The problem is market maturity. If Uber is currently facing a quickly maturing market, the upside is limited. Investing in growth is much different than investing in diversification. For example, Google's ad-click market is completely mature, there is very little new growth there. So all their investments are in something new to add to their revenue pipeline, whether that will be AR or autonomous technologies. The fact that Uber is already seeing a loss of market share indicates that market maturity is fast approaching. How much of their investment is simply protectionism to maintain market share rather than growth?
I'd rather see the connection between happiness and self-sufficiency, because ultimately, isn't happiness what we all want? Whether through intelligence, social connections or religion, achieving that elusive sense of peace and happiness is what drives people's ambitions.
Tim Cook has always been an efficiency expert. He is the master of supply chain management and logistics. He is perfect for operations and everything related to cost management. However, do his skills translate to the visionary tasks expected of the CEO? I understand he's delegated these tasks to others, but ultimately, these delegates have failed. Either Cook needs to find better visionaries, or step down, because Apple is completely rudderless as a purveyor of EXCITING consumer products. It's becoming more like LG, Samsung and Lenovo - a boring derivative consumer electronics product company.
The problem is that it's almost impossible to hire a Steve Jobs-level visionary. Those people won't usually work for anyone but themselves (note that working for themselves may or may not result in actual success -- that's an orthogonal axis).
> do his skills translate to the visionary tasks expected of the CEO
So this is a real question, why does the CEO have to be the visionary? Why can't the product visionary role be supplied by Ive? According to Jobs himself, he 'set things up at Apple so that no one can tell Jony what to do'. It seems like Ive could have taken the CEO desk after Steve passed if that's what he wanted but because he isn't interested in doing the dog and pony stuff instead they came up with this dual split where Jony focuses on Products and Tim does all the stuff Tim did as COO and temp CEO when Steve was sick and it just so happens that Tim's nameplate says CEO and Jony's says CDO.
I think the problem is that Tim is too focused on cost effectiveness and hasn't learned to reign in Jony and company which seem to not give a flip about UI and software. To them it seems software should "just work" without any effort on quality assurance. Seriously, either Jony needs to step down from being the big boss on the whole visionary stuff or pushed out. I love his hardware design but I really am hating his software decisions and choices.
1. Guitar player in a band, either rhythm or lead
2. Study and compose (not lyricist!)
I can spend all day playing my guitar and jamming with other passionate musicians from all walks of life. I would love to take the time to explore jazz, blues and classic rock. I have guitars and I just don't seem to make enough time for them.
Unfortunately, I don't believe I'll make any real money in this space, so my assumption is that food and board is paid for by a patron so I can play music publicly in return.
The response to this trend has always been the continued niche usage of Linux OS outside of server environments. Based on the quality of software applications, Professionals really have only two alternatives: Windows and Mac. I've always went with Windows because I don't engage as heavily in the creative process (music, video, design, etc.) that would benefit from a Mac. At worst for Apple, Professionals return to Windows laptops (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, etc.) - that's a loss of 5%, maybe?
I agree with your premise on Linux but I'll never understand the Mac = creative thing. I've seen many people mention the creative aspects as a reason to use a Mac, but it's outdated thinking IMO – most creative professionals are using the Adobe Suite which has been cross platform for years.
As a dev I love having bash, a terminal, homebrew, wget, curl, etc available on my dev machine. At the same time I need world class application support for Office and the Adobe Suite that I wouldn't get on Linux. Mac is the happy medium between the power of linux with the polished GUI and application support of Windows.
Unless I was an MS only dev who depended on Visual Studio I can't fathom why I would switch to Windows (although things may be changing with Windows 10 and their Linux integration).
The issues of worker dissatisfaction in the U.S. is very similar to the ones in China, which was ironically built on economic equality.China, like Sweden and Norway, is ethnically homogeneous, but unlike Scandinavia its population is quite large. The larger the population, the more difficult it is to administer equal access to economic prosperity. China's revenues are technically built on capitalist models to maximize productivity, and it uses socialist ideals to do what it can with wealth redistribution, and yet is failing miserably. Socialism falls apart when the population far exceeds its ability to manage monetary policy. The U.S. is in a similar quandary without the socialist infrastructure; if China cannot do it, what are the chances the U.S. can?
The U.S. must innovate a different approach built to scale and support a population of 1 billion people. It's like management 101: managing a workforce of 20 to prosperity is much different than managing a workforce of 10,000.
It really does depend on the organizational structure of the company, and whether they appreciate how difficult it is to replace programmers with an equally competent one. Most non-tech managers don't understand the intangible costs of replacing programmers, but that's never stopped them treating programmers like interchangeable cogs. If you work for a Fortune 500 non-technical company, I don't believe this strategy works to well.
