I bet they weren't as valuable as you think. This is a common issue with certain high performing line delivery employees (particularly those with technical skills, programmers, lawyers, accountants, etc), they always think they are carrying the whole team/company on their shoulders. It almost never turns out to be the case. The machine will keep grinding.
It's like half the poster on here live in some parallel universe. I am making real money using generated image/video advertising content for both B2C and B2B goods. I am using Whisper and LLMs to review customer service call logs at scale and identity development opportunities for staff. I am using GPT/Gemini to help write SQL queries and little python scripts to do data analysis on my customer base. My business's productivity is way up since GenAI become accessible.
I recently bought a handheld spectrophotometer for work (color assessment). The product from the leading US company (X-Rite) is ~US$15k in my market. I bought the Chinese equivalent for US$3k. Maybe if I needed guaranteed nine 9s of colour accuracy the US product would be worth it, but for 95% of users in the market, the Chinese product is more than fine.
I have a vague theory that China's massive home market of poorer people keeps the innovation going. There's always an upside for making something 1% cheaper and simpler as more people can buy it.
That gets mocked by rich people in rich countries in the short term but then leads to disruptive innovation from below, cheaper, simpler items growing and eating the market.
I think you are on to something. In the US I feel the focus is more and more on catering to the maybe top 20% who can afford to pay a lot more for things. There are less and less low end cars. Concerts and sports events are super expensive. New apartments are usually in the higher price range. No starter homes anymore. Instead of innovating, we just increase the price of assets.
The internet is basically full of maladjusted people with sad lives. Strong chance that the post you read on HN, Reddit, X, etc is written by someone profoundly unhappy with their lot in life.
Yeah I think when you see that kind of unhinged negativity that's right, sure, it's a projection. But I believe the internet can be really good as well, it's just you have to ignore the stupidity that's visible and sort-of, idk, curate your experience (?) to be good. Seeing and responding to the best possibilities in any situation. :)
And it's not just that those people are more online, they also post a lot more, and don't stop a conversation when they should.
For many years the prevailing notion was that anonymity turns people into dickheads. But they did studies on this, and it turns out it's just that the real-life dickheads just dominate the discussion and the reasonable people post way less
Is that true? Can you post some studies you saw? That's fascinating if true. "The dickheads" post more - because they find an environment to take out their evil desires where they believe there are "no consequences", sounds like it makes sense. But I'd like to see the evidence.
It might have been "The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity" by Jin Woo Kim et al. [1][2]
> People in the EU are super wise. You have a meal with some sort of French person who works in Brussels—it's very impressive. They're cultured, they have wonderful taste, they understand all these different countries, they know something about Chinese porcelain. And if you lived in a world ruled by them, the growth rate would be negative 1%.
Basically my experience too. I've gradually come to the view that meetings are best as a place to communicate decisions/rubber stamp. If I need a particular outcome I will pre meet with the key people to get their input / socialise the decision / etc. And then the meeting just serves as formal approval.
reply