Tech's Elite Hates Labor • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#101

Post by thfuran » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

dlkf wrote: post #61

thebradbain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WGA is just one of many unions, but you’re right— getting into the “best” guilds is itself a process; but ostensibly, it’s to ensure that the guild keeps its prestige as a genuine body of talent. It’s a balancing act for sure, and I don’t know if tech wants to emulate everything exactly with the Hollywood guild system, but it’s worth taking inspiration from.

Would you trust unions over markets to determine which programmers are skilled? How would they determine that?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#102

Post by idlewords » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

2setIntrsction wrote: post #93

idlewords wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the workers never colluded to flex their considerable latent power against these employers is the real question. A lot of these cloaks of victimhood are very expensively tailored.

“If working in the warehouse is really that bad, why don’t the warehouse workers unionize?” I wouldn’t really say it’s a cloak of victimhood as much as a disillusionment of those that aren’t acknowledging they’re labor is being exploited combined with the fact that attempting to organize can be met with a loss of work.

But warehouse workers did unionize. It was the programmers, who back then could get a new job whenever they wanted, who lacked the foresight and self-discipline to exercise their latent power while it was at its peak.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#103

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #8

They hate the professional managerial class, but love the coders that go above and beyond to write them patents and build them technologies (capital) for only a steady paycheck.

The people below the PMC hate them just as much if not more than the people above.

It's one thing to have someone who makes more money than you can imagine swinging their dick into politics and being generally out of touch. It's a lot harder to make excuses when you see people who are more numerous and only make 2-10x what you make doing it.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#104

Post by eschaton » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #58

eh9 wrote: post #36

It feels like we’re due for a “big reset”, but I doubt it’ll be aligned with VC interests. They need labor more than we need those companies. Americans should pick up a French history book.

I'm not sure I see anything in French history I'd particularly want to emulate. The story of the French Revolution which I assume you're referring to is one of senseless barbarism and the old elites ending up back on top at the end anyway. The drownings at Nantes are among the most awful things to happen in Europe prior to WWII. As for modern France and their propensity for rioting over minor labor disputes, who want…

With “read French history” they’re not saying French history should be emulated, they’re saying it should be treated as a cautionary tale: Those at the bottom can only be pushed so far before they start building guillotine.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#105

Post by sixothree » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

jdmtheNth wrote: post #2

As long as there are more people that will do a given job for less, we're all replaceable. There's just no incentive to raise the wages or standards.

And when we are literally all replaced, what then? Seriously. What are we going to do when we are all replaced? We don't have support structures.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#106

Post by blastro » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

h2o_lover wrote: post #90

rektide wrote: post #10

Different topic, but tech to me is a craft, where there are a lot of integral issues of quality. Yet orgs at many levels rarely seem to care about software. It thinks on terms of business need, and seems to detest lowering itself to what actually is & makes up the product; it doesnt know (& maybe at best wants to trust this all is being well handled somewhere) does doesmt grapple with the other 50% of the org: the co…

In some sense I agree with you but I'd actually kind of invert the dynamic you're describing... I don't think writ large most people who have never professionally "done software" will ever be able to really "get it" about system maintainability and health. One aspect is that software engineers should probably get better at explaining this and backing it up with results and data, yes... but even moreso I think the pro…

I call it "Product Engineering"

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#107

Post by Finnucane » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #31

thebradbain wrote: post #9

For another perspective on high-skill labor organization, also based in California, for an industry that dominates the industry of its biggest city and is also one of our nation’s most lucrative industries, let’s look to Hollywood. The Hollywood guilds should be held up as a model for high skilled labor. It’s also something tech and (and especially the gaming industry) can learn from. The WGA, for example, allows the…

Those guilds are incredibly hard to break into. They're also why Georgia has been able to mop up all of the non union work. For better or for worse, they do their job but out of state scabs are a huge problem keeping industry work in LA.

One wonders if this has something to do with managerial hate for remote work. If the boss wants to move his production from a high-age area to a lower-wage area, the workers can't do much about it if their mobility is limited. For film and tv, you need people on set, but if your job is a desk job that can be done from anywhere, and you can get work from anywhere, you get some of that control back.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#108

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #65

I think because individual tech workers are so highly paid relative to other industries, we fail to see how low our pay is relative to what the people at the top are making. A high performing Google engineer may make 500k+ in total comp, Sundar Pichai makes $100M+ in many years. That's 200x as much ... and the baseline is already super high. You see startup founders who exit with generational wealth (tens or hundreds…

Sundar Pichai's job is to make sure Google has enough revenue to keep paying all those $500k+ engineers. If Google's revenue is at risk, the stock plunges and Sundar is out of a job. All things said, it seems like a remarkably fair arrangement.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#109

Post by throwaway23597 » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #65

I think because individual tech workers are so highly paid relative to other industries, we fail to see how low our pay is relative to what the people at the top are making. A high performing Google engineer may make 500k+ in total comp, Sundar Pichai makes $100M+ in many years. That's 200x as much ... and the baseline is already super high. You see startup founders who exit with generational wealth (tens or hundreds…

> The Bezos and Musks and Kalanicks of the world believe that this is correct. They truly think they do something in their 24 hours of daily human life that makes them hundreds or thousands of times more valuable than even the absolute best "labor" in their industry.

I mean to play devil's advocate, these people have created organizations that employ hundreds of thousands of people in highly paid tech positions. These 500K Google jobs wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Larry Page / Sergey Brin. Moreover, their organizations also generate useful products that improve society, AND make a profit while doing so. I think one could definitely make the argument that these people are hundreds of times more valuable to our economy than the average worker. The reason our system is set up like this is because there's a strong incentive to create new companies that generate even more useful products, employment opportunities, and returns on investment. It's really not such a bad thing IMO.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#110

Post by EduardoBautista » Tue, Feb 07, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #65

I think because individual tech workers are so highly paid relative to other industries, we fail to see how low our pay is relative to what the people at the top are making. A high performing Google engineer may make 500k+ in total comp, Sundar Pichai makes $100M+ in many years. That's 200x as much ... and the baseline is already super high. You see startup founders who exit with generational wealth (tens or hundreds…

Recent events might mislead us, but I believe Musk has had a huge net-positive impact on the world.

Crashing Twitter into the ground will never come close to diminishing what he has helped achieve with SpaceX, putting his money where his mouth was to the point of almost going broke, and, to a lesser extent, Tesla where, despite not being a founder, he was the biggest investor at the beginning.