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Tech's Elite Hates Labor

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Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#421

Post by pnt12 »

vkou wrote: post #19
MrMetlHed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing... One of the largest groups of non-union employees making movies are the VFX artists. Odd coincidence that they're paid much less and have worse working conditions.

Yes, but they get access to a coffee machine and get to make memes during unpaid lunch, why would they bargain that sort of freedom away to get a union?

Not sure why downvoted: lots of tech companies offer these benefits while omitting others which are much needed.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#422

Post by patriciaaa »

norir wrote: post #244
freedsoftware wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also that good marketing of a product is probably more integral to its success than its engineering. There are so many stories of superior technologies failing because of bad marketing.

I agree that marketing is extremely important. There is no product without the engineers and no customers without the marketers. If you prioritize quality, I think the engineers are more important. If you prioritize making money, perhaps then the marketers are more important. I don't really know. The problem is that in this particular case, the only things this person seemed exceptional at were being friends with the…

[dead]

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#423

Post by blamestross »

MockObject wrote: post #372
blamestross wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

This is both right and wrong. What makes an organism? You are a multicellular system of cooperating cells. If this statement was true, you couldn't exist. The truth is that the most powerful adaptation to increase your organisms ability to compete is to in fact build a bigger organism. Your body is a product of that strong evolutionary trend.

Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others.

We call portion of organisms that revert to this competitive mentality "cancer" and eventually it does win. That doesn't make it morally right, just the last parts of a body to die after it kills the rest in shortsightedness.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#424

Post by ch4s3 »

sofixa wrote: post #418
ch4s3 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is some weird revisionism. The Reign of Terror was until the Fall of Robespierre, July 1794. The Armée des Émigrés was still going strong and represented nobles actively fighting with France's enemies to destroy the revolutionary regime. The Vendée uprising was facing brutal suppression at the same time, but also existed and had local nobles participating. Voluntarily is a massive stretch. Even more so when you…

It isn't revisionism at all. The August Decrees happened in 1789 ending many of the privileges of the 1st and 2nd estates and by 1793 they were amended to turn land over to peasants for free. This was all before the reign of terror started. The nobles and clergy that participated in the National Constituent Assembly were practically racing to be the most forward thinking, the proposal to end feudalism came out of the Club Breton and was proposed by the Duke d'Aiguillon.

The Vendée uprising like many such uprisings was sparked by the Levy Decree(levée en masse) which was a response to the Girondins stirring up a stupid war for "national unity".

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#425

Post by bryanlarsen »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #223
bryanlarsen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is that true? Every VC-backed founder I know "failed up". They pulled a more-than-dev salary from the company during the failure, and then after the failure they just started a new company and had an inside track on VC. OTOH, the bootstrapped founders have my respect. They had their houses as collateral for their company's operating loan. They also succeeded at a much higher rate than the VC backed founders I've…

The comparison shouldn't be VC-backed founders, but all founders including those who weren't able to fund their company and therefore failed. Getting VC funding is a significant filter.

But in my experience those who got VC funding failed at a higher rate than those that didn't.

A far better filter is "do you have enough revenue that you can afford to hire employees." Self-funded entrepreneurs pass that filter, whereas VC funded ones usually don't.

The article is about employees so we don't care about the entrepreneurs that fail before they hire anybody.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#426

Post by MockObject »

blamestross wrote: post #423
MockObject wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. This is both right and wrong. What makes an organism? You are a multicellular system of cooperating cells. If this statement was true, you couldn't exist. The truth is that the most powerful adaptation to increase your organisms ability to comp…

> Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others.

Cooperation is definitely a popular strategy for survival, and our instinct for altruism benefits the survival of human families and small groups. Consider though, that in each of your examples, the collective entities formed then grow to the greatest extent, limited only by resource constraints and competition from other entities.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#427

Post by blamestross »

MockObject wrote: post #426
blamestross wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is both right and wrong. What makes an organism? You are a multicellular system of cooperating cells. If this statement was true, you couldn't exist. The truth is that the most powerful adaptation to increase your organisms ability to comp…

> Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. Cooperation is definitely a popular strategy for survival, and our instinct for altruism benefits the surviv…

And access to higher trophic levels is unlocked by learning to work together in bigger groups instead of fighting each other. Growth is bottlenecked by "othering"

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#428

Post by kwere »

kortilla wrote: post #230
wolverine876 wrote: post #193

This should create enormous business opportunities: Lots of talented, self-motivated, creative, forward thinking, skilled workers looking for a place that values them and is forward thinking, including about employment. Usually, layoffs happen in weak economies. But the economy is strong, unemployment is low. These layoffs are partly about power and ideology - sacrificing business interests. It's a rare opportunity f…

> how often do large companies shed their best people. Less often than they shed under-performers. Hiring during mass layoffs is difficult because it’s a market of lemons situations. You have to sift through the majority that got let go because their manager identified them as performing below average to find the ones that were laid off because some failing departments were shut down.

underperforming at FAANG is more than enough for 90% of workplaces

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#429

Post by thebradbain »

steveBK123 wrote: post #232
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…

You do NOT want to point at entertainment industry as some sort of better meritocracy model. The ratio of nepotism hires and who-you-knowism in that industry is insane. There's a reason you have multi-generation families all "in the business". Met plenty of people in NYC in the industry, and they are either nepotism hires or surrounded by them.

That doesn’t have really anything to do with the guilds, though— in fact, it would likely be worse because then those high up in a production could just elevate and pay who they choose (it’s not their money, after all).

The guilds do still have objective criteria to get in, and pay scales so that regardless of if you’re a director’s child or not, you’re getting the same pay as everyone else with your title.

Yes, nepotism in Hollywood is a well-known issue, but it’s also an issue in pretty much every industry that’s been around for multiple generations. I imagine we will see the same thing happen in tech— just as it has in healthcare, politics, sports, law, finance, and all manner of highly desirable skilled professions

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#430

Post by dlkf »

duped wrote: post #133
dlkf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you trust unions over markets to determine which programmers are skilled? How would they determine that?

The unions don't decide who gets hired for a project, only the set of terms should you hire someone from the union.

But crucially, they also decide who is in the union.
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