This isn't a good idea regardless of why it's being deprecated.
If it's no longer being maintained then put a depreciation warning and let it break on its own. Changing a deprecated feature just means you could maintain it but don't want to.
Alternatively if you want to aggressively push people to migrate to the new version, have a clear development roadmap and force a hard error at the end of the depreciation window so you know in advance how long you can expect it to work and can document your code accordingly.
This wishy-washy half-broken behaviour doesn't help anyone
Western employment has survived because automating and outsourcing labour has pushed people to take up knowledge/services work.
If AI is somewhat successful at automating knowledge work, what feasible job could exist that doesn't require your mind or body?
Services like healthcare and plumbing aren't going away of course, but there's not enough demand to support an economy on those jobs.
In my opinion the whole economy needs a rethink regarding what our actual goals are as a society, and maybe AI will force that conversation to happen, but I'm sceptical if it'll be a well-considered consensus.
> If AI is somewhat successful at automating knowledge work, what feasible job could exist that doesn't require your mind or body?
Very few office jobs in bigcos, but it does mean that you'll not need as much capital as before to start a business and compete with existing incumbents.
In a world where AI automates jobs, arguably any business services you could offer would likely have no customers because those potential customers can automate the services you offer themselves just like AI automates the employment skills employees offer. Not sure why people keep bringing up entrepreneurship as if that couldn't be automated.
> In a world where AI automates jobs, arguably any business services you could offer would likely have no customers because those potential customers can automate the services you offer themselves just like AI automates the employment skills employees offer
Take the POS market for example. It's relatively trivial to setup your POS system in dbase/foxpro/MS-access. Yet almost every shop uses lightspeed/toast/square because they don't want to take on the additional burden of maintaining it and want support. They also hire web developers/designers to make their website even though framer/square space are super easy to use.
With AI I think what's happening is that more competitors are challenging these incumbents leading to downward pressure on pricing. Which is great for customers!
> Not sure why people keep bringing up entrepreneurship as if that couldn't be automated.
Ah, how would you automate entrepreneurship? This isn't the matrix where AI will suddenly wake up one day and start an entrepreneurship journey.
> With AI I think what's happening is that more competitors are challenging these incumbents leading to downward pressure on pricing. Which is great for customers!
If AI automates jobs, POS system vendor is using an AI to run the business. You can do that yourself and remove the middle man.
re: "Ah, how would you automate entrepreneurship?"
I meant that every non-physical business need that would be filled by a local business can now be filled by the same AI you have already use to automate half the jobs away.
There is this fantasy where employers can replace workers with AI but businesses cannot replace their software vendors with AI
There are plenty of non-US index funds, like EU, UK, Japan and others. There are also indices that track smaller companies rather than just the S&P500 or Nasdaq.
Or diversify in both directions - small US, and big and small international funds.
This is often made worse as a result of hiring outside consultants. Firstly they don't have the institutional knowledge you have when starting a project, but they also aren't incentivised to properly document and hand over their knowledge at the end since that means less future work.
This is why a lot of government projects take so long, they don't see the value in keeping an in-house team of trained experts (see the difference in train line contruction costs in the UK compared to Spain), until you realised how good they were but you can't hire them back.
Back when Anderson Consulting hadn't yet disgraced itself, a corp I worked for hired them for a cost-cutting project. "Find ways we can cut costs."
Blew my mind that 22-year olds, fresh out of good-brand universities (their "qualification"), were doing the research on how to cost-cut. Chesterton's fences all over the place were violated. It was sad watching the slow-moving disaster.
That’s a great point. In my city, they started paving side streets with with in-house staff. They have dedicated funded budget, government can borrow cheaply, and they don’t need to price risk and margin.
Over 5 years, they spend 30-40% less depending on utilization of equipment. (We had a two slow years due to pandemic and weather)
For the work that’s funded by state aid or grants, they use contractors as its a variable workload.
I am currently on a team of consultants. Ironically, most of us have more institutional knowledge than the client due to internal churn. Seems like every few years they try to cut our utilization in favor of some off-shore company that's "cheaper", the project blows up, then we have to jump in and save some middle manager's job.
Except it's getting so difficult to find the companies producing the more durable alternative, so everyone is forced to buy the flimsy piece that falls apart
It is not that hard, if you do the minimum effort to educate yourself. For example 20 years ago I struggled to find motorcycle gear in Eastern Europe, it was very hard and stuff was extremely expensive for the salaries in this region. I bought initially cheap stuff that broke fast, then the next generation I knew what to buy and I have now equipment that is over 10 years old that I am using with great pleasure. It is similar in most cases I have to buy something, but it takes some effort to look for options.
Assuming the rides are comparable, the article has a table which includes price/km (weird) of Lyft: $7.99, Uber: $8.36, and Waymo: $11.22. On that data, Waymo is roughly 40% higher, so way more than just a tip.
in my limited experience, you're not usually tipping a percent but a flat dollar amount of like $2-5 per ride, so $3 on an $8 ride basically removes the price difference between lyft/uber and waymo
> The flipside of removing them is you now need to hire experts/specialists to do the work properly, not fire them...
Except that currently hired experts/specialists who don't argue correctly what their purpose is, are fired by Musk. The hole left is then to be filled up by external consultancy.
> Consulting companies destroy valuable institutional knowledge and make the government less effective
Can you explain?
Because the entire idea is that they bring knowledge to the institution that hires them, and proposes/implements processes to make government more effective.
If a department needs full-time experts in an area for decades, they generally hire them. But very often, a department needs to make a complicated decision in an area that is not its core competency, and after the decision is made and implemented it doesn't need those experts anymore. Their job is done. That's where consulting shines.
Institutional knowledge stays in the institution and builds up after people have moved from those roles even.
Consulting companies bring the operational knowledge to help with a specific situation.
Sometimes you may need the institutional knowledge (if it aligns with the mission of the organisation) and sometimes it is better to concentrate on your mission and use the consultancy's knowledge to help you.
Blanket statements are problematic. Particularly for something as complex of the goverment as a whole.
That is the idea and that is not what happens. Management consulting companies like this are the literal analog of pharmacy companies not wanting to cure anything because then you lose business. If you spend more than a few days working with them you realize that they promote people who find and make long-term revenue streams, not anyone who solves or actually helps anything.
The actual people who do work are generally clueless recent grads on their first job, are trained to produce just enough to pass what is being sold, and they leave (or move up to selling) when they understand the game they have been playing.
The only palpable defense of hiring them, as a practice, lies in the fact that they are big entities and there's implied trust. In my view reality has shown time and time again that big companies are a liability to individuals and other larger structures.
"And in May 2022, New York City stopped using McKinsey’s system for classifying detainees. In the end, the city spent $27.5 million on McKinsey’s services, with precious little to show for it. McKinsey, on the other hand, collected its money and moved right along."
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/mckinsey-whistlebl...
For those bored, wikipedia pages are a good starting point. I would be surprised if there were many, out of the top 100 consulting companies, that didn't have a controversies (or similar) section on their wiki page.
That's the shiny picture. The reality is that they let outsource risk and competence, turning the business into an empty shell of a former valuable self.
> Because the entire idea is that they bring knowledge to the institution that hires them, and proposes/implements processes to make government more effective.
No. That's the idea they sell.
What they bring is a cohort of interchangeable recent graduates, with flashy powerpoint presentations, fast talk, and "multidisciplinary skills". Which you can charitably translate to "no relevant knowledge".
They showed how easy it is to churn out consultant-level reports.
The bar will be raised for consultants now, and only those who can actually bring unique contextually relevant and sound insights will survive. Such consultants exist, but are rare.
Institutions can become caught in a trap of paying high prices for consultants and low/no prices for internal experts. Obviously, consultants are incentivized to cultivate this codependency. In many cases, the institution would be better served by building expert capabilities in the domains they care about rather than using consultants.
You can buy knowledge in all sorts of form, from books to consultation hours, but the most efficient when applying this knowledge to a task is still a human being. A consulting company might not even guarantee you that the same person will be sent to you for the whole time of the project.
It's cheaper and more profitable to make thing out of plastic rather than something more durable/sustainable, and companies lobby against strong environmental regulations so they don't need to care about improving.
This is the reason I chose to go with AMD's 7000 series for my 2022 build.
I wasn't aware of Intel's limitation when I built my first computer in 2016 so when I wanted to upgrade a few years later I wasn't expecting to need a new motherboard since it still had everything I needed - it felt so wasteful!
Instead I just waited for AM5 based on the longevity for AM4.I'm really hoping AMD support AM5 for a few more generations so I can do the same as you in 2026/7
If it's no longer being maintained then put a depreciation warning and let it break on its own. Changing a deprecated feature just means you could maintain it but don't want to.
Alternatively if you want to aggressively push people to migrate to the new version, have a clear development roadmap and force a hard error at the end of the depreciation window so you know in advance how long you can expect it to work and can document your code accordingly.
This wishy-washy half-broken behaviour doesn't help anyone