Not everything in the world can be measured by pay.

Sure, an FBI Criminal Profiler earns a tiny fraction of what a google dev earns. But one can take serial killers off the street, and the other just makes ads more annoying.

A Social Worker earns almost nothing, but they get to help the most needy of people get the help they need. A FB engineer earns 10x the pay, but just makes ads more annoying.

A teacher earns almost nothing, but they get to teach the next generation of society. An Amazon engineer earns 10x the pay, but just finds ways to sell you more stuff you don't need.

No one goes into government work b/c the pay, they do it for reasons they find more important.

Not to mention the fact that the government is one of the only funding sources for blue-sky research nowadays. Pretty much the only surviving research institutions that rival Bell Labs are the national laboratories. Getting to work with insanely bright people at the frontiers of your field (without the funding problems of academia) should be considered a benefit on its own. Also, many of the national labs pay quite well. They don’t use the USG pay scale which is a misconception I see very often in these discussions.

This is so true, but it's also an issue. If you can't make a living in government, then you're more likely to leave or turn to rent-seeking opportunities (i.e. becoming a lobbyist after a few years working on Capitol Hill). I worked in public policy for years but had 5 roommates even 5 years in and was saving zero money. In order to build a stable future for myself, I had to leave government. If I could've stayed working on the issues I was passionate about and been able to buy a house or start a family, then I may have stayed. But I couldn't do that, so I left...

I completely agree. Just the headline I didn't agree with. Universities for teaching, social work, fbi profilers will never be as prestigious as those where you can get trained to earn millions.

Except that isn't explicitly true. West point and the navel academy are some of the most prestigious universities in the entire country.

The fundamental difference between these things lies in the fact that a lot of government work comes with higher levels of responsibility and ownership in terms of the way in which you want to do your job.

There's tremendous demand to join things like the US foreign service officer program because as these people move though their career, there's basically an unwritten promise that they will have a legitimate impact on US state department policy for the countries they work in. Something that will only really ever be true in the world of government enterprise software work if you're the PM.

"The common good" is something that is easily lost on the vast majority of people in tech, it seems.

I'm not surprised. If you grow up as a computer nerd all your life with few recognizable achievements, and suddenly a Big Tech company dangles in front of you $100k or more, very few people can say no, especially if you also grew up from a relatively poor background.

Sadly it makes it harder to find a job as a software engineer in which I can work for a company or in a position making a positive impact on the world (as amorphous as that may sound).

Any interaction that I've had with a recruiter when considering looking.

Me: "I'm not interested in working on ad tech or a bank, etc. I'm interested in privacy companies, green technology, conservation, etc."

Recruiter: "I have a job with Investment Bank X that I think may be interested in."

Can I interest you in a React / Typescript role for Rent Seeking 2.0?

The Culture of Narcissism by Lasch or Democracy in America by de Tocqueville might be of interest to you.

Only if you assume that "the common good" in this country isn't a mirage (which tech workers are more likely to see, IMHO).

That phrase is roughly equivalent to how large corporations thank "essential workers" during the pandemic. It's marketing. It's an excuse to underpay and leave workers without sufficient support.

and most important of all: it created a new group of rent-seekers from scratch. well done!

Not sure what you are saying.

well, did adtech change the available income or why is it that it's so much bigger than the old way of doing advertisement?

I think the only point, why you are seeing this "growth" is that you have an oligopolic structure which is just skimming money (mainly to the benefit of the 0.1 percenters) without creating any additional value compared to the traditional way of doing advertising? Or how again are you increasing available income with your smokescreen of targeted ads?

EDIT: actually I think wikipedia captured it perfectly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking - and no, financing some productive webbusiness (which there are?) with a minuscule fraction of the ad money or following personal spleens of the founders/crazy people is not altering the outcome.

Plenty of (say, gaming, entertainment etc) companies in developing countries employed plenty of people due to advertising revenue, which would otherwise not be viable.

Google display ads takes a fraction of revenue and passes the rest to publishers. Same with audience network.

Digital advertising lowered the barrier significantly to making profit for lots of digital businesses. It enabled lots of physical businesses to get recognition and discovery in one way or the other.

Not sure why this is not clear, but happy to discuss more.

Why not pay them directly in a functioning economy, if its worth it? Why do you need to skim from random (!) other ventures to finance this kind of business?

I'm also not sure, if I understand this correctly, but 32% (or 1 third) seems like quite a big "cut" for any service to me - but apparently ratios changed with the internet which allows placing these ads at such a low cost :) https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en

So, do these "digital businesses" create anything, or just skim money? Just because you've built a network of rent-seekers, this doesn't really change the concept.

Also could you explain how physical businesses actually benefit from the "new kind of ads" in a more concise way compared to the weasel-wording "one way or the other" - is more product sold because of ads in a certain area (doubtful, because ads won't change available income), does the percentage of advertising spend go down, when all business go "online" (doubtful as well, or how can you generate growth beyond the growth of the economy, which is the declared target of most adtechy-enterprises?!). So this is frankly neither clear to me nor apparently to you (nor anybody else I suppose), but these are the hard questions society has to answer, before accepting "adtech" as a productive sector of the economy.

The US army also employs hundreds of thousands. Does that mean it's good to pump so much money into it and keep it that strong?

Depends on who you ask. The general us population owes its army their way of life, quality of life, and wealth.

>quality of life, and wealth.

Can you elaborate more on how invasion of Iraq helped in increasing quality of life for an average citizen?

Try not to pick on specific instances for the sake of argument. US military power and it's geopolitical position, combined with a bunch of other things made dollar the reserve currency. Fed is printing money yet there is no inflation except asset inflation. Noone can threaten us military, hence we will be for foreseeable future the country people will pour money on.

Surveillance capitalism was only impactful because there is no way to pay small amounts of money to view a digital good. No one is going to applaud you or your employer for setting up the greatest invasion of privacy the world has ever known.

I would go so far to say you have harmed the business models of tons and tons of apps by setting up an expectation that apps should be "free".

Disclaimer: Former Google employee.

Yet there are still lots of people who work for various government and quasi-judicial organizations, and the military. Two big selling points:

(1) you will likely get lots of resources to do things that your typical private sector organization doesn't prioritize, like longer term research.

(2) Nobody thinks a job != your career anymore; you could start out with a few years in government service and get education & experience on their dime, then move into the private sector. As more opportunities to get started get harder to find or aquire, this will be a huge motivator.

You know that Silicon Valley was originally created as a government project? Government sponsored research and enterprises.

I don't think this is in conflict with the GP's point.