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Comment by kuboble | Hacker News Reader

What resonates the most with me in the article is this quote

> I was so naïve that I thought progress could only go one direction, because that’s all I’d ever known.

As kids growing up in Eastern Europe in the 80s and 90s the world felt like its getting better every year. More peace, fewer borders, more opportunities, better technology.

Everything was getting better every year and we took it for granted that this is a law of nature.

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I kinda think I am lucky to spend my whole life in a rather peaceful, prosperous time. But the good time is almost over.

I think many of us take it for granted. I wonder what the view on the ground was in the late 1930's and early 1940's.

Or a more recent time. I think how mechanical engineers felt in silicon valley over the last 40 years as basically 'making and shipping" was all exported to china. I have some mechanical engineer friends whose life got smaller and smaller.

My brother in Brazil graduated in a world where Mechanical Engineers were needed a lot, but the decline was already going on, unbeknownst to most. During his career it just got harder and harder to change jobs, until after a second or third layoff he had enough and migrated to Australia. I wasn’t so sure he would succeed since at the time, all car companies were closing down (Mitsubishi first, then Ford a finally even Holden, the pride of Australian car industry). Somehow, though, he had several opportunities and is still working on a very good job. I suppose he might be one the last few able to have a lifetime career in this field.

I can tell you from Portuguese point of view, I could have studied close to home, but that would mean EE, and most interesting jobs in the early 1990's were already leaving the country, and unless one hit gold with Portugal Telecom, there were very few alternatives in a couple of factories or repair shops, and most EEs ended up doing coding.

Thus I went directly to Informatics Engineering and 300 km away.

Now were the ones into the line of sight of late capitalism.

But, overall, the world has been steadily improving from century to century (largely thanks to technology).

The catch is that the path there are occasional local minima, and very deep local minima, like the world wars

Very true.

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