Ukraine is far from a monolith. It's an agglomeration of bits and pieces attached in the aftermath of WW2 to a Ukrainian core. But there are plenty of ethnic Poles, Hungarians and Russians whose lands got attached that don't identify with it.
Before you downvote (OK, you can downvote first, I don't particularly care) - go look up what folks in Hungarian parts of Ukraine do to army recruiters.
Got to be honest with you, bro. This sounds like pro-russia FUD to me.
I mean honestly, wasn't all of the USSR a big agglomeration? The bottom line now is that Ukraine is a sovereign nation recognized by the rest of the world, and they have been invaded.
This article periodically surfaces in some shape or form. There's this idea that there's a "dual ladder", and the IC ladder offers just as much respect and compensation as the management one. This is a lie, and the sooner we stop telling it to the young generation - the better.
Human societies have always rewarded and valued those who built hierarchies more than those who built things. If you focus on building a thing - you will forever be a cog in someone's big project. There's a reason that management ladder is more competitive.
I think some places pitch the dual ladder a lot morethan they actually support it, but it's still there.
EM vs IC are totally different jobs though. The whole thing where you're a good IC, so you get "promoted" to being an EM is insane. There's some overlap, I guess, every job has pieces of managing other people even if it's not in the job description, but...
Just because EM offers higher positions in the hierarchy (and salaries etc to go with it) doesn't mean that accepting a "promotion" to being an EM is going to make your life better. Personally, I hated being an EM; I don't like the work, and I don't like that when I do a bad job, it directly impacts the careers of my reports.
I don't mind being a cog in someone's big project; but even if I did, I don't see how being an EM avoids it, unless you start your own thing, which I absolutely do not want to do.
I'm pretty sure I did well enough for myself in the IC track. I could have gotten bigger compensation as an EM, I suppose, but diminishing returns wouldn't have justified the additional stress. Obviously, that may depend on individual factors, everyone's path is their own and I got a lucky draw.
> There's this idea that there's a "dual ladder", and the IC ladder offers just as much respect and compensation as the management one
It is not a lie. It is true IF you live and work in the Bay Area, Seattle, and TLV - which represent the bulk of tech industry employment.
Companies where the underlying stack is a revenue generator and not a cost center are companies where these kinds of dual tracks exist, but these are only found in the major tech hubs and are not available if you are remote first.
They also require you to be both technically and socially adept.
>It is true IF you live and work in the Bay Area, Seattle, and TLV - which represent the bulk of tech industry employment.
Is that actually true (the bulk of people in the tech industry are working in "big tech" or startups)?
I don't know if there's any hard data around this, but my understanding has been that people working for these types of companies are maybe a single digit percentage of all tech workers (if that).
People working for those companies are certainly the most vocal online, though, which maybe skews perception.
Sorry, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. The ladders are simply not comparable, even in the Bay Area. Sure, at the entry point where one transfers from the IC ladder to management compensation can even drop. However, that's the bottom rung - and one typically can't get straight into management as a new grad. The management ladder goes higher.
Best to remember this isn't a ladder but rather a tree. Yes, it goes much higher, but you chances of ever getting there is minimal because it narrows so quickly.
I mean, this is true and also not true. The management ladder does start higher and arguably does end higher with C-suite titles (though even that may not be the case, e.g. Google now has a Chief Technologist or two, who are SVP/C-suite level). But at the major tech companies under discussion in the parent, yeah the levels do map basically 1:1.
You can maybe argue that it's easier to advance on the management side, and I think that was certainly true pre-2023, but since then there's been a clear tightening of easy empire building advancement, and at least in my neck of the woods, I've seen IC-track advancement has been faster from staff to principal than from manager to director.
USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.
Central/Eastern European here. Our labor costs are comparable or even lower than China today. And the manufacturing is still struggling. So it's not only that.
That, and you have to ensure your energy costs (power) are low and you have a secure source of raw materials. I'm not an expert, but from what I've heard, the economic region over there has been doing a poor job on both those fronts. Furthermore, you have to talk about regulation vs safety. The EU has regulation. Maybe too much.
There are also network effects. Your plant that is energy intensive is closing? Now other manufactures must increase their cost as transportation is increased and local contracts harder to get. Your chemical plant, which has operated within good bounds for a decade can't get a permit to expand, or is protested? Your intake products now either go up in price or become unable to attain them at all.
There's also that large scale effort ongoing to make those energy costs higher and take those raw materials away.
And even still - there's a lot of manufacturing in Easter Europe. Go to IKEA or an appliance or auto store. You might be surprised to find where things are made these days. Often they'll say "made in EU" instead of the actual country name though.
In Central/Eastern Europe, the problem is increasingly one of demographics. You can sometimes find somewhat cheap labour due to shitty (geo)politics, stagnant economies and poorly trained workers, but big-picture-like, the age of labour abundance is over. These economies have nowhere to go but down, down, down, starved of talent due to the twin cancers of bad demographics and emigration. Some countries are better, some worse, but the overall trend is the same all over the region. Going gentle into that good night.
(China's predicament is not much better, with the added wrinkle that there's absolutely nothing whatsoever they can do about bad demographics due to their size, whereas Central/Eastern Europe can import people once we collectively get over ourselves and let go of uppity xenophobia).
The number of kids born in 2025 in Uzbekistan (population 38 million) is about the same as the number of kids born in 2025 in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland, *combined* (total population 131 million). The age of labour abundance IS OVER, we're witnessing its very last days in EE. Unemployment may remain due to terrible politics and economic mismanagement.
There's not going to be any point even having sweatshops or factories in this region soon. Why bother? If it's anything low or medium-skill and low or medium-capital intense, just open up shop in... Well, why not Uzbekistan? And if double-landlocked isn't your thing, there's dozens of other options.
This is false, patently incorrect. With a good manufacturing line workers are not priced out by "cheap labor" they are priced out by almost zero cost labor, Robots are basically a rounding error compared to human's wages.
Robots bring very different tradeoffs on the table. But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.
Plus scaling industrial production is one thing, but if proletarians are unable to afford them because wealth distribution is exponentially concentrated, what is the point?
>But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.
No but they are significantly cheaper than an employee, A robot can pick up something and move it from A to B for upwards of 10 years. The programming and setup are a fraction of the time a robot can operate reliably
I cannot stress to you how reliable and little maintenance is required for a $60,000 fanuc robot.
The difference between the USA and, for example, China, in manufacturing is the difficulty of getting a new factory built.
If you have a product designed and ready for production, it will take you years to build a factory in the USA. All the while you'll be losing money managing the build, paying your employees and, most importantly, letting your competitors get a head start.
Likewise, if you build that factory in China, it'll be up and running in less than a year and you can start making your R&D money back, get to market before your competitors and not bleed money keeping your companies doors open.
The labor costs are easily offset by removing the logistics of moving the product.
Tesla Gigafactories are a pretty good example of this. The first two took ~3 years to build in Nevada and New York. The third, in Shanghai, took 10 months.
Gigafactory Nevada notably became the second-largest building in the world (by volume) and was a joint partnership with Panasonic, locating two major manufacturing facilities within the same structure. Seems like a big project with additional joint partner complexities. Making the second largest building in the world as your first try is going to maybe run into some things.
Gigafactory Berlin is a different beast and produces a different product mix.
Gigafactory New York produces photovoltaic cells and Tesla Supercharger assemblies but does not produce batteries or vehicles yet another product mix.
Giga Shanghai just does final vehicle assembly (basically the easiest kind of factory and most minimally regulated) and is a million square feet smaller than the other factories and with no joint partnership/co buildout.
I live in Texas, which is still part of the USA, and we manufacture a great deal.
I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output.
I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers.
That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.
I am not saying that you should tear down anything that works for you.
Trade barriers however are bullshit and don't work. And they are a lie. You are not building IPhones in the US because building an IPhone in the US would cost three times as much as it would doing in Shenzhen. And people would not be willing to pay that. And that's why they get an exception from the trade barriers. And that list of exceptions basically goes on and on and on...
Anyway, what works, works. This is especially true if that industry had been in the area for long, and therefore has access to a lot of skilled and experienced workers.
But it does not make sense to cry and complain that building such a thing from scratch is "banned". No, it is not banned. It's just a stupid idea, and there are laws against stupid ideas using limited natural resources.
So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes.
> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.
Texas beats California in total value of manufacturing shipments only because because of its petroleum and coal products manufacturing. And California beats Texas in manufacturing employment.
None of which answers the question of why we can't manufacture things in other states? Things that California clearly doesn't want to manufacture.
Again, what is the reason New Mexico, or Utah, or Nebraska, or Tennessee cannot manufacture these things? And why is it a problem if they do so instead of California?
Big companies already handle manufacturing in other states. Often in states that have the worst education systems and quality of living. It is frequently done to reduce the cost of labor.
Manufacturing jobs are also some of the most unstable because big companies will shop around for tax breaks. Once they find a political sucker ... they build a new plant and close the old one which wrecks havoc on the local economy. PR teams are designed to mitigate negative feedback when this happens.
Smart politicians know this and will not concede to tax breaks for big companies, like Amazon.
Doesn't that just make California's case for them though?
I mean if these jobs are so bad, isn't it good that California is trying to not have them in its own municipalities? The way you laid it out, shouldn't everyone be trying not to have those jobs?
Quality of a job matters. So does proper regulation so the job is not harmful to the worker or community or environment. Those others state politicians that welcome those jobs without proper regulation are willing to ignore the health and well-being of their neighbors.
Manufacturing jobs are not bad. The environment and de-regulation makes them bad.
To me a job must have a living wage tied to it and it must be in an environment that doesn't poison the employee, community, and nature.
Others have low standards like calling USA McDonald's a job when they don't even pay enough to live off of. EU McDonald's is forced to pay a living wage because of proper regulations.
> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.
California has the highest manufacturing employment and most manufacturing companies of any state, the second highest (behind only Texas) dollar value of manufacturing output.
It is just below the national average in manufacturing as a share of GDP, but its also the fifth highest state in GDP/capita; leaving it still above average in manufacturing GDP/capita.
I don't think we're priced out, there's still a lot of competitive manufacturing in the US. I think it stems from a regulatory side, primarily in unions and logistics, which is unfortunate because these provide very little or no benefit to citizens but make it sometimes impossible to invest heavily in manufacturing here. People can't create dense factories cities like Detroit if a union may come in and destroy it, and we can't move fast enough if it's going to take years to get regulatory approval to develop a large factory (the Micron factory in Syracuse comes to mind, although there are many like it).
The USA is priced out of manufacturing due to greedy capitalists and business owners. Acting like labor is an insurmountable expense is just hilariously out of touch.
Maybe those that own the wealth should pony up more in taxes or give away their factories to the workers so they can run it themselves (something tells me they'll do a better job than greedy owners that just care about money rather than building a community).
For most industries: No, you aren't. The limiting factor mostly is natural resources. Which is what the articles author is complaining about. "I am not allowed to use up the last drops of drinking water California still has! SOCIALISM!".
And the other limiting factor is knowledge/education. Your region has been known for 100 years to be highly skilled at building $THING? That knowledge is still there and has not fully retired? That's also a resource.
"High labor cost" is a smoke screen. We are not talking about acquiring from a pool of lazy dancing monkeys. The labor you need are for tasks that machines can not yet do. Those jobs are either really shitty, or need a lot of qualification.
Due to this: If you want to build a factory in an area where there aren't already similar factories, you first need to build a University and come back 25 years later.
The articles author should next try to build a business based on offering camel riding in Greenland. Camel riding? Banned in Greenland!!!1
Nobody (OK, maybe a few very special people) is saying that COVID was a hoax. What is true - and one wasn't allowed to say - was that the measures intended to prevent COVID weren't very effective and did more harm than good.
Ah yes you say, another psycho. He probably eats ivermectin for breakfast and chases it with bleach. But I ask you, after a chlorinated burp: how come Africa didn't die out? Why was the death rate pretty much the same in Florida and California? Did the EU really need to buy enough vaccine for ten-plus years?
> What is true - and one wasn't allowed to say - was that the measures intended to prevent COVID weren't very effective and did more harm than good.
But yet here you are saying it. Whether it's true or not probably requires a great deal of analysis, but your self-applied "psycho" label may be accurate enough if you've managed to apply lots of cognitive biases to end up with your "truth".
I'd agree the governments overreacted in many sense, but a non BoJo/Trump-government has a duty to be overcautious rather than a flippant attitude of "So what, x% dead is acceptable". Some other rules are based on dumb science: two meters distance from each other is probably a joke, a compromise between "keep everyone at home!" (what China did when there was a breakout) and a "Keep going to the pubs!", my own theory is that if you could smell someone's cigarette smoke from 2 meters away, virus particles being exhaled from their lungs would reach you too. Later we figured out getting the virus from surfaces is very unlikely, but people were still wiping surfaces down anyway...
Because it's an airborne virus and Africa isn't 1) as connected with the world to begin with and 2) as closely concentrated as urban areas. That's before really looking into Africa's response compared to other countries.
>Why was the death rate pretty much the same in Florida and California?
Because we didn't isolate fast enough between Trump trying to claim it being a hoax early on and desperate political attempts to keep "essential workers" running business. The locality doesn't matter for an airorne virus; just that people continue to go outside and not develop herd immunity.
>Did the EU really need to buy enough vaccine for ten-plus years?
I don't have a crystal ball into 2030. But yes, people still can catch COVID in 2026. Buying only enough for 2020-2022 would be reckless.
Everyone knows someone who worked for years on a project only for it to go nowhere. Pour years into a business that failed. Spend years getting a degree that was useless. Effort might be a part of many people's success stories, but it's not the thing that literally gets rewarded. And conversely, many people get rewarded for things that require relatively little effort.
I suppose I should have said that the correlation between effort and reward has never been 1.0 and has often been a lot lower than we like to believe.
Before you downvote (OK, you can downvote first, I don't particularly care) - go look up what folks in Hungarian parts of Ukraine do to army recruiters.
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