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Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

green.spacedino.net

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Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#21

Post by tidewinner »

card_zero wrote: post #10
DarkNova6 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One correction: if no more value can be produced organically, this doesn’t mean that society will stale and money is hoarded among a few families. Rather, the powerful will turn on each other and start waging war eventually, and the expendable bodies used in that is everyone else.

Neither of you mention creativity. The article too gives the impression that the world is made out of work (like turning a treadmill), and assets (inherently unfair). The point of it all is apparently to live, like a sessile sponge in the ocean, hence "living wage". > Now at some point, the humans involved in handing out currency decided that too many people were living too nicely. The origins of currency are mysteri…

The core foundation of society is built around work. We trade our time, skills and attention for a pay check that allows us to sustain ourselves, our families, and that we can use as a means to achieve our goals. The key problem is that society devalues this work year after year, as those with assets are rewarded simply for holding a legal deed. Creativity can get you far when you have nothing, but there is a limit as to what it can achieve.

I disagree with the commenter that your replied to directly, who seems to believe the world is a zero-sum game. However it's also naive to believe that the game is not rigged, and that those who complain simply lack creativity.

In a healthy society, choosing to work to serve others 40 hours a week, should afford you the ability to acquire enough capital to buy a small house and start a family after 10 years. Unfortunately, this is now unachievable in many parts of the world.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#22

Post by [deleted] »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #17
xorcist wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was that a $100k+ compensation for a software office work is among the highest in the world . If a comparison with another high compensation area falls flat, then maybe that says something. Perhaps another US state would have been a better comparison. It might be hard for a software developer in Montana to identify with a Silicon Valley rant about salaries being too low. It would not cross my mind personall…

It may be high, but so is cost of living; a better way is to compare spending power.

[deleted]

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#23

Post by mettamage »

xorcist wrote: post #8

This comes off as slightly on the entitled side. Yearly salaries at $100k+ is very high by Western European standards. I can only imagine what our Eastern European colleagues would feel about it. If you can live a comfortable life and send our children to school well fed perhaps broaden the horizons a bit before ranting off about how much better the world would be if you could be paid a bit more.

In the Netherlands many senior SWEs make €85K+ at the moment and that is what $100k+ is right now.

I'm writing this because I don't consider NL to be the top country in Europe where you can make a lot of money being a SWE. And I'm not talkin about FAANG salaries either, they are higher here.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#24

Post by Iulioh »

yobbo wrote: post #14

In ancient times, slaves didn't revolt because they were oppressed by weapons and violence. Instead of paying workers, resources were used to pay and feed the military. Slaves were considered "war bounty" and tradeable goods. When the incentives of workers favour burning buildings rather than working for wages, the next step is either to use force/control or to rebalance wages.

It is not "in ancient times"

This is a product of a resource rich economy, you can see it today.

It is calles Dutch disease

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#25

Post by tidewinner »

popcorncowboy wrote: post #18
Havoc wrote: post #13

The pressures he describes seem correct and mirror what I’ve seen. Think he’s wrong about this being close to blowing up. Think that’s coloured by his own personal situation. I suspect unfortunately the powers that be correctly read the situation as significantly more room to squeeze. It might read as bad to usa ears but keep in mind there are people breaking down ships with zero safety, zero job security, low pay, b…

> People will bear crazy stuff and still show up to work Because the "in the real world" alternative is so much worse. In theory: "Workers unite!", in practice: "Lose your home".

If we continue down this trajectory, where work pays less each consecutive year, soon the majority will not have a home to lose.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#26

Post by roenxi »

> I'll just be blunt: wages are also protection money. They're not just compensation for doing your job, they're compensation for not burning down warehouses, not going on strike, not sabotaging workloads, and not unionizing in the first place.

I'm interpreting this as venting, but the attitude on display here is madness. It is totally unreasonable to throw these sort of temper tantrums because an employer isn't adding crazy high wages to what is already a quite pleasant and comfortable desk job. One of the issues tech workers have is that even at a slightly lower wage than median it'd still be a much better deal than what an average worker is being offered.

People do far more work for far less money to a high professional standard. And trying to burn down a business because the person offering you the best deal you can find isn't what you imagine yourself to be worth is entitled to an undignified extent.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#27

Post by malfist »

xorcist wrote: post #15
Havoc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context suggests he’s in the US so not sure that sort of cross jurisdiction comparison is useful. You could just as easily say Europeans are entitled because their salaries are high compared to an Ethiopian. It’s not a useful comparison

The point was that a $100k+ compensation for a software office work is among the highest in the world . If a comparison with another high compensation area falls flat, then maybe that says something. Perhaps another US state would have been a better comparison. It might be hard for a software developer in Montana to identify with a Silicon Valley rant about salaries being too low. It would not cross my mind personall…

Great, I know people in Africa live on less than a dollar a day. How soon can you start working for me? I don't follow minimum wage or overtime laws, you're a gig worker

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#28

Post by stackedinserter »

Author thinks that companies have infinite sums of money to pay any salary, but just don't want to do that.

He either worked for federal government for too long or just thinks world owns him something. Probably the latter, based on him being 4 months in unemployment and stating "Employment inquiries should check the TXT record on job.spacedino.net for contact info."

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#29

Post by bell-cot »

tetris11 wrote: post #16

The 1830's reform of the UK, which begrudging wrestled power from the Lords and distributed voting power more evenly over the UK (rammed cities like Manchester had almost no voting rights), only happened when some of the Lords houses were close to being burned down. Thankfully the UK didn't follow France into the anarchy that was the French Revolution, and Earl Grey could make them see reason. But damn did we come cl…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832

For those unfamiliar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution . Which from the UK's PoV had lead to a hellishly long, expensive, bloody, and existential series of wars. Right on the UK's doorstep. The memories of which were very much living in 1832, to undermine the usual "can't happen here" motivated reasoning of the 1%.

And it took further horrors, including the Great Famine in Ireland, to get the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_laws repealed in 1846. Which, arguably, was a far greater reform - destroying the economic foundations of most of the wealthy land owners, and greatly reducing how many poor folks lived on the brink of "if you can't afford the food prices..." starvation.

ADDED:

> Nowadays, we don't know where the Lords necessarily live, the size of the Lords private armies don't...

Sadly, it's far more complex than that. While amoral billionaires and mega-corps get the headlines, late-stage capitalism has very efficiently allocated nice-sounding slivers of its loot to a huge number of minor stakeholders. Pretty much everyone who has savings (for retirement or whatever) invested in equities. Pretty much every homeowner. And pretty much everyone who still believes that they'll somehow manage to break into those "just sit there and watch your wealth grow" classes.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#30

Post by cbondurant »

Another part of the issue, as I can see it, is that paying your workers better is a prisoners dilemma:

If nobody pays their workers well: All companies suffer from a disaffected, burnt out workforce that is unable to consistently perform at the best of their ability. As well as many industries suffering from the fact that their products are non-essential. If you're paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by rent, you're not going to bother buying a new board game, pick up a book, get the latest and greatest console, or its overpriced games.

If some pay their workers well, and others don't, the companies that do will be at a disadvantage financially against their competitors. A healthier and happier employee almost certainly directly results in higher profits, but not to an extent that matches or outpaces the increase in wages required to reach that point.

If all of them pay their workers well, workers become less financially stressed. They do their job better, because they are healthier, less exhausted, etc. This also results in the exact opposite of the first case above: People have more money, they can spend more, you make more profit from people spending more across the board.

This is part of the reason that minimum wage laws are actually really important, and why the fact they have stagnated for so long is such an issue. It breaks the prisoners dilemma game by mandating that everyone together makes the group-optimal decision over the individual-optimal one.

Or, you know, we could also try UBI! Or help free up discretionary spending power by nationalizing the most essential goods and services (targeting the ones that are the least elastic). It's not like we aren't lacking in options that would work to alleviate the issue here.

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