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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

Something that I think about, is that we live in the greatest tech driven economy in the history of humanity, and it grows at a rate of about 2% per year. What I don't believe is that every programming activity contributes equally to that growth. By "activity" I loosely mean anything from a solo programmer to a large software business. Some are assets to the economy, others are liabilities, yet they pay the same salaries either way.

Economic growth is close enough to 0%, that a decent rule of thumb is that whether any specific activity is an asset or a liability to the business that engages in it, is a coin toss.

This is reflected in comments made by developers themselves, to the effect of, "I don't know why we're doing this, it's going to cost a lot of money and make things worse." These kinds of comments are about projects that they're working on themselves.

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It's hard to say, because so much of the work of keeping a company running is so far removed from income generation or anything else.

Does cleaning the company toilets contribute to the company's growth? I mean, not really, but on the other hand if nobody ever does it then it becomes an impediment.

A lot of programming work is like that.

with work from hone,everyones responsible for cleaning toilets, rather than having a dedicated cleaner

> "I don't know why we're doing this, it's going to cost a lot of money and make things worse."

I'm a step outside the domain so not totally confident in my own cynicism, but I feel like this phrase could be applied to practically every B2B startup I hear about these days. Selling CRM, project management and time tracking tools to (mostly) other VC-funded companies is just a way to skim more cream out of the economy without adding any true value.

I try not to judge individuals for working in these places; working at AWS I'm hardly in a position to throw stones. Increasingly though I am dismayed by the lack of real, society-enhancing jobs available to highly skilled tech workers in the sea of mediocrity and rent-seeking.

   every B2B startup I hear about these days. Selling CRM, 
   project management and time tracking tools to (mostly) 
   other VC-funded companies is just a way to skim more 
   cream out of the economy

I think it's OK to an extent. Not all of those apps are good, but the best of them do enable businesses.

   I am dismayed by the lack of real, society-enhancing 
   jobs available to highly skilled tech workers

I think the root problem is a lack of developers. The resulting crazy high developer pay scale prices smaller orgs completely out of the game.

We need to increase the supply of capable developers.

You better not look too closely at the rest of the economy then because most of it looks like that.

You mean we don't need 5 different grocery chains at every highway crossing selling the same 100 products under 500 different brands from 5 companies?

Competition between profitable businesses is one thing, loss-making startups paying 6-figure salaries for shitty tools is quite different - particularly when the latter company ends up with a billion-dollar valuation for reasons totally divorced from actual worth.

Could also be that much of the work is zero-sum. For example ads to some extent just shift consumers from one company to another without actually creating anything (although, some might cause new demand). The stock market is exists to allocate resources more efficiently, but some of the shorter-term stuff looks more like pouring a ton of math and software work into coming up with better gambling strategies...

> coming up with better gambling strategies...

"better gambling" means better predictions of the future. this means making use of all available information, which means higher market efficiency.

It's not useless to do better in the stock market.

> Economic growth is close enough to 0%, that a decent rule of thumb is that whether any specific activity is an asset or a liability to the business that engages in it, is a coin toss.

Well, you completely forgot about depreciation.

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