Matthew Yglesias on how societies stock up for the future:

A lot of the stuff we make has a pretty short shelf-life. Computer software gets obsolete super fast. Clothing wears out. Food spoils (even Twinkies). Durable goods like cars last longer. Airplanes last even longer. But the real durability is in structures. Houses, office buildings, bridges, tunnels, factories, train tracks. As a society, we save for the future by channeling resources—steel, elecricity, human labor power—into the production of things that last a long time rather than things that are more perishable.

This is a point the federal government does not seem to really understand.

I would take issue with his point about software, though. Yes, most software does not last very long, but as we build software, we also build a corpus of knowledge about how to build software more efficiently, and to create more powerful computers to run that software. I would argue that the software industry has created massive social value over the course of its existence.

Lately, working conditions in Chinese factories that produce consumer electronics that we all use and love have gotten a lot of press. Mike Daisey has been touring and presenting a one man show, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, on this subject. Portions of it were recently aired on This American Life. Perhaps not coincidentally, the New York TImes published an exposé on Foxconn last month that looked into the poor pay, unlawfully long hours, and dangerous work conditions at the company’s factories.

I’ve been following the subsequent debate. Tech pundit and Apple fan David Pogue responds with what is largely a straw-man filled argument about the price of electronics doubling and the fact that all companies use these factories, not just Apple. Mike Daisey responds ably.

I want to talk about two aspects of it, though. One is the scope of the problem, and the other is the fairness of singling Apple out. As the article points out, Apple is not the only electronics company that manufactures its products in China. Almost everyone does. And of course, we’re only talking about electronics manufacturers. What are working conditions like at Chinese tire factories? Or toy factories? Or the factories where they make buttons for shirts? The story is the same across industry in China, if not worse.

Everybody is in some ways a beneficiary of the low prices that come with China’s low wages and poor working conditions — there’s no room for sanctimony.

On the other hand, I think it’s fair and useful to single out Apple, for several reasons. The first is that it’s easier to rally action against a single company than it is against every company that imports goods from China, or even everyone in the electronics industry. Apple happens to be the highest profile target available right now, for all of the same reasons that the iPhone and iPad are so popular.

The pressure is working. Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an internal email about working conditions to Apple employees the day after the New York Times article talking about steps the company was taking to make things better. It has worked int he past as well. A few years ago, Greenpeace succeeded in getting Apple to improve its environmental practices by singling the company out as well.

Secondly, Apple just reported the best quarter in the history of the technology industry. If any company has the breathing room to spend money to bring all of the links in its supply chain into compliance with the relevant labor law without raising its prices at all. As has been pointed out, the factories that manufacture Apple products manufacture products for other companies as well. If they are required to improve their practices for Apple, then they will most likely have to improve them across the board. So targeting the biggest fish makes sense from that perspective as well.

Is it fair to target Apple alone? If Apple is benefitting in terms of cost through the illegal practices of its suppliers (as Mike Daisey points out, the suppliers are not even complying with Chinese labor laws), then it is perfectly fair to call them out for it, regardless of what every other company is doing. Beyond that, it’s a question of strategy. Would it be fair to boycott Apple and encourage people to buy Samsung phones instead? No, nor would it be sensible. But it makes sense to target your activism where it will have the most impact.

Ultimately, as explained in the National Geographic article I linked to above, labor conditions in China are the result of systemic problems that we cannot address directly. China has a surplus of labor, a weak regulatory regime, and a highly corruptible government system in charge of maintaining that regime. China also lacks the institutions that could counterbalance the conditions that work against laborers. Workers are unable to organize and negotiate with their employers, and are unable to change the state of things via the ballot box.

The reason I keep returning to this subject is that it pricks my conscience. Disentangling oneself from abusive labor practices in China is impossible, but I do think it is the responsibility of consumers to be informed about the origin of the products that we consume. I wasn’t going to post this article because that sounded like such a weak prescription, but it turns out that it’s working. Apple is changing its behavior, and I’m sure that other companies will follow suit. “Pay more attention” doesn’t sound like much, but it has the potential to be quite effective.

Update: This post about McDonalds requiring pork suppliers to stop using gestation crates illustrates why it makes sense for consumer activists to focus on big game. An earlier policy change by McDonalds changed practices across the entire poultry industry.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to both be the new person on a team and to integrate new team members onto a team that I had been a part of for a long time. Having seen it from both sides, I have some thoughts on how to join a new team without driving everyone crazy. It doesn’t matter how you became a member of the new team, everybody starts in the same place, which is to say, not really knowing the code base or the culture of the team. Learning to mesh well with the culture of a new team is almost certainly more difficult than learning to work in a new code base.

The first thing you have to do when you join a new team is check your ego at the door. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are or how many great ideas you have. At the beginning, your job is to be a sponge and learn as much as you possibly can. Just shut up and listen. Read anything you can get ahold of. Eavesdrop when other people are talking about the project. At the beginning, think of yourself as a spy — gathering as much information as you can without drawing too much attention to yourself. I even try to make it a point to try to figure out the answers to questions myself before I ask someone. The digging involved can be very educational, and showing some level of self-sufficiency will garner respect, at least until you make a big mistake that could have been avoided by asking a few simple questions.

One question I try to avoid until I get to the point of saying “our code” rather than “your code” is “Why?” Figuring out why things are done a certain way is important, but “Why?” is a question that can very easily come across as critical, especially when it comes from someone who’s not really trusted. The truth is that the stuff that makes you want to ask why often really is worthy of criticism. Just let it go until fixing it is as much your responsibility as it is anyone else’s.

The second important thing is to immerse yourself in the code style and coding habits of the team you’ve joined. Everybody who’s been programming for more than a month has their own opinion on whether to put spaces inside parentheses (doing so is crazy) or whether braces go at the end of the line or on the beginning of the next line. The team almost certainly has a policy on whether to use tabs or spaces when indenting. Beyond that, the team probably already has its own answers to more substantive questions about how their code is organized and how they deal with separation of concerns. At the beginning, do it all their way. If you have some ideas for improvement, propose them to the entire team once you’ve shown that you’re a team player. Coming in the door and writing code in your style rather than the team’s style is likely to infuriate at least one other member of the team. Furthermore, immersing yourself in the native culture is the best way to learn. People often have very good reasons for doing things the way that they do, and if you’re busy trying to impose your brilliant ideas on the team, you’ll never learn what those reasons are.

The third thing is to focus on service. Look for opportunities to be helpful wherever possible. The biggest mistake I ever made at a job was listening when the director of the group led us to believe that stuff other groups wanted from us was not as important as the things we were building for him. In the end, we had an unpleasantly dysfunctional workplace, and I found myself looking for another job.

The stakes are high. There are two ways things can play out, depending on the team dynamics. A new person who stomps all over the existing culture of the team will tend to be marginalized by the current members and will face a much tougher climb to build credibility. If the team feels confident in complaining to management about the new guy, they’ll in all likelihood try to get them disciplined or fired. If there’s something about the new guy that makes them seem untouchable (the usual scenario is that they were hired due to a prior relationship with the manager), then the current members of the team will leave. In the end, it all comes down to respect and you gain the respect of the team by treating the team with respect.