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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

#281

Post by WalterBright »

MarkMarine wrote: post #208
WalterBright wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you square the circle It's squared by the employees wanting the maximum pay for the least amount of work. It's call "Supply & Demand". It's the Law. > impossible for an individual to push against and win anything that is contested Not impossible at all. I've done it many times. The power the employee has is to say "No" and go work for someone else, or start their own company. > Like 80 hour work weeks / chil…

> were necessary when productivity was much lower than today. Wow. just incredible. I've never seen the take that kids working in manufacturing jobs were necessary. Begs the question, necessary for whom?

> necessary for whom?

Do you know that it wasn't until 1800 or so, and only in the US, where the ever-present spectre of famine was eliminated? Economies simply were unable to produce enough food. It wasn't that the rich were eating it all. There just wasn't enough food.

Which means it's all hands on deck to work. Other problems were it was very expensive to produce cloth, so for people to get clothing, lots and lots and LOTS of people were needed in the textile industry.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#282

Post by WalterBright »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #262
WalterBright wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you square the circle It's squared by the employees wanting the maximum pay for the least amount of work. It's call "Supply & Demand". It's the Law. > impossible for an individual to push against and win anything that is contested Not impossible at all. I've done it many times. The power the employee has is to say "No" and go work for someone else, or start their own company. > Like 80 hour work weeks / chil…

Absurdly farcical take. They went away because government regulations were slowly built up to guard against this kind of thing from occurring in the future. See Fair Labor Standards Act in the 1930s.

If we unwound technology back to 1900 level or so, child labor would come back, laws or no laws.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#283

Post by WalterBright »

thewildginger wrote: post #220
carlosjobim wrote: post #122

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 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 th…

> Miners, mechanics, longshoreman, factory workers, truck drivers, printers, brick layers, glass makers, textile workers, typists, computing specialists, librarians.

Those jobs were all created by automation.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#284

Post by cratermoon »

BenGosub wrote: post #11

Earnings fail, valuations go down and layoffs happen. This cycle of layoffs has been one of the most expected since I remember. And people in the software space still have so many options. There could be an event that will lead to a situation that won't be as good as we have it right now and I am fully aware of this. But, I don't see a reason to view the layoffs through the lens of this author.

> Earnings fail, valuations go down and layoffs happen

And yet the investors and senior executives still get 7- to 8- figure compensation, pull down yet more money from stock buybacks, and generally benefit. The overall amount of money changing hands doesn't go down, but less of it goes to the line employees while more falls into the pockets of the ones with already overflowing pockets.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#285

Post by cratermoon »

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

Funny how that keeps being thrown out but nobody really has done a full accounting for the deaths due to rapacious capitalism. I've seen figures of 100 million to 150 million from two World Wars, colonial wars, anti-communist campaigns, repressions and mass killings, ethnic conflicts, and victims of famines or malnutrition. Some accounting says 20 million people die every year due to the effects of capitalism, such as starvation, lack of access to clean water, lack of access to shelter, lack of access to medicine, and unchecked disease. Remember when the pandemic wasn't over and businesses said everyone had to go back to work or the economy would break? Credible counts say there are 16 million empty homes in the US[1] and around half a million unhoused [2].

1 https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/16-million...

2 https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#286

Post by WalterBright »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #247
MarkMarine wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were necessary when productivity was much lower than today. Wow. just incredible. I've never seen the take that kids working in manufacturing jobs were necessary. Begs the question, necessary for whom?

Sarcasm: until we had publicly funded schools, what else was the urban working class going to do with their children all day long? Putting them to work made sense in a "making the ends meet" sort of way.

And kids had summers off from school not for "vacation", but to work the farms.

Something like 97% of the population worked on the farms in those days trying to raise enough food.

Do you know that women in America use to spend all day in the kitchen managing the wood stove, which was very labor intensive? Any free time they had was spent spinning, weaving, sewing, and mending.

Gas/electric stoves are modern miracles, as are sewing machines, electric refrigerators, dishwashers, clothes washers, dryers, all sorts of liberating machinery. And most especially, indoor plumbing! Who do you think ran out to the town well constantly to pump a pail of water?

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#287

Post by cratermoon »

pdonis wrote: post #82
ameister14 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skills are not capital assets.

Yes, they are. The people who own and run Google and Facebook and Amazon didn't magically get "capital" from nowhere. They used their skills, and turned those skills into huge amounts of money. In other words, they understood what capital they owned, and acted to maximize their return on that capital. If you insist on refusing to view your own skills as capital, you're just giving up the chance to maximize (or at lea…

If I invest $100 dollars in very safe investments today, what will it be worth in 50 years? Now, invest in your skills for 50 years, what's that going to be worth?

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#288

Post by leshow »

swamp40 wrote: post #121

Well, in case you were wondering what a communist was, here is a perfect example. As an engineer, I'm not falling for his sad attempt to drive a wedge between tech workers, engineers and management. I have more in common with tech company lofty goals than I do with his. > Google, Amazon, IBM, Spotify, PayPal, Salesforce, 3M, Coinbase, and more are all conducting mass layoffs at the same time. Yes, it's a conspiracy j…

Unemployment is at record low levels, that's not indicative of a recession.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#289

Post by WalterBright »

MarkMarine wrote: post #263
drjasonharrison wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sarcasm: until we had publicly funded schools, what else was the urban working class going to do with their children all day long? Putting them to work made sense in a "making the ends meet" sort of way.

Talking about this stuff really makes people drop their masks. How many children should we use to grease the wheels of capital accumulation? How good is this system if that’s what it requires.

I recommend you take a tour of a reconstruction of an 1800-era dwelling and have a good hard look at how people lived.

I toured Mt Vernon recently (George Washington's estate). He was probably the richest man in America at the time. You and I live better than he did.

You seem to think there was all this wealth sloshing around at the time. Nope.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#290

Post by WalterBright »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #247
MarkMarine wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were necessary when productivity was much lower than today. Wow. just incredible. I've never seen the take that kids working in manufacturing jobs were necessary. Begs the question, necessary for whom?

Sarcasm: until we had publicly funded schools, what else was the urban working class going to do with their children all day long? Putting them to work made sense in a "making the ends meet" sort of way.

Have you ever wondered why, as productivity increased, the number of children per family decreased? This happens consistently in country after country.
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