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An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

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Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#61

Post by darth_avocado »

908B64B197 wrote: post #52
neilv wrote: post #39

> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the compan…

>> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the compa…

The company does better when they pay you less.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#62

Post by qualudeheart »

ravivooda wrote: post #45

I resonate with this sentiment very well. I was deeply disturbed when a Venture Fund publicly stated that engineers are making too much money in a statement ( https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/... )

How wonderful that we can name and shame that fund. More people should do this.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#63

Post by brightstep »

etothepii wrote: post #21

The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company. This very website, sneered at in the article, is littered with examples of people who have built something at the side. I'm not sure knowledge workers can make the same complaints about class struggle that mechanical labourers can. We tend to get more valuable with age and experience.

The only difference is our capital is digital, not physical. Binaries, not machines. As such we can build it without expensive raw materials and components, as those which form an assembly robot for example. Once one owns those binaries and other non-physical capital, one takes on the economic interests and incentives of that capitalist class, including the reduction of labor costs.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#64

Post by trieste92 »

Something that I've noticed in these anti work types is they assume work has negative value, that by working for someone you are "losing"

While you don't get paid the exact revenue you generate, I think that this kind of work has inherent value. It has plenty of learning opportunities which lead to income increases (edit: through promotion or going to a different employer, whichever is more optimal) because you become more productive and knowledgeable over time

As far as engineering culture is concerned, you're worse off working with anti work types like op because you don't learn as much and piss away more time, providing fewer learning opportunities in the long run

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#65

Post by commandlinefan »

dvt wrote: post #17

I mean, apart from the highfalutin class warfare nonsense and generally bad advice, this is a pretty decent post. I completely agree that over the past 30-40 years, companies have been pushing down engineering salaries. It's not really as incendiary as the author might have you believe, though. Programming, as a profession, has simply become more commoditized. It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it'…

> It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it's becoming more like being a plumber.

People keep saying this, and people who own software companies REALLY seem to want it to be true, but as far as I can tell, it's the opposite. I occasionally work with kids fresh out of college and they find themselves completely lost in the maze of modern software stacks that abstract distributed file systems and dependency management and security that fail for what seem like incredibly arcane reasons ("what the heck is a trusted certificate authority and why doesn't it like mine?"). Developing software today requires fairly deep knowledge (or access to somebody with deep knowledge) of nearly the entire history of software development.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#66

Post by andrepd »

WalterBright wrote: post #57
giraffe_lady wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In competition" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the interests at play. It's adversarial whether you integrate that understanding into your actions or not. And acknowledging the adversarial nature of workers and owners doesn't mean you have to be nasty to anyone on an interpersonal level.

> acknowledging the adversarial nature of workers and owners It is not adversarial. It is a mutually beneficial, win-win relationship. It's the unions who (mistakenly) frame it as a win-lose relationship, which is why businesses don't like dealing with them.

Of course it is adversarial (in a game theoretical sense). You are not doing any favours to the company and the company is not doing any favours to you; both are trying to extract as much value from the other as possible.

Now if we were talking about a worker's co-operative (or any company where a significant portion of ownership laid with the workers), now that's a different story...

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#67

Post by qualudeheart »

uoaei wrote: post #34
pdonis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lost me in the first half. The whole capital vs. labor thing is a false dichotomy, particularly here where we're talking about highly skilled tech workers. Your skills are capital , and your pay for using those skills is mostly return on capital, not "labor cost". The real dichotomy here is simple: it's between people who understand that they own capital and work to maximize their return on that capital, and people w…

Capitalist vs laborer is a true dichotomy, in that one cannot be both simultaneously within one context. But it is important to remember these are embodied roles and not character traits . I.e., a laborer becomes a consumer when they leave their place of employment to drive to the grocery store.

What about owner-operators? Truckers who own their own trucks are both laborers and capitalists.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#69

Post by WalterBright »

darth_avocado wrote: post #61
908B64B197 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the compa…

The company does better when they pay you less.

That depends. If they lose you to a competitor that pays more, then the company loses.

It's that old Supply & Demand thing again.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#70

Post by darth_avocado »

neilv wrote: post #39

> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the compan…

Sure it’s part of the description. But it is also free labor when you’re automatically expected to do the work of two people for the price of one. Or when you’re expected to do more for less pay.

Like the “job description” is often pretty vague which makes wage theft easy. If you’re working 996 without extra pay or less pay because everything that your “job description” has cannot be done realistically in a 40 hour work week, then it is by all means, free labor.

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