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Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

(www.nytimes.com)
388 points pseudolus | 36 comments | 25 Mar 25 17:02 UTC | HN request time: 1.574s | source | bottom
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Bukhmanizer ◴[26 Mar 25 19:14 UTC] No.43485838[source]▶
I’m surprised not many people talk about this, but a big reason corporations are able to do layoffs is just that they’re doing less. At my work we used to have thousands of ideas of small improvements to make things better for our users. Now we have one: AI. It’s not that we’re using AI to make all these small improvements, or even planning on it. We’re just… not doing them. And I don’t think my experience is very unique.
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1. nickff ◴[26 Mar 25 19:32 UTC] No.43486104[source]▶
De-scoping is also a commonly-cited result of higher interest rates. We recently lived through a prolonged episode of zero-interest-rate-policy (ZIRP), which encouraged long-term and risky projects. When interest rates go up, the minimum acceptable return-on-investment (ROI) required to lure investment money away from low-risk investments like government bonds also increases correspondingly.
replies(4): >>43487004 #>>43488046 #>>43489062 #>>43494777 #
2. Bukhmanizer ◴[26 Mar 25 20:36 UTC] No.43487004[source]▶
Yeah I think there are a bunch of different reasons that corporations are doing less, interest rates are a major factor, but the point is that it isn’t exactly the “AI is taking our jobs” narrative that people want it to be.
replies(3): >>43487102 #>>43488912 #>>43489424 #
3. nickff ◴[26 Mar 25 20:45 UTC] No.43487102[source]▶
Agreed! Uncertainty to do with short term economic issues, medium term geopolitical risk (Trump, China, Russia, etc.), and longer-term issues (national debt, Medicare, etc.) also shouldn’t be underestimated.
4. echelon ◴[26 Mar 25 22:13 UTC] No.43488046[source]▶
I'd be willing to bet that the biggest reason is that there hasn't been any antitrust action against the big tech companies. They just sit at the top, siphoning value from every other market in the world. If you need to use the internet in any way, FAANG taxes you.

None of these big tech companies really need to grow bigger. The smartphone is essentially done. AWS just prints money. Social/consumer apps are "done". What more is for them to do but collect rent?

The US government needs to break them all up. That'll oxygenate the entire tech sector, unlock value for investors, and kickstart the playing field for startups.

Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, and maybe Microsoft. Break them up.

replies(3): >>43488256 #>>43488336 #>>43488800 #
5. zombiwoof ◴[26 Mar 25 22:35 UTC] No.43488256[source]▶
Maybe Microsoft
replies(1): >>43488320 #
6. echelon ◴[26 Mar 25 22:44 UTC] No.43488320{3}[source]▶
Apart from their gaming department absorbing every big competitor, I can't think of ways Microsoft is abusing monopoly power like the rest of the mentioned companies.
replies(4): >>43488382 #>>43488549 #>>43489309 #>>43489388 #
7. dnissley ◴[26 Mar 25 22:46 UTC] No.43488336[source]▶
State the terms! Maybe come up with the US gdp % growth bump you would imagine we get for each of these companies being broken up?
8. autoexec ◴[26 Mar 25 22:51 UTC] No.43488382{4}[source]▶
How about turning Windows into an advertising and data collection platform. Sucking up vast amounts of people's personal data, even corporate data, to leverage against their customers so that MS can take in more profit.
replies(1): >>43488859 #
9. fhd2 ◴[26 Mar 25 23:11 UTC] No.43488549{4}[source]▶
They're the OG among big tech when it comes to abusing monopoly lower, e.g. during the first browser war.
replies(2): >>43488749 #>>43489533 #
10. 01HNNWZ0MV43FF ◴[26 Mar 25 23:33 UTC] No.43488749{5}[source]▶
They've been doing it so long that a generation of programmers grew up under moderate MS
11. UncleOxidant ◴[26 Mar 25 23:39 UTC] No.43488800[source]▶
Break them up along functional lines or just break them into multiple smaller entities that are each still doing pretty much what the larger one was doing?
12. globnomulous ◴[26 Mar 25 23:47 UTC] No.43488859{5}[source]▶
I'm much less concerned about this -- as far as I'm aware, the data collection is standard telemetry that any software provider would want, and the stuff related to advertising is, I think, largely concerned with app recommendations in the Microsoft store -- than I am about anti-competitive bundling practices.
replies(1): >>43489171 #
13. UncleOxidant ◴[26 Mar 25 23:55 UTC] No.43488912[source]▶
It seems like we're in kind of a lull that's being caused by expectations of what AI is about to be able to do. And these expectations could be completely wrong. But it's already causing changes in corporate planning and spending.
14. nicbou ◴[27 Mar 25 00:18 UTC] No.43489062[source]▶
At the same time, ZIRP completely distorted the market and gave us multi-billion dollar companies that never had a workable business models, but filled offices all over the world with useless employees. I really enjoyed having a chief happiness officer, but I don't think the company needed it.
replies(2): >>43492133 #>>43493926 #
15. autoexec ◴[27 Mar 25 00:36 UTC] No.43489171{6}[source]▶
Microsoft may call what they collect telemetry, but it goes way beyond what I'd want or expect to shared with a bunch of strangers at whatever company made the software I'm using. It'd take a whistleblower (or more likely multiple whistleblowers) for us to know everything MS is doing with that data, but they've been shoving ads all over the OS for a long time.

I'm struggling to think of a part of the OS that hasn't had ads shoved into it... the terminal I guess... There have been ads in the start menu, the lock screen, in pop up notices, in the file explorer, in search results, in the control panel, on the task bar, in the share pane, in windows update and in a bunch of windows apps like ink workspace. They've even just force-installed random programs to people's systems.

replies(1): >>43489431 #
16. Teever ◴[27 Mar 25 00:57 UTC] No.43489309{4}[source]▶
Uh... aren't they able to do that by leveraging their monopoly in other industries?

That's the definition of monopolistic behaviour that almost got them split up 25 years ago.

replies(1): >>43489433 #
17. RajT88 ◴[27 Mar 25 01:08 UTC] No.43489388{4}[source]▶
Hey remember that time MSFT got hauled in front of Congress for shipping IE with windows and making it default?

Yeah, they do way worse shenanigans now.

18. walterbell ◴[27 Mar 25 01:14 UTC] No.43489424[source]▶
Starting in 2022, US companies could not deduct SWE salary expenses in the same year, only over 5 years like hardware CapEx. For big companies, this will roll over in 2027. Meanwhile, LLM expenses can be written off immediately as OpEx.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37494601

replies(2): >>43489826 #>>43493572 #
19. globnomulous ◴[27 Mar 25 01:14 UTC] No.43489431{7}[source]▶
That (edit: second paragraph) is fair and a good point. Maybe Android has desensitized me to advertising and crap-/bloatware.

I'd wager, too, that the addition of the garbage you're describing has coincided with the OS's worsening performance. File Explorer performance is so abysmal that it may as well be an Electron app.

On the other hand (edit: regarding your first paragraph), Microsoft seems very serious about not falling afoul of the law, probably because of the cost of the anti-trust litigation they faced in the 90s and 2000s(?). It wouldn't surprise me at all if there were nothing for a whistleblower to blow the whistle on.

20. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 01:15 UTC] No.43489433{5}[source]▶
Which other industries does Microsoft monopolize? They used to have a personal computer OS monopoly but there is a least one viable competitor, and personal computers have become less relevant as many tasks have shifted to mobile devices. My flagship smartphone cost more than a typical Windows PC.
replies(1): >>43490398 #
21. fijiaarone ◴[27 Mar 25 01:33 UTC] No.43489533{5}[source]▶
After IBM & AT&T
22. emgeee ◴[27 Mar 25 02:28 UTC] No.43489826{3}[source]▶
great point, thanks for sharing
23. Teever ◴[27 Mar 25 04:30 UTC] No.43490398{6}[source]▶
They hold a dominant position in desk operating systems, word processors, and spreadsheets.
replies(1): >>43490490 #
24. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 04:53 UTC] No.43490490{7}[source]▶
But not a monopoly in any of those categories. Google Docs and Sheets are kind of garbage compared to Microsoft Office if you need to do anything complex or work with large files, but for many users they're good enough.
replies(1): >>43495129 #
25. coffeebeqn ◴[27 Mar 25 10:37 UTC] No.43492133[source]▶
It’s easy to have happy employees when you have infinite money and no pressure to ever build a sustainable product. Personal experience. Things do take a very sudden and powerful turn when the bubble bursts
26. trollbridge ◴[27 Mar 25 13:42 UTC] No.43493572{3}[source]▶
This is probably the single dumbest aspect of US tax policy.

If you hire Canadian software engineers, you can dodge this and deduct the expenses in your Canadian subsidiary. If you outsource software dev to another company you can usually get away with expensing it.

replies(2): >>43494577 #>>43494848 #
27. nyarlathotep_ ◴[27 Mar 25 14:17 UTC] No.43493926[source]▶
Yep. This is part of the core of the unspoken reality in this article--there were/are way too many people, even in nominally "technical" roles, for a well-adjusted market. A large portion of this employment is a direct result of the "prosperity" of the ZIRP era, which has now ended.
28. __turbobrew__ ◴[27 Mar 25 15:20 UTC] No.43494577{4}[source]▶
That is a good point, my company recently expanded to Canada pretty aggressively and I wonder if this was a factor.

Historically there has been a brain drain from Canada to the US, but if Canada can set up favourable policies for companies maybe they can start reversing that.

29. jayd16 ◴[27 Mar 25 15:39 UTC] No.43494777[source]▶
It also feels like the investor class has lost the ability to make strong/informed bets after the decade of cheap slot pulls.
30. walterbell ◴[27 Mar 25 15:45 UTC] No.43494848{4}[source]▶
Research outside the US = 15 years amortization?

https://www.grantthornton.com/insights/alerts/tax/2023/flash...

  The TCJA amended Section 174 by removing the option to expense SRE expenditures, instead requiring taxpayers to capitalize and amortize SRE expenditures over a period of five years (attributable to domestic research) or 15 years (attributable to foreign research)
replies(1): >>43496304 #
31. Teever ◴[27 Mar 25 16:15 UTC] No.43495129{8}[source]▶
How is this different from 1998 when Microsoft was accused of being a monopolist?

Apple was selling a desktop operating system that was a competitor to Microsoft Windows, Corel WordPerfect was a thing and so was Lotus 1-2-3.

replies(1): >>43495771 #
32. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 17:22 UTC] No.43495771{9}[source]▶
It's different because in the previous antitrust case, Microsoft was accused of product tying. They apparently had private APIs built into their operating systems which only their own applications were allowed to use, and weren't available to competitors. There is no such allegation today. Any third-party vendor can write Windows applications that work just as well as Microsoft's own applications.

Apple also had a much smaller desktop OS market share at the time. They nearly disappeared but are in a much stronger position today, which makes it harder to argue that Microsoft has a monopoly. There's no strict threshold for market share in these cases, but it's one of the factors taken into account.

replies(1): >>43499703 #
33. trollbridge ◴[27 Mar 25 18:12 UTC] No.43496304{5}[source]▶
You create an “arm’s length” Canadian subsidiary that then licences the software to you.

The Canadian government also heavily subsidises this. Smart of them to do so.

replies(1): >>43500017 #
34. Teever ◴[28 Mar 25 00:00 UTC] No.43499703{10}[source]▶
Just because they aren't tying their products now doesn't mean that they aren't abusing their monopoly position and leveraging it to boost up their non-monopoly position in other markets.
35. nickff ◴[28 Mar 25 00:41 UTC] No.43500017{6}[source]▶
AFAIK the Canadian government’s ‘subsidy’ is to allow R&D expenses (but not investments) to be fully deducted in the year they are made. This seems analogous to the old rule in the USA.
replies(1): >>43518612 #
36. trollbridge ◴[29 Mar 25 20:48 UTC] No.43518612{7}[source]▶
They do more than this. In Alberta we got a 50% credit on salaries paid if we hired people with oil/gas skills into a non oil/gas company. Think ML engineers who have been dong advanced data science for geologists to find oil coming over to tech startup… and the government pays half their salary for you, which is already cheaper than America. And you get to fully deduct it.

And our government is busy prattling on about putting tariffs on Canadian maple syrup or something…