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It's intuitively true that technology has allowed workers to do much more. At the same time productivity hasn't shot up as you'd expect it too, neither has the median wage and we're not working much fewer hours. There seems to be a paradox here. My favorite hypothesis is that we're using all that free time technoloty has given us to browse Facebook and tl.net while at work.
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On September 09 2017 10:35 warding wrote:
It's intuitively true that technology has allowed workers to do much more. At the same time productivity hasn't shot up as you'd expect it too, neither has the median wage and we're not working much fewer hours. There seems to be a paradox here. My favorite hypothesis is that we're using all that free time technoloty has given us to browse Facebook and tl.net while at work.
Pretty sure the cream just rose to the top, the top .1% have seen massive increases in their wealth over that time (both share and gross).
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United States44112 Posts
On September 09 2017 10:25 Plansix wrote:
This is the most accountant-ass post I've seen from you in a while.
Try to imagine what an internal auditor's job looked like back then. Things like verifying revenues for a grocery store. Better hope they paid someone to tally up every single fucking sale at the end of every single day because if not you're not summing 365 totals, you're summing everything. Wanna know what passed through inventory? Sure, just go through every single receiving report that was signed for the year. They're probably in a folder somewhere in the manager's office. Just write out all the different products and then keep a tally as you read the receiving reports.
By rights basically all the internal auditors should no longer have jobs. But we have more than ever, we just pay them to do audits that are a thousand times more comprehensive than they were before.
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On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors.
So, honest question here...
Is it actually that people have gotten sloppier or that there are more mistakes? Or is it that the mistakes are actually being caught because of the tools and the systems?
Because for every "back in my day people got things right the first time" story I tend to hear, there seems to be just as many "back in my day we got away with a whole lot more shit" tales. And Dunning-Kruger and all, I'd believe the stories of the people admitting to fucking around more.
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I'm currently reading The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen. His overall thesis is that America has developed too much of an overall aversion to change and it's costing us.
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On September 09 2017 10:34 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though. Their bitter refusal to modernize their businesses ahead of technology did more than the mere advancing of technology to contribute to their collapse. If record execs didn't expect so much for doing so little the industry would be a lot better too.
what the fuck are you guys talking about "collapsed the business?" music is better than ever
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On September 09 2017 10:41 Buckyman wrote:
I'm currently reading The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen. His overall thesis is that America has developed too much of an overall aversion to change and it's costing us.
*Cough*Metricsystem*Cough*
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Kwark, I am not disagreeing with you. I am just saying that you may not have a holistic view of the impact of computers on industries. The legal field thought that digital documents were the future. That shit has changed very quickly and we are not in a "digital when appropriate" system.
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On September 09 2017 10:41 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though. Their bitter refusal to modernize their businesses ahead of technology did more than the mere advancing of technology to contribute to their collapse. If record execs didn't expect so much for doing so little the industry would be a lot better too. what the fuck are you guys talking about "collapsed the business?" music is better than ever
Not if you look at overall sales. Those have taken quite a dive since their turn of the century peak, and there's probably nothing music execs could have done. I'd post a graph but apparently that's now frowned upon (?).
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On September 09 2017 10:41 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though. Their bitter refusal to modernize their businesses ahead of technology did more than the mere advancing of technology to contribute to their collapse. If record execs didn't expect so much for doing so little the industry would be a lot better too. what the fuck are you guys talking about "collapsed the business?" music is better than ever
The industry, as a direct consequence of technology, has dramatically shrunk. The repercussions of that for labels and artists is very different, but I don't see how you can argue the industry is doing better than ever. What technology will likely do with a bit more time is completely redefine the industry, probably leaving it smaller but less exploitative of artists as they move away from the label system - especially major labels - more and more.
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The music industry enjoyed a giant 10 year mountain of revenue growth purely on the back of CDs. Which are, you know, also technology.
There is, more or less, more music and better distribution than ever. Just that nothing can come close to the stupidly high profit margins of CDs.
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On September 09 2017 10:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:
The music industry enjoyed a giant 10 year mountain of revenue growth purely on the back of CDs. Which are, you know, also technology.
There is, more or less, more music and better distribution than ever. Just that nothing can come close to the stupidly high profit margins of CDs.
The music industry was smaller in 2013 than it was in 1973. CDs undoubtedly drove the profit margins way up, but the extent to which the industry has shrunk in even just the last 10 years can't be over exaggerated.
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On September 09 2017 10:40 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors. So, honest question here... Is it actually that people have gotten sloppier or that there are more mistakes? Or is it that the mistakes are actually being caught because of the tools and the systems? Because for every "back in my day people got things right the first time" story I tend to hear, there seems to be just as many "back in my day we got away with a whole lot more shit" tales. And Dunning-Kruger and all, I'd believe the stories of the people admitting to fucking around more.
Both. The metrics for success is number of deals made. More deals, more success. Faster sales means more deals. But care is needed to make sure deals are done correctly. So the company is careful with the sales and makes sure they are done correctly.
Until someone else does it faster and they are not longer offered to handle sales. Then they must go faster and do it cheaper. But then they notice other companies are also going faster and making errors. But they can't get permission to correct those errors. That would slow down the sales. So they pass them along to the next buyer, selling it as is. They are also making errors, because they are not careful. And because this is all on computers and over the internet, physical documents rarely pass through peoples hands.
This cycle continues forever until the errors becomes so great that they will literally get fucking sued if they sell this thing. Or they can't get title insurance. Or they discharged a mortgage in error because they discharged like 400 of them on a holiday weekend they shouldn't have because someone was working 70 hours in a week. Or they encumber the wrong land with the mortgage they gave to this family for a plot of land that does not exist.
And when that happens, it comes to use and we just put our hands in our head and debate how we will explain this to the judge.
Speed is what matters. Time lines are what they care about. They have time lines for time lines. Because they can go fast and no one has figured out what is the fastest. Nothing is physical, so its just fast moving ether.
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On September 09 2017 10:41 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though. Their bitter refusal to modernize their businesses ahead of technology did more than the mere advancing of technology to contribute to their collapse. If record execs didn't expect so much for doing so little the industry would be a lot better too. what the fuck are you guys talking about "collapsed the business?" music is better than ever
I presume this was actually a joke about how music quality and overall profit aren't connected.
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On September 09 2017 10:56 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:
The music industry enjoyed a giant 10 year mountain of revenue growth purely on the back of CDs. Which are, you know, also technology.
There is, more or less, more music and better distribution than ever. Just that nothing can come close to the stupidly high profit margins of CDs. The music industry was smaller in 2013 than it was in 1973. CDs undoubtedly drove the profit margins way up, but the extent to which the industry has shrunk in even just the last 10 years can't be over exaggerated.
Given that you're using 1973 and 2013 as your data points, I'm guessing you're referring to this graph? https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/msuicmarket1973-2013.jpg
Those are purely recorded media sales, which is shrinking as a proportion of music-based revenue in general.
On September 09 2017 10:58 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:40 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors. So, honest question here... Is it actually that people have gotten sloppier or that there are more mistakes? Or is it that the mistakes are actually being caught because of the tools and the systems? Because for every "back in my day people got things right the first time" story I tend to hear, there seems to be just as many "back in my day we got away with a whole lot more shit" tales. And Dunning-Kruger and all, I'd believe the stories of the people admitting to fucking around more. Both. The metrics for success is number of deals made. More deals, more success. Faster sales means more deals. But care is needed to make sure deals are done correctly. So the company is careful with the sales and makes sure they are done correctly. Until someone else does it faster and they are not longer offered to handle sales. Then they must go faster and do it cheaper. But then they notice other companies are also going faster and making errors. But they can't get permission to correct those errors. That would slow down the sales. So they pass them along to the next buyer, selling it as is. They are also making errors, because they are not careful. And because this is all on computers and over the internet, physical documents rarely pass through peoples hands. This cycle continues forever until the errors becomes so great that they will literally get fucking sued if they sell this thing. Or they can't get title insurance. Or they discharged a mortgage in error because they discharged like 400 of them on a holiday weekend they shouldn't have because someone was working 70 hours in a week. Or they encumber the wrong land with the mortgage they gave to this family for a plot of land that does not exist. And when that happens, it comes to use and we just put our hands in our head and debate how we will explain this to the judge. Speed is what matters. Time lines are what they care about. They have time lines for time lines. Because they can go fast and no one has figured out what is the fastest. Nothing is physical, so its just fast moving ether.
That sounds like a management problem. Which is happening in a lot of fields, where they just want everything reduced to numbers. Sure technology enabled that kind of attitude and micromanagement, but ultimately your life may have gotten worse, but obviously those "numbers" are getting better (in the eyes of your bosses).
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On September 09 2017 11:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:56 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:
The music industry enjoyed a giant 10 year mountain of revenue growth purely on the back of CDs. Which are, you know, also technology.
There is, more or less, more music and better distribution than ever. Just that nothing can come close to the stupidly high profit margins of CDs. The music industry was smaller in 2013 than it was in 1973. CDs undoubtedly drove the profit margins way up, but the extent to which the industry has shrunk in even just the last 10 years can't be over exaggerated. Given that you're using 1973 and 2013 as your data points, I'm guessing you're referring to this graph? https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/msuicmarket1973-2013.jpgThose are purely recorded media sales, which is shrinking as a proportion of music-based revenue in general. Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:58 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:40 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors. So, honest question here... Is it actually that people have gotten sloppier or that there are more mistakes? Or is it that the mistakes are actually being caught because of the tools and the systems? Because for every "back in my day people got things right the first time" story I tend to hear, there seems to be just as many "back in my day we got away with a whole lot more shit" tales. And Dunning-Kruger and all, I'd believe the stories of the people admitting to fucking around more. Both. The metrics for success is number of deals made. More deals, more success. Faster sales means more deals. But care is needed to make sure deals are done correctly. So the company is careful with the sales and makes sure they are done correctly. Until someone else does it faster and they are not longer offered to handle sales. Then they must go faster and do it cheaper. But then they notice other companies are also going faster and making errors. But they can't get permission to correct those errors. That would slow down the sales. So they pass them along to the next buyer, selling it as is. They are also making errors, because they are not careful. And because this is all on computers and over the internet, physical documents rarely pass through peoples hands. This cycle continues forever until the errors becomes so great that they will literally get fucking sued if they sell this thing. Or they can't get title insurance. Or they discharged a mortgage in error because they discharged like 400 of them on a holiday weekend they shouldn't have because someone was working 70 hours in a week. Or they encumber the wrong land with the mortgage they gave to this family for a plot of land that does not exist. And when that happens, it comes to use and we just put our hands in our head and debate how we will explain this to the judge. Speed is what matters. Time lines are what they care about. They have time lines for time lines. Because they can go fast and no one has figured out what is the fastest. Nothing is physical, so its just fast moving ether. That sounds like a management problem. Which is happening in a lot of fields, where they just want everything reduced to numbers. Sure technology enabled that kind of attitude and micromanagement, but ultimately your life may have gotten worse, but obviously those "numbers" are getting better (in the eyes of your bosses).
We have a lot of attorneys who worked in the field in the 1990s. My firm has been around since then. In the 1990s we handled a hand full of mortgages that were discharges in error over 10 years. We handle close to 70-100 in the last 2 years. All the errors have this systemic nature, where one fuck up is pushed on forever. It is industry wide and caused by the way technology has impacted the industry. It has allowed for this diffusion of responsibility that prevents anyone form making decisions. But yet somehow they are able to do millions of dollars in damage by fucking title.
And my bosses don't give a fuck about time lines. We are specifically hired to stop the madness.
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On September 09 2017 11:20 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 11:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:56 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:
The music industry enjoyed a giant 10 year mountain of revenue growth purely on the back of CDs. Which are, you know, also technology.
There is, more or less, more music and better distribution than ever. Just that nothing can come close to the stupidly high profit margins of CDs. The music industry was smaller in 2013 than it was in 1973. CDs undoubtedly drove the profit margins way up, but the extent to which the industry has shrunk in even just the last 10 years can't be over exaggerated. Given that you're using 1973 and 2013 as your data points, I'm guessing you're referring to this graph? https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/msuicmarket1973-2013.jpgThose are purely recorded media sales, which is shrinking as a proportion of music-based revenue in general. On September 09 2017 10:58 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:40 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors. So, honest question here... Is it actually that people have gotten sloppier or that there are more mistakes? Or is it that the mistakes are actually being caught because of the tools and the systems? Because for every "back in my day people got things right the first time" story I tend to hear, there seems to be just as many "back in my day we got away with a whole lot more shit" tales. And Dunning-Kruger and all, I'd believe the stories of the people admitting to fucking around more. Both. The metrics for success is number of deals made. More deals, more success. Faster sales means more deals. But care is needed to make sure deals are done correctly. So the company is careful with the sales and makes sure they are done correctly. Until someone else does it faster and they are not longer offered to handle sales. Then they must go faster and do it cheaper. But then they notice other companies are also going faster and making errors. But they can't get permission to correct those errors. That would slow down the sales. So they pass them along to the next buyer, selling it as is. They are also making errors, because they are not careful. And because this is all on computers and over the internet, physical documents rarely pass through peoples hands. This cycle continues forever until the errors becomes so great that they will literally get fucking sued if they sell this thing. Or they can't get title insurance. Or they discharged a mortgage in error because they discharged like 400 of them on a holiday weekend they shouldn't have because someone was working 70 hours in a week. Or they encumber the wrong land with the mortgage they gave to this family for a plot of land that does not exist. And when that happens, it comes to use and we just put our hands in our head and debate how we will explain this to the judge. Speed is what matters. Time lines are what they care about. They have time lines for time lines. Because they can go fast and no one has figured out what is the fastest. Nothing is physical, so its just fast moving ether. That sounds like a management problem. Which is happening in a lot of fields, where they just want everything reduced to numbers. Sure technology enabled that kind of attitude and micromanagement, but ultimately your life may have gotten worse, but obviously those "numbers" are getting better (in the eyes of your bosses). We have a lot of attorneys who worked in the field in the 1990s. My firm has been around since then. In the 1990s we handled a hand full of mortgages that were discharges in error over 10 years. We handle close to 70-100 in the last 2 years. All the errors have this systemic nature, where one fuck up is pushed on forever. It is industry wide and caused by the way technology has impacted the industry.
Again, sounds like a management problem more than anything. How many fuck-ups does it take before it outweighs the gain from pushing things out faster? Answer is probably quite a lot. Tech has definitely enabled that kind of attitude and number crunching, but it's still people pushing those standards within the companies.
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On September 09 2017 11:28 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 11:20 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 11:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:56 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:
The music industry enjoyed a giant 10 year mountain of revenue growth purely on the back of CDs. Which are, you know, also technology.
There is, more or less, more music and better distribution than ever. Just that nothing can come close to the stupidly high profit margins of CDs. The music industry was smaller in 2013 than it was in 1973. CDs undoubtedly drove the profit margins way up, but the extent to which the industry has shrunk in even just the last 10 years can't be over exaggerated. Given that you're using 1973 and 2013 as your data points, I'm guessing you're referring to this graph? https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/msuicmarket1973-2013.jpgThose are purely recorded media sales, which is shrinking as a proportion of music-based revenue in general. On September 09 2017 10:58 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:40 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:43 Plansix wrote:
But their productive has not increased on any substantial level. Tech as not transformed from the foundation up. My wife works in healthcare, digital records are not all they are cracked up to be. Construction is still construction. Power lines are still power lines. It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation? Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed. That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors. So, honest question here... Is it actually that people have gotten sloppier or that there are more mistakes? Or is it that the mistakes are actually being caught because of the tools and the systems? Because for every "back in my day people got things right the first time" story I tend to hear, there seems to be just as many "back in my day we got away with a whole lot more shit" tales. And Dunning-Kruger and all, I'd believe the stories of the people admitting to fucking around more. Both. The metrics for success is number of deals made. More deals, more success. Faster sales means more deals. But care is needed to make sure deals are done correctly. So the company is careful with the sales and makes sure they are done correctly. Until someone else does it faster and they are not longer offered to handle sales. Then they must go faster and do it cheaper. But then they notice other companies are also going faster and making errors. But they can't get permission to correct those errors. That would slow down the sales. So they pass them along to the next buyer, selling it as is. They are also making errors, because they are not careful. And because this is all on computers and over the internet, physical documents rarely pass through peoples hands. This cycle continues forever until the errors becomes so great that they will literally get fucking sued if they sell this thing. Or they can't get title insurance. Or they discharged a mortgage in error because they discharged like 400 of them on a holiday weekend they shouldn't have because someone was working 70 hours in a week. Or they encumber the wrong land with the mortgage they gave to this family for a plot of land that does not exist. And when that happens, it comes to use and we just put our hands in our head and debate how we will explain this to the judge. Speed is what matters. Time lines are what they care about. They have time lines for time lines. Because they can go fast and no one has figured out what is the fastest. Nothing is physical, so its just fast moving ether. That sounds like a management problem. Which is happening in a lot of fields, where they just want everything reduced to numbers. Sure technology enabled that kind of attitude and micromanagement, but ultimately your life may have gotten worse, but obviously those "numbers" are getting better (in the eyes of your bosses). We have a lot of attorneys who worked in the field in the 1990s. My firm has been around since then. In the 1990s we handled a hand full of mortgages that were discharges in error over 10 years. We handle close to 70-100 in the last 2 years. All the errors have this systemic nature, where one fuck up is pushed on forever. It is industry wide and caused by the way technology has impacted the industry. Again, sounds like a management problem more than anything. How many fuck-ups does it take before it outweighs the gain from pushing things out faster? Answer is probably quite a lot. Tech has definitely enabled that kind of attitude and number crunching, but it's still people pushing those standards within the companies.
I was always talking about enabling mistakes. Or simply hiding them. That was my whole discussion with Kwark. The same thing that allows him to do 50 times more work allows these folks to cover up 50 times more errors. Or they go unnoticed forever because they are buried work that is moving 50 times faster. That I questioned if the tech is a net positive for all industries.
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On September 09 2017 11:10 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 10:41 IgnE wrote:On September 09 2017 10:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 09 2017 10:24 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:22 Buckyman wrote:
Want a revolutionized industry? Try music. We've gone from vinyl to digital. We don't need to ship in specific songs before listening to them; our streaming services now give us access to approximately all the songs at a whim.
The production process has also gone digital. These days any talentless hack can put together an album. Technology has also absolutely collapsed the music industry though. Their bitter refusal to modernize their businesses ahead of technology did more than the mere advancing of technology to contribute to their collapse. If record execs didn't expect so much for doing so little the industry would be a lot better too. what the fuck are you guys talking about "collapsed the business?" music is better than ever I presume this was actually a joke about how music quality and overall profit aren't connected.
yeah except it's not a joke. defining an "industry's" usefulness or health by its profits rather than its products and the joy it brings to people is a sickness.
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United States44112 Posts
On September 09 2017 11:33 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2017 11:28 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 11:20 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 11:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:56 kollin wrote:On September 09 2017 10:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:
The music industry enjoyed a giant 10 year mountain of revenue growth purely on the back of CDs. Which are, you know, also technology.
There is, more or less, more music and better distribution than ever. Just that nothing can come close to the stupidly high profit margins of CDs. The music industry was smaller in 2013 than it was in 1973. CDs undoubtedly drove the profit margins way up, but the extent to which the industry has shrunk in even just the last 10 years can't be over exaggerated. Given that you're using 1973 and 2013 as your data points, I'm guessing you're referring to this graph? https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/msuicmarket1973-2013.jpgThose are purely recorded media sales, which is shrinking as a proportion of music-based revenue in general. On September 09 2017 10:58 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:40 WolfintheSheep wrote:On September 09 2017 10:19 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 10:11 KwarK wrote:On September 09 2017 09:59 Plansix wrote:On September 09 2017 09:52 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
It can't be isolated like that. You think any building being built now wasn't designed with software? You think the construction materials didn't come from a factory with significant amounts of automation?
Sure, you still need an architect and a structural engineer, no different than you did 30 years ago. But the kind of work they're doing is completely different to what it was then. Even in healthcare the kind of work being performed has changed.
That people still do the job is the wrong thing to measure. You need to look at what kind of work is being done on the job, compared to before, what your expectation was for that labour. The same professionals may be involved but they're doing many times more work and in a far more productive way. But that is how we measure productively and how much faster it happens. How much more than one person do. Computers are great and have increased productivity. But they are the telephone or the assembly line. They will not beat the mass market automobile or electrical grid. Computers have improved some aspects of many industries, but some has just changed. I work in a field that is almost untouched by technology, beyond that we struggle to clean up after it most of the time. I still use a type writer and fax machines. I'll give an example. Spreadsheets predate the invention of MS Excel. Walmart would call up a spreadsheet company and commission one. They would then collect all of their data and a team of people would manually process and enter it all onto a giant sheet of paper which would be mailed back a month later. Despite how laborious the process was spreadsheets still existed because the information on the spreadsheet was worth the thousands of manhours involved in assembling it. You were happy to pay $50,000 for the single spreadsheet because the information on it was worth $100,000 to you. Now they take seconds, data that would have cost millions of dollars to collect and compile is automatically fed into a system that can be queried at will, with new spreadsheets for whatever variables you feel like changing. That entire industry should, in theory, no longer exist. But it still does, and in fact more labour is being performed in it than ever. What changed is the output. Where previously you'd have fifty employees working for a week on a spreadsheet, now you have fifty employees working for a week on a hundred thousand spreadsheets. And where previously the added value of the spreadsheet was $50,000 over the costs involved, now it's many many times more because the barrier for entry is so low that queries that represent marginal increases in value are still being resolved. People still do the job, but the output is incomparable. Imagine what you'd get for engaging an architect for 40 hours thirty years ago. Now imagine what you'd get from them today for the same money and time commitment. You're still paying them, but you're not paying for the same thing. We're getting far, far more for our money. Yes, but you are not measuring all the systemic errors created by these faster system. I work at the back end of the real estate end of that system, cleaning up the mess created by two of those 50 people fucking up on their work. But because they can work 100 times faster, they made 100 times more errors before anyone caught it. I am not convinced that its a net gain at all. I look at the financial industry and see that speed only breeds stupidity and the ability to hide errors. So, honest question here... Is it actually that people have gotten sloppier or that there are more mistakes? Or is it that the mistakes are actually being caught because of the tools and the systems? Because for every "back in my day people got things right the first time" story I tend to hear, there seems to be just as many "back in my day we got away with a whole lot more shit" tales. And Dunning-Kruger and all, I'd believe the stories of the people admitting to fucking around more. Both. The metrics for success is number of deals made. More deals, more success. Faster sales means more deals. But care is needed to make sure deals are done correctly. So the company is careful with the sales and makes sure they are done correctly. Until someone else does it faster and they are not longer offered to handle sales. Then they must go faster and do it cheaper. But then they notice other companies are also going faster and making errors. But they can't get permission to correct those errors. That would slow down the sales. So they pass them along to the next buyer, selling it as is. They are also making errors, because they are not careful. And because this is all on computers and over the internet, physical documents rarely pass through peoples hands. This cycle continues forever until the errors becomes so great that they will literally get fucking sued if they sell this thing. Or they can't get title insurance. Or they discharged a mortgage in error because they discharged like 400 of them on a holiday weekend they shouldn't have because someone was working 70 hours in a week. Or they encumber the wrong land with the mortgage they gave to this family for a plot of land that does not exist. And when that happens, it comes to use and we just put our hands in our head and debate how we will explain this to the judge. Speed is what matters. Time lines are what they care about. They have time lines for time lines. Because they can go fast and no one has figured out what is the fastest. Nothing is physical, so its just fast moving ether. That sounds like a management problem. Which is happening in a lot of fields, where they just want everything reduced to numbers. Sure technology enabled that kind of attitude and micromanagement, but ultimately your life may have gotten worse, but obviously those "numbers" are getting better (in the eyes of your bosses). We have a lot of attorneys who worked in the field in the 1990s. My firm has been around since then. In the 1990s we handled a hand full of mortgages that were discharges in error over 10 years. We handle close to 70-100 in the last 2 years. All the errors have this systemic nature, where one fuck up is pushed on forever. It is industry wide and caused by the way technology has impacted the industry. Again, sounds like a management problem more than anything. How many fuck-ups does it take before it outweighs the gain from pushing things out faster? Answer is probably quite a lot. Tech has definitely enabled that kind of attitude and number crunching, but it's still people pushing those standards within the companies. I was always talking about enabling mistakes. Or simply hiding them. That was my whole discussion with Kwark. The same thing that allows him to do 50 times more work allows these folks to cover up 50 times more errors. Or they go unnoticed forever because they are buried work that is moving 50 times faster. That I questioned if the tech is a net positive for all industries.
If it wasn't they couldn't justify paying you to fix the mistakes.
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EPT
