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Tech's Elite Hates Labor

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Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#291

Post by diebeforei485 »

amrocha wrote: post #257
diebeforei485 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't care enough about how much someone at the top makes, as long as I'm getting paid fairly for my work. Startups often use this argument in reverse ("we're a small company, we can't pay you as much") while paying their founders far, far more than 200X what they pay early engineers. I'm including equity grants in this calculation because you are, as well.

The problem is that by definition, if the CEO is making 100x what you do then you're not being paid fairly Did you mean to say you just want to be paid modestly?

No, what I mean is I don't care how highly paid the CEO or executive team is. It's the last thing on my mind.

I do care about how much I'm being paid.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#292

Post by gamblor956 »

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.

The Hollywood Guild contracts are between the guilds and the studios, so the filming location doesn't matter. Even international shoots are subject to the guild agreements.

Georgia didn't mop up any non-union filming work. The state decided to hand out a lot of tax credits for filming in Georgia, and that's the only reason studios film there.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#293

Post by diebeforei485 »

hef19898 wrote: post #249
diebeforei485 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison shouldn't be VC-backed founders, but all founders including those who weren't able to fund their company and therefore failed. Getting VC funding is a significant filter.

If making sunsets and co. showed us something, it is that nepotism makes VC money access a lot easier.

Being born into a lot of wealth and "bootstrapping" a company is infinitely easier than raising funds from a VC.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#294

Post by amrocha »

hackerlight wrote: post #267
amrocha wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that by definition, if the CEO is making 100x what you do then you're not being paid fairly Did you mean to say you just want to be paid modestly?

> The problem is that by definition, if the CEO is making 100x what you do then you're not being paid fairly Really, "by definition"? You can't think of a possible universe where a CEO draws on all their skill to make a crucial decision, that most other possible people in that role probably wouldn't have made, that saves a company billions of dollars, and that this is 100x more valuable than what you or I have contri…

Sure, maybe the CEO makes great business decisions, but I don't see how that entitles them to 100x the compensation of the people around them. I don't think researching and making decisions is 100x harder than engineering or HR or law etc.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#295

Post by VFIT7CTO77TOC »

baron816 wrote: post #125
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.

A lot of Leftist tech workers like to think they’re working in a coop. They think the company should exist to serve their needs, rather than the needs of investors and customers. It’s a recipe for catastrophe.

I saw a discussion about tech layoffs few weeks ago. Someone had noted that layoffs should have come as no surprise when you had employees bragging about how little work they were doing. This comment stirred up a lot of people calling the poster heartless and saying things like "these people have families".

That is such a naive perspective of the world. These are businesses and their goal is to make as much money as possible. That means they strive to be as efficient as possible. I don't know where the expectation that they should function as charities or job programs came from.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#296

Post by seti0Cha »

topaz0 wrote: post #177
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…

This is not 100% wrong, but you are missing an important part of the calculus, which is that as you go up the hierarchy you have more overall and more concentrated power to demand higher pay, out of proportion to the value of your labor.

I think you have the causality backwards. A person is able to demand higher pay not because they are in charge, but because the owners/upper management want them to be in charge. That is, they get hired with high pay because that's the value the employer puts on their labor. They determine that the same way the determine what they're willing to pay for other goods and services: how much do they want it, and how easy it is to get.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#297

Post by throw93 »

ejb999 wrote: post #243
throw93 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>This is the kind of thinking that prevents labor from organizing and having no power. But is that the end goal? for the union to have power? sometimes it does seem like that is in fact the goal. I thought the goal was for people to make a good living and have good working conditions - most SV/hi-tech types have those things already, so why should they care that the union doesn't exist or doesn't have power? I work…

>>But is that the end goal? for the union to have power? sometimes it does seem like that is in fact the goal.

The end goal is to balance the power dynamic between capital owners and the labor. As of today especially in US, the labor has little to none bargaining power and capital owners have infinite power to even influence govt.

The only reason we had relatively higher salaries than other fields "till now" is because of lower supply/demand ratio and it's still a relatively new profession than others. This ratio will eventually balance out and when it happens we will be left with no bargaining power.

>> I work in the tech industry, I never worried for one second that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk gets paid more than me.

We're definitely not getting our fair share of the value we produce and that's just theft to me.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#298

Post by pwpw »

lordnacho wrote: post #256
gnicholas wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is not as great in these other fields, but that's because the pyramid isn't as large. There's one person at the top of Alphabet, and tens of thousands of people below him. No law firm has as many people, by a long shot. And the medical analogy isn't right either. You have to look at the CEO of a pharma company, who probably does make a similar multiple to Sundar. But the person at the top also has a mu…

I know this is beside the point you're making, but that guy at the top does not have greater risk. The right measure of risk isn't money, it's freedom. Work as CEO of Google or Roche for a month and you don't have to work any more. You don't risk shit, you can only win or win bigger. This is what I don't understand. There are plenty of people who can run a business, so why is it that we pay so much for them? There's…

> that guy at the top does not have greater risk.

The CEO and CFO of publicly traded companies get paid pretty handsomely in exchange for taking on a significant amount of risk by signing off on the financial statements.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#299

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

hackerlight wrote: post #267
amrocha wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that by definition, if the CEO is making 100x what you do then you're not being paid fairly Did you mean to say you just want to be paid modestly?

> The problem is that by definition, if the CEO is making 100x what you do then you're not being paid fairly Really, "by definition"? You can't think of a possible universe where a CEO draws on all their skill to make a crucial decision, that most other possible people in that role probably wouldn't have made, that saves a company billions of dollars, and that this is 100x more valuable than what you or I have contri…

We generally talk about risk and probability when discussing this. You get 50% when it's just an idea with a 99.9% chance of failure, and below 0.1% when it's a rocket ship. So we have to apply that to your question too, and apply "market for lemons" thinking. So while it's possible that they can save a zillion dollars by making amazing decisions nobody else would have made, the odds of them doing so are empirically not that great, so the "fair" value is a zillion dollars times a very small number. So it seems like that's not a big factor in their comp. It's just a big factor in how they justify it.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#300

Post by amrocha »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #291
amrocha wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that by definition, if the CEO is making 100x what you do then you're not being paid fairly Did you mean to say you just want to be paid modestly?

No, what I mean is I don't care how highly paid the CEO or executive team is. It's the last thing on my mind. I do care about how much I'm being paid.

Right, so as long as you're being paid modestly even if it's unfair you're ok with it. I think most people would agree.
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