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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

#341

Post by leshow »

WalterBright wrote: post #280
leshow wrote: 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?

I'm not sure what you think inflation is, but it is just the prices of certain key items going up: food, housing, transportation are the main ones.

Corporations decide to set their prices higher, and you have a price inflation. We know that this is not merely a function of their inputs going up because many companies have been pulling in record profits during this time period. Nobody needs to meet in a smoke filled room for this to happen.

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

You're being distracted with a nickel while your pockets are being emptied. It's all relative. Look at the cash big tech firms have in the bank. Google used 60B dollars to inflate their stock price this year with stock buybacks at the same time they laid of 6% of their workforce.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#342

Post by cudgy »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #120
keskival wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was missing the words "together" and "solidarity". It seemed to be a product of a culture of extreme individualism.

Yeah. "I, the individual, am going to do my best to make sure that I get mine, even if it harms the company and my coworkers ". That's not "class warfare". That's narcissism.

As opposed to “I, the executive or founder, am going to do my best to make sure that I get mine, even if it harms the company and my employees." Who has the most incentive and power to be the narcissist? Employees would be smart to understand this dynamic.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#343

Post by pelasaco »

thiagoharry wrote: post #331
pelasaco wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coming from a capitalist country, I say that money here do not depend directly on our work. The majority of people in my country works a lot and receives very little. The life for workers on farms, and meat-packing industries are particularly difficult and cruel. There are lots of people that becomes sick, or that became unable to work because of lesions. And guess that: they keep being poor and their employers are r…

> the goal in capitalism is increase profits, not well being of people.

I thought that in 2023 would be clear to everyone that only capitalist countries were able to improve the well being of the people. I see 0 boats from Miami to Cuba, just the other way around. So even though we can agree that people working in some fields have a hard life, for a fact, we know that in the communist countries they didn't have a better life than before, as we saw in the Holodomor, the famine that was caused by the decision by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property. Collectivization led to a drop in production, the disorganization of the rural economy, and food shortages.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#344

Post by vinimk »

WalterBright wrote: post #248
Supermancho wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to something that convinced you of this?

I don't have a cite, but I saw a graph in the WSJ decades ago that laid "productivity" and "total worker compensation" on the same graph, and they neatly overlaid each other. In any case, neglecting the value of employee benefits makes comparing salary to productivity a completely worthless statistic. What needs to be included are the values of: 1. health insurance 2. retirement benefits 3. stock options 4. so-called…

> I don't have a cite I wonder why

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#345

Post by BenGosub »

cratermoon wrote: post #284
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.

well, during early stages of startups the investors lose money, while employees get wages. I agree that compensation in the finance space doesn't make sense, but that's a different problem.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#346

Post by frollo »

dljsjr wrote: post #19
wufufufu wrote: post #2

Had me in the first half, lost me in the second. Why not try to create unions instead of "don't document anything because you're making yourself replaceable"?

This is exactly what the article says to do. I also paused at that section that listed all those crazy things, if you power through and get to the end you'll find this: >If you’re a conscientious engineer, you are probably going to find the above suggestions somewhere between counterintuitive and horrifying. You should! They are horrifying! This is how deeply capital’s war on workers is scarring our profession. >Thes…

For being the point of the article (and it is), it's very well hidden. I like the article and feel like we need more of this out there, but they should be written a little better.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#347

Post by frollo »

foobarian wrote: post #259
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…

> 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. Heh, are there actual companies where this is possible? If I went off coding random pet projects to "improve operations" I'd get in trouble real quick. Unless it's discussed and prioritize…

> Heh, are there actual companies where this is possible?

I've seen companies where this was presented as a benefit. The small ones said things like "you have X ours a week you can spend working on whatever part of our product/infrastructure you want, even outside your current role!" while bigger ones restricted it to "corporate hackathons" (aka work after hours for a cold pizza and some warm beer).

If there's a why to persuade an engineer to work for free, out there there's at least a couple MBAs who've tried it.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#349

Post by gomizari »

pelasaco wrote: post #343
thiagoharry wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a capitalist country, I say that money here do not depend directly on our work. The majority of people in my country works a lot and receives very little. The life for workers on farms, and meat-packing industries are particularly difficult and cruel. There are lots of people that becomes sick, or that became unable to work because of lesions. And guess that: they keep being poor and their employers are r…

> the goal in capitalism is increase profits, not well being of people. I thought that in 2023 would be clear to everyone that only capitalist countries were able to improve the well being of the people. I see 0 boats from Miami to Cuba, just the other way around. So even though we can agree that people working in some fields have a hard life, for a fact, we know that in the communist countries they didn't have a bet…

Soviet Union substantially improved well-being of its people, when compared to what Russian Empire was before.

Other capitalist countries managed to improve the well being of the people because of wars and financial imperialism.

Holodomor had a lot of reasons, collectivisation was not the main one.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#350

Post by jgeada »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #333
jgeada wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management decides what portion of the pot gets to be divided by the workers, and much of that pot you might get. You're not even a part of that discussion. You are an individual, management is not. They have negotiating power because they see what everyone else gets paid, you don't. Your only viable threat is walking away, and for most people that is not a credible threat. Your perception of your negotiation skills…

Even accepting everything you say, you have still missed my point. Company A has employees who are working as a team, working for the good of the company. Company B has employees that are doing as the article says, sabotaging actual work. Which company is going to do better, A or B? Even if management decides that workers only get X%, and workers can't negotiate that, in which company is there a bigger pot available…

It’s a trick question. Neither company will want to pay employees anywhere near market rates if they can avoid it. The smaller the pot for employees the larger the profits & management pools
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