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The problem and solution are one and the same. Google is trying to automate tasks that are nowhere near ready for automation. This doesn't even really make any

by rjf72 8y ago

The problem and solution are one and the same. Google is trying to automate tasks that are nowhere near ready for automation. This doesn't even really make any sense either. You might argue its because they're huge, but the numbers don't add up. Google netted about $31 billion in 2018. It's hard to tell exactly how many apps are published on Google Play per year, but it seems to be in the ballpark of 200,000 [1]. Let's hire some low wage employees to spend just 1 hour per app which is generally enough time to determine if an app is at all legitimate. That's obviously 200,000 man hours. Creating these jobs in the USA could be done for about $10/hour, or $2 million, or a minuscule fraction of 1% of their their annual net income. Problem solved, happy customers, happy developers, jobs created. But Google gonna Google. Though even here if they really wanted to Google, they could even hire these guys in e.g. India or wherever and pay a fraction of even that fraction of what they'd have to pay if they created these jobs in the US. But I'm certain they've Googled that the $ cost of pissed off customers and developers is less than the $ cost of providing a decent solution. The one confounding issue here might be that the 200k is lowballing the number of apps. After all that's only the apps that are published, not the ones that are refused publication. But all of the above holds true even if you push it up to 2,000,000 apps trying to publish per year. Perhaps the more salient point is that Google also charges $25 before you can even try to publish an app. Why not direct that money to a human being and actually have a half decent review process? That same human being might even be able to answer complex questions like, "Hey, I don't even have any ads in my app. Why was my app removed for deceptive ads?" in a timely fashion. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-available-applications-in-the-google-play-store/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-availab...

KirinDave 8y ago
Apple doesn't automate it and it's difficult to make a case that it's better. They've certainly made errors and bad decisions. So... I'm not sure automation is to blame. What's more, you could make an argument that any process will have an observable error rate at scale. Would we be having a different conversation in a different universe where this same post exists, but Google didn't automate? I'm not so sure. > Creating these jobs in the USA could be done for about $10/hour, Uh, minimum wage is $15 in most places. $10/hr isn't even above the poverty line. It's less than $20k a year pre-tax. If you're appropriating the language of socialism, at least do it in a way that doesn't fall apart to someone with mental math skills.
- rjf72 8y ago
  - The United States is not California. Here [1] are the US poverty lines. For 1 person, it's $12,490. - $20,800 a year puts you ahead of 26% of earners in the US. [2] - The guy making your $5 latte gets on average about $9/hour [3]. - A private company engaging in behavior to create jobs and offer increased value to their customers is not the "language of socialism." [1] - https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines [2] - https://dqydj.com/united-states-income-brackets-percentiles/ https://dqydj.com/united-states-income-brackets-percentiles/ [3] - https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Starbucks-Hourly-Pay-E2202.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Starbucks-Hourly-Pay-E2...
  - KirinDave 8y ago
    Firstly, you suggested: > Let's hire some low wage employees to spend just 1 hour per app which is generally enough time to determine if an app is at all legitimate. That's obviously 200,000 man hours. But folks have already been down this road, and the ugly fact is that you can't source folks to do work like this outside of metropolitan areas. This is why already this work is outsourced to areas where low wages are common but infrastructure is present. And you'll find, as several businesses I've worked with, that the difficulty of validating these jobs is very high. Turns out, you essentially get half the work you'd think you would. Secondly: > The United States is not California. Here [1] are the US poverty lines. For 1 person, it's $12,490. Sorry, I just assumed an average family of three with a single wage earner as the default, which is like $20.5k for most guidelines I've read. [0] > - A private company engaging in behavior to create jobs and offer increased value to their customers is not the "language of socialism." It absolutely is, and its historical success in America is exactly why capitalists have adopted it as a talking point even when it's not actually their goal in any scenario. [0]: I googled https://q1medicare.com/q1group/MedicareAdvantagePartD/Blog.php?blog=2018-Federal-Poverty-Level-Guidelines--FPL---2018-2019-LIS-Qualifications-and-Benefits&blog_id=674&category_id=8 https://q1medicare.com/q1group/MedicareAdvantagePartD/Blog.p... before I wrote my post.
- jdminhbg 8y ago
  > Uh, minimum wage is $15 in most places No, it definitely is not: https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/minimum-wage-by-state-and-2018-increases https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/minimum-wage-by-state...
nl 8y ago
This just isn't solvable with "low wage employees". If their task devolves to "run this security tool" then (a) that can be automated and (b) can be reverse engineered by the people putting this out. If it is a proper security audit then it's not an hour of work and it's not a $10/h employee, even in India.
UncleMeat 8y ago
> It's hard to tell exactly how many apps are published on Google Play per year, but it seems to be in the ballpark of 200,000 [1] You'd have to audit literally every version update.

by rjf72 8y ago

KirinDave 8y ago

Apple doesn't automate it and it's difficult to make a case that it's better. They've certainly made errors and bad decisions. So... I'm not sure automation is to blame. What's more, you could make an argument that any process will have an observable error rate at scale. Would we be having a different conversation in a different universe where this same post exists, but Google didn't automate? I'm not so sure. > Creating these jobs in the USA could be done for about $10/hour, Uh, minimum wage is $15 in most places. $10/hr isn't even above the poverty line. It's less than $20k a year pre-tax. If you're appropriating the language of socialism, at least do it in a way that doesn't fall apart to someone with mental math skills.

rjf72 8y ago
- The United States is not California. Here [1] are the US poverty lines. For 1 person, it's $12,490. - $20,800 a year puts you ahead of 26% of earners in the US. [2] - The guy making your $5 latte gets on average about $9/hour [3]. - A private company engaging in behavior to create jobs and offer increased value to their customers is not the "language of socialism." [1] - https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines [2] - https://dqydj.com/united-states-income-brackets-percentiles/ https://dqydj.com/united-states-income-brackets-percentiles/ [3] - https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Starbucks-Hourly-Pay-E2202.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Starbucks-Hourly-Pay-E2...
- KirinDave 8y ago
  Firstly, you suggested: > Let's hire some low wage employees to spend just 1 hour per app which is generally enough time to determine if an app is at all legitimate. That's obviously 200,000 man hours. But folks have already been down this road, and the ugly fact is that you can't source folks to do work like this outside of metropolitan areas. This is why already this work is outsourced to areas where low wages are common but infrastructure is present. And you'll find, as several businesses I've worked with, that the difficulty of validating these jobs is very high. Turns out, you essentially get half the work you'd think you would. Secondly: > The United States is not California. Here [1] are the US poverty lines. For 1 person, it's $12,490. Sorry, I just assumed an average family of three with a single wage earner as the default, which is like $20.5k for most guidelines I've read. [0] > - A private company engaging in behavior to create jobs and offer increased value to their customers is not the "language of socialism." It absolutely is, and its historical success in America is exactly why capitalists have adopted it as a talking point even when it's not actually their goal in any scenario. [0]: I googled https://q1medicare.com/q1group/MedicareAdvantagePartD/Blog.php?blog=2018-Federal-Poverty-Level-Guidelines--FPL---2018-2019-LIS-Qualifications-and-Benefits&blog_id=674&category_id=8 https://q1medicare.com/q1group/MedicareAdvantagePartD/Blog.p... before I wrote my post.
jdminhbg 8y ago
> Uh, minimum wage is $15 in most places No, it definitely is not: https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/minimum-wage-by-state-and-2018-increases https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/minimum-wage-by-state...

nl 8y ago

This just isn't solvable with "low wage employees". If their task devolves to "run this security tool" then (a) that can be automated and (b) can be reverse engineered by the people putting this out. If it is a proper security audit then it's not an hour of work and it's not a $10/h employee, even in India.

UncleMeat 8y ago

> It's hard to tell exactly how many apps are published on Google Play per year, but it seems to be in the ballpark of 200,000 [1] You'd have to audit literally every version update.