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Re:Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, S... by LoSboccacc on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:36AM (#23713592)
> We should really divorce politics from this discussion.

that's a common technical people pitfall. politics permeates society, and ignoring it is only to your own detriment exposing you form exploitation of those whom play the political game, of which you most assuredly participate in, whether you want an active role in it or not.

Re:Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, S... by eldavido on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:53AM (#23713851)
Not only does it permeate, but this particular issue touches on a much larger, and more timely discussion: the extent to which companies should be loyal to a nation, and its citizens.

In one view, the one I had for a long time, companies are free agents. They can set up where they want, come and go as they please, hire and fire at will. They add value by creating jobs and profit and society should be thankful for that.

A different view, one I hear a lot in the more intellectual conservative circles (Brexit and some Trump supporters), is that companies have a duty to their people, and society at large. They should train people (through apprenticeship, rather than strip-mining universities / the local market), try to promote stability, avoid huge disruptive layoffs, etc.

I used to think the first but have come around to the second a bit.

Re:Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, S... by thebean11 on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:41AM (#23713675)
There's a difference between "let's try to figure out the best way to do something" and "let's sell the solution we've settled on". That's not an argument for avoiding politics, but there's nothing wrong with veering in the other direction either.
Re:Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, S... by LoSboccacc on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:04AM (#23713989)
once you figure out the best way, you _still_ have to sell it to stakeholders which are each optimizing for different things, some of which you probably don't even known, and that's when the politics kicks in.
Re:Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, S... by robertlagrant on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:43AM (#23713713)
> politics permeates society

No, it's a pitfall people fall into when they read politics into any topic.

Re:Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, S... by egh5oon on Thursday July 02, 2020 @12:40PM (#23715102)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics

Politics permeates society, and by design.

Also this thread is about employment and moving jobs across countries, which is an extremely politically changed topic.

Re:Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, S... by LoSboccacc on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:13AM (#23714096)
the topic is optimizing an arbitrary metric among a group of people with diverging goals and objectives many of which hidden[1] or with far reaching consequences that are impossible to know fully.

that quite literally requires reaching compromises in place of whatever optimal mathematical solution may exists.

[1] including people that might want a certain solution to be implemented _and_ fail. they do exist, especially in older groups where the power structure is fragmented and the dynamic dysfunctional.