The weird thing about the article, or at least, with a title like It's a Tough Job Market for the Young Without Degrees is it seems to imply that the job market is tough for people without degrees, but is otherwise healthy. That doesn't seem correct, and there does not seem to be any information in the article indicating that Vynny Brown's (interviewed in the article) 20 year old peers are faring much better than he is. So, the article isn't incorrect in some points it makes like retraining the workforce is important, university education isn't the only type of education, ect, however it doesn't really explain the meta-problem.

The job market is tough because there is increased outsourcing in physical/human-centric work and simultaneously(even in manufacturing) improved technology, step-changes in process engineering and the electronic automation of simple tasks have removed a lot of jobs from the economy and for some that do exists, significantly limited the perceived value society has for them, limiting earning potetnial.

Clinkle also lost a ton of money for a lot of pretty smart people. I blame silicon valley because it was their fault they made a bad investment (as much as SV can be a collective group). I mean, I bet like 1/10 companies they fund fail. Some comitted fraud, some had shitty biz plans, some failed for no reason.

  > what are we blaming silicon valley for? Being wrong on a venture investment? 

I think the general feeling is that the investors did far more than merely throw a few bucks at Theranos.

They can go out and make deals, do press etc... all within their rights as board members - in fact that's what they are for.

Investments are passive only for non-accredited shareholders.

Having made a bad investment, as a Director or Officer, they had a responsibility to blow the whistle on malpractices, enforce proper procedures, fire the CEO long before the CEO was in a position to be barred from the industry, &c. &c.

Well I haven't made a statement on that either way - but I wouldn't advocate for that.

It is however up to their own judgement how much to do in any case. They represent shareholders, so they do have fiduciary duty there to be sure (though I am unsure if that is true for the high profile members of the Theranos board as it seemed to be largely advisory).

The fact that Holmes has 50+% of the company makes the point in this case pretty much moot. Aside from leaving the board en masse and abandoning whatever shares they have, they really are pretty powerless.

And I'm hardly the only one saying this. Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark, made it clear that we've been dealing with a bubble, and said that the best possible thing that could happen was "a return to an appreciation for sound business execution". [1]

Nobody minds minds that we have companies that fail. That's the game. But when we create companies that burn ten million, a hundred million, maybe a billion dollars and never could have succeeded, then that is a major fuckup that is on us.

Even if you don't care about wasting OPM at that scale, just think of the number of seed and A-round companies that Theranos's $686.3M could have funded. If our job is to make interesting mistakes, we should be maximizing the amount learned per venture dollar.

[1] http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to-recap/

What are we blaming Silicon Valley for (insofar as we're really talking about VC's)? I don't know about "we" but I'm blaming them for being dishonest. Do I go around being mad about it all the time? No. But I won't pass on an opportunity to rub a lemon on their noses.

For failing to do due diligence before investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a company.

A culture where regulation is a hinderance that can be ignored, rather than something that protects businesses and customers.

The difference is in outcome: Uber's ignoring regulation has led to a better outcome for the average person. Theranos.. hasn't. Careful not to conflate "following the rules" with anything but obedience.. the outcome is more important.

No they haven't. Not all regulations are equal. Most of the regulations Uber has ignored are probably examples of regulatory capture and shouldn't exist in their current form. The regulations Theranos ignored are important, even critical, for patient safety and the integrity of medical testing.

Some of Uber's regulatory battles are complex, but many are laughably transparent. France's 15-minute mandatory delay before you can be picked up by hire cars? They didn't even pretend it was about anything other than protecting a monopoly.

If a regulation has a decent purpose that you feel it's not fulfilling (especially safety), you should probably lobby against it. If the regulation's entire purpose is to manipulate a market, it becomes pretty easy to defend ignoring it.

The idea that it's not the person's job to decide which regs to abide by implies that all laws are equal. As GP mentioned, that isn't the case.

And in the process likely led to harm to their clients. Healthcare is one of those things that you don't fuck with, because the failure mode of bad tech isn't just that you go out of business and inconvenience a bunch of people, it's that you actually cause potentially irreparable damage to people (in Theranos's case, by providing incorrect information about people's health which they depended on).

[1] Drivers with eg allergies can get medical certificates to exempt them from having to carry assistance dogs.

Regulations are in place for a reason.

(There was a deaf student in my upper division math courses and I worked for a communications company with deaf coworkers for a bit.)

First "business" has no concept of "ethics". This is one of the classic market externalities which leads to non-pareto-optimal outcomes.

Second, the "culture" doesn't just reward "hyperbole and fraudulent misrepresentation of business success." If we take your statement at face value, there would be no venture capital firms because they would all be throwing away their money, without any return, until they ran out.

The unfortunate truth is that there _is_ money to be made with Silicon Valley type investment. There _are_ economic inefficiencies which lead to undesirable market outcomes, but it's not because venture capitalists are just throwing money away for _no_ reason.

And finally, Theranos appears (at least to me) to be an exception rather than a rule. And while I don't agree with everything the article says or the way it says it, I think there are a few important takeaways.

Theranos was able to get funding because of who they knew...it calls into question whether or not they would have been able to get funding (or the amount they did) if they had been just another start up _without_ connections. It documents the times Theranos was _denied_ funding by Silicon Valley venture capital when they tried to obtain funding the traditional way.

It also points out the disproportionate amount of media coverage they had and questions whether it had a contributory role to Theranos' rocket-like trajectory. Heck, I would bet many people who use/rely on our software have never heard of my start-up, we hardly get covered in the media. In general I think the start-ups that get large amounts of media coverage are exceptions to the general rule.

Anyway, sorry for the long comment, and I don't want to take away from the fact that there ARE problems with Silicon Valley and business regulation in America in general.

Ethics can be modeled as an externality, but they don't have to be.

Hypothetically, let's say investors were taken to task publicly every time one of their investments blows up - not a simple company shutdown, mind you, but when the company is later proven to be doing really shady, unethical things. Ultimately, this would result in a tangible cost to the investment firm, because investment firms value their brand. In the long run, they would adapt, and take steps to guard against this risk before making investments.

Is that ethics? Or is it just the market acting efficiently, by pricing in the risk-adjusted expected future costs?

You can look at it either way, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Whether or not businesses have a concept of 'ethics', they can be forced to act as if they do, which amounts to essentially the same thing.

Ah excellent point! But your hypothetical offers an external market correcting force. Another external market force would be government regulation (take for example the recent government laws forcing retirement investors to put their clients first).

The lines get pretty gray when you try to figure out what should be considered part of the market and what should be considered external to it. Personally, I would consider public perception outside of a traditional "market" model...but like I said, I am by no means an economist.

I also wanted to mention that most companies think in the short run and therefore often make self-harmful decisions to themselves. This relates to your comment:

> ...pricing in the risk-adjusted expected future costs?

Companies can only sell products to people that can afford them, so by keeping wages low, they are actually pricing themselves out of the market. A classic and oft referenced counter-example to this is when Henry Ford payed his factory workers well-enough that they could afford to buy the cars they were assembling.

Anyways, I obviously like to philosophize about economics far too much and don't want to bore anyone :) I am also NOT an economist so I have a rather limited perspective.

No worries, and thanks for responding.

> Personally, I would consider public perception outside of a traditional "market" model...but like I said, I am by no means an economist. Another external market force would be government regulation (take for example the recent government laws forcing retirement investors to put their clients first).

Speaking as an economist, I'd say it's pretty standard for economists to consider public perception (brand value) to be part of the decision-making model. In fact, it's essential - plenty of decisions can't be explained rationally unless you account for intangible assets and revealed preferences.

Likewise, it's common for non-economists to think of government regulation as an exogenous force, but from an economic perspective, government action is very much a component of the market - it exists as part of the market, not outside it.

> Companies can only sell products to people that can afford them, so by keeping wages low, they are actually pricing themselves out of the market.

This is a common talking point among advocates of wage floors (e.g. 'minimum wage'), but you'd be hard-pressed to find an economist who agreed with that statement as written, even if you're looking only at economists who already advocate for wage floors. (There are some economists who advocate for wage floors, but rarely using that line of reasoning). Labor economics is a complex subfield, though, (not to mention politically charged these days), so I'll just say that companies do price in risk-adjusted expected future costs (just not always with complete or accurate information, or with the outcomes one might like), and leave it at that.

Interesting, I was under the impression that this was sort of the bold new frontier for behavioral economics. I would agree that plenty of decisions can't be explained rationally without accounting for intangible (non-price/revenue driven) effects, but hadn't realized that the specifics were widely accepted by "traditional" economists.

I also, myself, am skeptical of revealed preferences (specifically whether or not they can be revealed with respect to ordinality). But perhaps it is now widely accepted?

> Likewise, it's common for non-economists to think of government regulation as an exogenous force but from an economic perspective, government action is very much a component of the market - it exists as part of the market, not outside it.

Oh gosh, its been awhile, so my command of the proper terminology and referencing is severely lacking. But I agree with what you are saying...what I was trying to (poorly) articulate was that in a non-regulated, laissez faire market involving only Suppliers and Consumers (Demand) without an external correcting force acting on the market the market outcome would be inefficient. Of course from an economic model standpoint, the "new" market incorporates the regulation...and the government is actually an actor within the market. My lax terminology is probably a result of a) not being an economist first and foremost and b) usually having politically oriented discussions with individuals who like to call Right-wing economic view points "capitalism".

> This is a common talking point among advocates of wage floors (e.g. 'minimum wage')

Well, truth be told, I am not a fan of wage floors...I am more a proponent of basic income. And Labor economics is definitely complicated and the actual economics usually aren't the basis for the political positions (at least as I understand it)...but one rather contrived example which stuck with me was: If you are a company selling a $10 good, which market would you prefer: 100 potential buyers with $10 each or 1 buyer with $901 and 99 with $1? Which is what motivated that last comment...which is rather narrow and analysis thereof far above my own narrow view of economic theory. It just resonated with me.

Pushing for hyper growth above all else can lead to cutting corners. It's also a common mistake for inexperienced entrepreneurs to make.

Any way cheers!

Even if we accept that Stanford's teaching staff, resources, and student peer-groups are complete non-factors, it is extremely unlikely the content is the same. Both because schools differ on how they supplement that content (adding more & where they provide additional attention) and general quality of laboratories ect.

So even if they use the exact same books depending on how granular you define "content", I think we can say San Jose (or many universities) are difficult to compare directly. While I wouldn't put it as rudely as parent, Stanford has a reputation for putting out high quality engineers, although that is irrelevent to the point, which is that you certainly can't say general content guidelines map to "certainly identical" experience...

No.

How is someone an engineer without an official engineering designation?

It's funny that Zuckerberg is dismissed as a computer scientist, but accepted as an engineer, proving how arbitrary these titles are.

If we're using titles that describe what they do rather than professional licensing (which doesn't apply to software) then these people build software and lead teams that build software. That's software engineering. If you don't like the use of the word 'engineer' for someone who isn't a Professional Engineer then,

a) Tough, that boat has sailed.

b) Pick a different word, "software builder", "coding guy", whatever.

No matter how you slice it, they are not computer scientists.

When I was in my first year Econ 101 class I remember the professor telling a story which IIRC was about SF Bus Companies. We were talking about price elasticity and general market pricing mechanisms and doing price curves. The story was essentially that the bus company brought in consultants who evaluated why the company was losing money after it had raised rates. It was a no-brainer of course, that if you sell 5,000 rides a day (made up number) that if you raised prices from 1.00 to 1.10 you would make 10% more.

It turned out, that the company was doing rather poorly after raising rates but critically, they were even priced too high at 1.00. 20,000 people would ride the bus for $0.75 and have less impact on the marginal price as the busses were heavily underused.

The point is that it is possible, I would say likely but I have no data, that a subscription for the Boston Globe might attract 5,000 people at current price(made up number), but like above if they charged $0.99 a month, they could feasibly have 20000-200,000 customers in a biz with virtually 0 marginal cost, and profit tied directly to subscriber size(ads which I assume they show to even paying subscribers after reading the article).

Newspapers are super elastic, and that price curve probably falls steeply after $1.00 a month.

It's actually incredibly dishonest, at each and every step of the way. It's anti-consumer, and makes distrust the organization and it's integrity as a place of good journalism. You never bothered to explain how you thought it wasn't. How is a huge surprise bill at the end of a year not dishonest? Hiding truth is dishonesty. Low level used car lot sales type strategy.

You're right on pricing though. Newspapers need to stop trying to charge nearly the same as a print subscription. Almost no one is going to pay that these days - we don't expect to get all our news from one or two sources now.

I'd love to see a respected news site try a penny under $1/£1 a month sub just to see how the numbers land. I'd wouldn't be at all surprised to see enough subscriber growth that they make more notwithstanding traffic growth. It has to be better than advert supported rates.

I'd pay that, without second thought. I'd be happy paying that across the twenty or so news sites that make up regular reading for me.

We really need some zero-friction mini-(if not micro) payments solution. I'm imagining a Paypal subscription button that's as frictionless as a Like button (on both subscribe and unsubscribe). Click once to pay $1 for access, without even leaving the page (no logins or signups). Unsubscribe is just a single click away, with no hidden cancellation periods. I love the idea of flattr, but only someone like PayPal has the existing userbase to get any adoption. They also have a balance feature to reduce CC processing fees.

They are completely bonkers. They have absolutely no idea how people consume news; they still believe I'm going to go there first thing in the morning as my first page and 'read the whole newspaper' or something. And that I'll be subscribed just to them, or something equally idiotic.

I'm willing to pay that £10 for netflix for example, or perhaps 2 or 3 /maximum/ service I use /a lot/ -and that will be reviewed very often- but I'm not going to pay that to everyone whose website I go once a week or so.

What are they thinking? Gimme a subscription for £1/month, and I'll take quite a few of them (possibly more than 20 or 30!!) but I'm not willing to shell out that sort of money for occasional visits.

The Boston Globe is being intentionally deceptive about the amount they're charging their customers. They're trying to trick people into paying more money than they thought they were consenting to.

You could argue that they'll only "trick" those who don't dig deep enough to figure out the real price, but that's like saying confidence tricks are moral because they only work on naive people.

Although a large organization like the Globe will be able to negotiate better rates.

Or aggregate each customer's monthly payments into one larger charge, like Google used to do for Play Store purchases. From memory they waited until you'd reached something like $8 and then charged that in one transaction.

China has to realize that it is hurting the financial position of the entire country and it's own credibility, by funneling secrets to private companies. If the reverse were true in the US, companies funneling secrets to the governement, it would be treason. America has the advantage of complete isolation of the government and corporations, which just isn't possible in a communist nation, so only in the most extreme cases do the two share finances or data.

China approves state sanctioned hacking against their allies and citizens in private companies and it gives them an unfair advantage. If private companies had that sort of clout in the US, you would see laws structured favourably for corporations and they would yield a lot more political influence. China is the kind of country that would commit industrial espionage against private companies it is allied with economically and politically. If it were possible for them to configure Danish and Malaysian servers via network and physical intrusion, they would be able to tactically engineer a super virus that would affect >50% of a whole country, not to mention collatoral damage. It would hurt the companies reputation, jeopardize it's secrets and causing them millions in damages as well as the hundreds of thousands affectd.

The article says:

"Chinese prosecution would entail the United States sharing evidence linking the cyberintrusions to the individuals. And to do so could compromise sensitive information on how the U.S. government tracked the suspects."

THESE ARE HACKERS. We shouldn't be afraid to get a win once in a while. We have to do something and a good first step would be to go to China, and tell them how we caught them breaking into private companies in the US and abroad, and we were able to document these records. They need to know that if they hit a multinational, a data center, resedential citizens, etc. that we are there, we will catch you and we will bring you to justice.

Im glad the US is taking a stand against this. I look forward to watching these hackers face trial, but ultimately, their government and citizens should be ashamed of themselves. It's a shame the Cyber Security bill failed to pass the senate a few months ago, that way organizations would monitor for cyber threat indicators and they would be forced to protect us from these hackers. I think I echo the words of the unnamed source, when I say "Look, here’s these guys. Round them up".

The U.S does minimal hacking and when it does, it's nearly surgical in nature. It's a precise target for a precise reason. This is unlike other countries' hacking (read: China & Russia) where it's indiscriminate and relentless. They hope to steal anything and everything.

The world isn't black & white. It's infinite shades of grey. Believe it or not, one form of hacking can be "less bad" than another form. Regardless, China and Russia's government hacking programs are orders of magnitude larger than the U.S's program.

> I could just replace the word "China" with "USA" in your comment and everything is still true.

No you couldn't. Again, the world isn't black and white and not all crimes are the same. Is a mass murderer and a petty thief the same? They're both criminals, right? If you don't think they're the same, then you begin to understand that the world isn't black and white.

Adding rules, regulation and loopholes that will only be read by a low level data-entry clerk and their new Artificial Intelligience.