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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

#71

Post by qualudeheart »

Animats wrote: post #33
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'…

> railroad engineers probably went through a similar economic reality in the early 20th century. Yes, they did. Being a locomotive engineer was a high-status job around 1900 or so. It was a union job. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was the first major union in the US. The same thing happened to electricians (heyday around 1920), radio engineers (peaked a bit later), and television engineers (peaked around 19…

Eagerly the awaiting the age of the homeless current googler. I would let them stay on my couch.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#72

Post by lll-o-lll »

lampshades wrote: post #16

Yes, I agree 100%. Do not help those who seek to devalue you. Extract as much value for as little work as possible. The people who run these companies are not your friends and they’re not your family, take advantage of them at every opportunity you can. Don’t care if the company fails, don’t pay any mind to burning bridges, don’t bother giving two weeks, and certainly don’t do anything more than the bare minimum. All…

Wait what? You did mean to add the /s at the end right?

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#73

Post by darth_avocado »

WalterBright wrote: post #69
darth_avocado wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well if everyone decides to pay less, like it’s being argued here, then there is no supply demand, that’s just the cost of your labor.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#74

Post by WalterBright »

andrepd wrote: post #66
WalterBright wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Smart businesses know that in order to prosper, you have to make win-win deals. Free market economies grow and prosper because people are making win-win deals.

Win-lose deals are the path to poverty and misery.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#75

Post by qualudeheart »

Animats wrote: post #23

Earlier today I wrote on HN: "We can see it coming now - the Final Solution to high tech salaries. Expect to see a huge downward salary trend in the web front end/back end sector. That stuff is a solved problem. Expect salaries for new hires to drop below $100K and old hires being gradually pushed out." This new post says that's already happening.

That’s easily viewed as a pricing in of automation. Amjad Masad of Replit is predicting fully automatic software engineer bot by end of year. Me and my girlfriend were ahead of the curve and are high enough up the ladder that we won’t be effected. Others will have a harder time.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#76

Post by pdonis »

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.

> Capitalist vs laborer is a true dichotomy, in that one cannot be both simultaneously within one context.

Sure one can. One can be a "laborer" in the sense of spending one's working hours doing work for an employer instead of starting a startup or owning your own company, and also be a capitalist in that same context in the sense of using your skills as bargaining power with your employer to get the best return on the capital you own (in terms of your pay and benefits), and judging your employer's treatment of you on that basis.

The inconvenient part is that, in the context of working for an employer instead of starting a startup or owning your own company, you are almost guaranteed to not be getting the best return on the capital you own; you have given up some return on capital (often a significant amount) in exchange for not having to manage business risks by yourself. Which in turn means you are exposing yourself to the risk of your employer deciding to manage their business risks by laying you off. But that's not because you're "labor" instead of "capital"; it's because you made a risk tradeoff that came back and bit you.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#77

Post by commandlinefan »

moffkalast wrote: post #22

> Documentation: The entire point of documentation is to make it easier for the people who come behind you to work. You should write as little documentation as you possibly can. Ah, so no change then?

Actually what I see is people producing reams of documentation because they're required to, but it's all completely useless.

    /**
     * This is the constructor
     */
type stuff is plentiful.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#78

Post by lampshades »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #72
lampshades wrote: post #16

Yes, I agree 100%. Do not help those who seek to devalue you. Extract as much value for as little work as possible. The people who run these companies are not your friends and they’re not your family, take advantage of them at every opportunity you can. Don’t care if the company fails, don’t pay any mind to burning bridges, don’t bother giving two weeks, and certainly don’t do anything more than the bare minimum. All…

Wait what? You did mean to add the /s at the end right?

/s for serious

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#79

Post by ameister14 »

pdonis wrote: post #31
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 problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company Yes, one does. One needs tech skills. Those are capital. (You agree with this since you say tech workers get more valuable with age and experience.) They're just not capital in the form of a large pot of cash that can be used to throw money at problems.

Skills are not capital assets.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#80

Post by WalterBright »

trieste92 wrote: post #64

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 becom…

> While you don't get paid the exact revenue you generate

If you did, why would a company hire you? The idea is the employee must create more value than he costs. And the employee gets more pay than his labor is worth to himself.

That's why it's a win-win relationship.

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