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I'm with you... I repeatedly tell collegues of mine that I'm baffled society has decided (by their wallets) that my time is worth more than say, a climate scien

I'm with you... I repeatedly tell collegues of mine that I'm baffled society has decided (by their wallets) that my time is worth more than say, a climate scientist, nuclear or renewable energy engineer, or someone else engaged in planet saving technologies. [Context]: I mostly reverse engineer malware and embedded systems. Most of what I do is malware for phones... and most of this malware is packaged as stupid games that nobody should be playing anyways. But hey... I get paid well. Good night for now.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Society doesn't decide shit. People need to stop thinking about the free market as some kind of oracle. It's not. It's a collection of feedback loops between greedy optimizers. It drives people down the local gradient of profitability, which has only a minimal relationship with long-term social utility. It can, and will, drive us all off a cliff if there's enough money to be made stepping off the edge. And yes, I'm with you here. I just don't see it as society deciding. If asked, most people will also be baffled how it is you and me get more than a climate scientist or a nuclear engineer. They also can't directly express their individual preferences on this using their wallets, because the market isn't structured in a way to allow that.
- wait_a_minute 5y ago
  A more informed customer base makes more informed decisions. So over time it can be said that the market does actually choose things. Like how if more people want products sourced from ethical materials suppliers, the trend becomes more products being sourced from ethical materials suppliers. I couldn’t care less about good software engineers making more than “climate scientists” or “nuclear engineers” because those lines are more blurred than ever. If you’re in one of those roles and you can’t code, you’ll be obsolete within a matter of a few years.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > if more people want products sourced from ethical materials suppliers, the trend becomes more products being sourced from ethical materials suppliers. Or rather, the cheaper option is chosen: companies just lie. This is what actually happened. > A more informed customer base makes more informed decisions. The market has already worked around this. We've created the marketing industry. The business world has learned how to bamboozle customers at scale. We're at the stage where spending a marginal dollar on marketing has a better ROI than spending it on improving the product. > I couldn’t care less about good software engineers making more than “climate scientists” or “nuclear engineers” because those lines are more blurred than ever. If you’re in one of those roles and you can’t code, you’ll be obsolete within a matter of a few years. And I do care, because while I agree that coding is becoming essential for productive scientific and engineering work, it's not those people who get the good salaries. Guess what programmers are getting the most money? The ones building technology for advertising. Because of course they do. See my previous point: we've created an industry that can play customers like a fiddle, undoing the main feature of a free market that made it socially beneficial.
    - function_seven 5y ago
      Kind of amazing how your third point so neatly wrapped around to the first one. I've become tremendously cynical in the past decade regarding all the ecofriendly stuff I'm supposed to be doing. It always seems to come out that the effort I was committing to Thing X turned out to be either worthless or even worse than that. Recycle my plastic bottles? Nope, they're just getting dumped into the Yangtze River. (I put the bottles in the trash now.) Okay, but my sink faucet no longer drips, so that's good right? I guess, but that one container of almonds just wiped out whatever yearly water savings I achieved with the repair. I would consider buying carbon offsets if I had any faith at all that they really truly represented a net reduction in atmospheric CO2. I don't have that faith. Way too easy to launder or fabricate. It reminds me of the 90s, when grocery stores switched from "forest-destroying" paper bags to "ecofriendly" plastic bags. Then we all did a 180 on that. Now I'm paying for the bags--also they use roughly 3x the amount of plastic--and I still use them twice (once for the items, once as a trashcan liner), just like I did before.
  - kaybe 5y ago
    You can't be a climate scientist right now and not code. (You don't have to be good though.. urgh.) I do think the people working on upgrading the energy grid do have more utility at this point though.
wait_a_minute 5y ago
Convince the market that you have a solution to a problem and they’ll reward you. Plenty of climate-focused companies out there looking to hire software engineers. If you’re not happy with the employment that gives you the income to pursue your hobbies and fund side ventures, why not join one of those climate companies or start one?

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Society doesn't decide shit. People need to stop thinking about the free market as some kind of oracle. It's not. It's a collection of feedback loops between greedy optimizers. It drives people down the local gradient of profitability, which has only a minimal relationship with long-term social utility. It can, and will, drive us all off a cliff if there's enough money to be made stepping off the edge. And yes, I'm with you here. I just don't see it as society deciding. If asked, most people will also be baffled how it is you and me get more than a climate scientist or a nuclear engineer. They also can't directly express their individual preferences on this using their wallets, because the market isn't structured in a way to allow that.

wait_a_minute 5y ago
A more informed customer base makes more informed decisions. So over time it can be said that the market does actually choose things. Like how if more people want products sourced from ethical materials suppliers, the trend becomes more products being sourced from ethical materials suppliers. I couldn’t care less about good software engineers making more than “climate scientists” or “nuclear engineers” because those lines are more blurred than ever. If you’re in one of those roles and you can’t code, you’ll be obsolete within a matter of a few years.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > if more people want products sourced from ethical materials suppliers, the trend becomes more products being sourced from ethical materials suppliers. Or rather, the cheaper option is chosen: companies just lie. This is what actually happened. > A more informed customer base makes more informed decisions. The market has already worked around this. We've created the marketing industry. The business world has learned how to bamboozle customers at scale. We're at the stage where spending a marginal dollar on marketing has a better ROI than spending it on improving the product. > I couldn’t care less about good software engineers making more than “climate scientists” or “nuclear engineers” because those lines are more blurred than ever. If you’re in one of those roles and you can’t code, you’ll be obsolete within a matter of a few years. And I do care, because while I agree that coding is becoming essential for productive scientific and engineering work, it's not those people who get the good salaries. Guess what programmers are getting the most money? The ones building technology for advertising. Because of course they do. See my previous point: we've created an industry that can play customers like a fiddle, undoing the main feature of a free market that made it socially beneficial.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    Kind of amazing how your third point so neatly wrapped around to the first one. I've become tremendously cynical in the past decade regarding all the ecofriendly stuff I'm supposed to be doing. It always seems to come out that the effort I was committing to Thing X turned out to be either worthless or even worse than that. Recycle my plastic bottles? Nope, they're just getting dumped into the Yangtze River. (I put the bottles in the trash now.) Okay, but my sink faucet no longer drips, so that's good right? I guess, but that one container of almonds just wiped out whatever yearly water savings I achieved with the repair. I would consider buying carbon offsets if I had any faith at all that they really truly represented a net reduction in atmospheric CO2. I don't have that faith. Way too easy to launder or fabricate. It reminds me of the 90s, when grocery stores switched from "forest-destroying" paper bags to "ecofriendly" plastic bags. Then we all did a 180 on that. Now I'm paying for the bags--also they use roughly 3x the amount of plastic--and I still use them twice (once for the items, once as a trashcan liner), just like I did before.
- kaybe 5y ago
  You can't be a climate scientist right now and not code. (You don't have to be good though.. urgh.) I do think the people working on upgrading the energy grid do have more utility at this point though.

wait_a_minute 5y ago

Convince the market that you have a solution to a problem and they’ll reward you. Plenty of climate-focused companies out there looking to hire software engineers. If you’re not happy with the employment that gives you the income to pursue your hobbies and fund side ventures, why not join one of those climate companies or start one?