What code of conduct? Who advises that? Expecting that to be followed seems like it would just disadvantage honest hard studiers and honest people who actually do figure out the solution on the spot, while rewarding dishonest talented performers who also happen to be hard studiers—so unless that's what you're trying to select for....
I think most of the dislike comes from the tendency of typical whiteboard questions to favor someone who happens to have seen a very similar problem recently, the same way someone who comes up with the correct answer to a brain teaser very quickly is usually someone who's seen it before. Many rely on that, in fact, since otherwise they'd be asking people to come up with a publishable (once published, perhaps) finding, under pressure, on the spot, in maybe an hour.
This might be fine if the "very similar problem" is something you'd likely have encountered in your work, but often they questions are drawn from a pool that most people in this line of work see rarely if at all, and if they do it's likely to be some very small subset of the questions, so dedicated study of the remainder of the pool still puts one at a large advantage, regardless how useful it is in doing your actual work.
They're measures of "how bad you want it" (how much of your time you spent memorizing stuff you don't actually use to prep for the interviews) and/or how recently you took an algorithms course. And maybe those are things worth measuring, I dunno. Maybe the absence of strong enough signals on either of those is important enough that it makes sense to use them to reject people who are otherwise very capable of doing the actual work.
> Many rely on that, in fact, since otherwise they'd be asking people to come up with a publishable (once published, perhaps) finding, under pressure, on the spot, in maybe an hour.
In much of science the hard part is asking the right question rather than coming up with the solution, so figuring out these algorithms is not equivalent to making publishable research.
Fair criticisms. I tend to prefer asking/being asked system design questions, which in nature allow for a wide range of experiences to excel at.
What they aren't the best at, although more realistic, is coming up with an objective measurement of quality. Algorithms , at the cost of realism, do measure things quite nicely.
HDR and larger color gamut's nice. Deeper blacks are nice. Agree 4k's more useful for monitors than TVs, where it's bottom of the list of important modern upgrades to ordinary hi-def TV, IMO, unless you're rocking a legit home theater, as in projector and huge room and all. Semi-properly-set-up surround's way more important than 4k, though also expensive and very inconvenient in most people's TV spaces.
Or convince other employees in your workplace that that union is bad and decertify them (perhaps replacing them with a new union that you and your coworkers form, either independently or affiliated with a better parent union.)
How is that easier than convincing the employer? Seems much harder, especially since the middle-men have a vested interest in perpetuating any problems.
Because Unions are basically corporations that go by another name and want to gobble up the market share?
Unions are not benevolent. They are bureaucratic organizations that want to grow in power and resources just like a corporation. Their interests just happen to be orthogonal to corporate interests which can be beneficial for employees.
I suppose you could describe many groups of people as corporations by another name so I'm not sure how far that gets us, and I tend to treat groups of people large enough to have emergent behaviours as essentially amoral anyway.
Your market share comments are interesting. I remember Matt Levine making an observation about Uber's 'contractors', if they attempted to unionise could be guilty of price fixing, because they're supposed to be competitors. The corporation seems to be another step along where price fixing within the corporation is allowed, and the union goes a step further again by making monopolistic behaviour ok.
As a society that has decided that a corporation can decide how to organise itself and work together internally, but also a society that has decided that monopoly, or at least the abuse of that monopoly is wrong, these seem to be interesting exceptions.
Yes, that's not how unions are structured by law in the US. Every union is shop-based and organized against a specific employer. They usually throw in with a larger union or an association, but not always. This is where the "Local 404" comes from -- the union itself is the local ###, aligned with the national federation. The union at Powell's Books, for example, is a retail union but they're connected to the ILWU, the longshoremen.
Portland is also undergoing an tremendous unionization battle at a local burger chain (Burgerville); one or two of the shops have successfully unionized, while the rest are still fighting for their right to organize. That's because unions here are at the shop level, and there just couldn't be one burger union that dominated all burger-making.
> The cynic in me thinks, if unions were such a bad thing, why wouldn't the owners let them form, burn the employees, and decertify?
Because unions gets more powerful than any company and can leverage said power against both workers and employers.
Lets take SAG-AFTRA as an example, a union many here at HN says the software industry should mimic. Their contracts with their workers states that the workers are not allowed to work at non-union shops, and their contracts with shops states that they are not allowed to work with non-union workers. This means that you as a worker has to join the union if your workplace unionize no matter if you feel it benefits you or not, and as long as the union control most workers any larger workplace will be forced to join or they will lack workers.
Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer. Do you think that will happen? No, of course not, weeding out a union in such a situation is way harder than starting the union in the first place. And even if they organize, the union could organize a picket in return to harass the shop and its worker into compliance.
Edit: Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't, kinda like how poor whites think that Republicans are on their side.
> Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer.
Or a majority has to elect new leadership in the union who will replace the problematic rules.
Or a majority (either of the whole membership or of workers in a defined subarea) need to vote to decertify (and optionally replace) the union.
Because of these, “everyone has to quit at once” is literally never an issue.
> Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't
Sure, but workers opposed to the existing union and employers and union parent organizations competing with the parent of the existing union (or wanting to become the parent of there is no current parent) are all able to deploy “PR and propaganda” (two different names for the same thing) against the established union, too.
You could write the exact same comment about USG, and yet here we are...
"The Market" (or however you want to think about it) is not perfectly efficient - if it were, there would never have been any motivation to form unions because every employee's requirements would already be perfectly reflected in the companies they chose to work for. Rather, sluggish network effects and other non-invisible-hand structures dominate immediate results.
All power tends to concentrate. When it gets large enough, it attracts those who seek and hold power for their own ends rather than any benevolently stated goals. Your scenarios are straightforwardly mitigated by union leadership directly appeasing the leaders of such movements, the same way monopolist companies buy out possible competitors to keep a stranglehold - the creation rate of competition is itself limited.
I don't know too many specifics about SAG-AFTRA itself, but its hold over the entire industry is a good indicator that it is indeed too large. Its size implies politicking on the order of at least a city government. Conversely, that size may also be the minimum necessary to engage in collective bargaining across different production companies, and so any general top-down reform is a bit hazy. My only direct experience with this is seeing casual SAG actors having to do a bunch of extra paperwork to participate in a strictly non-profit hobby short film production. It seemed quite ridiculous and onerous, until I thought about the neighboring gradient of low-budget for-profit film production.
Also entertainment unions provide way more services eg training, chasing late payers for freelancers and running the "call first list" - this is the list of problem employers.
> Is there anything preventing unions from growing huge and essentially dominating entire sectors in the US?
The structure of labor law makes it just as possible for workers with a particular employer or in a particular job class with an employer to decertify—and, if they wish, simultaneously replace—a union (or for a union local to dissociate from a parent organization) as it is to organize one in the first place, which doesn't prevent parent union organizations from getting large, but does limit the success of ones that, in doing so, fail to meet the needs of their members in particular workplaces.
> Modern capitalist societies—marked by a universalization of money-based social relations, a consistently large and system-wide class of workers who must work for wages, and a capitalist class which owns the means of production [....]
I expected another definition in the context of that comment, but fine. According to that, it's anyone who owns the means to production, and is thus the most open class possible. Rather strange to say they're dividing and conquering when anyone can join.
Anyone who owns the means but does not actually do the work of production. This is in contrast to a worker-owned structure. It leads to concentration of power, since the profit from many workers goes to one or a few owners. Each owner is more powerful than any one worker, so workers have to act collectively to have leverage.
This is a fallacy. If you're going to talk about profit then you must also consider that the risk and loss also goes to owners while workers get paid either way.
This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.
> This is a fallacy. If you're going to talk about profit then you must also consider that the risk and loss also goes to owners while workers get paid either way.
I think you're falling into a set pattern of argument rather than looking at what's under examination and considering it on merit.
> This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.
Please look back over the previous posts in the thread and consider the points that have already been raised.
You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.
The people who these talking points might hit better with are people who don't have the capital, or access to such capital, to be able to do such things.
> I don't think your point is going to get across.
Oh, I'm used to Internet discussions with folks of a certain mindset (I here carefully avoid a convenient, self-selected label that I suspect applies in this case, as its introduction is rarely helpful). They're incredibly common online and usually very eager to engage. Years and years of experience, here. I usually avoid it these days because it's almost always fruitless for all concerned, but felt like giving it a go this time.
> You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.
Fussell's class-confused middle by socialized attitude, maybe, coupled with the income and means of his upper-middle and so especially off-kilter. "I'm a doctor, I make good money, I run my own practice, therefore the capitalist class is both what I'm part of and easy to join, so it's a silly and not very useful term". That sort of thing.
I came from one of the poorest places in the world. I didn't have access to capital when I was born or young. I do have access now, and it's the ability to be a 'capitalist' under my own efforts which is responsible for that change.
This is why generalizations on audiences are pointless. Don't assume people are incapable of understanding an argument or empathizing with a perspective just because of their current place in life.
That's not the same risk. That's a voluntary agreement of work in exchange for cash, and either side can stop at anytime. Legal and contractual obligations like pensions and severance can also be layered on. What assets and liabilities that employee has in their personal life doesn't factor into calculation, they could be independently wealthy for all you know.
Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working.
> Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working.
Because the distinction is whether one's primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay. "Ah but a worker may own some shares!" isn't important. It's tough to nail down color names at transition points, too, but you add a tiny bit of white to some very red paint and no-one's gonna start calling it pink. It's still red.
[EDIT] at the heart of the misunderstanding, here, is a false syllogism, I think. "Pink paint is red mixed with white, you mixed some white in this red, therefore it is now pink"; "The capitalist class own capital, this worker owns some capital, therefore this worker is part of the capitalist class"; "The capitalist class owns capital, this guy owns and operates a hot dog stand, a hotdog stand is capital, therefore this guy is part of the capitalist class". It's quite similar to another that's often seen: "Mugging is taking something by threat of force, governments ultimately back taxation with the threat of force, therefore taxation is the same as mugging" or variations that end up at at some form of "taxation is the same thing as theft, so your thinking is inconsistent if you don't transfer all your bad feelings about theft to taxation, as well".
This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.
And no taxes are not theft, they are a contract in exchange for citizenship and sovereignty of the nation. Evading taxes is theft, by you from the government.
> This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.
You keep ignoring important parts of what's commonly considered the defining properties of the capitalist class, to make the idea seem less useful and much more slippery than it is. Or maybe taking that one sentence from WP as the entirety of the definition, period (though, again, ignoring important parts of that, even). I'm not sure you're going to find what you need to understand the concept, if you're interested, in an HN discussion.
It doesn't seem that way, it is that way. If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit then it's not very practical. I sense your particular context being a class of people who have power through ownership of means. My point is that ownership is available to anyone, either by buying shares (fine if you say that's difficult) OR by starting their own business (literally minutes away on the internet).
If anyone can join then it's not exclusive. In fact it's entirely welcoming. The economy not only supports it but relies on it, demands it even, and the very people you may claim are the most powerful today includes members who have started with nothing and were far outside that 'class'. The boundary is completely porous and ever-shifting so as to be non-existent outside of a political discussion. There are no chains binding you.
So what is the use of such a definition other than a "us-vs-them" distraction? When the "them" is open to anyone? It seems like the side which is dividing and conquering is not the capitalists.
> It doesn't seem that way, it is that way. If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit then it's not very practical.
OK. I wrote a really long response attempting to get through, but frankly, at this point, you should write a paper and submit to some journals, because this whole line of reasoning would be a significant finding if it stands up to scrutiny.
Everything after that first sentence is entirely about your interpretation of it.
Brevity is a key signal of clarity and cohesiveness. If it takes a journal paper to even attempt a discussion then this entire concept (under your interpretation) is suspect.
Yes. I see you actually did understand that after all.
Are you calling it "muddy", then, because socioeconomic mobility exists? America's socioeconomic mobility is among the lowest of developed nations and getting worse since the 80s, but regardless, in order to even study such a thing requires defining it. Its definition is not muddy, it's widely accepted and studied.
I am genuinely happy for you that you were able to achieve it. I am incredibly grateful my parents were able to achieve it. But such achievements don't mean it's not still a problem.
Owning a few shares isn't really what's meant. If your way of life still depends on earning wages for the bulk of your adult life, that's usually not what people mean by the term "capitalist" (or "capitalist class"), since it'd be a pretty useless definition.
> And yes, agree that it's a useless definition. I've never seen it used outside of esoteric political debates.
Esoteric? It's a central concept for understanding how capitalist societies are structured. The central concept, even. It's not math, it's language, exceptions or hard-to-pin-down boundary regions don't wholly invalidate or render useless an idea.
> Being a central concept does not mean it's not esoteric.
That might be fair. I wouldn't consider a term well understood by anyone with much exposure to the social sciences (any of them, just about, will run you into it, sooner rather than later, probably) or a more-than-tiny exposure to economics (if we're feeling generous and separate that from the social sciences) or just about any higher liberal arts education, to be esoteric, but I can see that falling within one's tolerances for the term, depending. Probably well North of half the population would be lost by it, or take something other than the intended meaning, that's true.
> Also, why 4k? Small room, massive display? Many people can not even detect a difference between 1080p and 4k at normal couch distance.
I've got a 55" 4K at a viewing distance of maybe 6', tops, if you're leaning waaaaay back on the couch, and can only barely tell the difference. A good 1080p source (high bitrate h264 or h265, or a normal ol' 1080p bluray) looks a hell of a lot better than Netflix's 4k. HDR matters a ton more than 4k itself does, as far as how good something looks.
[EDIT] and what really matters is having semi-decent speakers in a somewhat-OK 5.1 layout, with a proper receiver. I'd drop to 720p on the picture before I'd give that up.
Apple needs another of their performance-focused releases, like that one where one of the biggest features was reducing memory use. For MacOS and for iOS, focused on reducing system latency in both cases. Both are a lot laggier than they used to be, and the power of the hardware under them barely seems to matter.
I'm probably still easily in the 80s WPM, and could practice back up into the 100s in a day or two. Input lag doesn't so much throw off my typing as it makes computing feel kinda remote and gummy rather than real and crisp. You lose the feeling of a direct connection between your input and the computer. Like you're poking the keys with a stick underwater, no matter how fast you type.
Even this text box, on HN, is noticeably disconnected compared with, say, DOS on an IBM PC-XT, or your average text input area on early Apple computers, BeOS on a first-gen Pentium, QNX on same, that sort of thing, and that's without applying the linked site's extra latency. Everything, just about, is a bit muddy on a "modern" computer. iOS is the closest thing to an exception and even that's gotten worse over the years.
75x... factor in the inverse cube law... yeah I'm gonna say unless it's somehow a directed effect it's still won't even be close to mattering a little bit, even if there is some sub-light "wave" of some kind coming toward us from this event.
Pick a job that offers actual maternal leave (teaching's probably the best—time it right and you get the Summer, too, plus your daily schedule will be close to that of your kid so you'll have lower daycare costs) or otherwise is either fairly tolerant of people disappearing for a while for kids or is easy to get back into after leaving—I don't have direct knowledge of this but I suspect family-friendliness and relative ease of relocation to follow a higher-earning spouse, say, is part of the appeal of all of teaching, nursing, and real estate agent..ry? ing?
Or just take barely enough unpaid leave (or draw on other pools of paid leave, which are usually tiny anyway and may have been eaten into over various pregnancy-related issues and appointments already) to get back on their feet and head back in, leaving the baby with a cheap unlicensed daycare down the street (maybe fine, maybe, uh, not, but not like there are other options on a limited budget) or older relative or whoever :-/
