jfc
flan
joined 3 years ago
honestly smartphones were the last next big thing, everything since 2008 has been desperate flailing. apps got better sure because of course they would but tech hasnt been able to recapture that.
I think a lot of what we're seeing is a combination of things coming together at once.
Firstly tech way overhired during covid. Between the money printer giving free cash to the banks, people staying home with little else to do but sit on the internet all day, and nil interest rates CEOs felt like fuckin' geniuses with a capital J. Now people have largely gone back to their old habits and are spending less time and money on internet things.
Secondly interest rates have gone up. Tech tends to rely on losing money for a long time and using equity and debt to keep the company alive until they can go from red to black (if they can). That money becoming more expensive makes it harder for them to be unprofitable. Staffing is expensive, probably 50% or more of their overall costs. It's the most obvious place to cut back.
Finally AI. I am not convinced it is LLMs that are replacing jobs. I believe it is the LLM hype and subsequent reallocation of resources that is costing jobs. If I have a team of people working on some thing that makes a little bit of money but it's nothing to write home about and that team costs me $10 million a year but what omagad i need AI now or we're going out of business! i might reallocate that $10 million by firing that team and hiring some expert I found on LinkedIn who worked for a cyrpto company 6 months ago.
All those things taken together I'm actually not that doomer about the situation. Yes the tech industry sucks right now but it's not going to stay like this forever. What will really kill us all is climate change and AI is certainly not helping with that.
He gets his daily national security briefings from the Cool Dads In Cool Cars facebook group
so in searching this interview i didnt see any mention of the fact that a lot of it is pretty incoherent. I see a lot of editorializing to get the general thrust of what he was saying but nobody commenting on the content at face value.
LinkedIn has really created this flywheel of emotio-corpo-bullshit. Managers have to be on there competing over how empathetic they were to some sob story on the street or in an interview. But they don't do the things that will actually help their workers like get them decent pay or help them form a union or fight against layoffs or whatever else. Instead of that we get adult daycare if we're lucky and vapid made up linkedin posts by our bosses who are regularly riding our asses if we're not.
tryna get more muscles
go west life is peaceful there there in your underwear go west where the skies are blue thats where i have to poo
can i donate negative days
reactionaries are like an absurdist sketch comedy. It doesn't even matter what changes but as long as it changes they will get mad about it.
They're like little tiny babies who get scared and shid and barfe because daddy shaved his mustache off.
Me, arguing with two little girls about Star Wars.
western leaders are out to lunch. They accept and acknowledge China’s economy is more efficient but they would rather be rats hanging onto the billionaire life rafts than captains steering us away from the iceberg in our path.