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Or maybe, just maybe, companies find it cheaper to hire new employees due to the number of people who permanently couldn't find jobs, than to invest in increasi
by meric 11y ago
Or maybe, just maybe, companies find it cheaper to hire new employees due to the number of people who permanently couldn't find jobs, than to invest in increasing productivity. The past 8 years of overestimating economic growth by central banks have clearly shown hope is not sufficient to boost the economy on its own. Central bank balance sheet have exploded, exploding price of assets, making in unattractive for businesses to invest. They would rather perform stock buybacks from borrowing money, send it to investors to be consumed. In terms of real physical capital (as opposed to financial), the American economy is actively divesting. Any supposed GDP growth from the current monetary policy is due to capital being actively consumed, increasing spending temporarily. The data showing lack of productivity growth supports this pessimistic scenario. Central banks will do well to hike interest rates, collapse the markets, destroying the zombie and hangers on companies, so their physical assets go on firesales, releasing physical capital at massively deflated prices, for well run and well managed companies to gobble up. Only this will rejuvenate the American economy and return its status as the world's economic growth powerhouse.
Remember, the current Silicon Valley boom started in the mid-2000's due to the collapse of costs of IT, with the advent of cheap Internet and cloud computing, not because of low interest rates. The cost of building capital got so low from 1999 people were doing it in their parents basements eating ramen.
- carsongross 11y agoAlso, real wages are declining. After a point, working harder to make the c suite and Wall Street richer begins to seem pointless.
- illinator 11y agoMy old boss said, "Million dollar ideas don't come for free." I stopped giving mine away. If the business thinks it needs to funnel money up and away, hire product people who take the credit, then why should I as an engineer care? I am sad to say I care more about my coworkers and learning abstract concepts than the business model because I feel I have been cut out of it.
- HappyTypist 11y agoThat's a symptom of division between product and engineering and zero sum mentality. Get rid of that and you have happier and more productive employees.
- carsongross 11y agoThat's certainly one pretty-sounding possibility. Another is that it is a zero sum game, or, more likely, somewhere between that and a 1-for-1 game where the product manager and above realizes most of the gains.
- jordanb 11y agoThat's supported by the observation in the article that companies are not investing much capital in improving productivity. If you've ever seen video of a Foxconn factory you've seen the rows of people carefully placing ICs onto circuit boards. In fact, there are machines to do that. They're called pick and place machines[0]. They've existed for many years. But labor in China is cheap enough that it often makes more sense to pay humans to do it manually than to invest in automation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMT_placement_equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMT_placement_equipment
- SixSigma 11y agoPlus you can scale labour up or down whereas you can usually only scale machines up without significant loss.
- eitally 11y agoI'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. There are several types of components that require surface mounting on PCBs. By far the most common are things like resistors & capacitors that are machine placeable. But others, like BGAs and through-hole components, often require hand placement because they require hand soldering and can't go through a wave solder machine. Additional possible complications are boards with components placed on both sides, or multi-layer boards with non-standard solder. Finally, Debug/Repair stations are always manual. Source: Masters in operations research and 15 years experience writing factory control software for one of Foxconn's direct competitors & largest trading partners.
- Retric 11y agoGenerally, increasing automation requires some design changes, but you can start with the same basic design and end up with one focused on automation and another optimized for human asembly. So, it's a little more nuanced than you are suggesting. PS: There are also at least demos of pick and place for through-hole components. But, I don't know how production ready they are. (Manufacturing PCBs is not my area.)