markpundmann

It's kind of ironic how condescending you are towards amazon stemming from what seems primarily based upon them not being a "tech company". In school, you probably had the jock type people looking down on you, and now that you are in your own subculture of tech oriented people, you've taken their place at the top of the arrogance pyramid.

I think you need to reevaluate your outlook on giving advice. You seem to have a preference for more tech oriented companies which is perfectly fine, but their are a lot of other people on HN that aren't as techie as you. Don't trash a company and shout advice to everyone based on your own personal preferences for work.

A cushy introduction to living by oneself. My school built a new $60 million dollar gym two years ago that blows other gyms out of the water. I've got nice library's and computers to study on, cheap world class sports that can entertain me, and more. That's where a lot of the increased costs are going.

What your talking about is commonly referred to in economics as diminishing marginal returns. The first $1000 is much more useful than the second. Also, your interpretation of "expected impact" is what we call economic utility, which is commonly put in a cobbs douglas utility function (utility = (some_number > 1)^(1 > some_number > 0).

Price drop speed has already been examined: https://gigaom.com/2014/04/19/moores-law-gives-way-to-bezoss...

Your example has 3 locations in it. Of course it isn't hard! Try doing that for a billion locations.

Trust funds can grow faster than the economy depending on the assets. I cannot remember where I read it, but warren buffet said stocks return on average about 7%. 2% for inflation, 3-4 % for economic growth, and the rest from dividends. (It's not much more, but dividends still add some value)

I wonder how long it will be until amazon gets brought up for abusing their market power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_bundling

Does this remind anyone else of Peter Thiel's notes on value systems? The entire time, I was thinking about how Peter was emphasizing that finding the right size market was key. Too big, and the competition erodes your profit away. The higher level tiered companies had to face much more competition, and Apple utilized that by having them compete with each other.

If you are interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend reading Economics of Strategy as it talks about the benefits and costs of being horizontally and vertically integrated. There are also some good anecdotes on how one can obtain economic profits, which reflects the opportunity cost of a venture, compared to accounting profit which just takes into account the total profits, through various forms such as competitive advantages.

Value Systems: http://blakemasters.com/post/20955341708/peter-thiels-cs183-...

Economics of strategy: href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/111827363X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...

Classic case of Adverse Selection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

I've seen a bunch of these kinds of posts about how software engineers don't get paid enough and it seems to me that a lot of people have this misconception about software engineers. We are part of the labor market just like everyone else. While their is a lot of skill and creativity involved in software development, your work can likely be replicated by someone else, and if that someone else can do your job for a cheaper price, companies are going to hire the cheaper person.

I've got a 6 figure offer coming out of college and not one of my business/engineering friends are making anything close to that. Other majors will make even less. My brother works for a top consulting firm doing the "evil business" and charges clients 300+ an hour, and yet he will only make around ~80,000 a year. It will be years before he will be able to climb their hierarchy and make the big bucks.

So quit your bitching and either invest in yourself so that you have skills that are in high demand and low supply, or start a company so that you can earn profits which technically have no limits.

Your acting just like the old factory worker who's pissed that his profession is starting to become more automated. Wake up and smell the coffee, developers are getting more productive and you have to adapt to the decreasing demand that this will cause. Programming is job in the labor market just like a fast food cooker. If you want to make some more money, either learn some skills that most other people do not have and that are needed (low supply, high demand), or start a company so that you can make some profits (which technically have no limit).

BTW, I think you need to look at the salaries of some other professions. I'm gonna be making 6 figures out of college as an SDE, while most of my engineering and business friends are going to be making about half of that. Talk to non engineering/business majors (cough, communication majors, cough) and the pay gets even worse.

->The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad. HAHAHA so true

I have read a lot of thoughts on the supposed "singularity", and something I still have yet to see is for someone to realize that every person who believes in the singularity disregards economics.

They all seem to think that this intelligent machine will improve it's algorithm or find ways to make smaller, more efficient, and better designed chips. On the software side, there is only so much one can do to maximize the intelligent aspect of the algorithm. At one point or another, the program will be maximally efficient at solving whatever problem the algorithm is designed to solve.

On the hardware side, the singularitists sometimes argue that the program will design every better, bigger, and more efficient chip designs as the news chips would be used to build even better chips.

However, who is going to pay for the manufacturing, energy, and maintenance costs of this self improving machine? Eventually, this machine will have to quit trying to design more intelligent machines and start solving HUMAN PROBLEMS. Why? Cause humans will actually pay for the solutions to problems that this intelligent machine can solve.

I'm not saying that this type of self improving machine would never be built. I just think that we will end up splitting the line between devoting resources to improving the machine to encourage future growth, and making money by solving problems that people are willing to pay for.

Also note that as this machine gets more and more powerful, the problem of making itself better will get more and more complex, and as I think we can all agree on, complexity is our greatest enemy.