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Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias. This is not an unavoidable trend and is not global. Japan's work market isn't exactly like this. Germany's Mittels

Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias. This is not an unavoidable trend and is not global. Japan's work market isn't exactly like this. Germany's Mittelstands are eating the world precisely by buckling this trend. Northern Italy (around Milan) has an artisan industry that thrives on skilled artisans working for small cottage industries, etc. If you want workers skilled in a very niche and crucial technology then you desperately need to invent strategies to avoid this. This is particularly true to technologies that rely in manual work or manipulating precision machines such as mechanics, clothing, specialty food (e.g: fine cheeses and wines), etc. A better discussion are the side effects of becoming an economy that lost manufacturing skills, such as Silicon Valley and Great Britain.

gumby 9y ago
> Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias. It's explicitly an article about the microeconomic impact of neoliberalism, so discusses places where that holds particular sway such as, as you mention, USA and U.K. You are correct that it is less appropriate to a place such as Germany where Ordoliberalismus is a more popular model. But the article doesn't pretend to discuss this.
mr_spothawk 9y ago
> manual work or manipulating precision machines such as mechanics, clothing, specialty food (e.g: fine cheeses and wines), etc. computers count in your list of precision machines, right?
- diego_moita 9y ago
  The key issue is how niche, rare and unreplaceable the skill is. If your skill is MS-Office then you're not niche and you're easy to replace. If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle then you are a little harder to replace and you can see more stable jobs.
  - santaclaus 9y ago
    > If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle Maybe not Oracle, but most gigs related to Maya were shipped off to Canada yeas ago.
mcguire 9y ago
I was going to say that this isn't new nor limited to the SF tech industry. It has been common throughout the US for at least 30 years.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias" Did you miss the opening sentence where the author states: "In the early 1990s, career advice in the United States changed." So yes the article is specifically talking about the US economy and not the global economy. >"Germany's Mittelstands are eating the world precisely by buckling this trend." The article is also referring specifically to publicly traded companies. I think that's pretty clear when the author states: "In general, to keep stock prices high ..." Germany's Mittelstands are largely family-owned companies, they are also not part of the US economy, ditto for some artisans in Northern Italy.

gumby 9y ago

> Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias. It's explicitly an article about the microeconomic impact of neoliberalism, so discusses places where that holds particular sway such as, as you mention, USA and U.K. You are correct that it is less appropriate to a place such as Germany where Ordoliberalismus is a more popular model. But the article doesn't pretend to discuss this.

mr_spothawk 9y ago

> manual work or manipulating precision machines such as mechanics, clothing, specialty food (e.g: fine cheeses and wines), etc. computers count in your list of precision machines, right?

diego_moita 9y ago
The key issue is how niche, rare and unreplaceable the skill is. If your skill is MS-Office then you're not niche and you're easy to replace. If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle then you are a little harder to replace and you can see more stable jobs.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  > If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle Maybe not Oracle, but most gigs related to Maya were shipped off to Canada yeas ago.

mcguire 9y ago

I was going to say that this isn't new nor limited to the SF tech industry. It has been common throughout the US for at least 30 years.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias" Did you miss the opening sentence where the author states: "In the early 1990s, career advice in the United States changed." So yes the article is specifically talking about the US economy and not the global economy. >"Germany's Mittelstands are eating the world precisely by buckling this trend." The article is also referring specifically to publicly traded companies. I think that's pretty clear when the author states: "In general, to keep stock prices high ..." Germany's Mittelstands are largely family-owned companies, they are also not part of the US economy, ditto for some artisans in Northern Italy.