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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

#211

Post by malermeister »

pdonis wrote: post #181
carlosjobim wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skills are not capital in the communist vocabulary. Skills have an unlimited supply that can not be limited. If you want to mind-bend people into believing skills are capital, then all the workers in the world are bona-fide capitalists, since they are using their skills to get paid.

> Skills are not capital in the communist vocabulary. I have no interest in the communist vocabulary. Communism killed more than a hundred million people in the 20th century. I would hope we have figured out by now that communism doesn't work. > all the workers in the world are bona-fide capitalists, since they are using their skills to get paid. In the sense that most of their pay is return on capital, not "labor",…

> Communism killed more than a hundred million people in the 20th century. I would hope we have figured out by now that communism doesn't work.

So did Capitalism [0]. Now what?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_noir_du_capitalisme

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#212

Post by solarmist »

(This is only a partially developed thought. I'm sure some of my reasoning isn't sound. Please help me to develop it more fully.)

This is an extremely misguided essay. It conflates two types of programmers. There are two classes (as in labor classes) of programmers. It's like confusing the difference between an electrician and an electrical engineer. Many businesses already recognize this fact, but the author doesn't seem to have a clue.

The first, "programmers," do routine things to implement features, which it sounds like the author is advocating everyone turn into.

The second, "software engineers," are a new class of workers, knowledge workers. Creativity and collaboration are core job functions for this class of workers. Is implementation a piece of it, yes, but it is decidedly not the point of the job.

Software engineers ARE "the machine that makes money". Trust is the mechanism that keeps a technology company viable. Apple and Microsoft are great examples. They are ascendent when there is trust in the motives of the company, but when they were headed for rent-seeking or "lost their soul" (for lack of a better description) they quickly started declining and were on the path to bankruptcy or at best irrelevance.

For a software engineer leaving is like leaving a half completed painting. You leave behind the artifacts, but they were never the (most) important part.

When leaving the company is sufficient to change its prospects (taking your ball with you) elaborate strike behavior is unnecessary. Without creative engineers, tech companies will die and creativity requires psychological safety.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#213

Post by yogthos »

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…

That's not how this works at all. You produce a certain amount of value that the business appropriates, and then you get paid a small portion of the value your produce as your salary. That's why it's the business owner who becomes and not the employees. The only way you would be paid the exact value that you generate is if you worked in a cooperatively owned business.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#214

Post by int_19h »

SergeAx wrote: post #172

I believe that the best antidote for this utterly bullshit marxist propaganda is ESR[0]'s essay "Why hackers should eject SWJs". Please take time to read this (and, if you like it, other his essays): http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918 [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond

Indeed, please do take some time to read his other writings. Some choice examples:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/aim/

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#215

Post by migf »

Author is ignoring the value of building a network of engineers and professional relationships that will withstand any particular gig. This is the mode we have for building solidarity among developers.

Software is unique as a means of production precisely because it is a much more efficient way to turn labor into capital assets (software programs). I think the way out it presents us is to start software focused businesses that are wholly employee owned without VC input; bootstrapped as employee cooperatives.

I'm working on this right now, although it's a hard climb to figure next steps. Anyone else interested?

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#216

Post by [deleted] »

commandlinefan wrote: post #77
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.

[deleted]

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#217

Post by carlosjobim »

jltsiren wrote: post #201
carlosjobim wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? Can they buy homes without entering into lifelong debt?

At least in Finland, home ownership seems to be common among the people in their 30s and 40s I know, regardless of what they studied or didn't. The most common reasons for renting appear to be being single and relocating often for work. Typical mortgage duration is 20-25 years, which means that if you are in your 30s or 40s, you are probably about halfway through. At least if you didn't switch to a bigger home recent…

> At least in Finland, home ownership seems to be common among the people in their 30s and 40s I know, regardless of what they studied or didn't.

You cannot call it home ownership, when these people are in decades of debt for their houses. 20-25 years is what I'd consider lifelong debt, if you enter it in your 20s. And for many it makes financial sense to go into that lifelong debt. When the parents croak about when they're halfway through paying, they have the option to sell the inheritance and can get free from the debt. To finally take back control of their life - but in reality to refinance and get a car and continue to feed the banks.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#218

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

SergeAx wrote: post #192
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Written in 2015, with ESR's typical naive-utopian ideas about "hacker culture". The whole point of TFA is that the corporations that employ the people who, at this point, make up "hacker culture" have shown their hand, and it looks very different when you can see the cards instead of the backs of their hand. But also, the "SWJs" that ESR is talking about have almost nothing to do with the class warfare described in T…

"Naive-utopian hacker culture" gave us approximately everything we are building upon right now. Can't tell the same about SJWs. And yes, they are very much the same as those who call to class warfare and unionizing. Those are people who interested in shifting the power from the people who actually build things to those who will dictate them what to do and what not to do.

I'm almost 60. I'm a part of the "naive utopian hacker culture" - I started working on the GNU project in 1986. And I'm telling you that this conception of it - as something alternative to political power, class warfare (or at least, an understanding of class) and "that old stuff" - is just completely invented bullshit (invented in part by ESR, who I went out to a rave with back in 97).

I built/build things ... and I'm telling you that your analysis is wrong. Yor antipathy towards what ESR terms SJWs and to unions and the understanding that a class war has been ongoing whether you want to admit or not is blinding you to reality that "naive utopian hacker culture" might have been a good driver for technological "innovation", but it has never been how the world works, nor will it be.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#219

Post by thiagoharry »

vfclists wrote: post #200

Hacker News is so full of corporate shills it is laughable. The guy is making a point here. Do not add to your employer's assets unless you are expressly instructed to. Quite simply, don't write any software to improve your employer's operations unless you are instructed by your boss to do so. Don't use your own initiative to do something unless it is acknowledged and approved by your superiors. Factory workers don't…

Exactly. The ideology that romanticizes free labor is very strong in software industry. Would my employer spend extra hours just to make me more comfortable or to help solving my problems? Would they be proactive to find ways to increase my wage instead of their profits? If not, why should I act in the opposite way going out my way to help their profits? We have a contract, so I fulfill exactly what is written in the contract: no more and no less. And even accepting this, I am being very generous, as I know that I produce more wealth than what I am paid for.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#220

Post by thewildginger »

carlosjobim wrote: post #122
MarkMarine wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you square the circle of management wanting to pay employees the minimum they can for the maximum amount of their employees labor? The company is a giant thing, with lawyers, power and resources that are impossible for an individual to push against and win anything that is contested. Like 80 hour work weeks. Children working in manufacturing jobs. Unsafe working conditions with fire exits blocked. Which are al…

> How do you square the circle of management wanting to pay employees the minimum they can for the maximum amount of their employees labor? The same way you circle the square of workers wanting as much compensation as possible for the least effort possible. In other words: The market of labour. > The company is a giant thing, with lawyers, power and resources that are impossible for an individual to push against and…

A problem with the argument of IT being such a free market right now is the pattern of labor markets. Look at the AI leaps and you have yourself a foreseeable "streamlining" that every other profession of the past has gone through. Miners, mechanics, longshoreman, factory workers, truck drivers, printers, brick layers, glass makers, textile workers, typists, computing specialists, librarians. The pattern is always the same. It's a hot and competitive market until it is captured by automation. Google announced going public with the project to automate programming yesterday! You seriously think the job that is coincidentally useful now will exist forever?

Software Engineers are falling prey to what every other person on this planet save a very rich few live with. Welcome to reality. "The free market" always becomes a cartel. When the government stops the cartels, the cartels take over the government in the form of lobbying, campaign contributions, government employee hiring/revolving door.

And yet developed nations where unions are a facet of the labor market have fewer of these issues, and on a less grand scale.

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