Blueberries.
5,728 karma · joined May 9, 2008
The work of a steveadore, one of the examples given, has been vastly automated and unionized. The work is much physically easier than before: operating a crane vs. manually moving cargo. Dockworker's unions have negotiated strong agreements related to overtime pay which guarantee time and a half. There are a far smaller number of employees needed, and those employees want to pack in as many hours as they legally can, to reap the overtime benefits. Automation of an industry can actually lead to longer hours for the fewer employees still working in the industry.
Since there are far fewer well paying positions like being a longshoreman, people who may have once gotten a job on the docks have to compete with everyone else for service jobs. The service jobs don't pay enough, so many need 2 or even 3 jobs to keep their families afloat. The need for multiple jobs explains why this class of people is working longer.
That's interesting, as other career gurus argue the opposite view. For example Barbara Sher, author of "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was" gives the example of herself as an unhappy stay-at-home mom. She is an expert at cooking, changing diapers, and other aspects of child rearing. If she pursued what she was really good at, she'd be limiting her options to work as a nanny, or perhaps open a day-care center.
-Mark Twain
Dances/events are usually funded by fundraisers. Although an exorbitant amount of money is spent on sports, they also have a lot of funding from booster clubs and fundraisers.
Schools do get stuck paying for extra sports staff, and sports facilities. Sometimes a wealthy donor will spring for a giant football field. That actually sets a bad precedent, because then neighboring towns feel they need to spend more on their sports facilities.
Arts and music programs receive almost no money from any source and are cut every year.
"Asian" educational models will never work in the USA. You can't convince middle America to pay more for teachers and/or enroll their kids in programs that involve hard academic work. After school academic programs are crazy, only for obsessed nerds. When would they have time for football practice? This model only works in American communities with large Asian populations. It partially works in low income communities in which the main benefit is keeping the kids away from their screwed up home life.
This is a bit off topic, though. The article is about a guy who makes money off of video lectures. Americans do pay money for videos of things they care about, such as losing weight or improving their golf stroke. Only a small subset of the population would pay for academic tutoring videos.
In my case, what happened is the failed startup I worked for was "acquired" by another company that was funded by the same investors. The acquiring company wasn't acquiring anything: the software was open source, none of the founders worked there anymore, no key engineers were left, etc. The deal was done to avoid a loss on the VC balance sheet so that the fund wouldn't lose face with its institutional investors. The people who benefit: investors, and also mediocre late hire employees who stuck around through the transition. They ended up with a higher salary and better title than they would have if they had been hired directly by the acquiring company.
When I read about an acquisition where it doesn't seem like anyone is going to make money, nobody uses the product, the founding team isn't there anymore and key engineers have left, it just reminds me of this situation I already lived through.
This reminds me of working with crotchety gen-X and above sysadmins. They complain about "hipsters" but the people they are talking about are wearing standard issue clothes from the mall that everyone in that age bracket wears. They don't realize that wearing a "JavaConf 1999" fleece, bat-belt, cargo shorts and Tevas is not what other people consider normal work attire.
I'm not saying that is what happened here, but I have been involved in a startup acquisition which was an investor shell game, and even guys who lost in the acquisition had to come up with a warped internal history about what happened in order to not feel bad about it, or something...