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Give people cheap stuff, pretend to be one of them and they won't question anything you do. Seem like he invented the modern tech company decades early.


The minimum in the EU is 4 weeks, with many countries having 5 weeks. On top of that most countries have ~10 paid public holidays. So the real span is 30-35 days. If you work a government job or get older it is usually an additional 5 days. So at least in northern Europe people usually take four continuous weeks in the summer, one week at Christmas, one week for winter activities and maybe two additional long weekends. Sick leave is separate and not earned like vacation days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...


What does that have to do with anything? The US has cheaper and better food than most of the world. If anything the health problems in the US comes from people eating whatever they want rather than staple foods and vegetables.


That was probably around the time when SV was trying to justify its existence with arguing that it could also do 'hard science'. The hype around Theranos maybe being the most prominent example.

I don't think the Grab is innovative either, but it is just as innovative as the majority of popular things coming out of SV in the last decade. I think a lot of the skepticism has to do with it being in Asia, outside the reality distortion field of SV.


There are plenty of ordinary people that e.g. prefer one religion to other or believe in traditional gender roles. Some of those people believe they should be able to express those opinions in the same way people express opinions about diversity or equality regardless if other people considered those opinions e.g. sexist. I happen to disagree with those people, but I wouldn't consider their opinions less serious.


So you wouldn't consider an opinion 'less serious' if the opinion is that directness and honesty is identical to saying racist, sexist, and homophobic things? Because that's what we're talking about, and I would absolutely write that off as 100% nonsense. Just because someone believes in something doesn't mean it's not stupid.


Scandinavia is great if you are rich. Sweden for instance would be a great choice for anyone with a trust fund. You would have to pay almost no taxes and still get all the services. It is becoming rich that is hard. Though you could argue that a lot more people get the chance. The problem is that it has also become increasingly hard to be frugal. Especially when it comes to cost of housing, but also the cost of a good quality of life in general.


> "At physical education they said it would be really difficult." . That should be a physics education, not? And that preposition is weird. Perhaps "Regarding a physics education, they .."

Yes, but it's more that they are saying it about themselves. The meaning is basically the same as the previous sentence just expressed differently i.e. "People at the music school emphasized how easy it would be for me. People at the physics school said it would be really difficult".

> Is it for specialists to operate, or is it unusual equipment?

Unusual equipment.

> "How does a computer do when it's going to search for something like when you googlar?" - Perhaps it's supposed to be "What does a computer do when it's going to search for something, like when you use Google?"

"Googlar" is "(to) google" or maybe "googleing" with Swedish conjugation.

> "there would be a total of seven bands" - What is "bands"? Volumes?

Yes, in Swedish you can say "band" referring to the "band" of the book i.e. the binding. The meaning is volume.

> "and stands in a fantastic hall" - The word "stands" sounds odd.

I guess "sits" is more common in English.


There are of course other ways to see things e.g. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/sweden-social-democracy-m...


> If a time comes where a good dev cannot choose where they work and basically negotiate their own terms [...] then unionization may be warranted.

When that time comes it will very likely be too late to effectively organize. It might already be.


It's definitely too late on a national scale (not limited to this industry). Labor has been utterly and totally decimated


The software industry has few required degrees, certifications or titles. There is no rigid career path or unions forcing companies to retain people they have had influence over for a long time. This is great for people starting out, but like everything else there is no free lunch. It is entirely possible, even likely, to navigate this wrongly.

General experience doesn't mean much since there are few standards. Ones experience would generally be used to take more responsibility, do more important things or in other ways advance ones career. Not as some measurement of quality, since that would be very subjective.

In a changing industry it would even be expected that when things change a certain amount of people won't last, because they get squeezed out between new people coming up and old people already specialized.

So while surely part of the industry focuses to much on youth I think people jump the conclusion that it is widespread too quickly.


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