8 ms·

I love how these commenters think they know something about shipping that the CEO of Flexport doesn’t (I’m referring to the person you replied to, BTW).

bb88 5y ago
The best HN commenters seem to speak only when it concerns their expertise, or do so after fully understanding the issues at play.
- deadmutex 5y ago
  Unfortunately, many comments are not from "best HN commenters", so signal/noise ratio perhaps lower than expected.
rdtwo 5y ago
When is the ceo of a company the real expert on anything? The ceo is the celebrity that makes the big decisions but rarely ever the actual ground level expert
- ameister14 5y ago
  A lot of the time when they found the company I find the CEO knows a lot about it
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Even if they were once the expert and know a lot about the area they just have too many other responsibilities to be the ground level expert and be ceo at the same time. A good ceo will delegate to folks that understand the details because details are the difference between success and failure.
- taneq 5y ago
  What do you mean by "ground level expert"? In my experience the true expertise tends to hover a couple of levels above 'ground level' and get called in for the curly questions. The actual boots-on-the-ground-100%-of-the-time people are usually at a fairly basic level of competence (or rapidly get promoted) and do the simple 'grunt work'. I occasionally run into the higher levels these days and let me tell you, most of them are whip smart.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  This is the kind of dumbass comment I see on HN that makes me roll my eyes. You sound like you're 3 years into your tech career and you can't help but comment on everything as if you're an expert but in reality you show your ignorance.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  That is the case with companies not started by the CEO. Flexport is a startup (YC, I think).
hbworn77 5y ago
Most of them are usually the top comment on a thread like this, too, because there are a large number of people who consider them authoritative (or like what they say, or dogpile, or who knows). When it’s my industry being discussed here, I can usually predict who will be in the top spot (it’s only a few), and how wrong they’ll be. It’s a real problem but it’s also the immediate amnesia thing whoever-that-was talked about. For the record that is one common prediction up there, in my experience, but I’m trying not to make it personal. There is very often a sense of reciting recent research into whatever the hot topic is, and little depth or mastery of any of those topics. But they score well, so here we are debating what is said instead of what is substantive.
- variaga 5y ago
  The immediate amnesia thing: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- rdtwo 5y ago
  If you have subject mastery often you aren’t allowed to talk it because you might get fired or make your company look bad
  - catlikesshrimp 5y ago
    This
- amcoastal 5y ago
  Its a comment on hackernews. Reciting recent research on a topic is a top tier internet comment. You can't really expect much more nowadays.
- ehnto 5y ago
  > but it’s also the immediate amnesia thing whoever-that-was talked about. That gave me a chuckle.
- nuerow 5y ago
  > But they score well, so here we are debating what is said instead of what is substantive. Blanket dismissals of everything any commenter mentions without providing any basis or reason or counterpoint besides empty appeals to authority is no way to conduct a discussion. In fact, doesn't your criticism also applies to you and your dismissal of everyone else's comments? But taking your criticism at face value, the only way that the scenario you've depicted becomes possible is if those in the know do not step in to point out misconceptions and clear up doubts. Nevertheless, even so experience does not grant omniscience or infallibility, not to mention that the expert beginner problem is also a thing. In that case, an inability to refute points or offer counter-evidence, accompanied by this need to fallback to various types of appeals to authority and seniority, might actually indicate a discrepancy between actual and perceived competence and insightfulness. The point is that if you happen to believe some posts are not right or fail to take into account critical aspects, why not call it out? I mea, you're already taking your time to write relatively lengthy posts complaining and vaguely casting doubts on how fellow posters are contributing. If you have the means and opportunity to right what you believe are wrong, why aren't you doing so and instead opt to waste your time posting messages that aren't constructive or contribute positively to a discussion?
_3u10 5y ago
How do you think the CEO of flexport became CEO?
- spicybright 5y ago
  By simply saying they're an expert at shipping on hacker news comments, obviously.
bsder 5y ago
The Flexport CEO may know more, but the Flexport CEO also has an agenda of being profitable for the Flexport CEO. This may, or may not, align with being solutions and advice that benefits the public at large. In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that things are currently "optimized" strongly enough that squeezing more profit out of the system generally corresponds to finding a sucker to take advantage of--normally the public at large. Startups and their leaders have a "move fast and break things" attitude that is no big deal when imaginary things like software is involved that becomes a big deal when non-imaginary things like people become impacted. Stacking 6-high triples storage space, sure. But it doesn't stop container ships from running back to Asia empty. So, that storage space will fill up quickly, and we're back where we started only now we have dangerously stacked high center-of-mass (because empty) containers (this is an active seismic zone, you know) that nobody wants to pay to get rid of until somebody dies and their insurance rates shoot up enough to make it necessary to dump the containers. At which point, the shipping companies will magically make the shipping containers go away--probably illegally to somewhere you don't want them to go to.
- weyland108 5y ago
  “ The Flexport CEO may know more, but the Flexport CEO also has an agenda of being profitable for the Flexport CEO” These are all for profit companies. It’s a bit utopian to suggest anything else would be better without providing any specific alternatives.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bsder 5y ago
    If you want me to believe that "profit motive" is aligned with "public interest", why is everybody running to the regulators to clear this instead of spending money? It's a bit disingenuous to suggest that "profit motive" is aligned with "public interest" in the face of all the current evidence we have in other sectors that is quite to the contrary. To start, it is not at all clear that super low cost, super low friction shipping from China is, in fact, in the general US public interest. But it is in the interest of WalMart. And it is in the interest of Amazon. For example, from the standpoint of the public interest, consuming fewer Christmas goods (which are mostly disposable garbage and which is what the Asian shippers are all rushing to get transported) is probably preferable. A great deal of Asian garbage which is destined to be US garbage is currently clogging out the shipping of goods which have a steady demand and are far more necessary to the functioning of the economy. You will note that "increased foreign shipping friction causing goods to be manufactured locally again" is not on the discussion table because it is not part of an agenda that people in the shipping industry wish to countenance.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
True. But let's also note that being CEO of a company in the industry doesn't automatically make you right, nor does it mean that when you speak to a reporter or send out a tweet thread like this you don't have some sort of agenda. There's almost always an agenda. Maybe that agenda is honest and in line with public interest, maybe it isn't. And twitter is less reliable than a news story, because usually reporters seek more than one source and try to verify what they can, how they can. They're by no means perfect, but this dude can write whatever he wants. I suspect that this measure just delays the inevitable. I'm also wondering why the limit of 2-high stacks exists (I'm guessing safety related in event of an earthquake?) He has a lot of ideas in his other tweet thread, but I noticed that in his long list of ideas nowhere to be found was "offer better pay and working conditions for truckers." The core issue is not too many containers. It's not enough truckers picking up the new containers, so there's no room for the old ones. And because the ships can't be unloaded, nobody can take the containers back to other ports. It doesn't help that the full-in-union longshoremen (not the part-timer union guys) get way, way over $100k a year, some of them making $300k...and with zero requirements to meet any sort of metrics. They shouldn't be incentivized to where safety is compromised, but surely there is a balance. Right now they have zero incentive to do anything about the problem. The port sits doing nothing...and they sit too, getting paid.
- IanCal 5y ago
  > The core issue is not too many containers. It's not enough truckers picking up the new containers, This doesn't make sense to me unless the truckers are currently extremely busy. And if they are, why is there now a problem? Are there suddenly far fewer truckers?
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    Trucking is not an easy job. The working conditions are poor, you have to pay a fair amount of any benefits out of pocket, and like most "gig" economy stuff the logistics companies are driving a relentless rate towards the bottom. According to the American Trucking Association, turnover rates for drivers have been at about 90% for a decade. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-there-really-a-truck-driver-shortage https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-t... I would assume that the tight job market is making things worse.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's a particularly low-quality, low-information sort of post, which reliably leads to worse subthreads, which is why we added that guideline. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972094.) p.s. Animats is a great HN commenter who knows a lot about a lot of stuff (not everything, of course). I don't know how much he knows about shipping but if you know more, a much better way to contribute to HN would be to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. Supercilious putdowns of other commenters just degrade the community.

bb88 5y ago

The best HN commenters seem to speak only when it concerns their expertise, or do so after fully understanding the issues at play.

deadmutex 5y ago
Unfortunately, many comments are not from "best HN commenters", so signal/noise ratio perhaps lower than expected.

rdtwo 5y ago

When is the ceo of a company the real expert on anything? The ceo is the celebrity that makes the big decisions but rarely ever the actual ground level expert

ameister14 5y ago
A lot of the time when they found the company I find the CEO knows a lot about it
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Even if they were once the expert and know a lot about the area they just have too many other responsibilities to be the ground level expert and be ceo at the same time. A good ceo will delegate to folks that understand the details because details are the difference between success and failure.
taneq 5y ago
What do you mean by "ground level expert"? In my experience the true expertise tends to hover a couple of levels above 'ground level' and get called in for the curly questions. The actual boots-on-the-ground-100%-of-the-time people are usually at a fairly basic level of competence (or rapidly get promoted) and do the simple 'grunt work'. I occasionally run into the higher levels these days and let me tell you, most of them are whip smart.
0x0nyandesu 5y ago
This is the kind of dumbass comment I see on HN that makes me roll my eyes. You sound like you're 3 years into your tech career and you can't help but comment on everything as if you're an expert but in reality you show your ignorance.
tomjen3 5y ago
That is the case with companies not started by the CEO. Flexport is a startup (YC, I think).

hbworn77 5y ago

Most of them are usually the top comment on a thread like this, too, because there are a large number of people who consider them authoritative (or like what they say, or dogpile, or who knows). When it’s my industry being discussed here, I can usually predict who will be in the top spot (it’s only a few), and how wrong they’ll be. It’s a real problem but it’s also the immediate amnesia thing whoever-that-was talked about. For the record that is one common prediction up there, in my experience, but I’m trying not to make it personal. There is very often a sense of reciting recent research into whatever the hot topic is, and little depth or mastery of any of those topics. But they score well, so here we are debating what is said instead of what is substantive.

variaga 5y ago
The immediate amnesia thing: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
rdtwo 5y ago
If you have subject mastery often you aren’t allowed to talk it because you might get fired or make your company look bad
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  This
amcoastal 5y ago
Its a comment on hackernews. Reciting recent research on a topic is a top tier internet comment. You can't really expect much more nowadays.
ehnto 5y ago
> but it’s also the immediate amnesia thing whoever-that-was talked about. That gave me a chuckle.
nuerow 5y ago
> But they score well, so here we are debating what is said instead of what is substantive. Blanket dismissals of everything any commenter mentions without providing any basis or reason or counterpoint besides empty appeals to authority is no way to conduct a discussion. In fact, doesn't your criticism also applies to you and your dismissal of everyone else's comments? But taking your criticism at face value, the only way that the scenario you've depicted becomes possible is if those in the know do not step in to point out misconceptions and clear up doubts. Nevertheless, even so experience does not grant omniscience or infallibility, not to mention that the expert beginner problem is also a thing. In that case, an inability to refute points or offer counter-evidence, accompanied by this need to fallback to various types of appeals to authority and seniority, might actually indicate a discrepancy between actual and perceived competence and insightfulness. The point is that if you happen to believe some posts are not right or fail to take into account critical aspects, why not call it out? I mea, you're already taking your time to write relatively lengthy posts complaining and vaguely casting doubts on how fellow posters are contributing. If you have the means and opportunity to right what you believe are wrong, why aren't you doing so and instead opt to waste your time posting messages that aren't constructive or contribute positively to a discussion?

_3u10 5y ago

How do you think the CEO of flexport became CEO?

spicybright 5y ago
By simply saying they're an expert at shipping on hacker news comments, obviously.

bsder 5y ago

The Flexport CEO may know more, but the Flexport CEO also has an agenda of being profitable for the Flexport CEO. This may, or may not, align with being solutions and advice that benefits the public at large. In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that things are currently "optimized" strongly enough that squeezing more profit out of the system generally corresponds to finding a sucker to take advantage of--normally the public at large. Startups and their leaders have a "move fast and break things" attitude that is no big deal when imaginary things like software is involved that becomes a big deal when non-imaginary things like people become impacted. Stacking 6-high triples storage space, sure. But it doesn't stop container ships from running back to Asia empty. So, that storage space will fill up quickly, and we're back where we started only now we have dangerously stacked high center-of-mass (because empty) containers (this is an active seismic zone, you know) that nobody wants to pay to get rid of until somebody dies and their insurance rates shoot up enough to make it necessary to dump the containers. At which point, the shipping companies will magically make the shipping containers go away--probably illegally to somewhere you don't want them to go to.

weyland108 5y ago
“ The Flexport CEO may know more, but the Flexport CEO also has an agenda of being profitable for the Flexport CEO” These are all for profit companies. It’s a bit utopian to suggest anything else would be better without providing any specific alternatives.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bsder 5y ago
  If you want me to believe that "profit motive" is aligned with "public interest", why is everybody running to the regulators to clear this instead of spending money? It's a bit disingenuous to suggest that "profit motive" is aligned with "public interest" in the face of all the current evidence we have in other sectors that is quite to the contrary. To start, it is not at all clear that super low cost, super low friction shipping from China is, in fact, in the general US public interest. But it is in the interest of WalMart. And it is in the interest of Amazon. For example, from the standpoint of the public interest, consuming fewer Christmas goods (which are mostly disposable garbage and which is what the Asian shippers are all rushing to get transported) is probably preferable. A great deal of Asian garbage which is destined to be US garbage is currently clogging out the shipping of goods which have a steady demand and are far more necessary to the functioning of the economy. You will note that "increased foreign shipping friction causing goods to be manufactured locally again" is not on the discussion table because it is not part of an agenda that people in the shipping industry wish to countenance.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

True. But let's also note that being CEO of a company in the industry doesn't automatically make you right, nor does it mean that when you speak to a reporter or send out a tweet thread like this you don't have some sort of agenda. There's almost always an agenda. Maybe that agenda is honest and in line with public interest, maybe it isn't. And twitter is less reliable than a news story, because usually reporters seek more than one source and try to verify what they can, how they can. They're by no means perfect, but this dude can write whatever he wants. I suspect that this measure just delays the inevitable. I'm also wondering why the limit of 2-high stacks exists (I'm guessing safety related in event of an earthquake?) He has a lot of ideas in his other tweet thread, but I noticed that in his long list of ideas nowhere to be found was "offer better pay and working conditions for truckers." The core issue is not too many containers. It's not enough truckers picking up the new containers, so there's no room for the old ones. And because the ships can't be unloaded, nobody can take the containers back to other ports. It doesn't help that the full-in-union longshoremen (not the part-timer union guys) get way, way over $100k a year, some of them making $300k...and with zero requirements to meet any sort of metrics. They shouldn't be incentivized to where safety is compromised, but surely there is a balance. Right now they have zero incentive to do anything about the problem. The port sits doing nothing...and they sit too, getting paid.

IanCal 5y ago
> The core issue is not too many containers. It's not enough truckers picking up the new containers, This doesn't make sense to me unless the truckers are currently extremely busy. And if they are, why is there now a problem? Are there suddenly far fewer truckers?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Trucking is not an easy job. The working conditions are poor, you have to pay a fair amount of any benefits out of pocket, and like most "gig" economy stuff the logistics companies are driving a relentless rate towards the bottom. According to the American Trucking Association, turnover rates for drivers have been at about 90% for a decade. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-there-really-a-truck-driver-shortage https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-t... I would assume that the tight job market is making things worse.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's a particularly low-quality, low-information sort of post, which reliably leads to worse subthreads, which is why we added that guideline. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972094.) p.s. Animats is a great HN commenter who knows a lot about a lot of stuff (not everything, of course). I don't know how much he knows about shipping but if you know more, a much better way to contribute to HN would be to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. Supercilious putdowns of other commenters just degrade the community.