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What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

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Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#301

Post by StavrosK »

goatherders wrote: post #290
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

My biggest frustration at work is the colleagues - most of whom are software engineers - that are inconvenienced when being asked to consider work outside of normal business hours. I don't really care if they are happy; that's what overpaying them is for. What I care about is getting one of them to answer the phone at 5:05pm on a tuesday and not getting a return call until 9:03 on a Wednesday.

What the fuck? What is unclear about the term "non-work" meaning anything other than "they aren't at work"? If it's not during work hours, it's entirely at my discretion whether I'll pick up or not. I usually will, because my employer is good to me, but your comment sounds entitled and of exactly the type of employer I wouldn't pick up the phone for outside work hours.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#303

Post by reflexive »

Article has many holes in reasoning.

The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum

As NN Taleb points out exhaustively: social science puts too much faith in their models. "Measurable" trends? How do we even know what to measure, or that it's a trend? "Plausible" projections? What is the scientific measure of plausibility?

there’s not enough work to go around

There's a limitless amount of work - it just doesn't pay minimum wage. Every time you lower the minimum wage, it makes a new class of activities profitable.

you’ve just met an attractive stranger at a party, or you’re online looking for someone, anyone, but you don’t ask: ‘So, what do you do?’

This ubiquitous question may be asked and answered in the sense of "what are you passionate about" rather than "what is your largest source of income". It would be great if those co-incide, but that's often not the case.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#304

Post by taeric »

goatherders wrote: post #290
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

My biggest frustration at work is the colleagues - most of whom are software engineers - that are inconvenienced when being asked to consider work outside of normal business hours. I don't really care if they are happy; that's what overpaying them is for. What I care about is getting one of them to answer the phone at 5:05pm on a tuesday and not getting a return call until 9:03 on a Wednesday.

If you are constantly having a situation where you need them to answer a question as late as 4:50 on a regular basis, you've already failed.

I seriously mean that. Movies and revisionist history are full of companies that successfully pulled out last minute victories. Real life is full of companies that kept that death march until the end, and blamed the workers for not keeping up.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#306

Post by hibikir »

cesarbs wrote: post #240
vacri wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it easy . It's hard to get here, but once we're here it's a great gig. We're paid well, we're in demand, and there's a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal, medical, engineering, or whatever. That link describes a call center worker as a knowledge worker. That's absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is about manag…

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

Yes it is, but it is not everywhere, and it completely goes away on consulting. Suddenly companies are a lot less interested in 70 hour weeks when they cost almost twice as much as 40 hour weeks. Older, wiser developers often end up contracting or picking employers that are not that exploitative.

Those good jobs exist, and they don't really pay worse in absolute terms. In fact, they often pay better when you calculate your pay hourly. So just pick the right employer and get out of the awfulness you describe.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#307

Post by throwaway368 »

goatherders wrote: post #290
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

My biggest frustration at work is the colleagues - most of whom are software engineers - that are inconvenienced when being asked to consider work outside of normal business hours. I don't really care if they are happy; that's what overpaying them is for. What I care about is getting one of them to answer the phone at 5:05pm on a tuesday and not getting a return call until 9:03 on a Wednesday.

This is exactly the kind of moronic bs that I haven't and will not put up with. Executives most of the time are paid, and compensated to be there 24/7. Software engineers are not. While founders and other execs have tendency to forget that - deal with it. I am there between 8am - 4pm, or 6am - 2pm or what ever it says in my contract. No more, no less. You want me to do extra hours, fine, most of the time happy to, you just need to pay me for it. Oh btw -- we have this online service that needs one or more of of the devs to bring it up if it goes down at 3am - well - don't expect me to pick up the phone unless you've set up the appropriate schedule for us devs to be on call, and that we're compensated accordingly.

Bottomline -- you want to call me outside work hours, then you better compensate me accordingly.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#308

Post by PrimalDual »

winter_blue wrote: post #134
PrimalDual wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So right now it comes from other people's paycheck but does it have to? Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending? Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of 4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways? In the US at least I strongly opp…

> not print money to cover their spending? [...] Would inflation of 4% be that bad Inflation is a tax on currency holdings. So if a person has $10,000 and inflation is 4%, they are effectively paying a $400 tax on it –– because the -4% loss of value is transferred to the one causing the inflation, i.e. the printer of money, which is the government . The people would just divest their US dollar holdings, and switch to…

So I understand that the real solution is to fix the tax system but I doubt that is politically realistic.

I think you are also assuming that returns on all investments would stay the same under increased inflation which I seriously doubt.

More importantly I understand that wealthy people have a smaller portion of their wealth in cash than poor people what I am arguing for is that perhaps inflation is at most no worse than our current taxation scheme.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#309

Post by PrimalDual »

pesfandiar wrote: post #131
PrimalDual wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So right now it comes from other people's paycheck but does it have to? Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending? Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of 4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways? In the US at least I strongly opp…

Printing money out of thin air also robs the productive part of the society out of their assets. A higher inflation without an actual increase in productivity (and thus investment returns) will reduce the value of everyone's assets. This sort of "Robin Hood" schemes have been executed by some populist governments, but I don't know of any which worked out well. The only fundamental difference is taxing income to pay f…

So the point in an economy with underutilized resources money printing does not necessarily translate money printing to inflation directly. More importantly, the US has carried out a huge money printing scheme: QE. The federal reserve bought a couple trillion of US debt de facto reducing the amount of outstanding debt. What I am arguing for is QE with a higher tolerance for inflation.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#310

Post by khedoros1 »

goatherders wrote: post #290
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

My biggest frustration at work is the colleagues - most of whom are software engineers - that are inconvenienced when being asked to consider work outside of normal business hours. I don't really care if they are happy; that's what overpaying them is for. What I care about is getting one of them to answer the phone at 5:05pm on a tuesday and not getting a return call until 9:03 on a Wednesday.

I have a work phone for that purpose, currently. When I took the position, it was made clear that there would be occasional times that I'd need to work odd hours, and that my employer was going to pay for a method to contact me.

We're changing management though, and in the new management's eyes, my position doesn't need to be contacted outside of work hours, so they're taking away the phones. Outside of an occasional pre-declared odd schedule, I won't have to deal with my job during my own time.

If someone takes a position where it's clearly expected that they'll need to work off-hours, and they fight against that, that bothers me. It's an inconvenience that they've accepted as part of taking the position. The reverse applies too; if it isn't clear to me that a position I take will expect a certain amount of work outside of pre-agreed upon hours, I'll resent when they start piling them on.

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