Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 207 posts

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#131

Post by SoftTalker »

conductr wrote: post #104
LPisGood wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional athletes and pilots have unions. They both make considerably more than your average programmer, even in FAANG and even with equity.

This leverage all has to do with the product, how close you are to it and how valuable it is. FAANG product is valuable, but the programmers are still just creating it and usually a small part of it at that. Pilots are the product when the product is "get plane to destination" they are the 1 or 2 people providing that product (ok service). Athletes are the product of sports. It's very valuable and there's only a doze…

Pilots also spend years logging hours in small airplanes, then regional airlines, getting paid relative peanuts, working crazy hours, rarely home, etc. before they land a high-paying job at a major national airline. And any hint of health problems, depression, substance abuse, etc. they fail their medical and it's all gone.

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#132

Post by mikeweiss »

thrownthatway wrote: post #126
neya wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably slogged to death before this and finally are recouping what they were owed over their lifetime if you put things into perspective. I feel happy for them and hope they use it wisely and actually retire.

> recouping what they were owed I’m just a dumb blue collar worker, but I’m going to go with “No” here. They were only ever owed what they agreed to work for. Now, that’s changed and they negotiated a different agreement. They were never owed this until both parties agreed they were.

I don't think it was meant to be taken so literally.

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#133

Post by snthpy »

dyauspitr wrote: post #44

This is what bonuses would average out to in the US as well. It’s just that the CEO would get $100 million and the workers maybe $10k each. Does the article say how it’s going to work?

Exactly. I came here to say the same thing.

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#134

Post by js8 »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #97
saghm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. That's certainly an opinion that some people have, but as the parent comment stated, companies don't run without employees, so the idea that the value created is solely attributed to the founders or other executives is not an empircal fact like you're claiming it is. There's no scientific for…

> companies don't run without employees, the idea that the value created is solely attributed to the founders That's why the owners get to keep what is left AFTER paying employees. It's called profit. One way to become a billionaire is when you offer that stream of future profits securitized as "stock" to other people who buy those future profits from you and collectively value those securitizations at over a billion…

> The owner takes the risk that there is no (or negative) money left over after paying employees and all other costs.

This is not true, and somewhat confusing, because "takes the risk" means two distinct things - making decisions and living with the consequences of them. Economic production is a collective effort. The management of the company is who usually makes the decisions; these might coincide with owner (especially in small business) but often they're just another employee.

On the other hand, bad decisions made by management affect everyone in the company, not just the owner. The rich enough owner rarely lose their livelihood (we have limited liabilities btw), but the employees might lose the only source of income.

And the system where you have only one person (owner as main manager) making decisions ("take risks") that can negatively impact many people (his employees, customers and what not) is structurally risky, it actually increases the risk of something going wrong (aside from it being a moral hazard). (POTUS is an extreme example of this.) The risk is shared (collectively owned, if you will) and so should be the decision-making.

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#135

Post by energy123 »

js8 wrote: post #116
arjie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. If you create $6 of value for every American and capture half of it you are a billionaire. “Public investments” besides are heavily spent on. The majority of the US federal budget goes to welfare. If you want new infrastructure and so on, the primary blockers are the universal veto powers we ha…

If they want to "share with society", it's nice, but they can do it after taxes, just like everyone else. Even if a rich person reinvests everything, the control over large amount of money is what makes it problematic. Also the idea that welfare doesn't go to investments is wrong. When you buy groceries (or anything really), there is a decision made by the management of the company you buy these things from to reinve…

What's your solution to the local knowledge problem? Capital markets are like other markets. Capital gets allocated to where it's needed, holding aside market failure (which is what regulations are supposed to fix). Capital owners seek out the best return/risk, and because they are on the ground and diverse in views and skills, that solves for the local knowledge problem.

This is where startup seed funding comes from, capitalists like YC who are good at it rather than some incompetent. It's why bad companies eventually lose the ability to raise, freeing up societal resources.

What appears to be implicit in your comment ("There is no need for a capitalist") is an advocacy for central planning for capital. Although you also say "they can pay taxes" so maybe that's not what you're advocating for.

If you want to know what I think is best, it's possibly a wealth tax applied on global wealth, along with stronger regulations around media concentration, political spending, and a few other things. But to eliminate capital markets and push it all into a central planner is bad.

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#137

Post by zozbot234 »

js8 wrote: post #116
arjie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. If you create $6 of value for every American and capture half of it you are a billionaire. “Public investments” besides are heavily spent on. The majority of the US federal budget goes to welfare. If you want new infrastructure and so on, the primary blockers are the universal veto powers we ha…

If they want to "share with society", it's nice, but they can do it after taxes, just like everyone else. Even if a rich person reinvests everything, the control over large amount of money is what makes it problematic. Also the idea that welfare doesn't go to investments is wrong. When you buy groceries (or anything really), there is a decision made by the management of the company you buy these things from to reinve…

> Even if a rich person reinvests everything, the control over large amount of money is what makes it problematic.

What about the control that out-of-touch politicians and bureaucrats have over large amounts of taxpayers' money? Shouldn't we find that far more problematic overall?

> There is no need for a "capitalist" (owner of the enterprise) to insert themself into the process, they are useless middlemen who get a cut, essentially.

Then why do newly created enterprises almost universally seek outside capital investment? Sounds like there is a need after all, otherwise you could just have a partnership structure and take no outside money whatsoever.

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#138

Post by vintermann »

saghm wrote: post #78
arjie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. If you create $6 of value for every American and capture half of it you are a billionaire. “Public investments” besides are heavily spent on. The majority of the US federal budget goes to welfare. If you want new infrastructure and so on, the primary blockers are the universal veto powers we ha…

> People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. That's certainly an opinion that some people have, but as the parent comment stated, companies don't run without employees, so the idea that the value created is solely attributed to the founders or other executives is not an empircal fact like you're claiming it is. There's no scientific for…

> There's no scientific formula for "how much of this result of a bunch of actions that multiple people took over the course of a few years is attributed to each of the people"

I can think of a few. You've got things like Shapley values. But it's not a "neutral" way to attribute outcomes to actors.

It's funny actually, I read about Shapley scores ages ago, and then the go-to example was basically political corruption: assume a bunch of political parties with varying vote weight but no principles whatsoever, aiming to secure a majority to split a "prize" among themselves. But looking at Wikipedia now, it's practically presented as a method to guarantee fairness.

Either way, there's no neutral measure of value (or for that matter, effort) either. What a dollar gets you depends 100% on who else has dollars and how much, so productivity or efficiency can never be separated from distributional concerns.

Re: Samsung chip workers will get an average $340k bonus as AI profits soar

#139

Post by hvb2 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #14
bayarearefugee wrote: post #6

Meanwhile tech workers in the US spend all day online defending billionaires who wouldn't piss on them to put out a fire and arguing about why we can't have unions because blah blah blah rugged individualism.

I find this complaint hard to square when US developers earn "moon money" compared to both: a) fields requiring similar levels of expertise like EE or Mech-E and b) international developers in similar roles. Plus, equity. [GIF of Woody Harrelson wiping tears with money]

Its very simple. Look at the profit margins of those companies, there's simply a lot more to share.

If you don't need to buy a product to make a product, or when you have to that's typically pennies on the dollar you can share a lot more of that.

The real difference here is that when the market is favorable you CAN share more. And Samsung is doing so. In the US you probably wouldn't be able to do this because the shareholders will cry and will happily give a 100M bonus to whoever will 'lead' the company better. Where better means diverting as much as possible to the shareholders

Post reply on HN