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Tech's Elite Hates Labor

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Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#371

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

unity1001 wrote: post #364
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The last 20 years' of tech progress did create new paradigms . The world today is totally different from how it was in 1990 I feel the opposite, if anything the rate of innovation is slowing down, and besides this sort of religious type words should not be used in the context of business. And if were to be used it should be reserved for something that really changes human life in a pivotal manner in the same way…

> I feel the opposite, if anything the rate of innovation is slowing down Of course it is. The sector has been 'MBAified' after the first decade and a half. Its about extracting maximum value by providing the minimum. It happens to every sector - look at computer games. First decade is full of innovation and firsts. Then big corporations take over and consolidate the sector. Now its about milking what already existed…

> > of things as opposed to 'building' things and telling them apart is critical.

Innovators of the past would call Brin and Page 'MBAs type' like you do, or better yet they'd call them not imaginative or risk taking enough given that MBAs didn't exist back then. It recursively goes like this the more you go back into the past.

In the end it's all about risk. You think MBAs are risk averse. People like Edison and Rockefeller would think Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are risk averse.

Guys like the Montgolfier brothers and Christopher Coloumbus would laugh at Edison and Rockefeller for being risk averse and they themselves would be subject to the same ridicule from the guy who invented fire and the wheel.

This is coherent with the idea that the rate of innovation is slowing down because of less risks being taken.

The only difference between my stance and yours is that you only analyze the last 10 years and identify a bogeyman in the MBAs, and hail founders as the great pioneers, whereas in reality it's a phenomenon which traces its roots way back into the past.

As kids say: 'fuck around. Find out'

I don't think MBAs were the first figures who refused to 'fuck around' and I don't think Silicon Valley founders are the kings of the 'fuck around' either, that title belongs to our early ancestors

The rate of risk and innovation will never be as great as the time that we invented the wheel and fire. As I said it has been slowing down ever since, mostly because people 'fuck around' less and less. Not just MBAs but everybody.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#372

Post by MockObject »

blamestross wrote: post #359
MockObject wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I review human history, in all its approaches to organizing technologically advanced societies ever since the plow, I see profit-seeking behavior everywhere, even in societies deliberately engineered to thwart the profit motive, so evidently, altruism never scales much further than an extended family. I see profit-seeking behavior when I watch a squirrel hoard nuts, or a dog snap at a scrap of meat on the ground…

That is a level of rationalization of capitalism that I had not previously imagined. Competition doesn't have to be unbound. All things in nature find satiation. We can be satisfiers not optimizers.

This goes far beyond capitalism, and describes all forms of human complex societal organization, from the ancient slave states described by Marx, to the Leninist states in our modern times.

Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#373

Post by ethbr0 »

pavlov wrote: post #315
pwpw wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And when does that risk ever materialize apart from the Enron/Wirecard/FTX cases where the CEO and CFO truly were pulling a massive scam?

Kenneth Lay died after being convicted but before being sentenced, so afaik his family still has the money.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#374

Post by unity1001 »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #371
unity1001 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel the opposite, if anything the rate of innovation is slowing down Of course it is. The sector has been 'MBAified' after the first decade and a half. Its about extracting maximum value by providing the minimum. It happens to every sector - look at computer games. First decade is full of innovation and firsts. Then big corporations take over and consolidate the sector. Now its about milking what already existed…

> > of things as opposed to 'building' things and telling them apart is critical. Innovators of the past would call Brin and Page 'MBAs type' like you do, or better yet they'd call them not imaginative or risk taking enough given that MBAs didn't exist back then. It recursively goes like this the more you go back into the past. In the end it's all about risk. You think MBAs are risk averse. People like Edison and Roc…

> Innovators of the past would call Brin and Page 'MBAs type' like you do

They objectively wouldnt. The science and engineering history of late 19th century is filled with people like Brin and Page getting 'MBAified' out of their inventions. Tesla and Westinghouse is a good example of such stories.

> Christopher Coloumbus

A genocidal profiteer is the last person who you would want to invoke as an example of such people. He didnt invent or innovate anything, he didnt want to change anything, he didnt bring about any new paradigm.

> because of less risks being taken

Equating innovation with taking risks is a faulty concept to start with. You can bet that the 'person' who invented the fire or the weel didnt take any risks. To start with, those were not invented by singular people 'taking risks' but invented by entire species (likely more than one) by adopting them gradually through observation from nature and learning from each other. Likewise agriculture. If anything, risk-taking was not something that early human ancestors or their close relatives would risk themselves.

> The only difference between my stance and yours is that you only analyze the last 10 years and identify a bogeyman in the MBAs

Sorry, but its otherwise. Thinking that fire or wheel were invented by singular people shows the lack of insight into science of history, leaving aside the history of this species.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#375

Post by sofixa »

ch4s3 wrote: post #335
sofixa wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Some parts of the old elites ended up kind of on top at the end anyway, however in a drastically different situation - citizens had rights and power at the top came from below, not above (divine right was no longer a thing). So massive difference regardless…

Sure, but they could have gotten that without all of the wars, reign of terror, and general horribleness of the revolution.

Like how exactly? If they had gotten crazy luck with a benevolent king that decided to bestow them rights? I'm struggling to think of a case where subjects became citizens with rights without either violence, threat of violence, or the sovereign getting scared of violence elsewhere. The French Revolution made many of the liberal reforms across Europe possible precisely because many rulers were deathly afraid of getting guillotined.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#376

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

unity1001 wrote: post #374
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > of things as opposed to 'building' things and telling them apart is critical. Innovators of the past would call Brin and Page 'MBAs type' like you do, or better yet they'd call them not imaginative or risk taking enough given that MBAs didn't exist back then. It recursively goes like this the more you go back into the past. In the end it's all about risk. You think MBAs are risk averse. People like Edison and Roc…

> Innovators of the past would call Brin and Page 'MBAs type' like you do They objectively wouldnt. The science and engineering history of late 19th century is filled with people like Brin and Page getting 'MBAified' out of their inventions. Tesla and Westinghouse is a good example of such stories. > Christopher Coloumbus A genocidal profiteer is the last person who you would want to invoke as an example of such peop…

> > Equating innovation with taking risks is a faulty concept to start with. You can bet that the 'person' who invented the fire or the weel didnt take any risks. To start with, those were not invented by singular people 'taking risks' but invented by entire species

Back then people were making human sacrifices and starting wars because 'the Gods told them to do so'.

Innovation happens when risks are taken (eg. Montgolfier brothers, Wright Brothers, the guy who discovered testosterone by self injected blood taken from the testicular veins of horses...) and given that risk and confidence are a state of mind much less a business practice, you cannot conflate it just to science and technology but said risk and confidence will be visible all around society. So wars, genocides, violence and genearlly stuff considered bad.

The rate of innovation has been slowing down due to the diminishing in the standard deviation of human behavior. Or as kids say: 'Less fucking around, means less finding out'

Standard deviation of human behavior goes both ways, people rejoice that we eliminated the negatives but we have also eliminated the positives. No Einsteins without Hitlers, no Archimedes without Alexanders etc.

So even if the guy who personally discovered fire or the wheel didn't take risks personally (I doubt it) he operated in an environment where the standard deviation of human behavior was much larger. For sure there were people jumping off trees with wooden wings, wars, genocides, much more violence. And that is statistically enough to make sure that at least one unit in the sample stumbles into something great like fire or the wheel.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#377

Post by indymike »

This is going to be unpopular, but business has these priorities: debt-holders(sometimes employees are here), owners, customers, employees, everything else. Articles that try to re-order these priorities really get it wrong. If being an "elite" means you are holding debt or own shares, you are very much

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#378

Post by hackerlight »

hnfong wrote: post #316
hackerlight wrote: post #267

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 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…

Another way to look at your story is that the CEO is just doing their job. Perhaps they had a specific talent, perhaps they had a stroke of insight, or perhaps they just randomly made the right decision. But at the end a cynic could say they were just being at the right place at the right time. On the other hand, you can also say that the board should be paid 100x because they somehow picked the right CEO. But why st…

> The possibilities are endless... why attribute success to one single person?

I don't disagree, but this same critique can be applied to anyone, yet it disproportionately gets applied to CEOs. How can a SWE justify their $300k compensation? After all, the fact they hold that job can all be explained by circumstance, parenting, genes, being born in the right country, etc.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#379

Post by hangonhn »

danaris wrote: post #367
hangonhn wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no evidence that management problems are harder to solve than coding problems. I think that's the sort of thinking some forms of schooling drill into our heads: harder problems = greater reward/value. That's not really how it is. We get rewarded for the value we supposedly generate by solving some problem or at least some portion of that value is rewarded to us. So if there are some low hanging fruits that…

> We get rewarded for the value we supposedly generate by solving some problem or at least some portion of that value is rewarded to us. And that's the sort of thinking other forms of schooling drill into our heads: value generated ~= value compensated. That's not really how it is. We get rewarded for the position we are at in the class hierarchy. If you're "in charge of" someone, you have to be making more money tha…

Totally agree with you. I think your point and the one I made earlier are at least two of the naive beliefs often held by a lot of engineers in tech -- myself included. The really pernicious part is that the value generated by engineers are sometimes quite big and the reward they get is a small fraction of it but big enough to make the engineer happy that they never stop to ask for more or find a better deal.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#380

Post by 2setIntrsction »

rank0 wrote: post #99

I don’t really like tech executives…but the idea that tech workers are somehow oppressed is ludicrous. We get paid extremely well! FFS have any of you guys taken a moment to talk to folks outside the industry?

The argument isn’t that tech workers are oppressed more than any other laborer, the issue is that the balance of power between laborers and capitalists is flawed.

Tech workers can be oppressed even if other laborers are more oppressed; believe this is where the idea of class solidarity originates.

Tech workers are in the same class as all other laborers; not capitalists.

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