The cited rationale is a perfectly reasonable take.
But most of the world is in the same boat of "large budget deficits and growing government debt". It will be "interesting" for bond issuers and most investors and "exciting fishing" for hedge fund sharks over the next 10 years or so.
That said, I do not agree that it is 100% politicians. At least in the US, that path has been virtually unavoidable after the fiscal spending by G.W. Bush on the 9/11 wars and fully set in stone after 2008 subprime crisis. For the last 15+ years politicians could slow down or speed up the transit a little, but getting off that train has not been an option. My 2c.
It did not go into a hyperinflation after the WW2, when the US debt load as a share of GDP was even higher than today; and deflated in the same way US is likely to do it now (bond rates forced way below inflation with yield control).
I am not saying that the process will be pleasant for the US or its citizens. But it is not without precedent and is extremely unlikely to cause hyperinflation. My 2c.
Warnings about the deficit are spot on. It is a safe bet that the country with government that spends 50% more than it takes in as taxes will not give above inflation return on its government debt. As a side note, most of the "Western world" is in the same boat (spending way above the long-term ability to pay, so eventually will have to default-by-inflation on bondholders).
But I am sure the poster you are responding to was criticizing the take about US splintering into parts due to armed unrest within the next 5 years. Which sounds completely nonsensical to me as well.
Luck plays a big role, but it is not just luck. One can apply in a way that significantly stacks the deck in his favor.
So absolutely reach out to your network, study the current market and find your edge. It might still be poker-style games which you can still lose because of luck; but doing that gives you starting hands with two aces. My 2c.
Absolutely. There's still luck involved. But I've gotten lucky a couple of times when the market has been mediocre overall to very bad by reaching out to people I had worked with in some capacity. It also helps, per another comment, to realistically appraise the state of the market and if you get a decent offer, grab it.
Yeah for sure. "Just luck" is a bit too glib from me.
Noticed a typo in my original post; my last point is about how different things are when you do have a job vs you don't have a job. Money, not even a lot but enough to stop you hemorrhaging out, offers a lot of freedom to be quite tactical in a way that does help things in your favour.
But it's different when that isn't the case and i think people underestimate the mental load that takes and how detrimental it is to necessarily bringing your best self if you do land an interview. Its always easier when you have some of that comfort which is why sometimes I think just landing something, preferably within your long-term field, rather than necessarily being very particular can make sense.
Perelman is a strange character; IIRC he declined several times first without bothering to give a reason. Then, after being asked enough times, came up with a "I am not a hero and such awards are irrelevant" as a somewhat acceptable version so those pesky folks would leave him alone. Thus I would not use him as an example of the right way to deal with a prestigious award.
That said, the Nobel medal to Trump circus is beyond ridiculous.
TLDR: "previous years of boom provided 100k jobs straight out of college, 200k jobs and a guaranteed path to wealth soon after that. That time is over."
Right. And this, IMO, is not a bad thing. We had a long, multi-year bubble and bubbles are not good for anyone. Deflating bubbles can be painful, but they are less painful than bursting ones.
And the current software bubble is deflating, not bursting -- there are still plenty (say, compared to the last 50 years average) of jobs where a good engineer comfortable with programming will make a very good living. So do still learn CS or SE in college, but as a minor to another STEM field. My 2c.
It really depends on the person. This may be an unpopular opinion today, but I strongly believe that someone doing what he loves will statistically be both happier and better off financially than someone in only for the money. So whatever makes their ears perk up: EE, chemistry, mechanical, math, physics, biology, etc.
And, as a complement, pick up a "computer-ish" minor to learn how to make a machine do your bidding. My 2c.
It sure is. If I said that it is not it was a typo.
What I was saying is that today I see a non-CS STEM major plus a CS-like minor as a better ticket for an undergrad (who will enter the job market in the next 2-4 years) than a CS major. Which was not the case for the last almost 30 years, when a pure CS major gave many folks an excellent start. My 2c.
I came in to say the same thing -- major, major respect to Powell.
I am not a big fan of his earlier policies (or of Greenspan's and anyone after him for that matter). His "unlearn the importance of M2" did not age well. He made the tail end of the ZIRP more painful than it needed to be. But those were honest mistakes from a public servant who did his best and believed in what he is doing.
And standing up for what he believes is right, against this insanity from the president is the gold standard of what we need from public servants. My 2c.
They do and always did. But open source was originally not about that, but about building something cool and letting others build on that. And, crucially, about GPL preventing large companies from extinguishing your work "because copyright". I remember Bill Gates calling GPL a spreading virus that tech world has to fight.
Sometime along this path monetizing open source became a thing. Now it is apparently becoming less lucrative. OK. That's the nature of changes, but IMO it does not kill open source. It might eventually make it even better, as commercial open source has become too widespread and money corrupts. My 2c.
Being old(ish) I recall in the early 90s Stallman advocating for (and mostly winning the argument in the tech circles at the time) open source as the primary tool for freedom to build things. With financial motivation possible, but completely orthogonal to the development of the open source software.
And how his argument (he was also a strong proponent of freedom to fork and improve in ways that the original developer did not do/want/agree with) was used against him in the early Emacs-XEmacs wars. When he tried to advocate that developers should support his Emacs version because he was the one who built Emacs (with tech retort being that his version sucks, he does not want to let others change it, so the community will build the features they want in XEmacs, thank you very much).
I think viable financial models of the last 15-20 years morphed open source into something different (in a kind of embrace-extend way). But I think that "extinguish" is very hard with OSS, so with financial models becoming less viable, open source might morph back somewhat. Or not; we shall see.
Stallman was propagating the ideal of Free and Open Source Software, where the notion of Freedom was paramount. I think that is the Free the poster you are responding to was talking about, not as in Freeware (usable without paying, but not necessarily open source).
I don't know what "ready for prime time desktop use" means. I suspect it means different things for different people.
But with Linux being mostly hobbyist-friendly a number of folks have custom setups and do not want to be forced into the standardized mold for the sake of making it super smooth to transition from Windows.
I have such a setup (using FVWM with customized key bindings and virtual layout that I like, which cannot work under Wayland), so can I donate some money to Microsoft to keep Windows users less grumpy and not bringing yet another eternal September to Linux. I like my xorg, thank you very much :).
But most of the world is in the same boat of "large budget deficits and growing government debt". It will be "interesting" for bond issuers and most investors and "exciting fishing" for hedge fund sharks over the next 10 years or so.
That said, I do not agree that it is 100% politicians. At least in the US, that path has been virtually unavoidable after the fiscal spending by G.W. Bush on the 9/11 wars and fully set in stone after 2008 subprime crisis. For the last 15+ years politicians could slow down or speed up the transit a little, but getting off that train has not been an option. My 2c.
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