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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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems these people are in an adversarial relationship with doing actual work. They advocate for doing noting beyond the absolute minimum you are directly instructed to do. So essentially taking out all independence from work and making it a dull box checking job.

Sounds eerily similar to how companies generally operate, by paying the absolute minimum to get the job they want done. Interesting how people don't seem to like when labor takes the same aproach.

I don't have to defend any company out there, but that's not how in my 20+ years experience, i think it works. You do your work well, you show professionalism, does your manager think that you are important for the team? You are well paid. Are you just doing the regular stuff, not being active on meetings, not actually helping anyone, or doing anything other than what you think that "your job is": Then you are going to get just a regular salary. You do more, you get more. If you don't get more, you find a job where you get more. This weak man game like "oh i'm not going enough money, so i will stay here and do nothing", doesn't make sense in a market like ours with skill shortage. Worse developers are the spoiled one, that think that the whole world conspire against them.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#302
post #39

> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the compan…

> No, I think most of these are usually part of the job of a software engineer, and it's part of developing solutions that work, rather than just gaming individual metrics. If you speak to people who work in trading or finance, they do none of those things. They view each other as conpetitors and don't help each other. They aim to outgame and outdo each-other. The culture in software is very different to most other i…

people who work in trading or finance would never write open source code. Why should we compare our profession with them?

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#303
post #39

> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the compan…

Sure it’s part of the description. But it is also free labor when you’re automatically expected to do the work of two people for the price of one. Or when you’re expected to do more for less pay. Like the “job description” is often pretty vague which makes wage theft easy. If you’re working 996 without extra pay or less pay because everything that your “job description” has cannot be done realistically in a 40 hour w…

I don't remember to see people doing over 40 hours work/week since the 90s. Today, people start at 10, go lunch at 12:00, and 16:00 they want to go home.. At least in Europe.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#304
An interesting idea that is then followed-up with a bunch of bad advice. I'm just not seeing how taking the advice here doesn't turn into your job being excruciatingly annoying to actually perform day-to-day. So maybe you've tipped the balance in labor's favor, but you've given up any semblance of actually enjoying your job. There have to be other ways.

I would welcome an article that started with the goal to further the same thesis but got there in an alternative way.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#305
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you get a pay bump for no increase in hours? Is that free money?

you have an answer in marx's capital: all surplus is wage theft because the capitalist, who does nothing, gets money from those who do the work. so any more money you get is not free, it's just a slight reduction in the money which is getting stolen from you.

what insane idea, don't believe people still citing Marx in 2023, coming from a communist country, I can just laugh hard on you. I'm working on a open source software, and our money depends directly on our work. Our CTO works side by side with us, and our bonus are all the same. That's just BS. If you want the same conditions, there are plenty of companies doing the same. Just find one.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, I think most of these are usually part of the job of a software engineer, and it's part of developing solutions that work, rather than just gaming individual metrics. If you speak to people who work in trading or finance, they do none of those things. They view each other as conpetitors and don't help each other. They aim to outgame and outdo each-other. The culture in software is very different to most other i…

people who work in trading or finance would never write open source code. Why should we compare our profession with them?

Who should we compare outselves to? Can't be doctors - they risk deadly infection to save a life.

Lets not get carried away thinking we are specially noble.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#307
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this wage suppression was direct collusion, corporations have such an oligopoly now they hardly need to explicitly collude, both on wages or prices. A company raises the price for something, and it's called 'price leadership', other companies recognize it is in their interest to follow suit and prices go up. The same dynamic exists for wages. Years of not enforcing anti-trust have left us in a pretty bad spot.

We've seen across the board price increases recently, but it was inflation, not collusion. How do you explain price decreases? > Years of not enforcing anti-trust have left us in a pretty bad spot. And yet STEM graduates were getting $200K+ for their first jobs. How is that collusion working out?

Inflation is just tge cover story.

2021 was the most profitable year for big corporations since 1950, with pre-tax profits rising to $2.5 trillion and after-tax profits surging 35%, enabling the 1% to finally overtake the middle class in share of overall wealth.

53% of price increases went straight to profit.

They've got you right where they want you.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2022/05/10/how-w...

> And yet STEM graduates were getting $200K+ for their first jobs. How is that collusion working out?

?? City traders can make millions, they actually get a cut of profits they generate.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're unstable, unless maintained by force What is the basis for this assertion? Is this why OPEC exists? Is that why in 2010 Department Of Justice had to step in to break up a wage suppression cartel between Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay If it wasn't fpr the force of law, they would happily cooperate to drive you into poverty.

> Is this why OPEC exists? OPEC has had a constant problem with cheaters selling oil under the table. > Is that why in 2010 Department Of Justice had to step in to break up a wage suppression cartel between Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay Yes, it was a cartel, and the companies were cheating on it. Remember when Jobs complained to Google that Google was cheating on it? There was no…

> Yes, it was a cartel, and the companies were cheating on it.

The american police often breaks the law themselves and kills people.

Does it mean we should get rid of police, they don't work just like cartels don't work?

Anyone reasonable agrees murder rate would be higher if there were no police at all.

A cartel does not need to be perfect to achieve wage supression.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people who work in trading or finance would never write open source code. Why should we compare our profession with them?

Who should we compare outselves to? Can't be doctors - they risk deadly infection to save a life. Lets not get carried away thinking we are specially noble.

> Lets not get carried away thinking we are specially noble.

The guy in Nebraska maintaining one of key dependencies of your project thanklessly disagrees[1].

Well, we build stuff. we praise the knowledge. We were called geeks, hackers, etc. I can just compare software engineering with science like math, * engineering, physics.

Finance market as put by the other contributor, is just what we are not, and why Linux exists, why FOSS exists, why internet exists and services like github, trello, gmail exists (even though you want to scream at me, they are there for profit, they were all created with one goal in common: Collaborate openly with others). Egoist finance sharks aren't example of success, virtue and happy life, no matter what.

[1] https://xkcd.com/2347/

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#310
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So have I. I love the people I work with (usually). That doesn’t change the nature of the wage relationship. We workers produce value through our labor which companies pay for in wages. Capital (CEOs, founders, VCs) wants to maximize the ratio of value to cost, therefore they wish to pay us as little as possible while getting maximum efficiency. It has nothing to do with liking your coworkers.

Negotiation goes both ways, you want to be able to demonstrate your value and sometimes that comes by showing people that you can be paid more elsewhere. The game here is positive sum, not zero, you want to know and show what you add to the equation. I've met everyone above me on the org chart. It's not that impressive because we're smaller, but we're also not doing layoffs and I can talk to people who make human dec…

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