"To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.
For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/opinion/24friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Incidentally, a whole lot of smart engineers that we have still left in computer science works on stuff that is very much akin to the financial engineering Friendman is writing about - chasing eyeballs, not users, producing Facebook apps that help people waste time rather than being productive...
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> Incidentally, a whole lot of smart engineers that we have still left in computer science works on stuff that is very much akin to the financial engineering Friendman is writing about - chasing eyeballs, not users, producing Facebook apps that help people waste time rather than being productive...
There is no doubt that the eyeball chase is for sake of "exit". But there is also another question - do people become happier when they become more productive?
I mean - does better productivity serve the "pursuit of happiness"?
The more productive the person is, at least here in Israel, and I think in US it is the same, the more slave of his job he becomes.
In Europe it is different - see France as an example.
Sometimes things are so obvious that even Thomas Friedman of "F.U." (Friedman Unit) fame can see them. He had to have his nose rubbed in it, but he finally "got" it.
As for working on core infrastructure rather than eyeballs, that's one reason why I am very happy with my current job and have no intention of leaving it anytime soon. We don't do eye candy, and our users are hopefully going to buy our new product because it saves them money and makes them more productive, not because it looks pretty.
As for people becoming happier when more productive -- I guess it depends on what you mean by "more productive". If some new technology takes over doing some tedious and time-consuming task, thus freeing me up for doing more interesting things, then a) I'm more productive, and b) I'm happier. If, on the other hand, I improve my total productivity (but not my per-hour productivity) by working longer hours, I'm quite unhappy indeed :-(. I assume that pretty much everybody feels this way about having tedious tasks automated so that they no longer have to do them. Or maybe it's just the ADHD in me that makes this true for me?
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