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The root cause is the decade of zero interest rates which led to companies intentionally overcomplicating their stacks to justify neverending VC rounds. Early p

The root cause is the decade of zero interest rates which led to companies intentionally overcomplicating their stacks to justify neverending VC rounds. Early prospective employees took notice and adjusted their skills as a result. The dangerous part is that in the meantime we've got brand new and budding talent that actually took this charade seriously and effectively got high on their own supply, seeing this performance art as the actual normality even in a post-ZIRP world where tech/engineering is primarily there to drive business profits and not a VC mating ritual. The only winners are the cloud/infra/tooling providers who got an entire generation of "engineers" to do perpetuate their con without even realizing it.

rodgerd 3y ago
> The root cause is the decade of zero interest rates which led to companies intentionally overcomplicating their stacks to justify neverending VC rounds. Extended hot take: the true customer of a company are the current and prospective holders of capital, whether VC, private investment, or public markets. Keeping them happy is the main goal of the exec. If your owners' portfolios include real estate, you push "back to the office". If it includes container startups, you deploy on k8s. Your "strategic partnerships" are determined by how much your owners care about propping up investment A investment B.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dehrmann 3y ago
I think you're mixing up cause and effect. Low interest rates caused investors to chase higher returns in things like VC, VC had pressure to make investments, startups had easy money, so they were less scrappy and had more funding for overengineering.
Sammi 3y ago
Except zero interest rates stopped almost four years ago, but we're still seeing vcs ape into ai this last year. So clearly the underlying cause of this squandering of resources must come from somewhere else. I point the finger at the rising class of super rich who don't know what to do with their money. Why do they exist? Why is taxation seemingly not applying to them any longer?
- Jensson 3y ago
  > Why is taxation seemingly not applying to them any longer? Investing returns was never taxed, as long as they don't use their wealth for consumption they wont get taxed. This is a good thing since it encourages investments over excessive consumption, building a startup is much better than buying another yacht.
  - seec 3y ago
    That's a very simplistic view. Like with all things, there is a point where more investment money does not make things faster or better. In fact, since pretty much everything is still dependent on people and social groups, if all the relevant people are already busy, you won't get much for your money. And too much money chasing too few choices creates bubbles, wich is exactly what has happened. And not just in tech, it is the problem of real estate market in many places of the rich world, and similar bubbles can be found in many markets. I believe it is actually one modern problem, a good part of the rich world is getting paid a lot more than there is really a need for; and since we glorified "investment" essentially has a way to make even more money; a too big amount of money is not doing much instead of being useful right now. If you look at society as a whole, spending every ressource every year would be bad, but also setting too much aside for later is actually wasteful. It's a lot like stocking a pantry, you need to put enough so that you don't run out of food easily but if you have stuff in there that hasn't been used 5 years later it shows the "investment" was too much. Food gets stale and loses nutritional value over time (even canned) but money also gets stale in a way. As for the startup vs yacht I would say it largely depends on how useful the startup can ultimately be to society and how many people it can employ (how much actual value is being created). Because even though yachts have fossil fuel consumption problems, it actually takes a lot of people to make them, maintain and service them actually. It can potentially have a better social impact than a startup... And this is the root of the issue, people getting a lot of money actually have a responsibility to redistribute it (in an intelligent manner preferably); but what is happening is that people try to get even richer even though it stops having much value to anyone.
  - Sammi 3y ago
    All this money that is aping into an ai gold rush could have been taxed to fund schools and other broadly useful things. I'm very much a free market capitalist, but seeing all vcs ape into ai at the same time does not make me think there is value in have so many super rich people in the world. I hate it when discussion devolves into high taxation vs low taxation or high regulation vs low regulation. There must be a thing such as the appropriate type of taxation and the appropriate type of regulation. And that depends on what we want as a society. Do we want a big class of super rich that don't know what to do with their money so they squander it on an ai gold rush? Or do we want to tax them so we can put that money to use that we all benefit from?

rodgerd 3y ago

> The root cause is the decade of zero interest rates which led to companies intentionally overcomplicating their stacks to justify neverending VC rounds. Extended hot take: the true customer of a company are the current and prospective holders of capital, whether VC, private investment, or public markets. Keeping them happy is the main goal of the exec. If your owners' portfolios include real estate, you push "back to the office". If it includes container startups, you deploy on k8s. Your "strategic partnerships" are determined by how much your owners care about propping up investment A investment B.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dehrmann 3y ago

I think you're mixing up cause and effect. Low interest rates caused investors to chase higher returns in things like VC, VC had pressure to make investments, startups had easy money, so they were less scrappy and had more funding for overengineering.

Sammi 3y ago

Except zero interest rates stopped almost four years ago, but we're still seeing vcs ape into ai this last year. So clearly the underlying cause of this squandering of resources must come from somewhere else. I point the finger at the rising class of super rich who don't know what to do with their money. Why do they exist? Why is taxation seemingly not applying to them any longer?

Jensson 3y ago
> Why is taxation seemingly not applying to them any longer? Investing returns was never taxed, as long as they don't use their wealth for consumption they wont get taxed. This is a good thing since it encourages investments over excessive consumption, building a startup is much better than buying another yacht.
- seec 3y ago
  That's a very simplistic view. Like with all things, there is a point where more investment money does not make things faster or better. In fact, since pretty much everything is still dependent on people and social groups, if all the relevant people are already busy, you won't get much for your money. And too much money chasing too few choices creates bubbles, wich is exactly what has happened. And not just in tech, it is the problem of real estate market in many places of the rich world, and similar bubbles can be found in many markets. I believe it is actually one modern problem, a good part of the rich world is getting paid a lot more than there is really a need for; and since we glorified "investment" essentially has a way to make even more money; a too big amount of money is not doing much instead of being useful right now. If you look at society as a whole, spending every ressource every year would be bad, but also setting too much aside for later is actually wasteful. It's a lot like stocking a pantry, you need to put enough so that you don't run out of food easily but if you have stuff in there that hasn't been used 5 years later it shows the "investment" was too much. Food gets stale and loses nutritional value over time (even canned) but money also gets stale in a way. As for the startup vs yacht I would say it largely depends on how useful the startup can ultimately be to society and how many people it can employ (how much actual value is being created). Because even though yachts have fossil fuel consumption problems, it actually takes a lot of people to make them, maintain and service them actually. It can potentially have a better social impact than a startup... And this is the root of the issue, people getting a lot of money actually have a responsibility to redistribute it (in an intelligent manner preferably); but what is happening is that people try to get even richer even though it stops having much value to anyone.
- Sammi 3y ago
  All this money that is aping into an ai gold rush could have been taxed to fund schools and other broadly useful things. I'm very much a free market capitalist, but seeing all vcs ape into ai at the same time does not make me think there is value in have so many super rich people in the world. I hate it when discussion devolves into high taxation vs low taxation or high regulation vs low regulation. There must be a thing such as the appropriate type of taxation and the appropriate type of regulation. And that depends on what we want as a society. Do we want a big class of super rich that don't know what to do with their money so they squander it on an ai gold rush? Or do we want to tax them so we can put that money to use that we all benefit from?