The real reason for the “cartels” in the US is because of the cost of infrastructure versus the subscribers cost. Because the United States is so large there are only a few companies that can create the infrastructure required to service large area areas with fiber.
So companies that have the ability to lay down, fiber do so in necessary cooperation with other providers to create a large patchwork across the country. This means that network companies have to cooperate with each other to send traffic back-and-forth.
It’s not realistic or feasible to have the US government generate a fiber optic connectivity for the entirety of every household in the United States. In fact, the free market was the only realistic possible to deliver this.
> The real reason for the “cartels” in the US is because of the cost of infrastructure versus the subscribers cost. Because the United States is so large there are only a few companies that can create the infrastructure required to service large area areas with fiber.
The "US is large" argument is non-sense. 40% of the US population lives in a coastal county:
And even if it wasn't, looking at history, the US managed to bring electrical cables to just about every household in the country, and later telephone cables. If those two things could be done in the 1900s, why can't fibre be done in the 2000s?
"It’s not realistic or feasible to have the US government generate a fiber optic connectivity for the entirety of every household in the United States. In fact, the free market was the only realistic possible to deliver this."
Why? Other countries with similar population densities have done it. A bigger country should have an advantage due to economies of scale.
I think he means it's not economic viable to the companies, however as you can see the Swiss model was defined by politics.
Even though, I agree with you it's possible, in my city the internet only got better when a monopoly was broken, and a state company decide to work in a new infrastructure, all FTTH, now I pay less than 100BRL for 300/150Mbps with that price 10 years ago it was only possible ADSL connections (25Mbps).
Now every major provider do have FTTH infra with great prices.
> It’s not realistic or feasible to have the US government generate a fiber optic connectivity for the entirety of every household in the United States. In fact, the free market was the only realistic possible to deliver this.
They managed for water and wastewater, which are a lot more complex than fiber.
This is just pure nonsense. The only reason for "cartels" is regulatory capture.
Most of the cost of an ISP is the so-called "last mile". Depending on your locale this is usually either stringing up cables on existing telephone poles or digging trenches, typically in the setback area between the road and the sidewalk that you might maintain but you don't technically own (or the municipality maintains an easement on, it varies).
Once you go from the premises to a central POP, the costs basically go to zero (per install). Backhaul bandwidth for a residential ISP is incredibly cheap, even free with peering arrangements.
The point is that geography really doesn't matter. Wiring up a 10,000 homes in Phoenix, Zurich, Shanghai or Sydney is basically the same (normalized for labor costs). The US is very spread out due to geography. It doesn't matter. The links between towns are a small fraction of the cost and often covered by existing rights-of-way anyway (eg railroads). You compare that to a highly urbanized and concentrated population like Australia where urban density is very similar to many American towns and cities and you're dealing with a very similar cost structure.
Think about it this way: if geography was the issue and not, say, artificial barriers to prevent competition (including from municipal broadband), why would the ISP lobby spend so much moeny to make municipal broadband illegal (as they do in many states)? Or why would they formalize a monopoly into a contract with an "exclusivity" deal (ie franchise agreement)?
I don’t think this is correct. This is about German politics. Their central bank has been attempting to repatriate gold since 2013 in an effort to centralize their holdings. It’s also not just about the US. In theory, Germany could move all its gold holdings to Switzerland. Where there is a major trading hub. The fact that they want it back in the country is domestic politics.
Everything that happens in politics happens because someone managed to assemble a powerful enough coalition. Maybe some people wanted to repatriate gold before, but not enough to make it happen. Now suddenly, there are enough people.
France just did that and even made some gains. Was in HN today as well.
Germany has lost it, no farsightedness or longer plan. So frustrating how the German gov is failing on these longer term issues and are ground up in day-to-day noise. Flood the zone with shit comes to mind.
That was purely an accounting gain (because of selling that gold and buying it back). After realising this PnL the gold is now held at a much higher cost basis.
Alzheimer's is a prion disease. Prions are proteins that cause other proteins to misfold. What's interesting is that most prion diseases are transmitted through ingestion or physical contact - possibly there's a correlation with population density and/or sanitation. It's also possible that there are low occurrences in ancient populations because most people died of other things. For example, 200 years ago bacteria diseases were the most common cause of death. Now that we have conquered most infection disease the primary cause of death now is cancer and cardiovascular issues.
Idempotentancy on POST isn't just about preventing double posting. For POST the RFC says you can return 303 when the call to create a resource would have resulted in generating an existing resource. You need a Location header for allowing the client to redirect to the corresponding GET. This allows clients to POST multiple times (over time) for the same resources and not have to handle 400 errors.
I don't think this is a reflection on performance. seems like the key word here is "obligated" to work after hours. this is due to managers pushing deadlines on their reports. honestly this isn't much of a surprise. If your boss is obligating you to work after hours you are unhappy. one issue here asking engineers to work after hours in a 'you build it you own it' culture. in my mind this qualifies for being "obligated" to work outside of business hours.
A more interesting item in the slide deck is that anyone that has more than 2 hours of meetings in a day has a loss of focus. I think it's conceivable to say that a heavy meeting culture may also force people to be "obligated" to work after hours because they have lost focus time in the day.
I think the definition of "productivity" is part of the problem. Managers view "productivity" as the ability to bounce ideas off each other and working collaboratively to get traction on hard problems.
This isn't how most engineers write software at the ground level though. Engineers need quiet concentration, free from distraction. Yes, there are hard problems that need collaboration to solve, but that type of interaction can be scheduled when needed. Far from needing to "bounce ideas" off other engineers, most senior engineers are pretty self-sufficient.
There is a different issue at play with junior engineers. They need supervision and that's hard to do unless your on a zoom call with them all day long. This isn't a new problem - it's simply a problem exposed by being remote. When we were in the office, all these junior engineers, were pulling productivity away from your senior engineers. Moving everything back to the office didn't increase productivity, it's actually decreasing it. Commute + sidebar conversations + mentoring junior engineers = less productivity out of your senior engineering staff.
There's definitely a "managers are from mars and engineers are from venus" sort of vibe happening here. Managers need that interaction and collaboration in order to provide oversight and provide direction. Senior engineers need a place to concentrate - and typically that isn't in the office where we have noisy open floor plans.
You can't "manage" people who work remotely the same way you manage people in the office. That's the issue.
Also, you shouldn't have to watch newer employees like a hawk if you've given them clear tasks / projects and expectations. No need to micromanage people.
It's not about managing. It's about the friction to reaching out for help and lost productivity from having to schedule meetings combined with inexperience making it hard to decide which problems are worth the friction of reaching out and which ones aren't. There's also the sense of isolation that being remote gives, because asking for help over a private message makes it look like you're the only one that needs help. All of this is still a problem regardless of clarity of expectations and tasks.
My preferences are likely going to change once I get more experience under my belt but I absolutely feel there are some facets of remote work that benefit senior engineers at the expense of junior engineers.
There can be friction scheduling and holding meetings, absolutely. Starting a meeting friction can be overcome through tools like Slack huddles which basically require one click to join if people are around fairly predictably, but scheduling friction can be reduced with some techniques.
Our remote-first company has a daily standup everyday which shifts everyone’s brain into talking/collaboration mode for that bit. If someone - especially newer or junior engineers - have a question, that is a great opportunity to either have an impromptu discussion, or to have scheduled a discussion about it the previous afternoon jf it wasn’t particularly urgent.
it's a millennial thing. they grew up working on laptops and their dream office is to make the workplace look like starbucks. Open seating, no cubicles, a barista. It's a knee-jerk reaction to the old office place standard of 'cubes'. Managers hire out to consultants that hype this type of office layout because it will supposedly attract a talent.
To be fair, cubes weren't any better. I remember having a guy slerping tea sitting across from me. I couldn't see him but I could sure hear him and there was no way for me to get up and move.
For sure, and like he says near the beginning of that video, "Most employees have moved to other buildings." I've been in some of those other buildings and guess what, they're almost entirely private offices... no open office plan.
They learned their lesson from the Frank Lloyd Wright building. It's a wonderful piece of architectural history, but it's not wonderful for productivity.
He doesn't mention one of the most interesting things about that building -- the building has no square corners, everything is round (even the elevator).
I don't know. I'm certainly not a millennial and I've never had any real issue with ambient coffee shop or equivalent background when reading/working/etc. and I'm rarely putting earphones/headphones on or playing music in general. People probably just have different tolerances and types of tolerances for distraction--not sure how generational it is.
As I've said before, people here pine for private offices a lot but, in my experience, typical workplace private offices have tended to be door open by default absent private meetings/phone calls/some urgent deadline thing.
Even with the door open, it still blocks a lot of ambient sound. Sound also isn’t the only problem with open offices. The other problem is with visual distractions. It’s hard not to interrupt your work whenever the constant stream of people pass by, especially when they greet you
The open office trend happened before millennials started having careers, open offices are always an economic choice. It's cheaper to cram more people into less space.
Hmm, I think it’s more a managerial thing than a millennial thing. I don’t know a single millennial that wants to sit in open floorplan offices. Just because something happened when our generation entered the workforce doesn’t mean we were the driving force for it. Maybe millennials also caused climate change, as far as I know that started becoming a recognized problem around the time we were born. Expensive housing is on us too.
I would definitely prefer good cubicles over open assigned desks. (I mean, with open desks or cubicles, I would ask the other person to stop slurping loudly.)
But "good" is the key there. I worked at an office in 2001 which had a cubicle system that was probably only a year or two old. The desks were wood (probably veneer) with nice big keyboard shelves, as was the style at the time. The panels were either grey metal or red fabric, and they stepped up and down so that beside your close coworker there might be only a 4' wall, and then a 6' wall to the "hallway".
Immediately after that, through an acquisition, we were in an office whose cubicles were probably from the 80s, and they were all 6' well-worn beige fabric panels, which despite being private and relatively quiet were just so ugly and energy-draining.
It’s more a new way to cut costs further. Plenty of boomer leadership hopped on the open office trend despite plummeting employee productivity and satisfaction
I unironically miss my cube. They were natural sound breaks and sound absorbing so you could talk and not intrude horrifically on people adjacent. I had a place for my things so I didn't have to shuttle them in and out every day. I had a phone that worked, an Ethernet jack that was not temperamental, and a whiteboard that was ready to go. I also had a few different ways I could sit at my cube so I wouldn't get the same pains I get sitting in an open office plan because there is no way to customize anything for comfort in many cases. I have seriously considered packing a drill and a set of bits to tear off idiot things like keyboard trays (when nobody has an external keyboard) but I am resisting only just.
In a moment of clarity the real thing about open office plans is that most times when you show up it has the vibe of a floor being fired and everyone's desk wiped clean. There are no remnants of those who are there, no photos of family or the odd dollar store fun thing that kicks around a desk, every desk is wiped clean more austere than a hospital room.
No ,when money is cheap people buy assets. Doesn't really matter what it is as long as it goes up in value. Bitcoin, Homes, NFT, who cares.
This isn't quite the same thing as inflation. Inflation is the cost of milk and eggs. That also has gone up, in part because the Fed is dumping money into the economy during the pandemic as part of quantitative easing. But the home prices are an effect of cheap money.
Now cheap money is gone, people have to rethink were to put money. Homes that are expensive to leverage and don't go up in value aren't a great place to put money anymore.
What makes this satire interesting is there is a conflict here. People sitting on $4 million homes in Palo Alto want to see more affordable housing. Just not here and not now.
So companies that have the ability to lay down, fiber do so in necessary cooperation with other providers to create a large patchwork across the country. This means that network companies have to cooperate with each other to send traffic back-and-forth.
It’s not realistic or feasible to have the US government generate a fiber optic connectivity for the entirety of every household in the United States. In fact, the free market was the only realistic possible to deliver this.
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