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The feels like exceptionally lazy reporting in the NYT. What was the expectation, that tech companies would be up and to the right perpetually? That public tech

The feels like exceptionally lazy reporting in the NYT. What was the expectation, that tech companies would be up and to the right perpetually? That public tech companies are immune to general market downturns? While a lot of tech companies are going through post-pandemic layoffs, most of them have headcounts that are still larger than where they were in Feb 2020, and have valuations that show steady growth. My prediction is that over the next decade we're going to see a narrative in the media that hiring is still exceptionally difficult in the technology sector. There's a very real chance that this round of layoffs drives students and recent graduates into other industries if big tech is no longer seen as an easy path to outsized compensation. It was real side effect of the dotcom bust and the 2008 recession. I'm excited to see what new companies are going to form in the next few years now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room.

ciphol 4y ago
This is typical NYT reporting on tech. "I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it." [1] [1] https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192
- nindalf 4y ago
  This decision matters because the NYT influences other journalists to a large degree. The person who took that autocratic decision was AG Sulzberger, the 37-year old publisher and chairman of the NYT. Surely a man wielding so much power and influence would have earned the post through merit and hard work, right? In reality it’s a hereditary post of the Sulzberger family. It’s shocking that a man who is a product of nepotism has so little written about him. Where’s the investigative reporting into this momentous decision 5 years ago? Where’s the criticism for biasing reporters in this manner? There’s nothing because the family is that powerful.
  - hoseja 4y ago
    - aliqot 4y ago
      >I don't want to Yepost but an explanation really presents itself. What is yepost?
      - pedrosorio 4y ago
        Ye: Kanye West (recently famous for his antisemitism on twitter posts and interviews with the media) yepost: presumably posting antisemitic comments
        aliqot 4y ago
        Ho boy. I had to look that one up. Time's just flying these days- I put my head down for 5 mins to clear out some projects and the whole world is losing it.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      Not only does this mirror Ye's antisemitism, it's also inaccurate. The NY times is controlled by his family for generations. Essentially, it's a family business. And it's pretty common for control of family businesses to be inherited. Second, with only 1 Jewish grandparent, even the link to Judaism is rather thin, unless you use the definition of Jew that was used in Germany in the 30s and early 40s.
      - hoseja 4y ago
  - justin66 4y ago
    > The person who took that autocratic decision was AG Sulzberger, What evidence is there of this? Asking because it's not traditionally the case that the NYT editorial staff needs to be interfered with by ownership in order to make terrible decisions.
- chrchang523 4y ago
  This is incidentally a valid reason for HN to blacklist the NYT domain, at least until a formal reversal of the policy.
- jollyllama 4y ago
  The tweets are remarkably scant on details as to when this occurred. Unless it's just assumed that nothing older than a week is ever discussed, in the current zeitgeist.
- uMeanPpl 4y ago
  Right sure no one on Twitter has an angle to push with vague statements I mishear or take things out of context all the time. I’m sure this random Twitter person is not misremembering. You’re being played emotionally.
alfiedotwtf 4y ago
> now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room. It's now well established that Software is Eating the World. This downturn is just Software taking a small break between meals.
lambdasquirrel 4y ago
The NYTimes has been hostile to tech for as long as I can remember, and my memory on the matter goes back to the 90's when Thomas Friedman was writing about how our jobs were going to India practically every other week. After Google had taken off, that stopped, and they changed their tone to some sort of embrace-and-extend. It's been many many years of this. It's not going to change. The signal-to-noise ratio isn't going to improve. To that set of folks, we'll always be a bunch of picks and shovels. There's a subset of the liberal artsy crowd that will always see STEM as being lesser intellectually, and that's who these articles are written for. To be sure, that doesn't mean that STEM folks should be anti-liberal-arts. Folks on the engineering side need to own what that side of intellectual life offers, because you can bet that there'll be other (traditional-management-and-corporate) folks leveraging the liberal artsy side and learning what they can about tech so they can "manage" it. To which end, I would also consider this article a reminder and temperature read. I'm indifferent if the narrative would drive away some talented students into other industries. Raw talent isn't all that there is. There were plenty of 10x programmers in the field before tech got big. And not everyone going into the big giants would be so good in a startup. If you ask me, there's other stuff at play, like the competition between programmers today, and the drive to climb the ladder above all else – those things more or less negate whatever benefit the bump in talent was, because those things don't help startups. Those things are much more readily harnessed by the truly big companies.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  ten years before that, for readers in Palo Alto, NYT tech analysis of the PC world was the source of hilarity -- so out of touch.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I thought Friedman is pro globalization?
Eumenes 4y ago
Companies not in the 'tech' sector employ a sizable population of software developers and IT people. The average NYT reader may not know or understand this. People see "tech" and think of the Silicon Valley startup, with ping pong and the lavish perks. Average consumers of news generally have a negative view of these workers, because they get paid very well to "do nothing" and sit at a desk, plus the generous perks/benefits. You see this in any conversation involving housing too. Tech workers move to low cost of living areas and displace locals.
rayiner 4y ago
Par for course: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ It’s no surprise that after a decade of loose monetary policy, there’s a shakeout in capital-intensive industries like tech. That’s painful in the short term, but it’s a good thing overall. It’s necessary for capital to be better allocated across the economy.
- itsdrewmiller 4y ago
  Tech is one of the least capital-intensive industries, no?
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Paying developers to build new products is a capital expenditure.
    - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
      Typically employees are considered operating expenditure, not capital expenditure.
      - wmorgan 4y ago
        The term of art is "capitalized labor." For example, this is from Microsoft's accounting policies: > Costs incurred internally in researching and developing a computer software product are charged to expense until technological feasibility has been established for the product. Once technological feasibility is established, software costs are capitalized until the product is available for general release to customers. Then later > The amortization of these costs is included in cost of revenue over the estimated life of the products. https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html
ehnto 4y ago
> I'm excited to see what new companies are going to form in the next few years now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room Here's hoping. Although it's market dynamics at work, I often wish that software developers (myself included) and related were paid a little bit more sensibly, so that other industries could afford to hire software developers and that smaller scale software became more viable. I think there are plenty of companies that don't necessarily need to be "eaten by software", they could just do some cool stuff if only it were affordable to hire a developer. I mean bespoke programs that help the company do stuff. Make people's lives better kind of stuff, rather than making bucket loads of cash kind of stuff. It's also a really fun role, it has the fun of bespoke automation and problem solving while also being part of the community you live in. Those kinds of opportunities just don't exist now because no company would expect to afford a software developer. I have a hard time articulating what I mean usually, I'm not a tech bubble hater, I just see opportunities elsewhere going unfulfilled because it wouldn't make the bucket loads of cash needed to pay for the developers at current market rates.
uMeanPpl 4y ago
The expectation was tech is being juiced by cheap money and it was proven out. None of the big tech CEOs except perhaps Cook, have presented a future vision to put people on. They’re making money with price increases and staff reductions. Tech deserves to be dumped on hard, as it was government funded socialism squandered. They’re not superstars but typical middle managers. Being good with computers is not what it used to be in this economy. What are all these laid of workers going to do? Start dotcoms? Been there, done that is not going to sway the public. You live in a filter bubble.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
spywaregorilla 4y ago
the market values of big tech growth companies with no dividends did, to some extent.

ciphol 4y ago

This is typical NYT reporting on tech. "I literally heard it from NYT reporters at the time. There was a top-down decision that tech could not be covered positively, even when there was a true, newsworthy and positive story. I'd never heard anything like it." [1] [1] https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192

nindalf 4y ago
This decision matters because the NYT influences other journalists to a large degree. The person who took that autocratic decision was AG Sulzberger, the 37-year old publisher and chairman of the NYT. Surely a man wielding so much power and influence would have earned the post through merit and hard work, right? In reality it’s a hereditary post of the Sulzberger family. It’s shocking that a man who is a product of nepotism has so little written about him. Where’s the investigative reporting into this momentous decision 5 years ago? Where’s the criticism for biasing reporters in this manner? There’s nothing because the family is that powerful.
- hoseja 4y ago
  - aliqot 4y ago
    >I don't want to Yepost but an explanation really presents itself. What is yepost?
    - pedrosorio 4y ago
      Ye: Kanye West (recently famous for his antisemitism on twitter posts and interviews with the media) yepost: presumably posting antisemitic comments
      - aliqot 4y ago
        Ho boy. I had to look that one up. Time's just flying these days- I put my head down for 5 mins to clear out some projects and the whole world is losing it.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    Not only does this mirror Ye's antisemitism, it's also inaccurate. The NY times is controlled by his family for generations. Essentially, it's a family business. And it's pretty common for control of family businesses to be inherited. Second, with only 1 Jewish grandparent, even the link to Judaism is rather thin, unless you use the definition of Jew that was used in Germany in the 30s and early 40s.
    - hoseja 4y ago
- justin66 4y ago
  > The person who took that autocratic decision was AG Sulzberger, What evidence is there of this? Asking because it's not traditionally the case that the NYT editorial staff needs to be interfered with by ownership in order to make terrible decisions.
chrchang523 4y ago
This is incidentally a valid reason for HN to blacklist the NYT domain, at least until a formal reversal of the policy.
jollyllama 4y ago
The tweets are remarkably scant on details as to when this occurred. Unless it's just assumed that nothing older than a week is ever discussed, in the current zeitgeist.
uMeanPpl 4y ago
Right sure no one on Twitter has an angle to push with vague statements I mishear or take things out of context all the time. I’m sure this random Twitter person is not misremembering. You’re being played emotionally.

alfiedotwtf 4y ago

> now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room. It's now well established that Software is Eating the World. This downturn is just Software taking a small break between meals.

lambdasquirrel 4y ago

The NYTimes has been hostile to tech for as long as I can remember, and my memory on the matter goes back to the 90's when Thomas Friedman was writing about how our jobs were going to India practically every other week. After Google had taken off, that stopped, and they changed their tone to some sort of embrace-and-extend. It's been many many years of this. It's not going to change. The signal-to-noise ratio isn't going to improve. To that set of folks, we'll always be a bunch of picks and shovels. There's a subset of the liberal artsy crowd that will always see STEM as being lesser intellectually, and that's who these articles are written for. To be sure, that doesn't mean that STEM folks should be anti-liberal-arts. Folks on the engineering side need to own what that side of intellectual life offers, because you can bet that there'll be other (traditional-management-and-corporate) folks leveraging the liberal artsy side and learning what they can about tech so they can "manage" it. To which end, I would also consider this article a reminder and temperature read. I'm indifferent if the narrative would drive away some talented students into other industries. Raw talent isn't all that there is. There were plenty of 10x programmers in the field before tech got big. And not everyone going into the big giants would be so good in a startup. If you ask me, there's other stuff at play, like the competition between programmers today, and the drive to climb the ladder above all else – those things more or less negate whatever benefit the bump in talent was, because those things don't help startups. Those things are much more readily harnessed by the truly big companies.

mistrial9 4y ago
ten years before that, for readers in Palo Alto, NYT tech analysis of the PC world was the source of hilarity -- so out of touch.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I thought Friedman is pro globalization?

Eumenes 4y ago

Companies not in the 'tech' sector employ a sizable population of software developers and IT people. The average NYT reader may not know or understand this. People see "tech" and think of the Silicon Valley startup, with ping pong and the lavish perks. Average consumers of news generally have a negative view of these workers, because they get paid very well to "do nothing" and sit at a desk, plus the generous perks/benefits. You see this in any conversation involving housing too. Tech workers move to low cost of living areas and displace locals.

rayiner 4y ago

Par for course: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ It’s no surprise that after a decade of loose monetary policy, there’s a shakeout in capital-intensive industries like tech. That’s painful in the short term, but it’s a good thing overall. It’s necessary for capital to be better allocated across the economy.

itsdrewmiller 4y ago
Tech is one of the least capital-intensive industries, no?
- rayiner 4y ago
  Paying developers to build new products is a capital expenditure.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Typically employees are considered operating expenditure, not capital expenditure.
    - wmorgan 4y ago
      The term of art is "capitalized labor." For example, this is from Microsoft's accounting policies: > Costs incurred internally in researching and developing a computer software product are charged to expense until technological feasibility has been established for the product. Once technological feasibility is established, software costs are capitalized until the product is available for general release to customers. Then later > The amortization of these costs is included in cost of revenue over the estimated life of the products. https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html

ehnto 4y ago

> I'm excited to see what new companies are going to form in the next few years now that it's a tiny bit more difficult for the big tech companies to suck up all the oxygen in the room Here's hoping. Although it's market dynamics at work, I often wish that software developers (myself included) and related were paid a little bit more sensibly, so that other industries could afford to hire software developers and that smaller scale software became more viable. I think there are plenty of companies that don't necessarily need to be "eaten by software", they could just do some cool stuff if only it were affordable to hire a developer. I mean bespoke programs that help the company do stuff. Make people's lives better kind of stuff, rather than making bucket loads of cash kind of stuff. It's also a really fun role, it has the fun of bespoke automation and problem solving while also being part of the community you live in. Those kinds of opportunities just don't exist now because no company would expect to afford a software developer. I have a hard time articulating what I mean usually, I'm not a tech bubble hater, I just see opportunities elsewhere going unfulfilled because it wouldn't make the bucket loads of cash needed to pay for the developers at current market rates.

uMeanPpl 4y ago

The expectation was tech is being juiced by cheap money and it was proven out. None of the big tech CEOs except perhaps Cook, have presented a future vision to put people on. They’re making money with price increases and staff reductions. Tech deserves to be dumped on hard, as it was government funded socialism squandered. They’re not superstars but typical middle managers. Being good with computers is not what it used to be in this economy. What are all these laid of workers going to do? Start dotcoms? Been there, done that is not going to sway the public. You live in a filter bubble.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

spywaregorilla 4y ago

the market values of big tech growth companies with no dividends did, to some extent.