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Comment Re:yes (Score 1) 113

But you need a degree to be a good developer.

You don't need a degree to learn anything. I personally believe the vast majority of people don't have the discipline or desire to learn a craft as difficult as writing software on their own, but plenty of people can learn to be an amazing software engineer without a degree. There is absolutely no knowledge that only exists in proprietary secretive knowledge bases controlled by universities that cannot be learned outside of college.

Comment Re:What do you expect? (Score 1) 160

I would expect this article to not spread misinformation. This isn't a new trend. In January 1993 unemployment for all workers was 48% higher than recent grads, but by January 2003 it was 17%. The gap spiked again after the great recession, but unemployment for recent grads has been the same or higher than all workers since late 2018. Before the pandemic or ChatGPT's release (the main culprits in the article).

This has little to do with anything on your list. This is the simple result of too many of the jobs being created over the past decade have been low wage jobs that don't require college educations or much experience. This has dropped the unemployment rate for all young workers by 15% over the past 30 years while unemployment for recent grads rose 30%. The economy overall has gotten better for the bottom 20% over the past few decades (more low wage jobs and a larger social safety net) but for the middle 60% it has been slowly declining for about 50 years.

Comment Re:Source for the non-degrer statistic? (Score 2) 160

I wouldn't hold my breath, because this entire article is rubbish. This isn't some new phenomenon. Unemployment for recent college graduates and for all workers have been neck and neck since 2014, and unemployment for recent grads has been slightly higher almost every month from late 2018 to mid 2022, when it started to grow noticeably higher than all worker unemployment. This isn't because of a post-pandemic cooling off period or AI, it is a trend that started in the 1990s with a hiccup just after the great recession that corrected itself in about 5 years.

Comment Re:Do the Japanese need a lesson in biology? (Score 1) 85

The number of times that my wife has had to submit a copy of her marriage certificate to confirm her original name even though we've been married for 11 years baffles me. It made some sense in the first year or two, but she still has to do it a couple of times a year for seemingly random things. I encouraged her to keep her original name when we were planning the wedding, but she insisted on the name change.

Comment Re:Predictions = planning ahead (Score 5, Interesting) 181

The more interesting research on this topic that I've read claimed smarter people make better decisions because they are better at deferring decisions. They are comfortable with the uncertainty because of their confidence in their abilities. There is always a tradeoff between making the decision later when you have more information and making it earlier so you have more time to plan your execution. If you need more time to plan execution, you need to make decisions earlier. And your decisions will suffer because of this.

Comment Re:From the No Shit Department. (Score 2) 181

I don't think this research qualifies as "no shit." I think it qualifies as very poorly done and potentially wrong. Or at least the summary makes it seem that way. They asked these individuals a prediction question that existing knowledge significantly helps with. Existing knowledge that many if not most well educated people will have and people with less education probably won't. I know what the average life expectancy is for someone in the US because I have read it. I know that your life expectancy is different when you are 40 because you have already avoided dying for 40 years, and I understand this in large part because of the math education I have had and because I've read actuarial tables before.

If you wanted to test predictive power that is based on innate intelligence instead of education, you need to ask for predictions that a well read adult wouldn't have a significant advantage in making.

Comment Re:Unproven if AI replaces jobs (Score 3, Insightful) 53

Not hiring 30 staff is not the same as firing 30 staff.

It is not exactly the same because of the personal disruption a firing has on someone, but they are pretty close. I have been laid off once, but it was in a strong job market so I found another position with a significant pay increase within a month. Being laid off right now if far worse because it isn't as easy to find an equivalent position.

When looking at the economy overall, not hiring 30 people is the same as firing 30 people. Both result in 30 less jobs in the market. Considering the US population from age 18-65 is growing very slowly right now, technologies that slow the growth of new jobs could be very beneficial. But a shrinking job market, whether from layoffs or a lack of hiring after employee attrition, would still cause some significant damage to peoples' lives.

Comment Re:You Proably would not notice for Petrol Pumps (Score 1) 162

You two must be using different terminology, because there is no chance you have gone 10 years without seeing a single gas pump at a gas station down for maintenance. Gas stations around me have about 8 - 16 pumps, and the average gas pump is down for maintenance 2-4 hours per week. That means about 20% of the time at least one pump is down for maintenance on average (not accounting for times when more than one pump is down at a time), which aligns with what I would have guessed if I hadn't googled it (I guessed 25%).

Comment Re:Despite (Score 1) 277

It depends on what they've purchased. Microsoft's basic licenses haven't gone up by that much in five years. The top tier E5 license was $57 per month in 2020, and today it's $54.75 (albeit without Teams, which costs $8 per month with a phone number attached). European prices are probably a bit different, but the price changes in percentages won't be notably different. Even add-ons like Entra Suite or Intune Suite won't add 72%. It's more likely that they have Azure VMs or other services, and that's where the majority of the cost increase came from. If they're not planning on bringing that on-prem, they'll see some savings, but it may not be all that much.

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