A lot of companies don't "need" anyone because they are not subject to profit and loss anymore. This is the result of government policies of cheap money, government contracts and higher and higher barriers to enter the market.
If there was a need, even if there were a lot of candidates managers would prefer the first to be enough. But they don't have a need, government policies give them all the time in the world. So for managers it's worse to get the "wrong" candidate than a sufficient one. Managers also prefer multiple rounds, testing, etc, because they can avoid blame by showing they hired someone that passed all the tests. At the same time for managers it's better to get one superstar they can brag about than a person that can do the job, because there is no job subject to profit and loss in the first place.
This is how I explain the current situation, situation I find absurd. I may be wrong, but that's what I think. I don't know if it can help, I think your pain is fully justified and this is my attempt at easing it. It helped me a little, knowing I'm not the problem and nor is the person in front of me (at least not really)
Reading about things like this I love the way we select people for university in Italy. There is a written test, multiple-choice questions.
Those who score higher, pass. Yes, it sounds like a system that favors test takers, but there are so many seats to take that if you don't score enough you really don't deserve the place (I say this as a person who was never smart not good at tests).
Nobody will consider anything else. Sadly, I've noticed a slight shift towards a more american way of talking about things like race and sex, even in universities, but I hope the legal system is strong enough to keep having neutral admissions.
Our economy is already in a bad place, last thing we need is young people being discriminated for anything but their ability to perform a task, even if arbitrary.
> There is a written test, multiple-choice questions
So we have this in the United States but it has been accused of being discriminatory because the outcomes differ by race. You can't make this stuff up people!
"So it’s possible that big companies are increasing their market power by using lobbying to capture politicians and regulators. If this is true, it’s very bad news for free markets and capitalism."
So, they managed to blame capitalism and the free market for the effects of lack of free market and the will of politicians and the public to accept regulation that causes less free market?
What the hell!!!!
This is the kind of culture that makes it possible for estabilished companies to lobby for increasing regulations. If there were a "free market at all cost" approach, maybe even punishment for those who attack the free market with lobbying, there would not be this kind of problem. There would be other problems, of course, but not this one.
Of course, they had to blame even the lack of free market on the free market. Come on!
the housing market, especially in the US, is far from being capitalistic. You have all kind of weird rules, zoning laws maybe are the first culprit, and guess what is the result? You don't have enough houses, people are homeless and prices are most often ridiculous. This despite the fact that you have really a lot of land and the kind where you could build really high structures to house people.
I wish I knew this 10 years ago, when I decided to study math and get a CS degree. Sadly, while I'm good at programming (at least to the extent that nobody ever complained and projects got shipped), I'm really uncapable at math. I don't know what it is exactly, I just can't do it, no matter how much books, video lessons and tutoring I throw at it. I always understand theory but I cannot solve most exercises and problems despite a lot of practice.
Anyway, I wasted my 20s trying to get good enough at math, when I could've pushed on my talents instead. I really thought it was all about hard work and that I wasn't working hard enough, or maybe that I should've approached the problem from some other angle. Big mistake. Wasted opportunities.
The article says that China is doing good and the US is not doing well in this regard. I think they're both wrong. It's really stupid, and offensive and immoral, to put individuals into boxes. We don't know how the talents of individuals can express themselves to serve the needs of other people. That's why there should always be complete freedom of studying and working, instead of universities and States deciding who can do what job and on what terms.
Eventually I know programming will become a closed profession and I won't have access to it because of my inability to do math despite my ability to ship software. I can't even imagine how much we have lost in other closed fields in terms of productivity due to this belief that you just have to put in the work.
I hope I'll manage to get out of programming before it's too late. Clock is ticking.
This is a classic tactics by politicians: instead of reprimanding the judicial system for refusing to do their job properly, they cry and whine publicly in order to get the consensus to create more laws, which often guarantee more power to the government and also the creation of special regulatory bodies where they can put their people with a juicy governement salary.
All the problem described in this thread could be solved with laws from 25 years ago.
Facebook stealing call and contact data? No, they can't do it. No, GDPR was not needed. No, putting a phrase in a ToS that nobody reads is not enough to save a company from being destroyed in court in case of serious wrongdoing.
Friendly fraud? Also a crime, just use the existing laws.
Calling the users dumb fucks? Not a crime.
Manipulating the users emotion or testing the algorithms on users? Also not a crime and I don't see why it should be.
Of course, it's much easier for the judicial system to not bother with those big companies by applying the existing laws. Why risk getting attention from such powerful people? And after all, if they were to apply the existing laws, then the poor politicians would have much less fake crisis to work with in order to expand the role of government and make money.
This is how the whole government thing work. Proved since the beginning of time. Trust them even less than Facebook.
Agree with all of this in general. Inability to enforce existing statutes is not a justification for piling more on. However, what you wrote is widely disagreed with by many of the loud tech and media voices which believe adding laws is the only solution. Modern generations fear companies more than governments because it is difficult to put into perspective the real harms caused by each without a historical lens.
And now I have it in several countries and various political systems. Some of which are totally incompatible with the one I was raised in.
All you need is consensus. And it is easy to get. No matter if its an ethnostate, a communist state, has a supreme ruler or prince able to override the legislature, representative republics elevated as bastions of the capitalist society, you name it.
It is so surprising and entertaining how the population of these countries get so caught up in their political system in the least effective way. The key distinction being they spend energy on the parts that have no consensus, like not even a little or half of their energy, ALL of their energy in politics is used on alienating themselves and everyone to support the fringes of their political party that doesnt have consensus and none on the part that has consensus, letting them get totally steamrolled by power hungry people and wondering “what happen”. They are the ones being played here.
Downvoting doesnt change that or offer another perspective.
>All the problem described in this thread could be solved with laws from 25 years ago. Facebook stealing call and contact data? No, they can't do it. No, GDPR was not needed. No, putting a phrase in a ToS that nobody reads is not enough to save a company from being destroyed in court in case of serious wrongdoing. Friendly fraud? Also a crime, just use the existing laws.
Even if it's true that these are illegal, you're not going to be able to ascribe a "crime" to someone you can charge ex post facto. At most, you might see a lawsuit that results in a settlement for a small number of affected individuals, which is going to be accounted for already by Facebook's legal team in their decision to implement these polices.
We do need new laws here. The fact that Facebook feels so free to do these things means that they are unafraid of current law, probably with good reason.
If facebook's actions are illegal now, they are illegal now, there is no ex post facto.
Can't talk for the US, but for example the "friendly fraud" could be considered fraud in many European countries, since it brings profit to facebook by inducing people into error. The punishment includes jail time. You do need someone to start a lawsuit, of course, and that's what the judicial system should do when the fraud is repeated. But do they do it? Nope, instead we just have the politicians whine that they need more power. What a surprise.
The reason why FB and big companies in general are unafraid of current laws is that they know they won't be applied. It's a big hassle to punish the rich and the corporations, because people working in the judicial system just don't care about making big enemies. Also it's a pain in the ass because there are two thousand layers of limited liability they have to uncover before they can put the responsible people in jail. It's much easier to focus all the energy on some poor guy selling some weed or a small business not submitting the right form at the right time. Punishing them need zero effort, they can't defend themselves properly and their punishment justifies the work of the judicial system.
Elected politicians should be the one to keep the judicial system in check, but they don't have an incentive to do so that it starts to punish rich people FIRST.
In the end the people, by showing support for "more laws" they only get more laws, which will cost more money to the taxpayers and also will make life difficult for the small business while big business won't care and will even be advantaged by them. All this aside from the fact that it doesn't make sense to make another law when there is already a law.
Did you ever noticed that when it comes to protect a public official, for example a cop killing someone, all the State pieces work in perfect synchrony? I mean, everyone, from lawmakers, judges and the lowest of clerks suddently learn how to make exceptions and interpret the laws in new ways.
Yet, I have to believe that lawmakers aren't able to stop billionaires from screwing up the small guy without making complex regulations that impede progress and innovation, regulations that in the end make the rich and the bureaucrats a lot of money and sink hopes for the honest entrepeneur.
I have to believe they're making the laws in good faith because they really have no alternative.
Of course. I totally believe it.
Regulations are written by very big companies in that space of the market. The EU isn't immune to this, and our government in the US definitely isn't. I know this seems counter intuitive to people not familiar with barriers to entry in industry, but big companies easily absorb costs in regulatory frameworks that are legally put into place. They normally lobby and ensure that whatever goes into effect is either something they are actively doing, or can do at minimal cost to them, while being a large cost to others.
A great example recently in the United States was in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act passed in 2008. It was in response to large toy makers using lead paint in their toys coming from China. It wasn't small toy makers doing this, it was the Mattels. As a result of what these large companies did with their disregard to product safety, a regulatory safety framework was put into place that Mattel could easily absorb into their operating costs, while small mom and pop makers suddenly had a very expensive process to go through, even if they were not the cause of how this law came into effect.
We can all agree on respecting privacy, toy safety, etc. It's a good thing. But just remember that usually these things are passed to protect large companies, not necessarily for the benefit of the consumer, and definitely not for young competitive companies trying to break into a market space that now has a huge initial cost that may be insurmountable. The result sold to the consumer is normally just a side effect used to promote it.
Is that a great example? If you gave Mattel the choice between absorbing a regulatory framework and just having extra money would they really have chosen the former?
You can pay for safety explicitly with regulation or implicitly with poisoned children. Regulation hits small businesses harder; rather than concluding that regulation sucks, maybe we should try something else like providing some publicly-funded office to provide compliance help to small businesses.
You will never get anywhere close to mitigating the harm that regulation does to innovation through something like that. Approach this from the perspective of UX design. The more barriers a user has to overcome the less likely they are to actually try the product. In this case the user would be a small entrepreneur trying something small. But a lot of businesses start out as something small. If they work then they grow, if they don't they go back to the drawing board. If you put barriers on the way of these people they often won't even try.
That doesn't mean it's impossible to start a business, but it does mean you'll get a lot less of them. A lot less of them also means less successful ones and less jobs.
Or just allow the free market and our courts to punish the offenders when they do bad things. If Google and Facebook violate privacy, sue them. If Mattel caused harm, sue them. Get the information out there that the service is bad or the toy is unsafe and they will either fix the behavior or go away.
Regulations may or may not be necessary for certain things, but to fold everything in the market under some kind of regulatory framework where you need to go to government to get approval and navigate a burdensome bureacratic process basically just ensures that you will harm innovation, destroy small business, and protect legacy companies in the space.
Targeted ads are great. Things cost less because there is more competitions between suppliers and they don't have to pay a lot per piece, since they can target only the specific people who needs the thing they sell. This is GREAT for people with small business and low budgets... but we know now that Europe only care about the big business and billionaire overlords.
Also with targeted ads you don't have to hear/read about products you will never care for a moment in your life.
I feel like the GDPR is working for me to help prevent companies treating my data like it belongs to them.
I guess I'll have to check under the bed for my missing billions.
> Also with targeted ads you don't have to hear/read about products you will never care for a moment in your life.
I don't have to look at irrelevant adverts at all because I use an adblocker. Something I started to use because of the battery sucking CPU fan abusing privacy invading toxic wasteland that is the online advertisement industry.
The tech industry in general, and online advertising companies specifically proved over many years they couldn't be trusted to look after people's data and privacy, so forgive me if I don't shed a tear for the shitbags who now have to stop exploiting me and my family's data.
In no way do the benefits outlined by OP even come close to outweighing the systemic risks posed by omnipresent surveillance coupled with precise targeting of individualized persuasive messaging with the intent of behavioral change.
The way targeted advertising is currently implemented is a mass violation of privacy and autonomy, a clear and present threat to democracy and liberty, and an indicator of the complete ethical collapse of the US tech sector.
"Also with targeted ads you don't have to hear/read about products you will never care for a moment in your life."
When I'm researching for product of a certain kind, I often get advertisements for months after I bought such a device. I still get ads for a 3D printer that I bought 3 months ago, I stopped caring then and find it frankly annoying.
It has been more then 10 years now but I've worked a couple of years in e-commerce when Google Analytics was still Urchin and ad-sense was not a big thing. You know how we needed to drive sales traffic to our sites ? By providing good and informative content and that sometimes being the smaller shop.
The corrupt ecosystem around enabling "they can target only the specific people who needs the thing they sell" however is a terrible thing for humanity and targeted ads are a neccesary (and welcome to me) casualty.
I can totally see the sites that caused the GDPR to become a thing on the list. What an incredible job EU bureacrats, keep it up, it's not like the economy here doesn't need more rules.
If there was a need, even if there were a lot of candidates managers would prefer the first to be enough. But they don't have a need, government policies give them all the time in the world. So for managers it's worse to get the "wrong" candidate than a sufficient one. Managers also prefer multiple rounds, testing, etc, because they can avoid blame by showing they hired someone that passed all the tests. At the same time for managers it's better to get one superstar they can brag about than a person that can do the job, because there is no job subject to profit and loss in the first place.
This is how I explain the current situation, situation I find absurd. I may be wrong, but that's what I think. I don't know if it can help, I think your pain is fully justified and this is my attempt at easing it. It helped me a little, knowing I'm not the problem and nor is the person in front of me (at least not really)