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An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

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Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#31

Post by pdonis »

etothepii wrote: post #21

The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company. This very website, sneered at in the article, is littered with examples of people who have built something at the side. I'm not sure knowledge workers can make the same complaints about class struggle that mechanical labourers can. We tend to get more valuable with age and experience.

> The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company

Yes, one does. One needs tech skills. Those are capital. (You agree with this since you say tech workers get more valuable with age and experience.) They're just not capital in the form of a large pot of cash that can be used to throw money at problems.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#32

Post by andrewmutz »

> Especially if the company you’re working for is not actually struggling economically right now. If you work for Google, say, you must be thinking, “What is it about the coming recession that makes a company that’s doing just fine institute broad layoffs for the first time in its 23-year history?”

People commenting about the layoffs keep citing the financial health of the companies that are doing the layoffs as evidence that there is some ulterior motive, but this misses why companies perform layoffs.

Companies don't choose to hire when they are profitable and layoff when they are losing money. As an example, most tech companies spend their early years losing money while growing hiring and no one assumes they have an ulterior motive.

The reason companies perform layoffs is that they believe the labor they are buying is more expensive than the profits from the products they were planning to build with those employees. If they think consumer demand is going to drop, then new investment opportunities won't be as lucrative and they thought they were.

Yes, it sucks for the employees and yes we want corporate leaders to have better economic foresight so this doesn't happen. But you don't need some elaborate Marxist theory of class warfare to explain why this is happening, and it does not represent monopsony collusion.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#33

Post by Animats »

dvt wrote: post #17

I mean, apart from the highfalutin class warfare nonsense and generally bad advice, this is a pretty decent post. I completely agree that over the past 30-40 years, companies have been pushing down engineering salaries. It's not really as incendiary as the author might have you believe, though. Programming, as a profession, has simply become more commoditized. It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it'…

> railroad engineers probably went through a similar economic reality in the early 20th century.

Yes, they did. Being a locomotive engineer was a high-status job around 1900 or so. It was a union job. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was the first major union in the US.

The same thing happened to electricians (heyday around 1920), radio engineers (peaked a bit later), and television engineers (peaked around 1970).

Being a printer was once a good unionized job. I've seen homeless printers talking about the good old days at the Burger King near the Civic Center cable car turntable in SF.

Who will be the first homeless ex-Googler?

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#34

Post by uoaei »

pdonis wrote: post #26
wufufufu wrote: post #2

Had me in the first half, lost me in the second. Why not try to create unions instead of "don't document anything because you're making yourself replaceable"?

Lost me in the first half. The whole capital vs. labor thing is a false dichotomy, particularly here where we're talking about highly skilled tech workers. Your skills are capital , and your pay for using those skills is mostly return on capital, not "labor cost". The real dichotomy here is simple: it's between people who understand that they own capital and work to maximize their return on that capital, and people w…

Capitalist vs laborer is a true dichotomy, in that one cannot be both simultaneously within one context. But it is important to remember these are embodied roles and not character traits. I.e., a laborer becomes a consumer when they leave their place of employment to drive to the grocery store.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#35

Post by RajT88 »

lampshades wrote: post #16

Yes, I agree 100%. Do not help those who seek to devalue you. Extract as much value for as little work as possible. The people who run these companies are not your friends and they’re not your family, take advantage of them at every opportunity you can. Don’t care if the company fails, don’t pay any mind to burning bridges, don’t bother giving two weeks, and certainly don’t do anything more than the bare minimum. All…

Burning those bridges carries a cost to your career.

If you think about your retirement prospects as amassing wealth by optimizing the "Area under the graph", it's really important to build a professional network so if one job opportunity ends, you can quickly work your network to find another similarly paying job.

Failing that, you take a big pay cut, and impact your salary history. I can't imagine an employer making an offer to you which is competitive with your job from 5 years ago, instead of your job right now.

Also in some cases (maybe less engineering, but sometimes even then), your professional network is part of what your employer is buying when they hire you. This is true especially of ex-govvy security engineers.

TL;DR don't be a dick to your coworkers, even on your way out the door. It's in everyone's best interest.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#36

Post by uoaei »

justizin wrote: post #5
wufufufu wrote: post #2

Had me in the first half, lost me in the second. Why not try to create unions instead of "don't document anything because you're making yourself replaceable"?

This is called, "The Tyranny of Competence", and is hostile to other workers. Companies also don't have a way to quantify this, and sometimes will hesitate to term someone, until they are fed up and will just decide it is worthwhile at all costs. I have worked with or been the successor to folks who did this and it made me absolutely furious, and reflected poorly on my performance.

Yeah, leaving your fellow employees out to dry is absolutely not class warfare, except insofar as it is friendly fire.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#37

Post by Animats »

georgeoliver wrote: post #27
dvt wrote: post #17

I mean, apart from the highfalutin class warfare nonsense and generally bad advice, this is a pretty decent post. I completely agree that over the past 30-40 years, companies have been pushing down engineering salaries. It's not really as incendiary as the author might have you believe, though. Programming, as a profession, has simply become more commoditized. It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it'…

> Programming, as a profession, has simply become more commoditized. It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it's becoming more like being a plumber. Did it start that way though? I feel like from the 50s-70s, outside of a narrow slice of academia, companies were mass hiring (and training!) people to program.

Yes. Companies used to send people to "IBM School", to learn COBOL or Job Control Language.

If you have to pay to train people, the technology tends to be kept simple and understandable.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#38

Post by teucris »

etothepii wrote: post #21

The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company. This very website, sneered at in the article, is littered with examples of people who have built something at the side. I'm not sure knowledge workers can make the same complaints about class struggle that mechanical labourers can. We tend to get more valuable with age and experience.

Sure, there exists a path towards success in tech without significant capital. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that it will be that way forever. At some point in the past a car mechanic could build a new engine from stock parts and make improvements they could monetize.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#39

Post by neilv »

> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the company thinks it’s paying them for: tending the machine that makes money.

No, I think most of these are usually part of the job of a software engineer, and it's part of developing solutions that work, rather than just gaming individual metrics. (And, at Staff+, all of these are.)

> There is no reason at all for engineers to continue performing this kind of free labor for entities that are trying to cut their wages. It is in their interest to do the exact opposite.

It's not free labor. It's part of the job for which we're paid.

Seems like anyone on a project team who doesn't share knowledge, help other team members, document, etc., would soon be disliked by team members who are focused on the project and team.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#40

Post by bob1029 »

> If you build a tool, you’re making it possible for capital to get more productivity out of its workers at the same time that it is reducing workers’ wages.

This is actually our central business model. We sell B2B automation/workflow software so that other companies can retain much cheaper talent. Most of the people involved would define our product as "progress", but I can understand how others would perceive it as a form of warfare.

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