4 ms·

> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. I hear from all the much more senior devs about how

> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. I hear from all the much more senior devs about how they learned OOP in company training after years of C, or how their employers would give bonuses for finished projects, and that sort of thing. I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. I think R&D for tax reasons needs to be changed, we had so many tech advancements used to this day from Bell Labs. Now only Microsoft, Google, Apple etc can afford to do R&D and so all the innovation is essentially only worth while to them if they can profit from it. Granted I do think if you build something innovative you should be able to monetize it, but it takes investing a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money.

Terr_ 2y ago
> I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. From a statistical point of view, that's probably to be expected. Kind of like how open umbrellas get rained on more. When a hard-to-hire minority gives way to a big growth in the workforce, by definition the majority arrive after the change.
gsf_emergency 2y ago
It's deep hubris in our leaders that assumes existing capital/values/structures/motivations are sufficient to allow newcomers ( & new generations) to contribute.. However. Bell Labs did it, so what sort of humility existed then that (mostly) does not exist now?!? Tangentially, I have not personally tried, but it seems possible: ("Unintentionally moderate"[1-2] business thinkers like PG/YC partners do it all the time) Wonder if hubris is necessary for continued survival of the economy. [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html >Have to be an asshole or something [2] https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanese-startups-dont-apply-to-yc/ https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanes...
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
But then the ip-poachers wait for you at the gates. Investing into the new thing, in a world order where copying the new thing is the best game approach, makes R&D a looser strategy. You need temporary punishment tariffs on products that steal IPs to recuperate the investments and make it a bad strategy - or else.. Patents do not work - because the rule of law does not exists without the international order and goverments have a tendency to trade away such cases for protection of big players.
- ta20240528 2y ago
  Literally patents. But you have to take out a copy of the patent in EVERY country you want protection. Most companies don't do this and then whine about copies. And lest someone whose never done it says they don't work: note how diligently generic drug companies wait for patents to expire.
  - nickff 2y ago
    What you’re describing is monstrously expensive, and doesn’t actually prevent IP violations, it just allows you to recover some of your losses, which is also expensive, and is unrealistic if the violators are fly-by-night operations.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > What you’re describing is monstrously expensive I would actually consider this to be an desirable side effect: if you want governments to enforce your monopoly using their state authority, you better pay for this really well. :-)
      - leereeves 2y ago
        So you'd prefer there be no protection for inventors who aren't already wealthy?
        aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        I prefer for inventors not having to deal with the minefield of loads of existing patents.
    - ta20240528 2y ago
      1) The alternative is for millions of local-currency patents in Lesotho to automatically be valid for two decades in USA, EU, and Japan. 2) An of course it doesn't prevent IP violations - Eurocopter (now Airbus helicopters) had to spend millions to enforce their patents against the thieves* at Bell helicopter. https://www.bananaip.com/intellepedia/bell-helicopter-v-eurocopter/ https://www.bananaip.com/intellepedia/bell-helicopter-v-euro... * not my preferred choice of words, but its the tone on this forum.
hakfoo 2y ago
I wonder if we could reproduce the magic of Bell Labs by basically re-creating some Ma Bell style businesses: grant a profitable, but regulated monopoly that had the financial security to think long-term and be willing to fund out-of-the-box research to service internal needs or hypotheticals.
- klooney 2y ago
  I mean, wasn't this ZIRP Google? Chrome, Android, Project Zero, etc.
vlovich123 2y ago
One reason Bell Labs is remembered so fondly for the innovations is that they really only benefited the broader world once Bell was broken up. I’ll also challenge the assumption that these companies only do R&D if it’s immediately profitable. For example, Microsoft and Google both are investing heavily in quantum computers despite the fact that it’s unclear that that is a profitable endeavor (or profitable to be the ones putting the upfront capital so early). Google also has the X moonshot lab that is trying to do similar things to Bell Labs. I think there’s just a lot of romanticism of the golden age when developments were relatively easier because we hadn’t exhausted the low hanging fruit of applied quantum and material sciences.
- gsf_emergency 2y ago
  [I wish HN could host more long-running threads like SO as these topics require substantial back & forth] Lasers? Information theory? Transistors?? Silicon tech in general? If you think hype-&-wishful-thinking-driven Google now or ever can be compared with Bell Labs.. you might just be a recent immigrant. The atmosphere at BL, I'm told, was way different. More an indefinite excitement (what can we do with quantum??) rather than the definite, closely guarded, superstition of Thiel ("quantum computing is the next big secret!!") (Or maybe it's just that old subdued Jewish atheism of the East Coast vs the neurotic ambitious religiosity of California!) I'm less biased against your low-hanging fruit framework.. still, I suspect that a rival framework based on the minimal attention paid to teaching undergrads at American universities would surpass it. I.e. materials science knowledge base has been spreading only about as quickly as the Baumol cost disease 2 other issues, Even if there are low-hanging fruits in STEMM (of which I think there are still aplenty), infotech and especially advertising fruits are thought to be strewn all over the floor. With AI, both thinkers & doers get into this weird emo haze of hubris+laziness, expecting neuro-furniture rearrangement to turn magically into paradigm shifts
- kermatt 2y ago
  Microsoft and Google are not representative of most companies. They have to invest in the innovation. Investor returns for most other companies are based on copy and paste.

Terr_ 2y ago

> I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. From a statistical point of view, that's probably to be expected. Kind of like how open umbrellas get rained on more. When a hard-to-hire minority gives way to a big growth in the workforce, by definition the majority arrive after the change.

gsf_emergency 2y ago

It's deep hubris in our leaders that assumes existing capital/values/structures/motivations are sufficient to allow newcomers ( & new generations) to contribute.. However. Bell Labs did it, so what sort of humility existed then that (mostly) does not exist now?!? Tangentially, I have not personally tried, but it seems possible: ("Unintentionally moderate"[1-2] business thinkers like PG/YC partners do it all the time) Wonder if hubris is necessary for continued survival of the economy. [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html >Have to be an asshole or something [2] https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanese-startups-dont-apply-to-yc/ https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanes...

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

But then the ip-poachers wait for you at the gates. Investing into the new thing, in a world order where copying the new thing is the best game approach, makes R&D a looser strategy. You need temporary punishment tariffs on products that steal IPs to recuperate the investments and make it a bad strategy - or else.. Patents do not work - because the rule of law does not exists without the international order and goverments have a tendency to trade away such cases for protection of big players.

ta20240528 2y ago
Literally patents. But you have to take out a copy of the patent in EVERY country you want protection. Most companies don't do this and then whine about copies. And lest someone whose never done it says they don't work: note how diligently generic drug companies wait for patents to expire.
- nickff 2y ago
  What you’re describing is monstrously expensive, and doesn’t actually prevent IP violations, it just allows you to recover some of your losses, which is also expensive, and is unrealistic if the violators are fly-by-night operations.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > What you’re describing is monstrously expensive I would actually consider this to be an desirable side effect: if you want governments to enforce your monopoly using their state authority, you better pay for this really well. :-)
    - leereeves 2y ago
      So you'd prefer there be no protection for inventors who aren't already wealthy?
      - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        I prefer for inventors not having to deal with the minefield of loads of existing patents.
  - ta20240528 2y ago
    1) The alternative is for millions of local-currency patents in Lesotho to automatically be valid for two decades in USA, EU, and Japan. 2) An of course it doesn't prevent IP violations - Eurocopter (now Airbus helicopters) had to spend millions to enforce their patents against the thieves* at Bell helicopter. https://www.bananaip.com/intellepedia/bell-helicopter-v-eurocopter/ https://www.bananaip.com/intellepedia/bell-helicopter-v-euro... * not my preferred choice of words, but its the tone on this forum.

hakfoo 2y ago

I wonder if we could reproduce the magic of Bell Labs by basically re-creating some Ma Bell style businesses: grant a profitable, but regulated monopoly that had the financial security to think long-term and be willing to fund out-of-the-box research to service internal needs or hypotheticals.

klooney 2y ago
I mean, wasn't this ZIRP Google? Chrome, Android, Project Zero, etc.

vlovich123 2y ago

One reason Bell Labs is remembered so fondly for the innovations is that they really only benefited the broader world once Bell was broken up. I’ll also challenge the assumption that these companies only do R&D if it’s immediately profitable. For example, Microsoft and Google both are investing heavily in quantum computers despite the fact that it’s unclear that that is a profitable endeavor (or profitable to be the ones putting the upfront capital so early). Google also has the X moonshot lab that is trying to do similar things to Bell Labs. I think there’s just a lot of romanticism of the golden age when developments were relatively easier because we hadn’t exhausted the low hanging fruit of applied quantum and material sciences.

gsf_emergency 2y ago
[I wish HN could host more long-running threads like SO as these topics require substantial back & forth] Lasers? Information theory? Transistors?? Silicon tech in general? If you think hype-&-wishful-thinking-driven Google now or ever can be compared with Bell Labs.. you might just be a recent immigrant. The atmosphere at BL, I'm told, was way different. More an indefinite excitement (what can we do with quantum??) rather than the definite, closely guarded, superstition of Thiel ("quantum computing is the next big secret!!") (Or maybe it's just that old subdued Jewish atheism of the East Coast vs the neurotic ambitious religiosity of California!) I'm less biased against your low-hanging fruit framework.. still, I suspect that a rival framework based on the minimal attention paid to teaching undergrads at American universities would surpass it. I.e. materials science knowledge base has been spreading only about as quickly as the Baumol cost disease 2 other issues, Even if there are low-hanging fruits in STEMM (of which I think there are still aplenty), infotech and especially advertising fruits are thought to be strewn all over the floor. With AI, both thinkers & doers get into this weird emo haze of hubris+laziness, expecting neuro-furniture rearrangement to turn magically into paradigm shifts
kermatt 2y ago
Microsoft and Google are not representative of most companies. They have to invest in the innovation. Investor returns for most other companies are based on copy and paste.