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Tech's Elite Hates Labor

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Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#391

Post by mrzimmerman »

ketzo wrote: post #227
bdcravens wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little of Hollywood's work can be done remotely. Even the parts that can are essentially protected by that network that can't, they are so intertwined. Also Hollywood has a substantial moat that prevents an indie studio in Tulsa from having access to the same distribution network, etc. Not suggesting that "big tech" doesn't have advantages, but overall, there's an entire world of software development outside of…

Supporting your point further, one of the reasons Georgia gets so much film/TV work is because they are unfriendly to unions, so labor costs are much lower.

If the studio has a contract with one of the guilds in Hollywood, the labor is still covered regardless of geographic location. Georgia has a LOT of tax breaks for film production costs which is what makes it attractive for studios.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#392

Post by mrzimmerman »

zozbot234 wrote: post #214
Manuel_D wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are guilds in a very traditional, medieval, sense: they have very exclusive membership, and drive up the cost of labor by deliberately causing shortages. This is great for the people lucky enough to be members. But it sucks both for the consumers that pay inflated prices, and for the workers who don't have the connections to get into the guild.

See also: the U.S. healthcare industry.

Except fields requiring expert knowledge (and in this case can cause injury or death) it’s very good that there are licensing and regulatory bodies that prevent any old person or group from wandering in and participating. No one dies if a script isn’t very good.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#393

Post by seti0Cha »

topaz0 wrote: post #352
seti0Cha wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know what point you are trying to make. You are describing some of the ways that people higher up the hierarchy have more power to demand higher wages. That's what I was talking about.

Ok, let me say it a different way. They don't have the power to demand more than they are worth, because the amount the employer offers reflects what the employer thinks they are worth. You may disagree about how much value they supply, but that's not really relevant. Wages aren't set by what some 3rd party thinks is fair, they're set like other prices - how much the employee's skills are needed and the available supply of people with those skills. Hierarchy is only incidentally involved, and not always. Consider, for example, the wages of actors or professional athletes for example.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#394

Post by danielscrubs »

seti0Cha wrote: post #296
topaz0 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my experience it’s not about labor at all. It’s very far from wanting to put the best high up and more about which social circles you get access to. It’s always a struggle between what’s best for the company and what is best for the individual board members/ceo and there is way to few real active investors for the best of the company to take priority usually.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#395

Post by mrzimmerman »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #24
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…

The problem with this theory is that the gaming industry has to work with the Voice Actors Guild and they are a huge pain in the ass. The hourly rate is fine. The min/max hours is fine. The union exclusivity clause is bullshit. They won’t even allow you to use your own company’s employees to record temporary VO. It’s all or nothing. Expo hall unions are even worse. I have to wait 30 minutes and pay someone $50 so the…

Exclusivity is a two sided coin. Speaking as someone who dealt with the Teamsters Union at a few expos myself, it can be very annoying to not be able to carry your own boxes, or plug in a new power strip. Honestly, it’s maddening.

The flip side (for me, personally) is that I believe that the conference hall would charge me the same fee with the same restrictions, pocketing a large majority of it. It’s no different than going to a stadium and spending $60 on two beers and a hotdog while the person behind the counter makes a fraction of the sale but cleans the space, warms and hauls the food, handles the sale, and puts it together and gives it to me.

So again, there is pain with the teamsters in a convention space (specifically in this context), I fully agree. But if I’m going to have to pay too much for a service I’d rather it went to working class families with stable jobs in the area I’m visiting and doing business in.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#396

Post by ch4s3 »

sofixa wrote: post #375
ch4s3 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 getti…

The reign of terror and wars happened after most of the nobility voluntarily gave up their hereditary rights. Even after the storming of the Bastille there had been very little real violence.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#397

Post by hnfong »

hackerlight wrote: post #378
hnfong wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. That's kind of my gut reaction to highly paid big tech employees asking for "fair" pay. Seems a bit "hypocritical"(?) to only consider fairness within the industry and not society as a whole.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#398

Post by danaris »

hackerlight wrote: post #381
danaris wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was a CEO only 6x more valuable to the company than a regular worker 70 years ago? We know that CEO pay has increased vastly out of proportion to any other related changes in our economic system over the last several decades. We also know that the makeup of boards (who choose CEOs, and determine how much they will be paid) is significantly slanted toward CEOs of other corporations. There is a clear financial interest…

Those statistics about CEO pay growth are often deceptive. If you sample the top N firms over time, where N is fixed, the mean market cap of those N firms will be growing, given that the economy has grown over the time window. That the average compensation of the CEO of these sampled firms is also growing is unsurprising. The omitted variable that causes this statistical illusion is GDP growth itself. Now, even with…

That's a lot of words to try and justify CEO/worker pay discrepancies of a factor of over 300.

All that bullshit about statistical illusions doesn't change the fact that the median worker in America has barely seen any real wage growth for 50 years, and all that extra wealth went straight to the wealthiest people in the country. Many of those are the CEOs we're discussing.

Income and wealth inequality of this level are genuinely harmful to the economy and to the political system, and every bit of effort you put into justifying them, rather than admitting that it is wrong and harmful, is effort being put into actively making the world a worse place.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#399

Post by mrzimmerman »

danuker wrote: post #85
luckydata wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow it took only one comment to make the article right, and it's not only the elite, it's even the "little people" doing a lot of the hating.

Taking feedback is a sign of maturity and adaptability. Genuinely, what will happen with writers when scripts will be a dime a dozen, because people are going to use these new technologies? Thinking about these scenarios is the POINT of a union, making sure writers stay relevant for the long-term future. Failing to address them makes for a lot of broken dreams and missed opportunities.

It is a fair point (I think your tone is what has set people off, and for the record I didn’t enjoy it either). The real question, in my opinion, is what does humanity do in general with our fellow humans whose labor is displaced by some form of automation? And that fully includes all of us here on Hacker News.

Do we prevent the lose of income to people by forming a collective bargaining group (guild, union, co-op—whatever you’d like) to prevent the job loss and maintain income? Do we tax the owners of businesses who are using large amounts of automation so that the profits are shared with larger society? Do we let the market figure out it out?

It’s an incredibly difficult and complicated question and I don’t have a good answer. But I do personally believe that the people who will be hit hardest will be average people: ourselves and our neighbors and we should consider how we want to react to that fact sooner rather than later.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#400

Post by [deleted] »

dlkf wrote: post #324
anon7725 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional guilds fostered apprenticeship, mentorship and relationships between practitioners that transcend firms/projects. Given that “the market” seems to have settled on LC as the only measure of skill I don’t think it’s far fetched to imagine that a guild system could be better.

> Given that “the market” seems to have settled on LC as the only measure of skill That’s not true and I suspect you know it.

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