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Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

(www.nytimes.com)
388 points pseudolus | 7 comments | 25 Mar 25 17:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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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.
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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.

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zombiwoof ◴[26 Mar 25 22:35 UTC] No.43488256[source]▶
Maybe Microsoft
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echelon ◴[26 Mar 25 22:44 UTC] No.43488320[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.
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1. Teever ◴[27 Mar 25 00:57 UTC] No.43489309[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.

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2. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 01:15 UTC] No.43489433[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.
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3. Teever ◴[27 Mar 25 04:30 UTC] No.43490398[source]▶
They hold a dominant position in desk operating systems, word processors, and spreadsheets.
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4. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 04:53 UTC] No.43490490{3}[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.
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5. Teever ◴[27 Mar 25 16:15 UTC] No.43495129{4}[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.

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6. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 17:22 UTC] No.43495771{5}[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.

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7. Teever ◴[28 Mar 25 00:00 UTC] No.43499703{6}[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.