191–200 of 279 posts
> Imagine you had a dog... Imagine that instead of a dog, it's an adult who makes their own choices and gets paid money, and who signed a contract where the terms of employment were spelled out very clearly..
I was with you until that part. Do people exist who can imagine that?
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There is no way to make a mistake here because there are essentially no consequences -- entities of this scale can rehire as easily as they fire. At a lower average compensation rate too, most likely. These companies are basically refinancing their labor force using cruelty and fear. It is working because they're all doing it, because we let them. System working as intended.
> At a lower average compensation rate too, most likely. highly doubt it. The labor force is shrinking. There's already a dearth of talented software devs. And then there will be huge upward pressure on wages from lower level jobs that now have to pay 20$ an hour to get workers.
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I think you're being a bit uncharitable and jaded here. For many, events like these are actually the catalyst that causes one to "grow up", which is what the author is conveying.
I don't know if I agree that "growing up" and "becoming bitter and cynical" are the same thing. Getting more bitter as you age might be something to work on with a therapist, not something to aspire to.
This place isn't your home, these people aren't your friends and your executive leadership would run you over with their cars if you stood between them and revenue growth. Your relationship to work changes forever. You will never again believe that you are "critical" to the company or that the company is interested in you as a person. This has always always been the case. Grow up.
While I agree with this perspective, these companies go out of their way to market to their employees to make the job their whole identity. They are not blameless.
This place isn't your home, these people aren't your friends and your executive leadership would run you over with their cars if you stood between them and revenue growth. Your relationship to work changes forever. You will never again believe that you are "critical" to the company or that the company is interested in you as a person. This has always always been the case. Grow up.
Grew up with parents working in startups/small tech companies in Santa Cruz from the late seventies through the 2000s. No, it has not always been the case. It's sad you are happy to accept it as both acceptable and the norm. Grownups realize they have the agency to choose the environment they place themselves in and choose to spend the majority of their day somewhere not adversarial.
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Actually there are different levels of working class. A guy earning $18k per year working in retail isn't exactly in the same boat as the manager of the store making $80k a year.
That was a story made up by capital owners to keep the working class fighting amongst itself. The reality is that anyone who works for a wage is being taken advantage of
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That was a story made up by capital owners to keep the working class fighting amongst itself. The reality is that anyone who works for a wage is being taken advantage of
It's called being middle class. middle class != working class, But i don't expect you to be able to see through the decades of propaganda.
Working class is defined as those who must sell their labor in order to survive. If you cannot live off income of your investments alone and must work for a salary then you are a worker, you are working class
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We are all workers, we are the working class whether we are educated or not. The capital owners want the working class to fight amongst themselves because it allows them to continue enriching themselves off the backs of the working class. Even if you own some stocks or have a 401k, if you depend on a salary to pay your bills then you are a worker
It annoys me in the UK how people claim that "Tommy who 'does up houses' and flips them or rents them out" is a "working class builder", where as Billy isn't working class because he types on a keyboard. In the UK working people, especially those earning above minimum wage, are taxed far more than the capitalists of the world like Tommy who can structure his income to pay just 30% marginal taxes rather than 60% plus.
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That was a story made up by capital owners to keep the working class fighting amongst itself. The reality is that anyone who works for a wage is being taken advantage of
It's called being middle class. middle class != working class, But i don't expect you to be able to see through the decades of propaganda.
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Don't forget the next bit, "by the third year, these differences became statistically nonsignificant". So the layoffs... worked?
> So the layoffs... worked? How does that follow? The conclusion would be that both the companies and workers suffered unnecessarily for 2 years, with no long-term benefit afterward to the layoffs. In other words, you should just ride out the downtimes instead of panicking.