7 ms·

Is it just me or does it seem like a lot of media outlets really, really want to see a big tech downturn? I want to say to the collective writers ofthe WSJ, t

by skewart 11y ago

Is it just me or does it seem like a lot of media outlets really, really want to see a big tech downturn? I want to say to the collective writers ofthe WSJ, the NYT, and everyone else, "stop trying to make a bubble happen, it's not going to happen." I get that a bursting bubble would be dramatic, and would make for lots of compelling stories. But there are plenty of other exciting and interesting things going on in tech these days! There's no shortage of dramatic tales that aren't quite as simple as "those crazy Californians are finally getting their due!" I mean, I get it. Journalists gonna journal. But still. Anyways, sorry for the rant. Please continue reading the comments as you were.

beatpanda 11y ago
Journalists report on things that are happening. People resist this idea like nothing else in the universe, but really, it's true. There are objective data to support the conclusion of a slowdown in the tech industry. I'm sorry if this upsets you.
- derefr 11y ago
  It's a bit of both: journalists try to find anything that makes for a good, compelling story as it's happening. Now, some things can be seen in advance to make for good, compelling stories; some journalists have already written a piece in their heads about certain topics, long before the news actually comes out. But nobody is reporting things just because they want them to be true. People are just jumping to report things now that they "finally" are at least a little bit true.
ethanbond 11y ago
Is it really that unbelievable that people are getting concerned with totally, for example, a gif image platform getting valuations in the hundreds of millions range?
- Inthenameofmine 11y ago
  I don't have any data, but it might be that Giphy class companies have more or less the same investment share percentage today as they used to before. It's just that the total investment pie grew. There's plenty of useful companies investors put their money in today. Heck, I think now might be the first one in a long while that venture investors put up money for moonshot type of ideas.
samcheng 11y ago
Newspapers in particular were butchered by the World Wide Web and Social Media. Paper advertising revenue is roughly a third of what it was a decade ago. That revenue paid the salaries of a lot of journalists... Of course the ones left hate us! http://www.journalism.org/chart/newspaper-ad-revenue-from-digital-and-print/ http://www.journalism.org/chart/newspaper-ad-revenue-from-di...
seibelj 11y ago
Seriously? When the entire country has been forced to endure decades of stagnant wages, crippling debt, and the two major presidential candidates are a socialist and a fascist, you are surprised that people want the most babied, prima donna group of workers to ever walk the earth to get their comeuppance? An entire group of engineers who complain about 6 figure salaries and how hard it is to live on them? I'm one of the group, I'm exactly the person I just described, I'm just not shocked in the slightest.
- rjeli 11y ago
  Trump is an opportunist and a demagogue, but he's certainly not a fascist.
- shams93 11y ago
  Actually with the cost of living and rate of taxation for singles in California it actually is difficult to live off 6 figures. Hollywood talent who actually generate much less wealth than we do get residual income, I live in a studio apartment off 6 figures but my friends who work as hollywood creatives generate far less profit but because of their strong unions are able to buy homes in Los Angeles.
  - USNetizen 11y ago
    It's the feeling of total entitlement amongst those six-figure engineers that is the issue, not necessarily the salary. Take, for instance, the whole 'tech bro' debacle and others like it.
  - exolymph 11y ago
    I have an extremely hard time believing that living on six figures is difficult when I manage easily at <$50k. Yes, in the SF Bay Area.
    - refurb 11y ago
      What people mean is "it's tough to live an upper-middle class life in SF on six figures".
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
I dunno. These sort of things have been quite destructive. I am not calling the tech sector a tulip market, but the Dutch tulip mania stands as quite an incredible event. It effectively ended Holland as an imperial power. It also inspired "Picture This" by Joseph Heller, which is worth reading.
- gozur88 11y ago
  >It effectively ended Holland as an imperial power. That's quite an exaggeration. What ended Holland's foray into imperialism was the Anglo-Dutch wars which started fifteen years later in 1652.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    I'd have chose "oversimplifiction" well ahead of "exaggeration". But yes, yes, yes. I could not agree more. Heller's book is the last thing I'd read on it, and it emphasizes the economic well over the... naval. As an American, we tend to attribute military success to economic power.
elaineo 11y ago
I think journalists like to predict doom because imminent disasters scare people and get pageviews.
- mc32 11y ago
  There's also a bit of Schadenfreude and people who have non tech non professional careers probably just want to watch the spectacle from the sidelines and also hope it will stabilize housing prices stop eating into jobs and stop upsetting life as we knew it before software began eating the world.
- vasilipupkin 11y ago
  Exactly. It's at least to some degree clickbait. Imagine reading an article that goes something like this: "stock market is down since its all time high which lowered a little bit some of the valuations of some startups but it's not a big deal". It's quite likely that a lot fewer people would click on and read that article. That's just how we are wired
danielrm26 11y ago
Maybe it won't need to be dramatic. Maybe a relatively slow and natural deflation. Media can raise awareness so it's not a needle pop.
natrius 11y ago
In addition to widespread tech worker antipathy, people expect history to rhyme. People know what a tech bubble story sounds like, and they'll buy tickets for the sequel. Eventually everyone will realize that it's not a tech bubble, it's an asset bubble that was intentionally inflated to buy us time to prevent a depression, but we didn't do much with the time. http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20120831a.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke2012... (Search for "portfolio balance channel," the mechanism by which our monetary policy achieved the stated goal of asset price increases.)
- ASinclair 11y ago
  > Eventually everyone will realize that it's not a tech bubble, it's an asset bubble that was intentionally inflated to buy us time to prevent a depression, but we didn't do much with the time. Seriously. Overlay the S&P 500 over that graph of "Median valuation of U.S. startups". They look mighty similar.
  - abcampbell 11y ago
    This just isn't true. You can see the Reuters VC index is up around 300% since the sector got flooded w capital. http://imgur.com/cYSjFRj http://imgur.com/cYSjFRj
ldehaan 11y ago
Yeah, from my perspective it's actually getting better, but that may be due to exp increases, and not necessarily just the job market being awesome. I regularly talk to potential side job people and the amount I can ask for my experience is definitely favorable to my financial status. Unless the Internet, computers, and electronics are forgone for some alternate form of data storage and retrieval; as long as I stay up to date, I'm pretty much guaranteed a job. I am moving into "big data", so machine learning, data storage and transfer. It's actually really fun, and it seems to be the direction to take if you want to stay current. It seems like thinking computers are swiftly replacing human workers in the work force and so it seems like a good plan to be able to program those machines ;) Automate all the things!
Gratsby 11y ago
It's a push because of the presidential election. The republicans like it because "business is going to be terrible if you elect a democrat" (or a commie!) Sanders likes it because "big business hates me! A vote for me is a vote against the establishment!" Clinton likes it because anything that makes Sanders a legitimate opponent means a longer and more active donation cycle, and more young people and black people voting come the general election (and despite what they say now... they are all going to be clinton supporters in a few short months.

by skewart 11y ago

beatpanda 11y ago

Journalists report on things that are happening. People resist this idea like nothing else in the universe, but really, it's true. There are objective data to support the conclusion of a slowdown in the tech industry. I'm sorry if this upsets you.

derefr 11y ago
It's a bit of both: journalists try to find anything that makes for a good, compelling story as it's happening. Now, some things can be seen in advance to make for good, compelling stories; some journalists have already written a piece in their heads about certain topics, long before the news actually comes out. But nobody is reporting things just because they want them to be true. People are just jumping to report things now that they "finally" are at least a little bit true.

ethanbond 11y ago

Is it really that unbelievable that people are getting concerned with totally, for example, a gif image platform getting valuations in the hundreds of millions range?

Inthenameofmine 11y ago
I don't have any data, but it might be that Giphy class companies have more or less the same investment share percentage today as they used to before. It's just that the total investment pie grew. There's plenty of useful companies investors put their money in today. Heck, I think now might be the first one in a long while that venture investors put up money for moonshot type of ideas.

samcheng 11y ago

Newspapers in particular were butchered by the World Wide Web and Social Media. Paper advertising revenue is roughly a third of what it was a decade ago. That revenue paid the salaries of a lot of journalists... Of course the ones left hate us! http://www.journalism.org/chart/newspaper-ad-revenue-from-digital-and-print/ http://www.journalism.org/chart/newspaper-ad-revenue-from-di...

seibelj 11y ago

Seriously? When the entire country has been forced to endure decades of stagnant wages, crippling debt, and the two major presidential candidates are a socialist and a fascist, you are surprised that people want the most babied, prima donna group of workers to ever walk the earth to get their comeuppance? An entire group of engineers who complain about 6 figure salaries and how hard it is to live on them? I'm one of the group, I'm exactly the person I just described, I'm just not shocked in the slightest.

rjeli 11y ago
Trump is an opportunist and a demagogue, but he's certainly not a fascist.
shams93 11y ago
Actually with the cost of living and rate of taxation for singles in California it actually is difficult to live off 6 figures. Hollywood talent who actually generate much less wealth than we do get residual income, I live in a studio apartment off 6 figures but my friends who work as hollywood creatives generate far less profit but because of their strong unions are able to buy homes in Los Angeles.
- USNetizen 11y ago
  It's the feeling of total entitlement amongst those six-figure engineers that is the issue, not necessarily the salary. Take, for instance, the whole 'tech bro' debacle and others like it.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I have an extremely hard time believing that living on six figures is difficult when I manage easily at <$50k. Yes, in the SF Bay Area.
  - refurb 11y ago
    What people mean is "it's tough to live an upper-middle class life in SF on six figures".

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

I dunno. These sort of things have been quite destructive. I am not calling the tech sector a tulip market, but the Dutch tulip mania stands as quite an incredible event. It effectively ended Holland as an imperial power. It also inspired "Picture This" by Joseph Heller, which is worth reading.

gozur88 11y ago
>It effectively ended Holland as an imperial power. That's quite an exaggeration. What ended Holland's foray into imperialism was the Anglo-Dutch wars which started fifteen years later in 1652.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  I'd have chose "oversimplifiction" well ahead of "exaggeration". But yes, yes, yes. I could not agree more. Heller's book is the last thing I'd read on it, and it emphasizes the economic well over the... naval. As an American, we tend to attribute military success to economic power.

elaineo 11y ago

I think journalists like to predict doom because imminent disasters scare people and get pageviews.

mc32 11y ago
There's also a bit of Schadenfreude and people who have non tech non professional careers probably just want to watch the spectacle from the sidelines and also hope it will stabilize housing prices stop eating into jobs and stop upsetting life as we knew it before software began eating the world.
vasilipupkin 11y ago
Exactly. It's at least to some degree clickbait. Imagine reading an article that goes something like this: "stock market is down since its all time high which lowered a little bit some of the valuations of some startups but it's not a big deal". It's quite likely that a lot fewer people would click on and read that article. That's just how we are wired

danielrm26 11y ago

Maybe it won't need to be dramatic. Maybe a relatively slow and natural deflation. Media can raise awareness so it's not a needle pop.

natrius 11y ago

In addition to widespread tech worker antipathy, people expect history to rhyme. People know what a tech bubble story sounds like, and they'll buy tickets for the sequel. Eventually everyone will realize that it's not a tech bubble, it's an asset bubble that was intentionally inflated to buy us time to prevent a depression, but we didn't do much with the time. http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20120831a.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke2012... (Search for "portfolio balance channel," the mechanism by which our monetary policy achieved the stated goal of asset price increases.)

ASinclair 11y ago
> Eventually everyone will realize that it's not a tech bubble, it's an asset bubble that was intentionally inflated to buy us time to prevent a depression, but we didn't do much with the time. Seriously. Overlay the S&P 500 over that graph of "Median valuation of U.S. startups". They look mighty similar.
- abcampbell 11y ago
  This just isn't true. You can see the Reuters VC index is up around 300% since the sector got flooded w capital. http://imgur.com/cYSjFRj http://imgur.com/cYSjFRj

ldehaan 11y ago

Yeah, from my perspective it's actually getting better, but that may be due to exp increases, and not necessarily just the job market being awesome. I regularly talk to potential side job people and the amount I can ask for my experience is definitely favorable to my financial status. Unless the Internet, computers, and electronics are forgone for some alternate form of data storage and retrieval; as long as I stay up to date, I'm pretty much guaranteed a job. I am moving into "big data", so machine learning, data storage and transfer. It's actually really fun, and it seems to be the direction to take if you want to stay current. It seems like thinking computers are swiftly replacing human workers in the work force and so it seems like a good plan to be able to program those machines ;) Automate all the things!

Gratsby 11y ago

It's a push because of the presidential election. The republicans like it because "business is going to be terrible if you elect a democrat" (or a commie!) Sanders likes it because "big business hates me! A vote for me is a vote against the establishment!" Clinton likes it because anything that makes Sanders a legitimate opponent means a longer and more active donation cycle, and more young people and black people voting come the general election (and despite what they say now... they are all going to be clinton supporters in a few short months.