> an investment in the task the software does that is unlikely to be paid off if it only does a single simple task
I don't think that's true at all. The tool linked here is exactly the kind of utility that does one single task and that people are happy to download. Most people use software to solve a problem, not to play around with it and figure out if they have a use for it.
Agree with this wholeheartedly. Stay there for now while looking for a new job. If things work out ok at the current place, end your search and enjoy your current job. If they don't work out, hopefully you'll have some options to move into. Best of luck to you.
What is the point of being great at persuading if one is persuading peers, reports, and leaders to do the wrong thing? Persuasion is necessary but it should be second to the suggestion actually being a step in the desired direction.
The more time I spend in engineering roles the more I think too many people are great at persuading but suck at the underlying thing they're persuading _for_.
If you're persuading people to do the wrong thing you're still proving how great and influential you are — if things go sideways you can still move to the next place /s
There are people whose entire careers are built on this!
Counterintuitively this is precisely why the people who care more about things being right than about winning need to work on their persuation skills: Otherwise the wrong thing will get done and guess who will have to deal with it.
I think it's interesting to also think about it from the other perspective. If this is someone who is supporting themselves through this work, then what they have to at least charge you is going to depend on how much they need to survive, i.e., buy housing, food, tools, etc. If they get only a few jobs per week, then they kinda have to try to pay their bills off of those jobs. They may also have a spouse, kids, and various others who depend on this income for survival.
Unfortunately, how much a person needs to have a decent living is not really what's driving prices: like all markets, what dictates prices is demand and supply. The job may be very easy for a tradesman to do, but if they're the only ones who know how to do the job, and many people need the job done and really can't just do it themselves, they can charge whatever people who need the job are willing to pay to not go without.
For most tradesmen , normally there are many "competitors", so they need to keep prices reasonable otherwise people won't hire them. Some jobs which can be easily DIY'd may just disappear as it's not possible to make a living off them, even if a small percentage of people will never DIY anything and would be willing to pay a small amount for the job to be done.
I am currently trying to hire builders for some larger projects at home (kitchen/bathroom renovations, custom car port) and I see wild differences in prices, and presumably quality. For these bigger jobs, it really becomes a bet unless you can actually verify the builder's previous jobs, which can be hard as people are not going to just let you into their houses to check how good/bad their bathrooms look. I've had bad experiences before, so I am being extra careful and trying to figure out the builder's level of expertise and capability by talking to them about lots of details (which I learned from previously building a garage).
what a person needs to make a decent living is an input into the supply part of supply and demand. Thus it puts a floor on prices. Pay me $500/hour and I'm installing washing machines not writing software thus increasing the supply of labor to do that. (but of course nobody will pay that much)
> If they get only a few jobs per week, then they kinda have to try to pay their bills off of those jobs.
I don't think this has been true anywhere for at least several decades. Every single tradesman I've used tells me they are overbooked/overworked and there's no shortage of jobs.
I'm sure they have their less-busy seasons, but overall I doubt any tradesman can't find 40 hours worth of work/week.
Exactly. The car in front might be reacting to some road hazard that just appeared that is not visible from behind it or it may have some mechanical failure. It doesn't matter why it comes to a stop, it is always and all times the responsibility of the trailing car to maintain enough distance to be able to come to a complete stop given the speed and road conditions.
If a human driver had been driving, they also could have fled the scene, like the other human driver who caused the whole problem in the first place, and left the woman laying on the road in the dark, you know, just waiting for the next human driver to drive over her. Lets not forget that the woman was crossing the intersection on red, violating the laws that are meant to keep her safe, which again is something that the robots tend not to do. Basically, what we have here is two humans fucking up and yet we blame the robot for doing the best it could given the circumstances.
Same thing. The idea is go without a lot of the comforts we are accustomed to in order to experience life as those less fortunate do so that we may be more empathetic towards our fellow humans.
> People keep talking about how 'this is a solvency crisis because if SVB had to sell everything today, they wouldn't cover liabilities' when that is the definition of a liquidity crisis.
I don't think that's right. It would be a liquidity crisis if the market value of everything they own is higher than their liabilities but they can't find a buyer at this time. You are saying that a liquidity crisis is when they can find a buyer but everything they have is worth less than their liabilities. That's not the case.
I don't think that's true at all. The tool linked here is exactly the kind of utility that does one single task and that people are happy to download. Most people use software to solve a problem, not to play around with it and figure out if they have a use for it.