Are you paid to look busy? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#81

Post by zo1 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #73

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

You appear to be getting downvoted, but you've struck at the heart of the issue: If we want to do away with meaningless jobs, people will still need resources to survive. And that "one-in-ten-thousand" (or whatever) will need to be taxed very heavily so the wealth can be spread. We can't have all of our financial resources siloed into an increasingly small number of people's wallets. A great benefit to this system wi…

"And all of this runs anathema to the usual sort of libertarian financial-might-makes-right of the tech world, unfortunately."?

Woah, hold on there. Did you really just imply that "financial-might-makes-right" is a Libertarian thing/concept? That is absolutely not true, and I challenge you to prove otherwise.

I'm honestly curious why you would even think that. If you do, then you've been drinking some seriously nasty statist koolaid, and we're here for you if you need some help getting over that addiction. With reasoned arguments, no less!

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#82

Post by ZenPro » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

The classic fallacy is that everyone can be an entrepreneur.

They cannot.

A. Entrepreneurs need employees to scale B. If everyone was an Entrepreneur there would be very few consumers for goods and services.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#83

Post by 001sky » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

hawkharris wrote: post #54

This reminds me of a study focusing on soccer games. It analyzed A) how often players shot goals toward the left, middle and right sides of the net; and B) how often goalies responded by jumping toward the left, middle and right sides. The stats revealed a surprising phenomenon. Though opposing players shot toward each area of the goal evenly — about 33% of the time — goalies jumped toward the left or the right 80-90…

Conversely, there are offices where someone "not being present" can shut down the productivity of the entire firm. People are paid to "be available" as well as to do tasks. The importance of "availability" on "task performance" is not imaginary--witness how computatuional hardware shows performance variation based on cache architecture.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#84

Post by pavel_lishin » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #46

keypusher wrote: post #23

No, I'm not, and it's one of the things I enjoy about programming. Some weeks I work 30 hours, others I work 60. But if I did the things I committed to doing this week, then I go home. Why sit in the office and pretend to be working? It makes no sense.

>Why sit in the office and pretend to be working? It makes no sense. Only if you think of it from the "accomplishing tasks" perspective. For example where I work, we are there even if we are not actively working to be available in case we need to immediately respond to demands of leadership. For example this week I had to answer an off the wall question about our project that they needed an answer to RIGHT NOW becaus…

Should your leadership be aware of the answer to the potential question without having to ask you about it 15 minutes before the meeting? This seems like something that ought not be a problem, if your leadership is attending standups and there's clear communication.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#85

Post by jamesisaac » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

> Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything??

Are you suggesting that the only motivation to start a business is to "make millions and keep millions"? What about:

- Making the world a better place

- Improving the lives of others

- The personal satisfaction of building things and solving difficult problems

These are all motivators to do something which creates "economic value".

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#86

Post by paulhauggis » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

keypusher wrote: post #23

No, I'm not, and it's one of the things I enjoy about programming. Some weeks I work 30 hours, others I work 60. But if I did the things I committed to doing this week, then I go home. Why sit in the office and pretend to be working? It makes no sense.

Most managers would not accept this. Since most developers are paid salary (as opposed to hourly), many feel like if you were leaving early, you aren't working hard enough.

I've seen it at every place I've ever worked. At one place, my manager directly told me I needed to stay until 6 or 7 every night or the boss will think that I'm slacking.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#87

Post by mpyne » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:21 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

Well, you only need money to buy the things you need to survive.

Many jobs are already "few doing work to support the rest of society", the only difference is that today we happen to be paying the few to do it.

If you had people willing to do the work anyways, since it's what they like doing (e.g. farming) then why shouldn't the rest of society benefit? It's the same principle that drives open source programming. Not everything you do has to be based on maximizing your net worth.

However I do think this is where Fuller's principles start going astray. There are so many jobs out there which people don't want to do, but are absolutely necessary. It's easy to say that people should see what needs to be done, and go do it, but people simply don't work that way. All other things being equal, we do what we want to do, not what needs to be done.

Fuller would be right on track if people wanted to do what needs to be done, and with those two sets in proper proportion with each other. But I've seen no evidence to show that is what society does for us (and a whole lot of evidence to the contrary). Failing that, the quest for money helps to provide a forcing function to align society's needs with worker's wants, but this system has a lot of flaws as well.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#88

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:21 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #55

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

This sounds great, but you still need money to survive. This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything?? You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of…

>the majority of my earnings

If the government is taxing a significant majority of your income you'll still be rich. Allow me to reframe the question, why bother starting a business where you'll only earn three million dollars a year? One good reason is because you want to take home three million dollars, even if it was theoretically 25 before taxes. Even if every slacker in the world gets a $20k stipend, there's plenty of incentive to solve problems and make money.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#89

Post by dantheman » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:22 PM UTC

"And then I thought, well, maybe that explains some other things, like why is it there’s this deep, popular resentment against people who have real jobs? They can get people so angry at auto-workers, just because they make 30 bucks an hour, which is like nowhere near what corporate lawyers make, but nobody seems to resent them. They get angry at the auto-workers; they get angry at teachers."

I thought people were angry at these people because of their unions - all the other jobs he listed are nonunion and thus the higher wage is actually a market wage.

Re: Are you paid to look busy?

#90

Post by williamcotton » Sat, May 10, 2014, 6:22 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #74

ryandrake wrote: post #22

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery becau…

"We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed" You make it seem like there is some entity or group of entities that thinks "Hey, let's go make up jobs". For what reason, you ask? Well, because he has to "justify his right to exist". That puts your argument in the same bucket as "karma", "quantum wellbeing", "deepak-nonsense" and "homeopathy". Seriously though. What is that rant…

What my neighbors are up to is incredibly relevant to my life. We share the same space and we affect each other's lives in important ways. On a bigger and more abstract scale we share the same Earth with every other living human.

Stop pretending like you don't live in an organized society and that we all don't have the ability to change the dynamics of our culture through government. We've been doing so for millennia.

No man is an island!