Here's the thing, I tend to believe that sufficiently intelligent and original people will always have something to offer others; its irrelevant if you imagine the others as the current consumer public, our corporate overlords, or the ai owners of the future.
There may be people who have nothing to offer others, once technology advances, but I dont think that anyone in current top % role would find themselves there.
Awkward headline, since its not really much of a milestone. The first couple in a region are interesting, hitting significant proportions a year is interesting, a cumulative (relatively) small number is not that interesting.
I have in the past, but three things put me off doing so now;
Pages where I can spot inconsistencies are often controversial, with long dense discussion pages, edits here are almost impossible beyond trivial details. I dont mind fixing trivia, but not if the actual improvement I think I can make is rejected.
There is a bit of a deletionist crusade to keep some topics small, for example, Ive had interesting trivia about a cameras development process simply deleted. Maybe it is truly for the better, but it is not really that easy to add to the meat of the project, without someone else's approval.
Third, the begging banners really feel a bit gross; I know the size of the endowment, and how long it would be able to sustain the project (forever essentially)... It really feels like the foundation is using the Wikipedia brand to funnel money to irrelevant pet causes. This really puts me off contributing.
Why should an individual landlord have to subsidize an individual tenant? Its a scale of social interaction that doesnt make any sense.
This can have lots of issues. Imagine something like a good school zone changing, an event that may not be accounted for by the index. Insurance and taxes are determined by current value, that is partially determined by market rent, but the landlord cant adjust.
This also hurts a specific landlord when it comes time to sell, making a tenanted property potentially less valuable (and reducing the incentive to take on a tenant at all). This does not impact the general property value mind, as the tenant only benefits and creates this problem if the index is below the market.
If you want a fair balance, "its mine as long as I pay market rent" is pretty good. "its mine as long as I pay indexed rent" is not great, as it removes the financial benefit of capital investment from the landlord.
Its not really about building your own thing, its about identity... You are what you do.
If you dont understand the impact what you are doing has once its out of sight, how can you understand yourself as part of society?
Contracting is simpler in a way, "I made a tool for Steve so that he can better do his job" is an easy to understand story, and doing that 10 times a year makes your connections to the world fairly clear (Not to mention it builds on itself, as more people know you as someone who can make things for them).
Big corporate jobs, especially highly distributed remote ones, can make it nearly impossible to clearly draw a line like that. The narrow context of "I improved a tool that the Widget team uses to support the Tools team who build visualizations for the Documentation team" thirty layers down before you get to a thing customers touch. In person becomes important, because it lets you better understand the context of your work as "Part of the institution that makes fighter jets".
Burn out is hard to manage; its something that happens in the cruisy 20-something hour a week job as well as the 80+ hour pressure cooker. Probably not to the same degree sure, but its not the only thing going on here.
Its a whole lot more sustainable if you can build an identity around "here is my team, we are building {___}", and its a lot easier to get there if you meet in person frequently.
Genuinely clear objectives can also be a great asset here; but I find that clarity doesnt scale. When Ive been a contractor working on projects measured in weeks or months with small teams, full remote is easy. At corporate gigs where the thing you are doing might be several abstraction layers from a customer; its harder to answer "why are we doing this?". In the second case being able to share in person is important; because its not just the work its the context and other people doing it thats grounding.
That motivation brings efficiency; at least for myself.
The distinction that i think is important to make when talking about "the bitter lesson" is that improving the compute and training infrastructure and tricks in the abstract wins over intelligent model and system design.
Its more about the information about the specific problem you are solving having less impact than techniques that target the compute. So in this case, breaking down how to parse a PDF in stages for your domain is involving specific expert knowledge of the domain, but training with attention is about efficient use of compute in general; with no domain expertise.
We have global commerce; you are not only working on the creation part of something new, but also competing with similarly skilled people working with different more advantageous start conditions.
Nobody is talking about the difference between 1 and 2 billion, they are talking about the difference between 50 and 100 thousand, while competing.
Personally I use google more/just as much for product searches; stores selling X, finding comparison sites, going to the manufacturers page for a product.
That and restaurants from maps.
I use it less for information based searches, but that almost seems to be a win from an advertiser perspective.
I dont think you can create a high trust society deliberately; It takes multi-generation level time-spans, and in a low trust environment there is no mechanism to guarantee your plans will be carried forward; even if you currently have dictator level control over society.
Creating highly trustworthy technology is the best we can do, and reliable transportation is a big part of this.
I also suspect targeting and removing the worst interactions people have with strangers (and for many this is the random nature of a human driver, either from a taxi or other drivers) would create a higher trust society overall, as there is less cause to be wary.
Im guessing my experience is very different; I work more in robotics than pure software, and this is an industry where many of the problems are investment intensive...
I wouldn't call it a crash in this field, but there is definitely a trend away from ambitious attempts.
Its not really a field where you can take your savings at make a go for a year or two, capital is required, and capital is more hesitant at the moment.
I am curious about your product, to me SaaS startups aiming to replace an existing always had the problem where the risk to your client was immense compared to the value you offer. For example even if your service is a hundredth the cost of the entrenched it might not be worth it, because its a saving on a small line item against what could be the entire turnover of a business.
The idea that a crash would benefit talented people more than the bulshitters is not really all that likely in my opinion... More likely that the chosen few get put on life support through government contracts or entrenched work, and innovation scales back in total.
I almost expect a higher degree of bullshit to be honest; the cost of a startup will be higher, so the "honest" capitalistic speculation will be reduced, but there will still be plenty of money for DEI and CCP projects.
The 3 hour day is a rare thing, but I dont think that its more available in Australia than anywhere else... I know more people with that setup in the states, as an anecdote.
And fully remote in the states has the additional benefit of actual high speed internet.
It really depends what specific circumstances you are comparing.
If you are looking at trades, low skill full time, or casual work, I dont think there is a better place to be. If you are comparing the lifestyle available from a full time skilled job (tech especially) its honestly not great.
Work anywhere in Asia, and while your wage may be lower, what you get for it goes a whole lot further. Restaurants are a focus, but things like a regular cleaner, doorman, club memberships are a whole lot more accessible. Things that are really only available in Australia to generational wealth these days, are available to skilled employees.
Work in western Europe, and the wages are slightly higher, and the cost of living is slightly lower; however the expectation for work-life balance is far better. 38hr weeks are very strict, with an expectation of flex time and time in lieu. with more weeks off, and better access to things like parental leave and study accommodations.
People make poor comparisons to America, because its a very hard thing to generalize. From my personal experience as a skilled full time worker, there is not one metric where Australia is a clear winner, and many where its far behind. The top end of healthcare is better in the USA, and if you factor in the lower taxes cheaper too. Crime statistics are worse, but localized to places I have no reason to go... I would say that USA as country is worse, but if you only look at the experience of someone who already has a skilled job, then you come out far ahead in the states.
The last plumber I hired had a website, spotted a leak with a flir camera (and had a pile of interesting niche electronics), and sent me an invoice he generated through an app on his phone via email... Maybe there are places where you can hire some analog types on the cheap, but where I am the computerized ones are way more efficient.
An economists point of view would say there is nothing wrong with empty houses; and in fact its a good thing because short-term low-barrier agreements allow the optimal price for housing in an area to be determined.
They would then say that the local wages will eventually increase to the point where a worker can live close enough to make the job in the high cost town worth the commute.
I suspect tools like this will become excellent at all the slight variations and duplicate work that goes on in a whole bunch of development work. To the point where especially for the low complexity work you get enough productivity increase that you actually begin to reduce the demand for programmers in general.
I wonder what the proportions work out to be, if you break the work into "the hard bit" vs the "automatable bit", Ive defiantly worked on projects where there is one novel bit that had to be done just right, but 80% of the time was still spent setting up standard databases, payment processors, customer interfaces.
There may be people who have nothing to offer others, once technology advances, but I dont think that anyone in current top % role would find themselves there.