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Tech's Elite Hates Labor

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Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#191

Post by pydry »

welshwelsh wrote: post #153
habosa wrote: post #65

I think because individual tech workers are so highly paid relative to other industries, we fail to see how low our pay is relative to what the people at the top are making. A high performing Google engineer may make 500k+ in total comp, Sundar Pichai makes $100M+ in many years. That's 200x as much ... and the baseline is already super high. You see startup founders who exit with generational wealth (tens or hundreds…

I don't see the problem here. A burger flipper makes $10 in an hour. An engineer designing a burger flipping robot makes $100. Their department's engineering manager makes $1,000. The CTO makes $10,000. The hardest worker here is the burger flipper. They work 16 hour days just to afford rent, and it's hard manual labor. The engineer makes 10 times as much because each line of code they write produces more value than…

Were what you said even remotely true than a really bad department manager and CTO would stand to lose 100x/1000x what a burger flipper makes when they fuck up and make things worse.

The force multiplier works in both directions.

More realistically, the pay is about control and class. An incompetent CTO who always makss everything worse is just not in the same social class as a programmer, let alone a burger flipper, and will typically still earn 100x as much while making everything 100x worse.

^ I've worked with one of them.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#192

Post by throw93 »

throwaway23597 wrote: post #109
habosa wrote: post #65

I think because individual tech workers are so highly paid relative to other industries, we fail to see how low our pay is relative to what the people at the top are making. A high performing Google engineer may make 500k+ in total comp, Sundar Pichai makes $100M+ in many years. That's 200x as much ... and the baseline is already super high. You see startup founders who exit with generational wealth (tens or hundreds…

> The Bezos and Musks and Kalanicks of the world believe that this is correct. They truly think they do something in their 24 hours of daily human life that makes them hundreds or thousands of times more valuable than even the absolute best "labor" in their industry. I mean to play devil's advocate, these people have created organizations that employ hundreds of thousands of people in highly paid tech positions. Thes…

Organizations are nothing without labor. The 500k salaries are a but small percent of revenue the labor is generating. These companies are sitting on the largest ungodly amount of cash piles ever seen in history of mankind and that should be cause of huge concern.

These so called tech icons were at the right place at right time and nothing else. I refuse to believe that these individuals are somehow 200x smarter or deserve 200x more than the people who are working for them. The reason they have intergenerational wealth while you & I still have to worry about mortgage is because our f'd-up system allows these "titans" to steal the profit we the workers generate.

It's not a bad thing to generate useful products to improve society but it's definitely a bad thing when labor doesn't get their share.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#193

Post by wolverine876 »

This should create enormous business opportunities: Lots of talented, self-motivated, creative, forward thinking, skilled workers looking for a place that values them and is forward thinking, including about employment.

Usually, layoffs happen in weak economies. But the economy is strong, unemployment is low. These layoffs are partly about power and ideology - sacrificing business interests.

It's a rare opportunity for people hiring - how often do large companies shed their best people. Better workplaces and new startups should be moving quickly. And it's a great opportunity for the job-seekers to find places that value them and want to do new, innovative things.

It requires you to believe in people as valuable, in cooperative not adversarial relationships, in the potential of human innovation, which can come from anywhere. Just like SV before the new reactionary power grab.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#194

Post by ejb999 »

sixothree wrote: post #86
WalterBright wrote: post #56

It's easy for laid off tech workers to start their own companies. Lots of my friends and colleagues have over the years. The fun thing about starting your own company, is you find out how much you're really worth!

Why is starting a company your solution to this problem?

not the OP, but if 'the problem' is that the people who are running companies are not running them in a way that some people feel is fair to their employees, then when people start their own companies they have the ability to institute whatever policies they want - i.e. never lay people off, pay everyone top dollar, guarantee health insurance after you leave - i.e. whatever policies the founders think are 'fair' and just.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#195

Post by Lionga »

gentoo wrote: post #171
Lionga wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is that 95 to 99% of the ones that go the Musk, Bezos or Kalanicks way fail and be left with no payout. In return the ones succeeding will have 20 to 100 times the payout. Its almost the same as if you just take your salary and bet everything on 13 at the roulette. Small chance of huge payout, high chance of failure.

all the engineers at an early stage company are "gambling" with exactly the same stakes as the founder. If they fail, they're all out of a job. The founder risks nothing more than that: he's gambling with other people's money. Why should one of those people reap generational wealth while everyone else ends up in the upper-middle class?

You have to invest a lot of time and effort to convince other people that they should "gamble" their money on you and your idea.

The early engineer has a pay check from the start.

Again if you want your shot at generational wealth just bet all at the roulette. Or convince someone that they should gamble their money on you.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#196

Post by geodel »

welshwelsh wrote: post #153
habosa wrote: post #65

I think because individual tech workers are so highly paid relative to other industries, we fail to see how low our pay is relative to what the people at the top are making. A high performing Google engineer may make 500k+ in total comp, Sundar Pichai makes $100M+ in many years. That's 200x as much ... and the baseline is already super high. You see startup founders who exit with generational wealth (tens or hundreds…

I don't see the problem here. A burger flipper makes $10 in an hour. An engineer designing a burger flipping robot makes $100. Their department's engineering manager makes $1,000. The CTO makes $10,000. The hardest worker here is the burger flipper. They work 16 hour days just to afford rent, and it's hard manual labor. The engineer makes 10 times as much because each line of code they write produces more value than…

Good point. Usually sentiment here is equality should be about pay of engineer and higher ups. Anyone lower than engineer deserve what they get due to market forces. They can always up-skill themselves to become engineers.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#197

Post by kortilla »

strawpeople wrote: post #182
welshwelsh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem here. A burger flipper makes $10 in an hour. An engineer designing a burger flipping robot makes $100. Their department's engineering manager makes $1,000. The CTO makes $10,000. The hardest worker here is the burger flipper. They work 16 hour days just to afford rent, and it's hard manual labor. The engineer makes 10 times as much because each line of code they write produces more value than…

There is no evidence that management problems are harder to solve than coding problems. Not only that, but when coders make mistakes the impact can be large and the responsibility clearly falls on the coder, whereas when managers make mistakes, the responsibility is diffused to their subordinates. Managers should either be paid a lot less, or be fireable by their reports when they make mistakes.

It has nothing to do with difficulty. It’s not a leveling up game of leetcode.

> whereas when managers make mistakes, the responsibility is diffused to their subordinates.

No it’s not. They will roast their subordinates but unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.

The higher up you move, the more responsible for outcomes that are less and less in your control. You even gain legal liability as you enter the “officer of the company” levels.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#198

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

throwaway23597 wrote: post #179
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > These 500K Google jobs wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Larry Page / Sergey Brin Stop believing in fairy tales, they were just the lucky winners in a winner-take-all market. Those 500k people would sill be employed by say a company called Poogle, founded by Parry Lage and Bergey Srin. It's like all common sense and statistics goes out of the window when people discuss the Forbes 400, it takes people meeting t…

So? Just because some competitor could have possibly formed in an alternate universe doesn't make the company or Page / Brin's contribution any less valuable.

In order for something to be valuable it needs to be rare and irreplaceable.

And the true test is the subtraction, if Brin/Page were never born we'd still have something like Google, much like we'd know relativity if Einstein was never born or the 3 principles if Newton was never born.

Humanity advances as a whole, while individual humans play dice and games to get to be the one guy (or girl although it's mostly guys) who get the privilege to be the person signing off the advancement. But in the end there is nothing special about the person doing the signing off, much like there is nothing special about the person who wins the lottery among the many who play.

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#199

Post by blamestross »

MockObject wrote: post #157

I find this tone annoying. Let's discuss systems and incentives, not personalities. The decision makers aren't all nasty people, they're maximizing their profits, just as most people would do in their shoes. (Or if they're all mean people, why do the mean rise to the top?) > Illustrating this grotesque point further, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft saw their collective valuations rise by $800bn after announcing…

> The decision makers aren't all nasty people, they're maximizing their profits

At least where I'm standing, fundimental profit incentive is morally bad. Yes they are by definition "nasty people". Our fundimental responsibility is to improve ourselves and the world around us. It can occasionally align with profit incentive (we have a culture where money can be a powerful tool), but considering it "normal" or "ok" seems problematic.

If you want to talk about incentives, how about what we can do to change them?

Re: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

#200

Post by [deleted] »

eevilspock wrote: post #137
habosa wrote: post #65

I think because individual tech workers are so highly paid relative to other industries, we fail to see how low our pay is relative to what the people at the top are making. A high performing Google engineer may make 500k+ in total comp, Sundar Pichai makes $100M+ in many years. That's 200x as much ... and the baseline is already super high. You see startup founders who exit with generational wealth (tens or hundreds…

I don't know. Where is all this anger and righteousness when it comes to all the people servicing tech workers, from farm workers picking your food in record high temps for slave wages and no protections to food industry workers to janitors to delivery people to the nannies and school teachers caring for your children? What about the other people who are more deeply exploited by your employers, the factory workers in…

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