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I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

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Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it saves them a lot of money on paper, yes, they will just hire someone else

And how long would it take for the person to get up to speed on the code for such software that in production and may have critical bugs that need fixing now?

Business managers don't like to think that way because they know they're already screwed if business continuity relies heavily on "bus factor 1" individuals

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s your choice, and you don’t need to choose to. And if I don't choose it, I can just choose to not pay bills/rent when I'm fired. What a simple solution.

Ultimately, it's just one more point of negotiation. In a market where labor is scarce, clocking out at But when the balance shifts and your skills are in less demand, the screws are turned, and management is going to start asking questions about who is providing the best value. To a corporation, employees are just fungible cogs, ready to be replaced if they aren't delivering. Unless you really are a 10x developer (a…

What led me to self-employment was that the 1.2x developer who works reasonable hours is often perceived as less productive as the 0.7x developer who is ass in chair more often. Maybe things have gotten better since covid but I doubt it.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#153

Just keep in mind that a business's role in society is to deliver something and bring in a profit. So if you don't bring revenue directly to the bottom line you are in line for layoffs. Don't fall in love with your job. The business is not in love with you. I suspect the fund's trading strategy was less than great so they had to cut expenses ASAP. I can't imagine why they would get rid of the person who would have to…

> Just keep in mind that a business's role in society is to deliver something and bring in a profit.

No, that’s just another lie you’ve been made to believe. Corporations exist to serve the public good. The freedom they have been granted by the laws passed by nations is to facilitate that end. All it takes to change the rights of corporations is a change in law (not a Constitutional change as it would to change the rights of people).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1322201?seq=3

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a storage startup in the South Bay in the late 00s which did something like this. After staff crunched to deliver the base operating system and kernel controllers, management gave across-the-board poor reviews to all IC staff to justify no raise. Those with the ability quickly left for greener pastures; Google hired some of the best. Only those who had to (work visas, lack of experience, etc.) remained.…

”The product, being a v0.1 release implemented in C, was of course plagued with data corruption and poor performance. It read /etc/password from disk on every file access. An uninitialized int caused indirect inode corruption every ~millionth write. And so on. Because of the poor product quality, they lost multiple opportunities, …” It sounds like the poor reviews for the ICs was warranted, wouldn’t you say?

Not necessarily. Big codebase in something like C, written in a rush, pretty much is guaranteed to have such things. We still are finding high-grade security issues in glibc (if you want some library to be clean, it's the one practically everybody is using), and it has been around for 37 years. v0.1 prototype is often plagued with various issues and often doesn't have best performance. You either spend years on polishing it and never release, of you start with v0.1 and fix the issues. Or, having fired all the dev team, don't fix the issues.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a storage startup in the South Bay in the late 00s which did something like this. After staff crunched to deliver the base operating system and kernel controllers, management gave across-the-board poor reviews to all IC staff to justify no raise. Those with the ability quickly left for greener pastures; Google hired some of the best. Only those who had to (work visas, lack of experience, etc.) remained.…

”The product, being a v0.1 release implemented in C, was of course plagued with data corruption and poor performance. It read /etc/password from disk on every file access. An uninitialized int caused indirect inode corruption every ~millionth write. And so on. Because of the poor product quality, they lost multiple opportunities, …” It sounds like the poor reviews for the ICs was warranted, wouldn’t you say?

> It sounds like the poor reviews for the ICs was warranted, wouldn’t you say

How many crunches have you survived that resulted in a high-quality initial product? If there is enough time to get things right, it wouldn't be a crunch, by definition.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what OP said. They said it was a case of exploitation and they are correct. People just don’t like to hear it phrased that way because it brings up negative connotations. Now, while the agreement may be exploitive that doesn’t mean it isn’t mutually beneficial or that the situation be zero sum, at least viewed at a small scale. It’s perfectly possible to be exploited by someone and still end up in a better…

The ideal compensation is: compensation = (value produced) - (cost to employ the person) - (opportunity cost) - (risk) By and large, that's what the employee gets. Get paid more than that, you're apt to be fired. Get paid less than that, you're apt to change jobs.

> compensation = (value produced

Only in a non-capitalist society. You are naively missing company profit as the reward for company risk: capitalism 101.

In an imaginary world you have built a business that brings in $x. You now employ $people to run the business and you leave the business in their capable hands. The amount of value produced by $people is $x. No capitalist owner would then share the total of $x out to the $people according to the value each person is producing in the business. Whether $x is profits or revenue, most capitalist businesses won't be kept alive for $0 profit.

Apple makes a revenue of 2.4 million per employee. When someone (a new employee) joins an existing business like Apple, should they be paid around 2.4 million less costs? https://www.statista.com/statistics/217489/revenue-per-emplo...

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ideal compensation is: compensation = (value produced) - (cost to employ the person) - (opportunity cost) - (risk) By and large, that's what the employee gets. Get paid more than that, you're apt to be fired. Get paid less than that, you're apt to change jobs.

> compensation = (value produced Only in a non-capitalist society. You are naively missing company profit as the reward for company risk: capitalism 101. In an imaginary world you have built a business that brings in $x. You now employ $people to run the business and you leave the business in their capable hands. The amount of value produced by $people is $x. No capitalist owner would then share the total of $x out t…

> You are naively missing company profit as the reward for company risk

I wrote:

    compensation = (value produced) - (cost to employ the person) - (opportunity cost) - (risk)
Note the word "risk" in there.

> Apple makes a revenue of 2.4 million per employee.

Revenue is not profit. And did you factor in the value of stock options as compensation? Total employee compensation is a lot more than salary.

> When someone

The value produced by a particular "someone" surely varies wildly among Apple employees.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compensation = (value produced Only in a non-capitalist society. You are naively missing company profit as the reward for company risk: capitalism 101. In an imaginary world you have built a business that brings in $x. You now employ $people to run the business and you leave the business in their capable hands. The amount of value produced by $people is $x. No capitalist owner would then share the total of $x out t…

> You are naively missing company profit as the reward for company risk I wrote: compensation = (value produced) - (cost to employ the person) - (opportunity cost) - (risk) Note the word "risk" in there. > Apple makes a revenue of 2.4 million per employee. Revenue is not profit. And did you factor in the value of stock options as compensation? Total employee compensation is a lot more than salary. > When someone The…

> Note the word "risk" in there.

0: I took risk to mean the risk of employing someone - your definition is totally unclear (I admit I'm an engineer not an economist). Please point me to a good reference that defines your equation.

1: Risk is not profit.

2: Profit is only related to risk in some perfect (edit) economist model of markets. Or if you use a tautological definition between the risk and the profit. In the practical world, risk and profits often diverge. Businesses cannot have perfect knowledge so opportunities always exist.

3: you are also ignoring the bigger issue: why would a capitalist company pay more for an employee than they have to? An employee usually can't even know how much their work is worth - they don't have access to the financial records - (edit) a company uses that information asymmetry to their advantage. If two fungible employees bid their required salary for a job, the company will pay as little as possible and choose the cheaper person. Where does that fit into your equation?

> The value produced by a particular "someone" surely varies wildly among Apple employees.

Obviously. This margin is too small to write a detailed example to fit your needs! Argue the point.

Edit: at least say whether you think "value produced" is revenue produced or profit produced. Kind of an important difference between the two and it isn't clear what you mean at all. When you do that, I'll try and construct a marginal employee argument edit2: I was trying to point the Apple example towards an argument based on marginal value - I should have been clearer, sorry.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#160
I’ll give a very simple job security lesson.

A small resort I worked for had a guy that had been there from the very beginning. He knew where every single water line was on the entire resort. A map was never made of those water lines.

When a new general manager was hired years later, he wanted to fire the guy who always showed up late for work, and was considered lazy. The owner of the of the resort said, “you can’t fire him, he’s the only one that knows where all the water lines are”.

Job security boys,job security.

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