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We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

drewdevault.com

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Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#141

Post by Verdex »

tarkin2 wrote: post #129
spaced-out wrote: post #18

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right? No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of th…

When you help a dubious firm progress, you further that dubious behaviour. Techies, and everyone else, included. Edit, re the enlightening discussion below: You are complicit in your employer’s behaviour, more-so if you are reasonably able to find another job, but decide against it.

That's really not a useful distinction though.

If you drive or ride in any sort of vehicle that uses gasoline, then you're helping big oil get away with the deepwater horizon oil spill. ... Or even if you purchase any good or service that was transported by a vehicle that uses gasoline.

By using gas you're normalizing a system that accepts oil extraction as necessary which furthers the dubious behavior of the people responsible for deepwater.

Also by not using gas or any good or service that uses gas then you're making yourself look crazy which also furthers the dubious behaviors of big oil.

So now that everyone is evil; it really doesn't matter if anyone is evil. Might as well catch fish and drown them with oil by hand. Either way dubious behavior is furthered, so why not.

You're going to need a lot more nuance and practicality to make a meaningful statement in this realm.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#142

Post by neilv »

spaced-out wrote: post #18

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right? No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of th…

Side note: Tim Bray isn't merely one technologist. I suspect his public writings about working at AWS, and his implicit endorsement, have helped AWS to attract some top talent.

Certainly, when I was considering going there, people pointed me to his writings, and overall the writings increased my positive impression of the idea of developing AWS, beyond my already positive impression from using it.

This also suggests one way in which we each could, perhaps should, make an individual difference: when we're working at an organization, we're implicitly endorsing and representing it to other prospective hires. We should hope that our presence there would make others want to work there more.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#143

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

> Apple builds walled gardens and makes targeted attacks on open standards,

This is where the article lost me. There is a saying called "keeping your powder dry". If you express outrage at everything, soon your outrage has no meaning. Whatever your position on open source, I think you would admit that this behavior is in a whole other category than having poor worker safety, retaliating against whistleblowers, or conducting mass surveillance.

I do think that one of the reasons we are so ineffective in our protest is that they devolve into a diffuse rage against the machine where we protest a dozen different behaviors. One of the reasons the NRA is so effective is that they focus on one thing: gun rights. If you really want to influence politics, you need to be laser focused on an issue. See also prohibition.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#144

Post by inetknght »

spaced-out wrote: post #112
lidHanteyk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an ocean, but a sea of drops? It starts with employees speaking up individually. Raise your voice and be heard. Upper management won't learn moral lessons on their own; they need to hear employees nagging them to be better people.

Or, what if we passed a law that required companies to give a certain percentage of their board seats to elected employee representatives? Then, employees wouldn't just have to hope their voice is heard, they can make management listen.

> what if we passed a law that

You want to pass a law with the current pro-big-company politicians in power? Like the laws that companies ignore on a regular basis because the enforcement arm of has been dismembered? Even in cases where it hasn't been, the cost of complying with the law is often more expensive than breaking it and eating the fine.

Yeah passing a law sounds like it'll solve the problem real quick. /s

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#145

Post by [deleted] »

clevergadget wrote: post #23
lotsofpulp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to ask my circle of friends and family, even bigcorp programmer money isn’t sufficient to feel secure due to future economic volatility. Especially if your goal is to make sure your kids get to live in the richer neighborhoods and go to the richer schools, and so on and so forth. And it’s not just a perceived fear. The data shows that if you’re not in the portion of people increasing their rate of income/…

Can you put a ballpark net worth at which you would feel secure?

[deleted]

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#146

Post by mcny »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #95
mcny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People making FAANG level salaries on this site routinely complain that they are "grossly" underpaid. I wouldn't say they are grossly underpaid as much as I'd say executives (not necessarily all management) is grossly overpaid. The market has failed us. People tell me to not look at someone else's plate to see how much more they have than I do but it doesn't make sense when so much wealth/power is concentrated at t…

>> I still believe there is a magic number like maybe 10, 50, or up to 100 which is a multiplier of the minimum wage above which the income tax must be 90%+ The fact that you refer to it as a magic number implies that this at best wishful thinking.

> The fact that you refer to it as a magic number implies that this at best wishful thinking.

I agree. It is wishful thinking at the moment but it isn't entirely unreasonable. This is about individual income tax and not corporate income tax (which is a completely different thing altogether which I can't tax like individual income even in my make-believe world [0]).

I think individual income tax changes I propose are very reasonable. I'd say if you are wealthy, my proposal is very much preferable to a wealth tax.

[0] For example, according to https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WMT/financials?ltr=1 the trailing twelve months, Walmart total revenue was ~523B, cost of revenue ~394B, and the most important bottom line, income before tax was only ~$20B. Ideally, we should be taxing revenue with no regard to expenses but there is no good way I can think of to do that other than drastically decreasing the tax rate to max out at about 2% so this is a different discussion altogether and likely not very fruitful.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#147

Post by zozbot234 »

spaced-out wrote: post #18

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right? No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of th…

> What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians

I couldn't agree more. It's quite tiresome to constantly hear about techbros somewhere "solving problems", "changing the world", achieving "disruption" yadda yadda yadda. You're building apps and websites, that's just about it. It just sounds unprofessional to describe yourself any differently. What's wrong with just being properly on-task as a well-oiled cog in some huge collective machinery?

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#148

Post by CalRobert »

Debt and healthcare are used to ensure that you don't have the freedom to walk away from immorality.

If you're in debt for your (or your kids' and/or partner's) house or education, or depend upon your employer for healthcare, you are not free to walk away. You might be able to switch jobs for something less objectionable, but so long as "not doing the immoral thing" means "my kid might not get treated for their cancer" just walking away is an option for a vanishingly small number of people.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#149

Post by ardy42 »

inetknght wrote: post #144
spaced-out wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, what if we passed a law that required companies to give a certain percentage of their board seats to elected employee representatives? Then, employees wouldn't just have to hope their voice is heard, they can make management listen.

> what if we passed a law that You want to pass a law with the current pro-big-company politicians in power? Like the laws that companies ignore on a regular basis because the enforcement arm of has been dismembered? Even in cases where it hasn't been, the cost of complying with the law is often more expensive than breaking it and eating the fine. Yeah passing a law sounds like it'll solve the problem real quick. /s

>> what if we passed a law that

> You want to pass a law with the current pro-big-company politicians in power? Like the laws that companies ignore on a regular basis because the enforcement arm of has been dismembered? Even in cases where it hasn't been, the cost of complying with the law is often more expensive than breaking it and eating the fine.

There are a lot of problems to be solved, as your list shows. Cynicism-fueled paralysis isn't going to fix any of them. Neither will fixating on a few easy but known-ineffective methods of change (e.g. petitioning the local lord, er, company management to voluntarily do the right thing, even though the king, er, shareholders have other ideas).

The way hard problems are typically solved in a democracy is someone organizes a political movement that pushes for a platform of laws to solve them. Oftentimes those laws are more radical than what eventually gets passed, but that's bargaining.

You'll never get what you want if you make all your concessions even before you make your first offer.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#150

Post by i_d_rather_read »

RookyNumbas wrote: post #120
spaced-out wrote: post #18

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right? No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of th…

Companies like Amazon were not always in the position you've described. It took decades to get there. And there would have been numerous opportunities along the way where a single engineer could have had a massive impact. A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today. 10 or 12 years ago they absolutely could have changed the course of the company. Almost all collective change is spearheaded by the id…

> A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today

making a difference or not is a false dichotomy.

Every single candidate refusing to work for fb makes a difference of size one.

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