If only one company offers jobs in your profession or skill set, that company has a labor monopsony. Back when companies provided lifetime job security and pensions, moving to a remote corporate campus might have been a reasonable tradeoff to consider -- your reduced negotiating leverage would depress your wages but that might have been offset by the lower cost of living (e.g. housing).
But modern skilled workers know how risky it is to put down roots in a place where they only have a couple employment options. So companies struggle to attract talent to remote areas and end up needing to hire in places that already have an established pool of skilled labor, which is typically in the cities and more affluent areas of the state or country.
In this case, the lack of employment options means many of the engineers laid off by Intel will end up needing to uproot their families' lives and move to a new city or state to find a new employer who can to pay for their skills.
Can someone help me understand when this bifurcation happened. As a Mechanical Enginneer who worked their way through college doing software, and then... just kept going for the next 30 years, I find this increasingly role based demarcation difficult to understand/accept. I came out of an era where we called ourselves engineers, but we were designers too. And a whole lot of other things. And the mantra regardless of label, was to solve the right problem for the right people.
I feel like software creation in this decade is increasingly about the creation of beauracracies. Different roles. Different processes. More people than ever before. Everyone vying that their contribution is essential, and that others need to stay in their lanes. I miss the old days honestly. I told myself I would not be like this as I aged. I'm struggling to execute on that hope. :|
I often call them the D's of organizations. Doers, Deciders, Discussers. We seem to have less and less respect for the plight of the Doer, and more and more desire to legitimize the others in disproportionate amounts. Pournelle's Law I guess.
> Can someone help me understand when this bifurcation happened
The distinction is as old as art and design. If I had to pick modern moments that articulated it well I'd go with Arts and Crafts followed by Bauhaus.
> solve the right problem for the right people
Solving problems is the core of design and a design can be evaluated on the basis of how well it solves a problem. Whereas art is free to simply exist. Many works have elements of both, but if you hire someone to solve a problem and they believe their job is to make art then you'll both be disappointed.
I'm unsure what motivated the rest of your post though I can feel your frustration. I will say that bureaucracies and processes have been around for centuries, they just shift language every decade or so. There has also always been a tension between the people who Do and the people who Decide but both are necessary for a functional organization.
But doing away with that crap was what drew lots of old skool coders in in the first place. Myself included. Now I need 10x the resources to do anything compared to my Delphi 6 and PHP 3 days. It sucks.
Similar to software developers, there's a difference between meeting a user need with with established patterns and exploring novel ones.
The vast majority of consumer and enterprise products ought to be done with established design patterns. Figma is fine for this.
Whereas exploratory design is about coming up with novel patterns. Most of this work ends up being interesting but not particularly practical, and even when someone comes up with something great it's often not yet clear how and where it should be applied. In my experience only a few companies actually pull this off and the rest would be better off following existing conventions. Also in my experience, people who do exploratory design have a wider skillset and use a much broader and more flexible set of tools like pen and paper, physical prototypes, 3d modeling, computer graphics, video production, software development, etc.
The challenge has been that many designers are hired for the former but would prefer to do the latter.
I agree with many of your statements but draw the opposite conclusion.
HTML and CSS are expressive, have a vast selection of libraries and tools, and can actually result in shippable code. Designers and front-end devs should learn and use it.
But I don't see the point in creating a design tool unless it's meaningfully simpler than HTML/CSS. I reach for Figma when I need to quickly mock up a dozen iterations using our design system and fancy rectangles. It's fast enough that I can make mockups in realtime during discussions with developers and subject matter experts. But if I'm actually going to take the time to set constraints to make things flex properly or make a real table then why not use HTML and CSS directly?
Because I can do way more meaningful design exploration and iteration if I am not constantly running into a tool's limitations. I work at a fast paced startup where my prototyping rapidly iterates into production and the vast majority of developers I have ever worked with don't really know CSS. If I want to implement something actually complex in layout it would be SO MUCH FASTER if I could show the devs how to do it in CSS correctly in the design tool. AND it would let me better test and explore how the complex layout interacts with real data and real users. Figma prototypes are terrible.
Figma is a great tool for 90% of basic and boring design. A lot of product design is not just basic and boring, and a lot of stuff I need simply cannot be reproduced in Figma. So yes I do just write the code directly, but that doesn't let me explore those complicated layouts and iterate on them visually the same way I could if it was HTML/CSS in a Figma-like design canvas.
Exactly. Though you can learn a lot about an employer by how it has conducted layoffs. Did they cut profits and management salaries and attempt to reassign people first? Did they provide generous payouts to laid off employees?
If the answer to any of these questions is no then they're not worth committing to.
Is it pound foolish, or just a rational business decision?
Let's say they ship 100k laptops per year. Let's say they could meaningfully improve battery life with a team of half-dozen excellent software engineers, which would cost on the order of a few million a year. For the sake of argument, let's say ~$3M/yr. That increases the price per laptop by ~$30 on average. That's a premium I'd pay for improved efficiency, but judging by the comments here and elsewhere, the premium they're already charging above the raw component prices seems to be at the upper end of what most people are willing to pay.
It's fiendishly difficult to become the next Apple, Tesla, Nintendo, or Valve with thick enough margins on your hardware (or services) to afford excellent software engineering teams, so it makes sense that so few hardware companies attempt it, and many who try eventually give up.
It's a much more interesting question when framed with numbers! But let's say they ship 500k main boards (since it doesn't need to be a totally assembled laptop to benefit), and it only costs $300k, not $3 million (and a couple laptops) to the right eastern European software developer to perfectly tune some Linux config files. Then it's only $1.50 per laptop, and they could arguably just eat that cost.
Framework doesn't have to spend enough to be the next Apple (nor do they have the resources to be), they just need to spend enough to not be so desperately far behind Dell.
The explanation makes sense in isolation, it just seems like a local maxima if you zoom out.
Sure, it totally depends on specifics! Only Framework knows how many mainboards they sell per year and can make an educated guess at how many of them end up running Linux.
Also, note that Framework already employs at least one person[1] working full time on Linux compatibility and support, so at least some of the low-hanging fruit may have already been picked. I'm sure they could spend an additional $300k, $3M, $30M, or more on improving Linux efficiency. I can't estimate what the benefit would be at each of those levels, nor do I know what the price impact would be, nor the sales impact. I don't know what they currently spend on Linux support except that it's at least one FTE.
We don't have enough information to answer or even meaningfully estimate most of these questions. I'm not saying they're making good decisions or bad decisions with respect to Linux support, I'm just saying neither of us have enough information to know.
I think almost anyone on earth would pay an extra money per month for Apple level battery life on a modular, repairable, hardware up gradable, Linux box.
Apple at the moment has zero competitors for upscale laptops and this would make System76 the only other alternative for a quality hardware machine.
The rave reviews alone would be free marketing worth well above the money invested in the software engineers.
It would be the default goto box for a modern alternative to Mac much like Lenovo used to be a decade ago before MBA enshittification set in there.
Battery life is the ONE thing preventing myself and many others from pulling the trigger on a System76 and I would gladly pay much more above and beyond a macbook pro for an alternative to a macbook with equivalent battery life but linux.
Plus PopOs is open source so there could be cross pollination with the Linux team on battery life optimization which would reap massive benefits for the Linux ecosystem as a whole and push more people towards Linux.
Something like this would be myself and many other peoples literal dream computers and withing a year or two's time almost any Linux user would be on System76 laptops, guaranteed
> The rave reviews alone would be free marketing worth well above the money invested in the software engineers.
Whether it's worth it depends on how much it costs to improve efficiency, and how many more laptops they need to sell at a higher price to recoup those costs.
For background, the AMD Framework 13's 61Wh battery supposedly gets ~9 hours[1] (~6.8Wh per hour), the System 76 14" Lemur Pro's 73Wh battery claims up to 14h [2] (~5.2Wh per hour), the MacBook Pro M4s 72Wh battery claims up to 22h [3] (~3.3Wh per hour).
I am skeptical anyone can get close to Macbook levels of efficiency without soldering components, designing new chips, and spending close to their ~$31 billion in R&D. But let's say we shoot for 4Wh per hour to get us in the 15-18 hour range.
If you could achieve such an improvement with a couple software folks and you can amortize it over a million laptops that might add less than ten bucks per laptop. That'd be great!
Personally I am skeptical it's anywhere close to that easy, and I'm skeptical that these niche manufacturers are selling a million laptops a year. I think it's much more likely that meaningfully improving efficiency would require making each laptop significantly more expensive.
> would pay an extra money per month for Apple level battery life ... I would gladly pay much more above and beyond a macbook pro
But would you pay an extra several hundred dollars for a Framework or System 76 laptop if other Linux laptops received the same efficiency benefits without needing to increase their costs to cover developer salaries? Apple can afford to spend billions improving efficiency because they can amortize that across many more laptops and because they can capture most of the benefit of their research. (And because for several decades they had loyal customers who paid an extra couple hundred bucks per laptop even when they didn't have better efficiency.)
> Something like this would be myself and many other peoples literal dream computers and withing a year or two's time almost any Linux user would be on System76 laptops, guaranteed
If we're dreaming, why stop there? If System 76 produced a $10 laptop that can be powered by nothing but sunshine they'd take over the world! But realistically, I think the best we're going to get in the foreseeable future is slow, incremental efficiency improvements that lag a generation or two behind Apple.
(A simpler way Framework or S76 could increase battery life to the ~15-19h range would be to bump up to a 99Wh battery which probably costs on the order of a hundred bucks for the larger battery and chassis, though it would also make the laptop thicker and heavier.)
Whats involved in improving the power consumption?
Im not an OS engineer so I have no idea, I was simply going by another commenters estimate which was a few OS developers.
And judging by the amount of times you said you were skeptical instead of giving any sort of meaningful information...
you clearly arent an OS engineer either.
And idealist and a skeptic walk into a bar. The bartender says two shots of disappointment coming up.
Correct, though I do regularly deal with the same class of assumption, where folks suggest that if I just hired a couple people to work on X, Y, or Z that would be well worth the money. The statement seems to come from a place of hope, a belief that there is a simple solution just waiting for someone to point it out, as opposed to something that is very hard or simply impractical.
But it's just not realistic to believe that the only thing preventing a niche laptop manufacturer from matching the battery efficiency of a vertically-integrated product backed by $30+ billion a year in R&D is a couple OS developers. Such a belief can also be demoralizing if every hard-won incremental improvement to Linux power efficiency is judged against such unrealistic expectations.
(I believe that someday we will have lightweight Linux laptops with 22+ hour batteries, but I also believe that by that point Apple will have shifted the goalposts again and people will continue to be dissatisfied.)
I'm curious how much you think an e-reader should cost?
Let's say the BOM for a bargain-bin e-reader is ~$65: e-ink display (~$25), mainboard (~$15), touchscreen and/or buttons (~$7), radios (~$3), battery (~$3), case (~$3), assembly (~$6), packaging (~$3). Forget about a charging cable. Then you've got to iron out the drivers and software, provide support, handle returns (which will be higher if you cheap out on materials) and turn a profit (assuming you're not Amazon). Let's say you charge ~1.5x BOM, now your product is ~$98.
Maybe you "borrow" your software and hardware designs from a competitor. Maybe you're willing to continuously change your company name so you can purchase low-quality parts without having to accept returns. Maybe you ask suppliers for a discount because you just know you're going to have enormous economies of scale and you're somehow more convincing than every other company (that isn't Amazon) asking for the same discount.
You do all of the above so you can sell your new e-reader for the insanely low price of $80. Will you move enough units for all that to be worth it? Are there really that many customers who would buy your $80 no-name e-reader instead of a second-hand Kindle?
6 inch color eink 24$ on alibaba, esp32 c3 cpu 3$ (incl wifi, ble, usbc) case 1$ probably. Assembly in china
3$ (done that), packaging temu style, transport temu style, touch layer I don't know.
BOM for a color eink about 35$ all together for a mass produced quantity of one, delivered anywhere (until tariffs).
Assumed quantity of customers, millions? Its so cheap that governments could give it out to schools, one eink ebook per child, cheaper than one year's worth of school books anyway.
Giving E-ink Corporation most of the profit via that 25$ screen is too much risk to make back on users who actually sign up to your store and buy books vs ones that put the gift in the closet, clearance models, losing to a more popular store, etc.
> too much risk to make back on users who actually sign up to your store and buy books vs ones that put the gift in the closet, clearance models, losing to a more popular store
I definitely agree that selling hardware at cost (or at a loss) in the hopes of turning a profit off of content sales is an extremely risky strategy. Many companies try that approach, few succeed.
But if you price it like a typical consumer product and sell it for ~1.5 * BOM (i.e. ~$50 retail price on $35 BOM) then you don't need anyone to buy books because you can survive off the profit from the hardware alone. And because I believe that a $50 ereader would sell well, I don't know why they are not more common if it really is possible to build and assemble a mass-market ereader with a $35 BOM as the prior poster claimed.
that just pushes the question back a step - why is the BOM not decreasing (in real terms) over time as the components get easier and more efficient to produce?
Well the pricest component is the screen, and that's under patent.
I think rising consumer expectations soak up a lot of that -- you could make the main board and other components a third the price if you're satisfied with mid-2000s specs e.g. 200MB storage, slow page turns, bundled radios, no touchscreen, no PDF support, etc.
At some point the raw materials cost (which generally aren't getting much cheaper) becomes a major factor and that's harder to cut without a new approach.
Eink screen aside, it may be that we're just nearing the limits with current manufacturing approaches and that the next leap requires a wildly different approach.
I published my first papers a little over fifteen years ago on practical applications for AI before switching domains. Recently I've been sucked back in.
I agree it's a problem across all of science, but AI seems to attract more than it's fair share of researchers seeking fame and fortune. Exaggerated claims and cherry-picking data seem even more extreme in my limited experience, and even responsible researchers end up exaggerating a bit to try and compete.
In my experiences, companies can afford to care about good software if they have extreme demands (e.g. military, finance) or amortize over very long timeframes (e.g. privately owned). It's rare for consumer products to fall into either of these categories.
> Why should my tax dollar subsidize for the dominance of US in science?
This is a fair question.
For one thing, the US dominance in science has allowed us to dominate many profitable products and new industries that were derived from that science. I'm not sure I believe the commonly-given estimate that every $1 spent on basic research yields $8-20 in economic return, but I do believe that the return has been positive.
If other countries become the preferred target for the best and the brightest scientists then the US is unlikely to continue to dominate new research-dependent industries as we did for the last ~4 generations.
I don't necessarily think this is bad for the world -- concentrating too much wealth, talent, and power in one country has had corrosive effects. But this decline may ultimately be bad for the average US resident, even if their taxes go down.
> other than funneling billions to arms industry?
As someone who has worked on several military research projects, for better or worse my sense so far is that US military research budgets will be the only ones to come out of this administration largely unscathed.
But modern skilled workers know how risky it is to put down roots in a place where they only have a couple employment options. So companies struggle to attract talent to remote areas and end up needing to hire in places that already have an established pool of skilled labor, which is typically in the cities and more affluent areas of the state or country.
In this case, the lack of employment options means many of the engineers laid off by Intel will end up needing to uproot their families' lives and move to a new city or state to find a new employer who can to pay for their skills.