Agreed 100%. Our (informal) manual for consultants used to say something like
"The cupcakes in the break room are not for you. Most people will not care if you take a cupcake, but somebody will, and we will hear about it. We give you money instead, and we will certainly bring you a cupcake if you want one."
FWIW, this isn't the case at Google (or many other large technology companies). Google dictates the staffing agency markup (which is very limited) and audits for compliance.
This, among many other processes, has significant negative impacts on the quality of the agency that will work with Google on this sort of work - but it does help with cost control.
(Source: I ran one of these agencies, and Google was a past client.)
Well, I'm the youngest of our group that got it and I'm 50. The older folks all had arm pain for days. We had a lot of grumpy folks on a video call three days later.
Nocebo effect is proven for vaccines. Even if we inject salted water: many will develop fevers, arm pain, headaches, nausea, ... (because they expect such symptoms). In some cases, as many as 90% of observed side effects are nocebo. i.e. if 100 people get the real vaccine and 100 people get salted water, 10 will get side effects on the first group, 9 will get the same side effects on the control group.
Based on the most active thread here, I think this article has accomplished its goal, which is to lead (smart) casual readers to believe that the congestion and associated delay are due to increased exports to the US because of the predicted increase in consumer spending. (This is a trade publication that wants advertisers for people who want to buy more freight! Demand is a great reason why!)
In reality, I'm almost 100% sure that the real reason for the congestion is referred to in the one sentence from Hapag-Lloyd - which is that port workers in SoCal have been decimated by COVID. The massive spike of COVID cases in Los Angeles County that started ~11/1 and really hit hard by 12/1 (discussed many places), which has disproportionally impacted both POCs and workers in heavy-labor industries, is certainly impacting the supply of workers to offload and process. I've heard this anecdotally from two friends who run freight forwarding companies in SoCal.
It's also worth noting that the logic around shipping ahead to predict a generic increase in consumer spending doesn't play out. Planning for a single date (Halloween costumes, Christmas toys) - of course, ship it as close to the deadline as you can, but don't f'ing miss it. But for a rolling, undated, potential increase in spending? In a world of relatively fast manufacturing, ~4 weeks to get your items from the Shenzhen terminal to offloaded in Long Beach, and with storage costs being exponentially higher in the US than in China - it makes zero sense for what will be a diffuse wave (optimistically!) of consumer spending. No major manufacturer/retailer produces that far ahead of unproven demand, and no smaller one can afford to do it (and it's not like you can get money for this).
This is a staffing shortage, pure and simple. It's not going to get better for a while.
[Added 30min later]
BTW, I didn't see this before I posted, but Ryan Petersen (CEO of Flexport) shared on Twitter today
"Yesterday there were 800 COVID-19 cases amongst the 9,000 ILWU employees who run the port of LA / Long Beach. And there was already a backlog of 29 container ships waiting to unload in the port."
Used to bother me too, as a mathematician. Then I learned about linguistics. If enough people use words a certain way, then it's vernacular. Sadly, I think this usage is long accepted.
"x more than y" means "y + x" - a sum. "x% more than y" means "y + x% = y + y×(x÷100)" and "x% less than y" means "y - x% = y - y×(x÷100)".
To me, "x times more than y" means the same as "x times as much as y" only "y×x" and "x times less than y" means "y÷x". I guess this might seem ambiguous if you bracket the expression like "x times (more than) y", but in practice it's bracketed like "x (times more than) y".
My go-to example is "awful". The original meaning is literally to be full of awe. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a speaker today that adheres to that meaning over simply meaning "very bad", which is almost an antonym.
Languages change and are influenced by their use, so you need to pick your battles. If something can be unambiguously understood then you're going to be fighting an uphill battle and it's only a matter of time
It used to bother me too, and some usage still bothers the hell out of me, but there’s a way "exponentially large" works fine.
An exponential change is a change on a log scale. Instead of current+d it’s exp[current+d]. So exponential change makes sense. “Exponentially higher” means on a log scale it’s higher enough to be worth commenting on. It’s mathematically correctly synonymous with an order(s) of magnitude change.
Of course, that gets you into the debate over what exponent or log base to use. Is 2x an order of magnitude increase? 1.1x? 10x? It’s all fuzzy.
And then there are people who just use it as “hella” and that still drives me nuts. “It increased by 10% but that matters so much to me that 10% is exponentially larger!” That kind of usage seems to be catching on too as “exponentially” further enters the lexicon of people who don’t remember what an exponent is. I’ll fight that one forever.
The "exponential" is possibly referring the `n` in scientific notation `×10ⁿ`. IE, it's referring to being larger on a logarithmic rather than linear scale.
I am on board (badum-psh!) with diffuse causality for massive and complex systems like "retail-level" (or consumer-level) import/export trade, but your point would be more persuasive with a trailhead of links demonstrating to what degree this is affecting the outcome. Because it's true that American consumers spent more during this past holiday season than ever before, with CNBC quoting the National Retail Federation (retail trade group) as saying a driver of increased buying was that people aren't spending on travel, entertainment, and services. [0] Also, unemployment has gone down significantly from those crazy levels from last spring. [1] It also appears the port itself said in late November that there was an increase of 22% in container traffic to the port. [2] However the LA Times makes the same claim that you are making, but without citing any source. Edit to add two things: Interesting to note the LA Times also implied that the federal government might be investigating some potential shenanigans around empty container availability. [3] Also, any idea where the tweet you posted is getting those numbers?
Didn’t you read the article? COVID is definitely part of the equation and listed as a cause under “Congestion cause”.
“Terminals are working with limited labor and split shifts,” it said, asserting that this is related to COVID. “This labor shortage affects all terminals’ TAT [turnaround time] for truckers, inter-terminal transfers and the number of daily appointments available for gate transactions and delays our vessel operations.”
I didn't assert that COVID wasn't part of the equation, and it's nicer for everybody if we don't assume somebody hasn't read an article (though I agree it's a natural thing to wonder sometimes).
I walked away from the article thinking exactly that it was a reduced work capacity thanks to COVID, it's said as such in the article. Perhaps I skimmed some of the more leading paragraphs, but my takaway was the cause was decreased capacity at the ports.
I did a tour once and its basically people sitting in a control room running robots remotely. One of the first places where they used self driving cars as early as the 90s. And its all run very efficiently, they plan up to the hour when ships arrive and leave.
It's answered (I believe) right below the chart: "Importantly, the data does not solely include TEUs arriving in a particular week. It also includes TEUs arriving in prior weeks that the port expects to handle in the stated week."
In other words, it includes the backlog that's building up. "Expects to handle" isn't the same as "can handle." That's going to go up until the backlog is cleared.
(There is data that could prove me right or wrong, but the article doesn't provide it.)
False. Getting a container in China is very difficult right now and around 2-3x the normal cost. Supply chain constraints are stretched way past just the local ports.
> which has disproportionally impacted both POCs and workers in heavy-labor industries
What does POC mean in this context? I come from software engineering and in my world it is an acronym for proof of concept, but it looks like it's about something entirely different here.
> port workers in SoCal have been decimated by COVID
The general narrative seems to be that unless you're older and/or obese, Covid doesn't usually affect you much (yes there are outliers). I would imagine the port workers to be physically fit - is this a misconception?
I don't know about the rules in California, but in most places you're not supposed to go back to work for at least a week if you've tested positive regardless of your symptoms. This is to prevent further spread, of course.
It's quite likely that most of the workers in question aren't worse off than with a "normal" flu, but they're still going to be away from work for a while.
Someone defined the difference as "if you think you're going to die, and feel that dying might be better than staying sick - then you have the flu. Otherwise you have a cold.".
I don't think these people can afford to take that week off. Most of these people are paid by the hour. If you aren't working, you aren't making money to pay bills and get groceries.
I am making some assumptions here, but I would venture to guess a lot of these people just fake it and grind through it just to stay employed.
I had it mildly (as in I didn't feel in mortal danger) early on, and it completely knocked me out for over a week. I'm a software developer and couldn't even have considered getting out of bed and working for the majority of that time, there's no way in hell someone who does actual labour for a living is going to manage it.
Not to mention what's called "long covid" - basically even if you are an athlete, you risk lung damage to an extent even a life of chain smoking can't achieve, and there have been reports of coronavirus passing the blood-brain barrier and damaging the central nerve system.
Coronavirus has many, many, MANY ways of affecting a person for decades to come, and we're learning more about it every day.
Edit: since I'm getting downvoted, I assume this comes from people who want sources, so here they are:
It's not yet clear that covid can result in lung damage more severe than a life of chain smoking, this kind of long term research hasn't been done yet.
Is the answer to ignore anecdotes until long term data has been done? Sometimes science doesn't have the needed solution quickly enough to minimize damage. Being overly cautious in times of uncertainty has always been a human risk minimalization technique, might as well wield it, in moderation of course.
Can you restate your point in non programmer jargon? The downside is chronic health problems, the upside is minimal. Theres not much unwise about waiting for more info and staying cautious.
Not really sure if either can cause more severe lung damage then they do. The worst case end scenarios of both are your lungs being so damaged that it kills you. Hard to make it worse than that.
Though one manages it in a few weeks while the other takes decades.
There are multiple reports of extremely damaged post-COVID lungs already, see my edit. Of course, the amount of these cases is low - but even if it turns out to be one in a million cases, I'd never gamble on these odds.
Generally the rules are that if you have COVID you stay home to avoid transmitting it to other people (who may be more vulnerable or who may themselves transmit it)
A bike is like a car. It has wheels and you ride it from point A to B.
> While the true mortality of COVID-19 will take some time to fully understand, the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4%, the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower. For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%. However, mortality is to a large extent determined by access to and quality of health care.
> While the range of symptoms for the two viruses is similar, the fraction with severe disease appears to be different. For COVID-19, data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation. These fractions of severe and critical infection would be higher than what is observed for influenza infection.
And aside from that, a large problem with covid-19 is the DDoS on the health care system stemming from the severe infection rates, which can create large second order effects.
Almost 0.1% of the US population has died from COVID so far, coupled with changes in total capacity due to COVID restrictions and changes to how workplaces operate, it's a lot more impactful than a flu wave to business operations.
I feel you are being willfully ignorant, and I have to suggest you look into the severity of COVID and the statistics so far. It's been going on for over a year now, the information is out there.
Check excess mortality for 2020: ourworldindata.org doesn't have the figures for Dec yet, but we'll end up with something close to 440k additional deaths compared to the average 2015-19.
So 0.1% probably is the correct order of magnitude.
If anything, it’s an underestimate. Regular flu deaths are way down for 2020 (masks and social distancing work!), but are included at their normal rate in the baseline for excess mortality.
Same applies at smaller scale for other factors in baseline mortality, like traffic deaths and industrial accidents, that have also been suppressed by policy and behavior changes due to the pandemic.
Massive spike doesn't mean anything. Most importantly, how many are actually sick.
The solution are obvious, do not test people with asymptomatic/mild symptoms. A lot of people are forced to stay at home simply because positive test, even though they are not sick or already recovered from sick.
Sure, some may say they can still infect other but the chance a low and even if they infected other, doesn't mean that the other people become sick too.
Sure, if it compared to other diseases like influenza it maybe higher but in general both are still low number and then you still have to multiply that probability of getting positive on test with probability of becoming actually stick, which is another low number.
Boy. As someone who actually runs a contracting + project agency, that looks to be of an approximately similar size as 10x (at least before this was published), this was lifting-cars-painful to read - not just because they have PR and I don't, but because they (Solomon and Blumberg) _are the inefficiencies they are pretending to eliminate_.
Let's take a few parts of the article:
>>"The three partners have separate roles. Blumberg handles his and Solomon’s eleven remaining music and entertainment clients, and takes care of back-office matters: “Accounting, invoicing, collection, payouts. Everything that’s the bane of most people’s existence.” Guvench vets new talent. Potential clients have to fill out a questionnaire that one programmer compared to “the most complicated dating Web site ever.” Then Guvench and Solomon conduct interviews, to screen for communication skills. (I heard one potential client say, during a meeting in Solomon’s office, “We don’t want people who just write code and drool.”) Guvench also does code reviews—testing Web sites that aspiring clients have built, and reviewing the programs they’ve written."
So...
--Blumberg isn't working on the business at all;
--Solomon's work isn't even described (except "conducting interviews for communication skills").
So there's one person, Guvench, an ex-engineer, who's actually doing the technical vetting - i.e. 100% of the value so far is coming from one guy.
OK, then maybe the others are selling? Nope.
>>"10x technologists are working with a variety of customers: Live Nation, a virtual-reality startup, and an N.B.A. player who has an idea for a social-messaging app. Solomon admitted, however, that this list is somewhat random—it consists mostly of people who found 10x through Google, or whom he or his clients know personally. He has hired a salesman, to pitch 10x to companies."
OK, so you're closing PR-driven leads and your friends in the entertainment business? That's your sales pipeline?
I know a number of agencies with two or three partners running the organization. I don't know a single one of those where there isn't somebody pounding the pavement, hustling, finding clients - and who know the difference between a long-term partner and a sports star with an "idea for a social-messaging app." (We _all_ hear about those.)
The other value they're talking about is in the negotiation process. Hey, I'm totally willing to believe that a many-year entertainment agent is a better negotiator than I am, at least in the first-principles department. But this is not some magic skill in what is generally a well-defined and competitive market, and of course you're better at it when you deeply understand the technology and market, the BATNA for the client, etc. Those of us who actually understand the very small markets that one job description might meet are, in fact, pretty darned good at it too. For that matter, I've never told an engineer that you should work with us because we can get you a better deal than you can get for yourself, and if you're dealing with a client who understands the market (which said NBA player may not), that's pure hokum. (P.S. plenty of people on HN provide that coaching for free all day long.)
It's ok that the author doesn't really understand this market, and so the competitors she mentions aren't really competitors at all - they're all focused on full-time hiring. I guess it's also OK that the New Yorker's fact-checking department didn't discover that there's no such programming language as "THP" - that should be "PHP." (Maybe it's just a typo.)
But to let the reader believe that this approach represents the best this market has to offer - well, I guess that's just really, really great PR. Back to work.
(Added later: I realized I commented on these folks 1.5 years ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5527610. I was feeling nicer then? Maybe? It looks like the participant in that HN thread was the partner who's clearly adding value.)
> there's no such programming language as "THP" - that should be "PHP."
I wondered what sort of esoteric programming language THP must be for me to have never heard of it...
It does seem very odd that they don't seem to have much of a sales focus. As a developer who occasionally contracts, that's my #1 problem. I don't need help negotiating or "invoicing" (software's great at that). I just need a steady flow of high quality clients. I'd happily give up 15% of my earnings if it meant I could stop playing extrovert by going to meetups and conferences.
Bottom line: find out who their PR firm is. They're worth every penny.
Really, you don't know THP? Lots of demand for it these days...
J/K, yeah, I'm guessing that "P" happens to sound a lot like "T" on a fact-checking call. =P I sent them a note about the typo. Hopefully will be fixed online if not in print.
These are excellent responses as usual, and I'm coming to this a few days late, but I wanted to add another answer for someone who maybe isn't willing to bite off quite as much sales skills as tptacek and patio11 are suggesting, or are dealing with a buyer who doesn't have the authority to go against the agency rule - i.e. the dev manager wants to bring you in, but he has no idea who he has to talk with to get you on board as an independent contractor, and you're not on an approved list, and two people tell him that he can't do it, and three months are going to go by and meanwhile everyone is frustrated, including you, who wants to work.
This is a common, real-world scenario, and we see it all the time. Agencies, in fact, are used to it: it's called payrolling.
If you find the work yourself - i.e. someone wants to hire _you_ but needs you to go through an agency - then ask for the names of three agencies they work with, and if any of them payroll. (They may not know the answer to that.)
Then call all three, tell them the hiring manager and anything else you know about the financials (you might know bill rate, or what you want to make, or both), and tell them you're calling all three agencies, and you'll go with the one that can make the best deal. That's a win for the agency (a little money and another person on the books with that client) and a win for you (in comparison to the $65/$130 deal). Factoring in things like employment taxes and such, you can assume that you'll keep ~90% of the bill rate. (So $65 would become $117 total comp: if they're required to employ you and pay taxes, offer insurance, etc., more like $95 to you. Look, almost a 50% raise.)
We're a small agency (~50 engineers), and we usually have 3-5 people we're payrolling because either the client called us and asked us to payroll, or we got a call like the one above and decided it was worth it.
"The cupcakes in the break room are not for you. Most people will not care if you take a cupcake, but somebody will, and we will hear about it. We give you money instead, and we will certainly bring you a cupcake if you want one."