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Tech's Elite Hates Labor

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Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#231

Post by nradov »

capableweb wrote: post #100
ch4s3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sometimes you have to upset some people in order to make the world better. I for one is happy about previous labor movements, because I like weekends and I dislike child-labor. Without labor movements, unions and sometimes riots, everyone (below upper-class) would have it much worse off.

Do you like having young workers taxed at high rates to subsidize pensions for 62 year olds?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64463330

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#232

Post by steveBK123 »

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…

You do NOT want to point at entertainment industry as some sort of better meritocracy model.

The ratio of nepotism hires and who-you-knowism in that industry is insane. There's a reason you have multi-generation families all "in the business".

Met plenty of people in NYC in the industry, and they are either nepotism hires or surrounded by them.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#233

Post by ejb999 »

Veen wrote: post #189
welshwelsh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem here. A burger flipper makes $10 in an hour. An engineer designing a burger flipping robot makes $100. Their department's engineering manager makes $1,000. The CTO makes $10,000. The hardest worker here is the burger flipper. They work 16 hour days just to afford rent, and it's hard manual labor. The engineer makes 10 times as much because each line of code they write produces more value than…

But then you jump up another level, where someone is making a hundred thousand or a million times what the burger flipper makes. Are they generating enough value to warrant that? Elon Musk's current net worth is roughly what 100,000 burger flippers will make in their whole lives. Is it plausible that he generates some multiple of that value, or is he just much better at capturing value than the burger flipper?

Given the things he has managed to bring to market, and the impact he is having on the world - I would say yes.

People can get really lucky once, but Musk has an overall track record that can't be attributed to just getting lucky or being in the right place at the right time;

I can't think of anyone else - except perhaps Steve Jobs, who managed to go from one huge idea to another and execute well more often than not, at several companies and industries.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#234

Post by Aunche »

goodpoint wrote: post #143
throwaway23597 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Thes…

> These 500K Google jobs wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Larry Page / Sergey Brin Citation extremely needed. Do you think without some billionaires around everybody else would be sitting on their hands all day?

This is what happened in the Soviet Union. Leadership at consumer-facing enterprises had no incentive to do anything more than the bare minimum because profits are socialized. Meanwhile the Soviet military did a much better job of keeping up with that of America because that was of upmost importance to the politburo and and successes were rewarded with political capital.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#235

Post by [deleted] »

kortilla wrote: post #186
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 other industries known for highly paid labor (finance, law, and medicine in the US) do not distribute rewards this way. Yes the people at the stop are still pulling in massive pay but there's a much stronger distribution of profits throughout the labor pyramid. This is wrong. Lawyers get paid worse than FAANG SWEs unless they make partnership, which is the equivalent to becoming a co-owner or working as a lower…

[deleted]

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#236

Post by flimsypremise »

throwaway23597 wrote: post #109
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. Thes…

there is absolutely no way that these guys are 100x as valuable as the people how actually build the product. if larry page and sergei brin's search engine hadn't won out, someone else's would have. these guys are all just average to dumb, and very often end up vaporizing millions if not billions of dollars with stupid decisions. there is no doubt in my mind that these tech giants would be better off if they fired their ceos and c levels. this should be obvious to anyone who has ever interacted with the ceo of a tech company.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#237

Post by swader999 »

The problems with CEO pay and tech worker pay and treatment would resolve itself if the tech space was more competitive. Instead we have gov subsidized/sponsored monopolies in a lot of areas with poor oversight and outdated regulation.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#238

Post by pmoriarty »

kortilla wrote: post #186
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 other industries known for highly paid labor (finance, law, and medicine in the US) do not distribute rewards this way. Yes the people at the stop are still pulling in massive pay but there's a much stronger distribution of profits throughout the labor pyramid. This is wrong. Lawyers get paid worse than FAANG SWEs unless they make partnership, which is the equivalent to becoming a co-owner or working as a lower…

"The owners get to decide how much to pay for operating costs."

They do make such decisions, but neither that nor their net worth makes them better than anyone else... yet too many of them act as if it does.

What they really are is nothing more than people who've won a rigged game.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#239

Post by diebeforei485 »

throw93 wrote: post #116
treis wrote: post #15

Sometimes I can't even begin to comprehend the POVs I read on the internet. The FAANGs and adjacent companies treat their workers better than pretty much any other company in the world. The idea that workers there are somehow this abused underclass is ridiculous.

This is the kind of thinking that prevents labor from organizing and having no power. You always look at the person being paid less than you or working in "relatively" worse conditions and think oh at least I'm not doing that job. All amenities that these companies "treat their workers" with are not out of goodness of there hearts but they are all designed to keep the worker in the office longer and work longer hours…

> You have seen how little it takes these companies to layoff employees.

This is a reasonable ask. It's easily addressable - build a notice period into the offers (for example, if you've been with the company more than a year, you get at least 4 weeks notice).

The problem with any sort of exclusive guild is that it becomes more difficult to break into, which is bad for a growing industry.

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