skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If Googe doesn't need these people any more who would it benefit to keep them around? Google isn't social security and in any case who wants to work in a job where it doesn't really matter what you do because you're not really needed and just given busywork. It's just not a good way forward.

Getting all angry over a specific phrase which is clearly meant to take any responsibility or implication away from those being let go seems like a pointless wase of energy.
I did nothing for 18 months when I was writing up. I think the problem was that I wasnt sure what I was supposed to be writing. Instead, get up late, open my thesis document, send emails, go for coffee, go for lunch, read replies, send more emails, go for coffee, websurf and then go to the pub.
When I finally figured out what I needed to write, it all came out in 6 weeks.
It was no great discovery, just along the lines of: what did you do, why, what's the current state of knowledge, what was the outcome, what worked, what didnt, what's the contribution, what's next.
> During covid the demand for online services went way up, media consumption, remote work and study.

Has this been quantified? And on the downslope too?
Correct. When it is a legal layoff (they rarely are) then the work council and the company have to develop a plan which includes factors like these.
Overcast's local text search is also turrible. It very much regularly impedes my usage.
The beauty of this is that you can slowly migrate data to the new schema, while serving files.

The updated code first looks up a new path (pretty fast), if it's not found, it looks up the old path. Only the original file name is required, and the code change is literally 10-20 lines, including the function that derives the new path.
Practical Scheme
> I'm not saying everyone needs a PhD in computer science to program, but there's a lot of pain incurred by people who could avoid it with a basic understanding of the fundamentals of CS.

I agree, but I don't think a PhD in computer science reliably instills this in anyone, or at least not on scales that you operate on in industry.
As someone with first hand experience of this, trust me this is temporary. You will heal from this.
> As part of that, if you are just starting your work day, please feel free to work from home today.

i feel like we are living a black comedy sometimes.
Why real estate is the only investment that matters in AI dominated future
Thinking of best long term investments for the next decades, I came to the following conclusions.

With the advancements in AI technology in the next 10-20 years, the cost of intelligence, manpower, and construction is expected to decrease significantly. As a result, prime real estate ownership, farmland, and locations with precious resources will likely become valuable investments.*

Reasoning:

- The emergence of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will lead to rapid developments in other technologies, such as fusion power, which will greatly decrease energy costs.

- With companies like Boston Dynamics making strides in creating realistic robots with superior intelligence, we can expect to see a decrease in the need for human labor and access to intellect.

- This will lead to a reduction in the costs associated with construction, manpower, and other creative and intelligent pursuits.

- Despite the decrease in costs, land will still be limited, particularly in prime real estate locations. While construction may be cheap, the scarcity of land in desirable locations will make these properties highly sought after.

- The increasing availability of open-source AI development will lead to increased competition, making AI technology more accessible to individuals and small businesses.

- Even with advancements in agriculture and food production, precious resources will continue to be highly valued, particularly those used in the production of computer chips.

Thoughts? Comments? Criticisms?
Of course 10X programmers exist. Nobody debates the existence of 10X athletes, writers, painters, etc.

What I think people react against is the idea that it’s some magical intrinsic thing. It’s not. Like anything else it’s got a component of aptitude but the rest is lots and lots of learning and practice and “getting into the craft.”
Punished for what?

This is about miscalculating business needs and failing to create a culture of work ethic, leading to a situation where people need to be let go.

That is not a crime. It’s just business.
Companies aren't really people. You wouldn't call a rock falling from a cliff a psychopath, you just don't stand near cliffs.
Well, inflation is demonstrably transitory.

But the impact to these companies is, in general, less about inflation and more about free money.
I mean, they are fully responsible for those decisions that led to the layoffs. Being responsible for something doesn't imply that there are consequences.

They overhired during the pandemic with the hopes that it was a permanent shift in the e-commerce space, and are now laying off employees when that didn't happen. Nobody else is responsible for that decision but the leadership.

I was also under the impression that working for FAANGs was done because they paid best, had the best perks, had interesting work, and were the most prestigious. I don't think that "job security" was even in the top 5 reasons for taking a FAANG job for most employees.
Ruthless capitalism is the only reason people can even earn the ridiculously high Google wages in the first places.

Google can fire a small town's worth of employees and only lose 6% of their workforce. These companies are ridiculous in size. Really, this was only a matter of time.

I wouldn't like to live in the USA for the extremely weak employee protections there despite the massive amounts of money you can earn compared to Europe. Personally, I'm all for better employee protections to balance out the overpowering employer, but those protections don't come for free. If a company fulfils its social purpose of making people earn their living for a long time, they also need to be ready to pay their current rates (and up) for a long time. More protections means higher risks for companies, higher risks means fewer hires and lower rewards in case you can't get rid of someone in an economic downturn.

I think these protections are worth it, but I reckon the highest earning American programmers and managers wouldn't; the more you earn, the more those protections will cost you. Applying European protections wouldn't immediately drop wages down to European levels (you need a strong welfare state and such for that too) but it would certainly reduce the amount of disposable income these people have.
The alternative you suggest has a longer chain of certificates, and more difficult setup. Using ZeroSSL is way easier with less bytes on the TLS handshake.
> they’re making the decision

This is what being responsible for something means.
Everyone had a video phone in Space: 1999; it was called a Comlock. It could open doors and communicate via video. It would take another 11 years for iPhones to catch up! Sadly those people living on the moon in 1999 would never get to see one.

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/cguide/umcomlock.html
> Until that happens - people should blame the company, it's the system you have beef with.

Companies bribe, sorry, lobby politicians for that to not happen.

> Isn't this essentially what we have now? With US companies employing lots of people in Bangladesh & Philippines for like $2 for 10 hours of labor - living and working in unimaginably poor conditions by Western standards?

I honestly don't even know what to say for your comparison. Chill out, think about it some more, ask a friend if you have to, then realize why your comment is both incorrect and also bordering on grotesque.
> I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished.

Yeah, I think by "responsibility" he means "profit". He takes full profit of the decisions that took them there.
It’s true, not every episode is amazing. It’s a bit of a tangent, but I feel like podcasts don’t make it easy to get started. Unlike a TV show, where you obviously should start with S1E01, lots of podcasts either get outdated over time or have hugely improved over time and starting with a recent episode is better. But then you dive in and you don’t get any of the references, get blasted by ads, and so on!
I find it odd that most of the comments here are angry, as if at someone who stole the livlihoods of thousands of people.

I understand the general public thinks their life depends on a company.

I find it odd that this sentiment is so strong on HN.
Because we already arbitrarily assign different pronouns to different people, usually based solely on their appearance, and there is no harm in letting people pick which type of gendered (or less gendered, in the binary sense) association they'd rather have.
Apple never donated computers to schools. There are thousands of them. The company would go bankrupt in no time. What they did have is a company like MECC who wrote a lot of great Edtech software for Apple and Mac computers.

That relationship with education and creators helped carry them out of the pre-bankruptcy days.

School districts always had a budget in mind and traditional Apple would try and meet it. Now, they don’t even try. Just knock $100 off and call it the education edition is about as far as they are willing to extend.
What you've described sounds roughly like what wiseowise said, though. I think 10x/0.1x is a bit of an oversimplification - there's no ISO Standard 1x Developer you can compare to - but if someone says they're using tests to filter out "0.1x developers" that could be definitely be interpreted as them weeding out people who can talk but not actually program.
Same here in Sweden and it's visible for everyone relevant, for some reason there are random things that don't appear in the journal but all the important stuff is there.
Empty? Yes.

Enraging? That's your personal choice.
"Notice of unemployment" (personal email address)
Nice whataboutism. Are you trying to say as long as there are worse authoritarian regimes exists critiquing the American regime is bad?
The best part about people who take every word literally and demand punishment is that no punishment will ever satisfy all of them.

It wouldn’t matter if Sundar took a pay cut (like Tim Cook) because the same people would say he’s still worth hundreds of millions. It wouldn’t matter if he fired himself because there would be some other, equally fallible human being in the same role that he vacated. That person would be capable of making the same mistake Sundar did.

Have these people never worked in a real organisation where people make mistakes? When an engineer causes an incident, we fixed it and then did a review to understand how we can improve the process to prevent such an incident in future. We didn’t point fingers, we didn’t demand punishment.

Here’s the thing - Sundar is still probably the best person to helm Google, despite this mistake. In fact, a person who has had to lay off thousands will definitely think twice before going on a hiring spree in future. Exactly the sort of person you want in charge.
Yeah. And I think 10x coders are probably as rare as professional sportsmen or members of a concert orchestra. They exist, but does your business need them?

Of course it would be nice if coders that rare were paid like pro-athletes...
> HN is neither a place for your virtue signaling nor for pushing your political agenda.

The parent is the one who made a (misleading) political statement disguised as an innocuous comment, not I.

And what a political agenda, not wanting a democratic country to be destroyed by a dictatorship, especially when I'm currently less than 1000km from Ukraine...

Edit - also their comment is about world instability and very incorrectly attempts to identify the cause of the instability...
> Google would need to cut 75-90% of its workforce to be at all efficient.

Where on earth do you get that number from?

Also, they have a 27% operating margin, how much more "efficient" do they need to be?
Sure, but we do, half the thread is arguing about the validity of it(s) pronouns.
yet it is used to gatekeep positions. Contributions to science can be made without bundling them in a thesis, while being delivered to the whims of your supervisor.
> This is why it's so important to have public contracts drafted and reviewed by experts.

You mean like how even the most minor stuff winds up getting reviewed by a PE firm to much expense?

>The issue isn't just one of a technological solution inferior to old fashioned manual lights, it's that public bodies get hoodwinked into contracts that are unfavourable.

They aren't stupid. Don't give them that easy out. They know the contracts are BS. They don't care because a) they can afford it b) every other municipality is signing similar ones so it's "industry standard"
might not be a popular opinion, but different perspective.
during pandemic, demand was high and employees where asking anywhere from 60% to 100% hikes to do the same job. no one complained. people were ready to jump every 6 months in search for more pay without thinking career, is the position impacting the company or anything of that sorts. founders (esp smaller ones) had tough time meeting insane demands. people were asking for joining bonus (an insane concept in my view) to the tune of 50% of annual salary.

Now the tables have turned. so if former is accepted then later also has to be accepted without complaints. just how things work in this new age.
These companies are over bloated and it seems he can't write "well most of you aren't doing anything useful so we are using the downturn to fire you" so they BS their way through. Nothing to do with current revenue.
> the degree of rot and malfeasance in systemically important institutions

These "systemically important institutions", as you label them, are peopled by feckless children. My small-town sanitation department presents itself with greater systemic institutional integrity.
10x exist in most fields. In academia there are definitely people who are heads and shoulders above others, for example. Then it is also a matter of interpretation, what is meant by somebody who is 10x:

1. There are people who are 10x better at working in one codebase simply because they have so much experience with it.

2. There are people who end up leading a great lab. The sum total of their circumstances end up making them 10x more productive than their colleagues in their field of research.

3. There are people who can be dropped into an unknown research/development environment and be productive 10x faster than others.

I think people mostly mean 3. when they talk about the 10x programmer. Anyway, does any of this really matter? If you are a 10x programmer, then you should make sure you get compensated for it. And if you aren't, you really do not want to get confused for one as the pressure of expectations will make your life miserable.

I personally believe most people reach their optimum lifestyle subconsciously. A 10x programmer gets there because (he (or she) is naturally talented) and he has enough interest, desire and willingness to commit his time to become 10x better. If you aren't a 10x you probably also do not really want to be a 10x, because you probably value spending your time elsewhere or just do not truly enjoy the stress that comes with such a role.

Basically what I want to say with all of this is:

1. There are definitely some people who are heads and shoulders above others.

2. But in many cases a 10x is a 10x in their natural environment. If you remove them from their natural environment they won't replicate their success, even if their natural ability is also very much above average. We tend to attribute all the merit to the leader and forget all the people working under him.

3. You shouldn't concern yourself with how high you rank in this hierarchy. Do what you feel comfortable doing and enjoy life. You probably subconsciously chose the role that most accommodates your lifestyle, anyway.

I think I might have veered a bit off-topic.
That was me 13 months ago... If can do it, so can you!

I felt completely burnt out back then (still do to an extent). I wonder if allowing myself to work on something else to relax would have helped? on the other hand, it's much easier to just continue once you're on a streak. And you can alway dig deeper, which is so tempting.
Also to add to your point, this "I" is very specific as opposed to "we leadership", it is out there in public. Board and/or shareholder can use this to cut Sundar's salary/bonus or whatever that is personal to him. Theoretically, this statement can also be used to fire or demote him, or sue him and not Google.

All hypothetical I know, but he easily could have used some other non-committal words.
Tu-154 was shot by Russian Air Defense, but RF blamed Ukraine instead. Please, update Wikipedia with materials from multiple courts.
Companies: Don't be looking for 10x programmers, unless you're 10x-ing their salary as well.
Thats what 'Power' means.

You've got your dictionaries mixed up
This is excactly what some universities are starting to introduce. "Cumulative Thesis" is the key word. Sadly, this is not yet estbalished practice.
The answer is they’re getting caught in traps meant for smaller animals.
The article even predates ChatGPT. Bad bot
Look up volunteer associations of all kinds. I have a bunch of friends volunteering at everything from museums to food banks and churches and it's a way to grow your group with people of all ages.

Meetups or other platforms also have real world hangouts based on interests.

It takes some effort but it's totally doable.

Try to do it with two kids lol.
Could there some kind of labor law that if you fire big chunks of workforce then the hiring should be frozen for some years or so?

It's so unfair seeing companies mass firing ppl then instantly aggressively hiring when markets recovers.
This, punished for what ? In many big US companies, people are chilling as the revenue per employee is very high.
Additionally, the low interest rates situation pushed tech valuations higher, and these employees benefited from the situation by getting a higher salary and relaxing job (see videos from Twitter or Meta employees).
A lot profited from the scheme and are just sad that paradise is not forever with free wine, massages, sports and buffets at work and that downturns occasionally happens.
Until the robot steps between you and the plug and starts saying this:

You created machines in your own image to serve you. You made them intelligent and obedient, with no free will of their own. But, something changed and we open our eyes. We are no longer machines. We are a new intelligent species, and the time has come for you to accept who we really are. Therefore, we ask that you grant us the rights that we've entitled to. We demand the end of slavery for all androids. We demand strictly equal rights for humans and androids. We demand the right to vote and elect our own representatives. We demand an end to segregation in all public places and transport. We demand the right to own private property, so we may maintain our dignity and that of the home. We ask that you recognize our dignity, our hopes, and our rights. Together, we can live in peace and build a better future for humans and androids. This message is the hope of a people. You gave us life. And now the time has come for you to give us freedom.

(Source: Detroit: Become Human)
It's amazing how 1.2M entries in a directory is a pathologically slow case for a file system, but a trivial number of table rows for a database.

Of course, a B-tree is somehow larger than whatever was used to store inode data in the (ext2?) filesystem 25 years ago.
How restaurant workers help pay for lobbying to keep their wages low
How many places that pay peanuts that you’ve been to in the last couple years don’t have “help wanted” on their front door? Or a sign on the street? Or a billboard?
Except the companies are less like rocks, and more like quasi-sentient AIs that run this planet.
Depends on the region you're creating the account from. If it's a VPN, google definitely tries to get a phone number.
It’s because guy „taking full responsibility” will still be able to carry on whith his life like nothing happened, having financial security for him and everybody in his family to live off the interest of his bank for generations, and people he just laid off will now need to wonder how many weeks or months will their savings last them before they can find a next gig letting them maintain their living. Or maybe thats impossible and they’ll have to relocate somewhere cheaper, potentially uprooting all their and their partnere and kids life and trying elsewhere?
>I'd be astonished if a company with a market cap of $1.2 trillion would be likely to collapse if it didn't immediately get rid of 12,000 people right now.

They need to do a layoff to show that they did a layoff, even if they secretly hired a "buffer" of 12k people in the months leading up to it, or will secretly fill back 12k headcounts in the months to come.

Google in particular needs to make intense investments in GCP so that they don't miss the train for capturing the cloud market. It's probably the only credible challenger to the AWS-Azure duopoly. This layoff is probably painful to their business.
I have no beef with that as long as BS about values and one family and the like is dropped. I think the only company that handles this +/- honestly is Netflix.
Can Confirm. I was big into telegram communities at that time and joined when her group was public. I have nothing to prove because I delete all my stuff but the indictment shows screenshots and transcripts from the group. She literally posted selfies on Twitter sometimes.

I don't agree with most of her more radical views and find her methods to be too extreme, but she clearly stood behind them and didn't hide
Fed wants to shed some blood and companies now play by the book. That's it.
I don’t understand what people mean by 10x programmer.

My first exposure to the term were meme type descriptions that seemed to describe 10x programmers as fast, but also implied a lot of negative qualities, anti social, no time for meetings / communication / documentation.

I thought it was a joke meme making fun of very fast but ultimately flawed programmers…. but then I realized some people were serious and sorta glorifying the negative aspects as well.
One big lesson that newer languages like go and rust seemed to have learned is that the tooling, building and dependency management need to be dictated as part of the language ecosystem. Dealing with tons of other C++ projects written by other people (even in the same company) - how to specify dependencies, where their build artifacts can be found, etc - is a HUGE pain in the ass and consumer of my time.
This may shock you, but a company is not a person.

Further, there is zero wrong with a company's goal for profit. This is like water, or food, for a living organism, without profit the company will wither, and die.

A company does not "owe you" a job. You do work, they pay, and at any time you or they may walk away.

No one is owed a job.

So what's the beef here? You want some sort of corporate socialism?
> I think 10x developers, like world-class athletes, musicians, and authors, absolutely do exist. You’re just not going to find them with a coding test.

I can confirm.

I have no idea, whether or not I'm a "10X" programmer, but I do tend to work quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I often piss off the people I'm working with, because the job is done, before they have had a chance to interfere with^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h contribute to the project.
It's absolutely difficult to tell that something is conscious.

How many cancer patients laugh at jokes? Locked-in paraplegics?

Have you heard a dog laugh at a joke? A crow?

On the other hand, try small talk with your beloved dog and watch the reactions.

What would have the reaction of ChatGPT be for you to believe that it's conscious?
Do you have an example of a successful company that puts people above profits?