replies sometimes, depending how many levels down the conversation is. This is a safeguard against threads full of knee-jerk back- and-forth responses, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title link takes you to the download page (which doesn't tell you anything about the app).

Head to <http://color.com/#landing> to see more about the app.

<comment><USER6> And if you want to come back and tell us what you think, be sure to hit "back" _twice in rapid succession_ , because color.com spent their $41 million dollars hiring web developers who gratuitously break the web.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, worked fine for me in Chrome.

<comment><USER6> Safari on OS X and Mobile Safari on my iPad both redirect from color.com/#landing to color.com, then back to color.com/#landing. So hitting back once takes me to some kind of intermediate hell that redirects to /#landing.

But I'm glad it's working for you. Maybe it's my fault!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seem like Color is trying _so_ _hard_ , it kind of turns me off from wanting to try it.

<http://www.color.com/#howItWorks>

Specifically:

* the background music with strumming guitar and bells seems really "yesterday" Apple-esque

* doorbell sound at the end reeks of trying to get consumer to associate that noise with the Color brand

You can try to brain wash me to fall in love with your product, but don't make it so obvious!

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll cut through the piles of snark that I knew would inevitably show up on this thread and say I now understand why these guys got so much venture capital. This idea, and the previous one they had, while maybe not runaway successes, are damn clever. Yes, it's more social-such-and-such, but they are really taking some very unique approaches here, and with 40M in the bank it's clear they're going to keep iterating until they _do_ find success.

There have been plenty of times where I've witnessed something that I wished I could've shared with a few friends. When I see something crazy happen, my first instinct is to tell someone about it. It's the equivalent of tapping a buddy on the shoulder and saying "woah, dude, over there. Look!"

If I get tapped on the shoulder by this color app you can bet I'll check it out. I've got 30 seconds.

At any rate, I find it disheartening to constantly see so many negative comments about everything color.com does. It smacks of so many sour grapes.

<comment><USER2> But you've just had the exact opposite knee-jerk reaction to the one you were commenting on -- by assuming that we're all "sour grapes". Instead, you could consider that our criticism of Color is legitimate. I think a reason a lot of us are skeptical is that if you took Color's business plan and general idea and applied to YC/TechStars/any VC, you would probably get polite looks of boredom and stifled yawns. We've also been hearing of a somewhat cynical underlying purpose to an otherwise fluffy mobile app, i.e., that it was meant to be a "data mining platform", which doesn't exactly breed goodwill from people who are trying to create consumer-centered products.

So why again does Color deserve any slack from (what I feel is rightly deserved) criticism?

<comment><USER9> I should have clarified that I meant a lot of the criticism sounds like sour grapes, not all. The point I want to make is that if it wasn't public knowledge how much money these guys took, I think the reaction on HN to these ideas would be very different. My guess is that the 40M scandal makes it pretty much impossible for these guys to get a fair shake in the developer community.

<comment><USER10> Nitpick: you might call that envy or schadenfreude, but it's not sour grapes. Sour grapes would be if someone were talking down the desirability of $40 million itself.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It looks similar to <http://keek.com> which I saw today on MoMB as "the easiest way to share microvideo with friends, family and the world."

Which itself looks like a video version of the YC backed site <http://dailybooth.com> (and messageparty)

add: <http://www.mobypicture.com/> could be best because it does a/v/i with sharing and apps (inc new iphone app [http://mathys.vanabbe.com/proudly- presenting-the-new-moby-ip...](http://mathys.vanabbe.com/proudly-presenting- the-new-moby-iphone-app/))

</comment><comment><USER3> So... mobile justin.tv without audio with Facebook integration? Did I miss anything?

Seems like a thing I might use if it had audio, which they might be working on.

PS: I hope they still have at least $40.5 mil still in the bank.

</comment><comment><USER12> They really should give the VC's their money back. You can't win them all.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is like <http://qik.com> but without the audio.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The one thing I really liked about the last version was the logo which they killed in the latest version. Bill replied saying "Old logo was too complex to produce. Update that came out is a partial of our FB work. More will come w/ OG."

</comment><comment><USER14> Ah, you have to login with Facebook just to view a preview of their not-quite- videos. What is the benefit to not including audio with the videos? (Besides that it surely uses less bandwidth.)

</comment><comment><USER15> wtf? Why would I ever want to be _interrupted_ with someone's (even my friend's) stupid skateboarding video?

I can't think of a single use for this product.

<comment><USER3> You could be at Startup Weekend and live broadcast your Office Hours session to the world... if they had audio, which can't be that far behind.

EDIT: Nevermind. They limit the broadcast to 30 seconds.

<comment><USER16> I don't think audio was omitted merely because this is an MVP and they didn't have the time or resources for it - it's pretty clearly part of the main concept of the product.

I can think of several reasons why this might be a good idea. For example, audio recording on mobiles can be really bad - maybe that makes regular video recording apps less popular. Audio makes the downloads heavier. Audio makes consuming the content require more focus from the user - it has to mute any music, phone conversation, etc. Audio makes 30s of video seem too short to say anything meaningful - omitting it makes 30s seem like a long time for a "moving photo". Etc.

I can't say if any of these things really make for a good product that people will want to use - it still seems fairly ridiculous to me - but I don't know why everyone's so dismissive of the idea that there's any benefit to omitting audio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yet the video that shows off the product on their web site has sound. Oh the irony...

</comment><comment><USER18> Just a few years ago, "41 shots" was the rallying cry. Now it is "41 million."

</comment><comment><USER19> Who?

</comment><comment><USER20> So besides being nothing but a crappy Facebook plugin, it's also not available outside the U.S.A. Good thing you prevented those furriners from downloading your app, otherwise they might upload their soundless foreign videos...

Color.com, instead of not rendering at all on Firefox, now does render after about a 1.5 second delay. So there's some improvement. At this rate, in about 1000 years they'll have something worthwhile.</comment>


Why You Can't Say - <AUTHOR> http://lacker.io/tech/2017/04/05/why-you-cant-say.html <comment><USER2> Good post.

Since we're contributing taboos, here's my offering: Prolific commenters on Internet message boards tend to be less professionally capable and not more. High HN karma is evidence of poorer impulse control and time management, and most importantly, less time spent on the day job. For each person who is a prolific commenter, an identically appearing person who comments less is likely to be the better source of knowledge. Equally importantly, the perspective of these people is hopelessly skewed by the community they're in.

<comment><USER3> Not sure if that's really a taboo, it's been commonly expressed on many Internet message boards, often self-referentially.

I suspect it's actually more that the _average_ commenter on a forum related to their field tends to be more skilled than the _average_ worker in that field, because the average worker spends their workday reading other forums that are unrelated to their field, but the _very best_ professionals in a field are usually not found on Internet forums, because they're doing their job instead of talking about it.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, that's true. But I think message boards simultaneously tend to the "oh, I'm terrible, wasting time here haha." and to "Oh that guy's got so much karma, and I see him posting all the time. He probably knows what he's saying.".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _The most successful companies all use whiteboard interviews_

Not much evidence to demonstrate that this is a significant contributing factor in their success. The five companies listed are pioneering behemoths that transcend the boundaries of rote startup analysis.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that whiteboard interviews are fine, but I think programmers tend to dislike them because the physical act of standing up to write code on a whiteboard is awkward and disconcerting, especially in the context of a high pressure interview. The skill of using a large unwieldy marker to render text by hand on a vertical surface requires a significant amount of practice and I think many programmers just resent the need to hone this skill which is mostly useless outside of an interview setting. Something like a written test or questionnaire with pencil and paper is much more well received, or more ideally an offline workstation running something like notepad that's hooked up to a projector or big screen.

</comment><comment><USER5> I totally agree about the hiring process. I've found that those most vocal against certain hiring techniques that tend to work fairly well in the large are bitter at their own mediocrity being discovered in such a process, and that result flying head first into their own over inflated sense of their own ability.

<comment><USER6> I think it is simpler than that. That whiteboard interviews are stressful and people don't like the additional stress on top of the already stressful interview process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like what's discussed here is more controversial than taboo. It's similar, but slightly different.

While Whiteboard interviews might be controversial, I wouldn't consider this taboo. Making jokes in the workplace about women however, would be considered taboo. Even though this may have been considered 'acceptable' just 15 years back.

It seems like the difference between the two is one of opinion vs offence. While having a different opinion is fine, raising offence really depends on how much backlash you get.

</comment><comment><USER8> I do not think you should use really big corporations as example. First of all, they attract enough talent to use any methods of selection they see fit. They do not care about false negatives, since they operate on virtually unlimited pool of resources.

Secondly, the logic against whiteboard interviews is sound. I have never had to implement complex algorithm at work. Never. Which means that last time I actually wrote some was at college, about 7 years ago. Obviously, to perform well, I need to study to remind myself how to use red-black trees for example. Or how to implement priority queue (hopefully not using Fibonacci Heap, ugh). Any effort that goes into it is basically wasted, since chances I will have to actually do this at job are close to zero. So I'm basically reminding myself how to do something I will never do past interview. Not very effective.

Third and last, good software engineering is, as I believe, not strongly correlated with algorithms knowledge. People great at hacking quite often get in trouble when they have to develop readable, predictable system. This is different set of skills.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered > improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English._

The Catholic Church is a pretty confident group, yet it's taken multiple decades for people to start taking allegations of wrongdoing seriously. It's been taboo for a long time to cast aspersions against the church, even though they're a powerful organisation - how can _you_ dare to question _them_!?

Conversely, until quite recently, in Anglo societies being pregnant in public was somewhat taboo, as was breastfeeding in public or letting a mentally handicapped child be seen in public. Same with talking about domestic violence. These are taboos against the weak, not the strong or in-between.

As for "not eating mud because that's what others tell you", the author clearly hasn't played a field sport in winter.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> As for "not eating mud because that's what others tell you", the author clearly hasn't played a field sport in winter._

Guilty as charged.

That one was just on my mind because my daughter loves eating mud, and it's pretty clear she won't listen to reason. Only an Argument From Authority will do the trick.

<comment><USER9> Wait a year or two and you'll have the opposite problem - getting her to eat anything that isn't her one favourite food :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone else find it extremely disturbing that one of the examples they provide for "things you believe not because of logic [thus, it's objectively true], but because other people told you to" is "Human life is a precious thing"?

<comment><USER11> It follows from Christian theology (imago dei) but that's increasingly losing ground in the West. If we're just agglomerations of atoms why should I believe that all human agglomerations are equally precious?

<comment><USER12> > If we're just agglomerations of atoms why should I believe that all human > agglomerations are equally precious?

If we're just agglomerations of atoms, why would any agglomeration of atoms, human or not, be precious at all?

<comment><USER13> Because patterns are neat.

(I mean that less flippantly than it reads.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You should do a blog/tumblr of "startup advice successful founders can't publicly share" and give founders you know an anonymous way to contribute.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a logically incoherent blog post. You go from one point to another without any logical causation. It's literally ramblings about what you believe but you don't bother to make the case for it except with the most glib of arguments.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sure whiteboard interviews are hated by everyone and maybe they aren't so terrible, but I think there's better alternatives than "just chatting about their past".

How about a coding exercise to take home?

<comment><USER17> Are they hated by everyone? Or just by those who can't pass them?

<comment><USER18> I can pass them. Hell i passed them most of the time and i help people pass them.

They are atrocious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _But in practice there are a zillion things you believe not because of > logic, but because other people told you to._ > _Red lights mean stop_

The author ignores second-order effects. Red lights meaning stop is arbitrary, but I believe that I should stop at red lights not because I accept the arbitrary assignment, but because of the objective fact that if I don't I'll eventually end up in hospital.

> _The most successful companies all use whiteboard interviews_

The most successful companies all use bank accounts with million dollar balances. One shouldn't confuse cause and effect.

I've worked for a few (arguably) successful companies, and I'm firmly of the opinion that they are almost invariably pathologically averse to risk and unwilling to experiment with new ways of doing things, _especially_ when those ways aren't used by their competitors.

Conversely, every such company seems to believe that their competitors are doing rigorous scientific analysis of business methods and so if their competitors are all using whiteboard interviews "there must be something in it".

> _The most successful companies all use whiteboard interviews_

Do Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Facebook owe their success to the quality of their developers, though? I would suggest that they do not. They may be relying on the wrong signals when hiring developers, not hiring the best, but still succeeding due to other factors.

Heck, Google made a new programming language designed to make it hard to confuse mediocre programmers. That tells me something about the average skill of their developers.

> _The most successful companies all use whiteboard interviews_

The most successful companies also have lots and lots of applicants.

Even if whiteboard interviews meant you automatically fail 50% of candidates because they're no good at them, that's not such a major problem if there are 100 candidates for each job. If ten of the candidates are top-class, you still have five of them left after half of them flunk the whiteboard.

OTOH, if you have 10 candidates, the likelihood increases that the _actually_ superior candidate will be the one that flunks.

</comment><comment><USER20> About to offer my own personal HN heresy, after reading the original Paul Graham article: in reading many of his essays, am I the only person who gets the impression that the author has a major superiority complex about his own intelligence? Something about the tone, and sometimes the examples he chooses throughout his essays.

</comment><comment><USER21> The beginning of this article is interesting. If I was from the distant future, maybe I'd ask these questions followed by the answers I'm expecting from 2017:

Q: Why are people still working? A: You need to work to live.

Q: Why do men and women appear so different? A: They are biologically very different.

Q: Why are people trying to increase, rather than decrease, the amount of jobs to be done by humans? A: Idiot, clearly we need more jobs, otherwise everyone will be poor!

Q: Why are people waiting for signs and lights in metal cages with wheels? A: Those wheels in metal cages are one of our most prolific forms of transportation right now.

Q: Why are people eating other animals? A: Who doesn't, meat is tasty!

Q: Why do people have different skin color? A: You are racist.

Q: Why are some people so round? A: Are you making fun of fat people?

Q: Why are some people in a rolling chair all of the time? A: Some people are born with disabilities or break bones.

Q: Why are people still cutting other people open to fix them? A: How else do you stop internal bleeding and remove tumors?

Q: Why do 51 people decide what happens to 100 people instead of 1 person deciding what happens to 1 person? A: Ever heard of democracy, (unfortunately) the most fair system ever created to date by our founding fathers (who also owned tons of human slaves)?

Q: What is a border and how come I can't see it? A: Ever heard of the nation state? You're already subject to it just by being here. Didn't anyone tell you that?

Q: Why do people get thrown in cages for misbehaving? A: What else would we do with misfits and dangerous people?

<comment><USER22> Putting in hypothetical answers displays your biases. Better to collect questions and accept that reality is complicated enough that simple answers do not work in general and often on average too.</comment></comment>