Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany, IG Metal and Verdi are active on IT field.
Salaries in Germany are really low compared to Denmark and Norway.
I have done a quite decent life since 2004, can't complain.
Goodbye Auth0
131–140 of 281 posts
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the idea of unions but not in tech.. blah blah.. meritocracy.. yadda yadda.. I can't afford union fees on my 600k salary.. something something.
I think for most it's not a matter of "can't afford", but rather closer to "don't think it's a use of money that will benefit me over the alternative." As a parallel: I can easily afford to buy a new car; I choose to buy used cars because it's a better use of money than the alternative. Many engineers are rational optimizers by nature.
I believe this discounts the very heavy anti-union propaganda that we've all been subject to since... forever.
I'm not even from the US (I'm from Brazil) but here, similarly, most have a very bad view of unions, fueled by employers that, of course, don't want to give workers any power.
It's always ironic when we see today's workers continuously losing rights that were achieved mostly through unions (with a fair share of blood) actively hate unions without ever truly looking into them.
Smart people always assume they are immune to propaganda, and objectively investigating where those feelings come from is not something most take the time to do. Confirmation bias plays a big role here.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that the lesson to learn here, really? An employee makes a stupid thing and the leadership didn't look into its security practices to avoid this type of attack?
The lesson here is that once an employee or contractor is terminated, you remove all access to internal infrastructure. That's it. That is the lesson.
Then your company is still susceptible to being destroyed by any random employee.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I am an American that doesn't trust institutions by default, so to that end I fit your description here. I'm not sure how universal it is though, we have plenty of institutions here that people do trust and depend on every day. In this context, I think it's less about an individual's trust of institutions and more the institutions mistrust of the individual. Companies don't have to send fired employees home imme…
> Companies don't have to send fired employees home immediately, they only do this because they don't trust the individual to act appropriately. Companies don't have agency or feelings. If company leaders expect people to do their jobs properly only because they are getting paid, it's already an institutional failure, because it's not taking into account that individuals are fallible. If the company does not have an…
I could have been more clear here. When I mentioned companies there I was referring to the people running the companies. Of course a company has no feelings or agency, companies are just a legal structure around a collection of people. Don't get me started on the absurdity of arguing that companies are people, that ruling was terrible.
I don't think its reasonable to assume that a company could ever have full safeguards in place to ensure that a bad actor employee could never cause meaningful damage, unless you are okay with a completely trustless system. Companies must trust their employees at some level, generally the level of trust grows in relation to the employee's responsibilities.
Its unreasonable to assume that any system can be 100% foolproof, if that's a requirement it just shouldn't exist. In the case of companies, they have to accept dome level of risk that employees can cause damage, whether intentional or not.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#135I don’t get it why the US company layoff culture is so different from what I’m familiar with, the European one. What are they afraid of that people need to be locked out? That one brings a gun to work? Here you get laid off, get a notice, are expected to continue working for a while (but depending on your work ethic you’ll take it easy), consume your remaining PTO, complain to your coworkers about what happened durin…
Because losing your job is really a bummer everywhere, but in Europe you've got a lot of things covered by the welfare state (how well, it's a different discussion), so it's less stressful, which reduces the probability of people being really pissed.
In the US, you're probably out of healthcare in the blink of an eye, may have no severance, no coverage, no unemployment benefits, and in some cases it'd mean deportation.
So yeah, two different worlds.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think for most it's not a matter of "can't afford", but rather closer to "don't think it's a use of money that will benefit me over the alternative." As a parallel: I can easily afford to buy a new car; I choose to buy used cars because it's a better use of money than the alternative. Many engineers are rational optimizers by nature.
I believe this discounts the very heavy anti-union propaganda that we've all been subject to since... forever. I'm not even from the US (I'm from Brazil) but here, similarly, most have a very bad view of unions, fueled by employers that, of course, don't want to give workers any power. It's always ironic when we see today's workers continuously losing rights that were achieved mostly through unions (with a fair share…
Unions do have to overcome that history as well as the "free rider problem", but I don't think that's particularly unique to them versus any other "If you will give me money and power, I will make your life better" proposition.
We get advertised travel, lifestyle, nutrition, convenience/utility, and entertainment products all the time. Most of those things over-promise and turn out to underperform their promises (yet not their price tags) and so people who are generally happy with the status quo need some activation energy and convincing to give up money and power now in hopes that this new thing being advertised/promised to them will deliver on its promises. That seems entirely rational to me.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
At my second job, the company terminated an employee for poor performance and intended to let them stay on a short term to wrap things up and then start their severance. The first evening (or maybe the first Friday evening), that dev stayed late in the office and deleted the source trees from as many machines as he could get access to (this was 1996, so most machines didn't have logins) and wiped the hard drive on th…
So because the company hired a criminal sociopath, every other person laid off until the end of times must be treated the same way? Certainly there are better ways to handle even this crazy scenario you mentioned. That feels so inhumane to me. If you don't see your employees as humans, instead as mere resources and, as soon as they are laid off, threats, then we can say it makes sense.
Similar things have happened in my ~12 year career which leads me to believe it is not as uncommon as your comment would portray it.
The first instance I can recall, a developer was terminated and his access was revoked. He goes home, waits until midnight, then tries logging into as many systems as he can. He apparently had saved a WordPress password on his Google Drive. He logs into WordPress and defaces a bunch of pages on the corporate website. FWIW he was one of my reports and he did not come off as a sociopath or unstable and his actions surprised me.
Second instance at a different startup, a marketing guy is terminated but was allowed to hang out at the office for a bit (for some reason management decided to fire him on a Thursday morning knowing he carpooled with several other employees). I felt bad so I took him out to lunch. At lunch he tells me he had a feeling he was about to be fired so he dumped the ~400K+ database of emails in our HubSpot account to sell to a competitor. I told him that was easily the dumbest idea he's ever had. I text the CEO from the bathroom to warn him. He's trespassed from the building upon our return. Oh, and he suspected I tipped them off and so he keyed my car.
Third instance at my own company, I terminated a contractor and removed their access to all services immediately. They attempt to run a series of reports on vendors, contractors, and other sensitive data from the admin UI without realizing their session was invalidated. I get the error notifications and add more granular permissions to the admin panel.
Is it inhumane? No. Is it rude? Yes. I think you have no choice _but_ to treat these people as humans. Humans do human things and act out for a variety of reasons and you have to expect that. Are they inherently bad people? No.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#138It’s not talked about as much but one of the main reasons for American and European software developers being let go is outsourcing to places like India. Companies save 90% of the cost of hiring someone in America. Very soon we are going to see what happened to manufacturing jobs happen to software jobs in the US unless the government steps in. Unfortunately I don’t see anyone talk about it
> Very soon we are going to see what happened to manufacturing jobs happen to software jobs in the US unless the government steps in. Unfortunately I don’t see anyone talk about it
Outsourcing is nothing new. I don't know why you (and others) act like it is only going to happen now with remote work.
My first job in my home country, 20 years ago, was outsourcing to a US company. I was just very cheap labor.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Each country has its own unique employment laws. So you would need a different Union in each country. In the UK, for example, it doesn't matter how small your employer is - you still have the right to have your Trade Union representative with you in certain meetings.
Right, having someone in meetings is nice, but I'm thinking more in terms of collective bargaining, being involved in layoffs (e.g. making sure that every effort has been made to move/retrain people) and all that.
It's true that collective bargaining units will be per country, since legally the employer will have an entity in each country that is subject to local laws.
In practice, unions have international links and often collaborate in the case of an action relevant to the same employer in multiple countries. The details are very much case-specific.
Re: Goodbye Auth0
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Auth0 does a lot more than just a JWT. Sure, it's more expensive and probably not something you'll need, and if you do; why? But it's definitely not just a JWT.
like what?