Bill Maher Tells Amazon's Jeff Bezos to “Take One for the Team” | Hacker News Reader

Bill Maher Tells Amazon's Jeff Bezos to “Take One for the Team”

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I think he missed a point. Amazon likely can't go to Mississippi, because there aren't enough programmers there. And very few would move there, even if the offers were good.

I turned down $300K in LA to stay in Hawaii. I can't think of what kind of offer would make me move to Mississippi.

A threatening misconception is that you can’t teach people — the truth is: you can’t teach the ones who have have self selected out.

In these areas, young people have already decided - to either decided to move away, or become one who stays.

There are ways to change this — amazon taking a large risk is one, and encouraging the next generation to be powerful is another.

I won’t bet on Amazon, and I hope we could fix our education to value “how” people think over “what” they think.

Oh, you can teach, but it takes 10-15 years to become a good programmer, and then another 5 years to learn all the tools and practices to get to the senior level, while Amazon needs them now.

That’s hogwash. You can take someone without professional experience but aptitude, put them in a professional environment and they will be cranking out decent production ready code and features faster than you’d think. Yes, even at Amazon level.

They won’t usually be FAANG level senior engineers in 5 years, but actual training when your organizations already knows the right way to do things already can take you really far.

Maybe but you have to put them in a professional environment. Amazon can’t magic up a professional IT environment in Mississippi from thin air for local talent to train up in, and you need senior talent there to create that environment from day one.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. I worked with enough bad engineers with formal education who caused all kinds of issues with the code quality, scalability, coding speed, etc. And here you are, suggesting to put completely untrained people who will magically start pumping out production-grade code. That's a pipe dream.

And i’ve worked with self taught professionals that outcompete formally educated ones. It’s not so simple, and one of our great sins is writing off people’s potential before they’re even given a chance to try.

"Not everyone can cook, but a good cook can come from anywhere."

So have I. But these are exceptional individuals. You can't base such a huge investment on a hope of getting a s##t ton of exceptional self-taught programmers.

It's also possible that people that would move somewhere they'd probably not want to live otherwise just to work for Amazon would be more motivated and less likely to leave in 2 years for a raise

Do you think Amazon wants these people? High turnover isn't fun, and creates a horrible work environment.

Like Amazon gives a flying fuck about their employees wellbeing.

No, I dont think Amazon wants those people at all, but that's what you're going to get in "tech hubs" a lot of the time. If they were to choose a more atypical location, and everyone had a bigger investment into their job coming in, then they could improve retention & as a result the quality of their engineering teams.

Not every employee is a programmer, and how many people moved from places like Mississippi to Seattle/Silicon Valley/NYC etc? Surely some of them would love to return to their home state or nearby earning good money, paying a lot less rent and actually seeing family and friends from their childhood.

I can respect your decision to stay in Hawaii, just like I stay in Sydney it's a vibrant multicultural city with everything I want. Despite coming from a small town in a rural area I wouldn't go back, especially as the nearest Korean BBQ would be a 6 hour drive away.

However if that small town grew to a medium town and had those things, and enough money to build some community facilities that I desire such as public pools that are open year round and have enough space for multiple activities (First world problems you can't go for a swim on a hot day because the local swim squad has the whole pool reserved), theatres that could host local and travelling groups, a public library that is open more than twice a week and of course city wide broadband, preferably available to outer regions as well (5G networks might bring this one home)...

Any big move like Amazon would have to be thoughtfully planned, the last thing a small town needs is thousands of new residents with salaries 2-5 times the local average driving up the price of everything, imposing their worldview on the community and creating an us/them divide in the town.

Not that many people who work at big tech companies moved from places like Mississippi to Seattle/SV/NYC. Lots of them came straight out of school (and top schools these companies recruit from are concentrated on the coasts), lots of them came from overseas and most of the rest came from other coastal areas. Even those who came from places like Mississippi don't all prefer their hometown.

Also what makes places like SV and NYC great is that they are big and diverse enough to serve as acceptable second/third choices for lots of people from all kinds of places. Some people may prefer small towns and cities, but most people who do have are often driven by concerns like family and friends and have specific small cities they'd prefer. HQ2 in some small city in Mississippi may appeal to those who happen to be from that area, but don't offer much to others from small towns elsewhere in the US. If you consider that these companies employ glboal workforces, this is even more obvious - if a random American tech worker had to work in Turkey, would they rather work in Istanbul or a random small Turkish village?

I don't understand this idea that it would be better for top tech companies to be headquartered in random places in the US - it's obviously terrible for the companies involved but it also doesn't serve the greater good. It leads to 1) company towns that live and die with the company; 2) environmentally inefficient sprawl; and 3) talents being trapped in wrong situations at wrong companies due to immobility. Furthermore, a critical mass is important and innovation is not a zero-sum game - if Silicon Valley's capital and talent, etc was spread around the country, I don't think the outcome is that you get the same level of innovation and wealth creation, only distributed more fairly - a lot of it probably never happens. Innovation is almost certainly accelerated along by a concentration of capital and talent in a small area. This doesn't mean everything should be in SV, but that there are strong benefits that accrue to society at large from companies choosing to bring talent to an already talent-rich area.

The literal interpretation has only humour value (which is great btw). If you were worth many billions and thought to better something you cared about it should be something big and long lasting. It would be to set into motion a new thing in a chosen direction over a longer time span, say a generation or more.

> set into motion a new thing in a chosen direction over a longer time span

Isn't that what Maher was saying though? An investment in a small town in the middle of nowhere to bring those places into the "party". The way Wal-mart did with Bentonville AK, or SC Johnson in Racine WI. Those companies have changed those regions for generations.

People here are saying you can't get programmers to move to Nebraska, but I don't buy that argument. Wal-mart and SC Johnson have attracted talented business people to Arkansas and Wisconsin. Sure, some won't want to go, but eager millenials who can't afford a home in Hawaii, Seattle, or Brooklyn will go.

Another media celebrity espousing left-side views. I'm just tired of it at this point. I'm not thin-skinned, I just want some jokes that poke fun at both sides. I don't want a one-sided barrage from talk show hosts to award shows.

Really, if the playing field were level, wouldn't there be more jokes about foibles of the left? The nation is about 50/50, shouldn't the media be about the same?

I think in the decades ahead this will be seen as a golden age of propaganda.

I've been wondering how much climate change is taken into account in decisions such as these? If I were planning where I built my headquarters it wouldn't be in the South. (In fact I'm trying to convince my mother to move- we were only 30 miles away from Michael and it's only a matter of time until we get hit.) Besides the threat of natural disasters, I imagine the increased cooling bills would not be insignificant.

> I imagine the increased cooling bills would not be insignificant

Actually, from a total energy perspective, living in warm climates is better. It used far less energy to cool a house than it does to heat it.

Sure, but there are many non energy ways to warm a house and few to cool it. I believe the term is "warm clothes" and "blankets". There is a limit to how much clothing you can take off.

I've never been so cold in a cold climate that I couldn't get warm without power. Between heat and humidity I've had plenty of days the opposite though. Now well designed and constructed housing makes a difference, but so does thoughtful clothing choices.

Here in Australia we often complain about the cold in winter, when it isn't even below freezing, we just don't dress for it and our houses are designed for cooling not heating (Assuming any thought was put into that at all). I spent time in Japan and half the times we turned the heaters off in our apartments because we were too warm, while outside there was a metre of snow...

The biggest joke in all of this is that someone like Bezos or Zuck or Dorsey etc actually cares about shit like this. They don't. They live in a completely different world detached from 99.9% of the populace.

The suggested regions are unpleasant places to live and work and it isn’t because of employment alone. It is because the political philosophy of the people present there is not conducive to individual freedom. Any effort to try to get engineering-like success there will fail. They do not want it. And few engineers want to live like them.

The question isn’t “what can we do to make these people prosperous?”. It’s “what are these people choosing to do that makes them non-prosperous?”. And I’d argue “nearly everything”.

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