Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Burnout Machine

unionize.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 695 posts

Re: The Burnout Machine

#341

Post by achenet »

dismalaf wrote: post #329
malfist wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Because somebody has it worse means billionaires can exploit us without recourse? Because that's the alternative. Either we advocate or they take more and more

It's fine to demand more. I'm a believer in market power. But have some perspective, there's a ton of far worse jobs...

The problem with the "it could be worse" line of thinking is it ignores that it could also be better.

Yes, there are far worse jobs. Yes, being a slave is infinitely worse than being a software engineer.

But that's like saying "oh, using 3G isn't that bad, dial-up is worse." Sure, but if you can get fiber-optic, that's better. A lot better. And you'll do better work that way (assuming you use the internet in your work, which, if you're a dev, you probably do).

"Oh, running our entire infrastructure on a 10 year old ThinkPad isn't that bad, it could be worse, we could have a PDP-11". Sure, and you could also rent a beast of a server from OVH/Hetzner/etc for relatively cheap, and that might make life a little nicer, for you, and for your customers.

If you've got half your workforce burning out, that's a fucking issue, and while yes, compared to 99% of jobs that ever existed (medival peasant, prostitute, garbage man, street musician, cashier) this is quite nice, if people keep developing mental health issues as a result of it, that's an issue.

And in that case, if the "market solution" is basically unionize to demand better conditions...

Re: The Burnout Machine

#342

Post by mojomark »

roncesvalles wrote: post #279
stared wrote: post #100

Software engineering is one of the ways of playing life in "easy mode" (I moved from academia over a decade ago, and I know the difference). This blog post tries to paint it differently - and it feels like it lacks perspective compared to virtually any other occupation. > We’re living in a world where billion dollar tech companies expect us to live and breathe code, demanding 80 hour weeks under the guise of "passion…

In my experience as a software engineer rounding out 6 years now, what I have observed in myself and others is that the work pressure that leads to burnout in SWEs is largely self-imposed. I have some conjectures as to why that may be: 1. High variability of pay, not only between companies but within companies. As a SWE your total compensation can be expected to double every two promotions, and promotions can be pret…

This is an interesting take, but I have a slightly different take. My ding dong company pays everyone including myself, salaries that are way too high. They gave ne a 30% raise I didn't even ask for or expect. We get a contract to do X, which say should take a team of 5 folks. However, we can only staff the contract with 3 folks because our salaries are too high. Now, we're all working 80hr weeks and stressed to the max because we really need more fresh minds on the challenge.

Now, we're in a contract lull, so some of us are only charging part time (75%), while actually working overtime.

It's bananas.

The solution seems obvious. Decrease salaries and increase company stock offerings. Then, if you and your colleagues care to work harder and deliver outstanding product, your stock value will rise over time and you'll be a.) more wealthy than taking 'dumb' money, and b.) more physically and mentally healthy.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#343

Post by Buttons840 »

theamk wrote: post #303
ethanwillis wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I type every single day and I don't want your health problem placing limits on my job flexibility and career advancement. You live in a society. All I'm hearing is I need to vote to raise taxes to bring you back down to reality. So it will be.

yes? pretty sure state-sponsored healthcare is going to be much better, both for individual and population, than the current mess that US has. You should not require unions just to get help with your health problems.

Having healthcare tied to employment is antithetical to the most basic principles of our economy: people should be able to freely and easily change jobs and/or pause employment--that is the "free" in free market.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#344

Post by [deleted] »

mrbombastic wrote: post #37
deedubaya wrote: post #26

Burnout? Yes. Overwork? Maybe. Unionize? Eh… The post reeks of privilege. Go work a manual labor job outside in the sun for a few weeks and tell me how bad tech employees have it. Most of non-tech America is not empathetic to our plights. They’ll probably cheer on the offshoring of our jobs.

I am not really decided if i am pro or anti tech unions yet but this argument always comes up and falls flat for me. It just smells like pitting the working classes against each other. Are we more privileged than most? Sure. We are still closer to broke then we are to the 1%.

[deleted]

Re: The Burnout Machine

#345

Post by achenet »

YZF wrote: post #322
chasd00 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing about software dev is it’s hard to do very well but pretty easy to do good enough. It’s when good enough becomes no longer acceptable all of a sudden that the job gets very hard and people get burned. That’s not always fair though. Another interesting part of software dev is expectations change radically. I’m not in construction but I don’t think a developer can ask a construction team to build a skyscraper…

You're under-estimating how easy it is to do good enough. During the dot com boom many people with academic degrees in various fields tried to move over to software development with very limited success. That's like the top few % of the population to start with. Only some tiny fraction of those were in the good enough to successful range and many were ejected from the market when it crashed to never come back.

Being good at acquiring fancy academic degrees != Being good at programming.

If you ask the top 1% of FAANG engineers, the Jeff Dean's and Ken Thompsons to try to make it as professional ballet dancers, they're probably going to fail pretty hard too.

Granted "academic degrees" and "programming" are probably more similar than "programming" and ballet, but still.

The metaphor "ballet dancer" and "basketball player" or "basketball player" and "gymnast" might be more apt. You can be good at one thing and not good at a related thing, even if both require 'using your brain a lot' or 'using your body a lot'

Re: The Burnout Machine

#346

Post by itsgrimetime »

paulcole wrote: post #280
thom__ wrote: post #28

Awesome to see something like this on HN. As we keep working for less pay, more hours, the constant threat of layoffs, and business leaders frothing at the mouth to replace us all with AI, it's important to remember that we aren't powerless as workers. It's also important to remember that your relationship to the higher-ups is adversarial. They want to get as much productivity out of you for as little pay as possible…

> They want to get as much productivity out of you for as little pay as possible It’s only adversarial because you want to get as much pay as possible out of them for as little productivity as possible. > I somewhat agreed and got caught up in that culture until I got picked up in the fourth round of layoffs at a time when I felt I was doing my best work. Did everyone feel that way?

> It’s only adversarial because you want to get as much pay as possible out of them for as little productivity as possible.

Or maybe pay that’s proportional to the value we provide

Re: The Burnout Machine

#348

Post by tmoertel »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #203
JimTheMan wrote: post #134

These articles about work conditions in tech feel profoundly out of touch with the rest of the world. It's like reading a gazette from Mary Antoinette talking about how tough her life was (pre-revolution..) The rest of the world outside of tech, looks at tech and sees a bunch of very overpaid developers with quite cushy perks... Like sure, it would be great to unionise... But if tech workers don't acknowledge their p…

> But if tech workers don't acknowledge their privelege, they shouldn't be shocked when no-one else turnsout to support them It's hard not to read your comment as anything but virtue signaling, and doing so in a way that makes everyone worse off. You seem to think being a part of a union means you think you have a bad job and everyone should pay special attention to you. Forming a union does not mean you are asking f…

> Forming a union does not mean you are asking for anything, it means you are giving yourself protection to ask for things in the future without being fired.

The way I've always done it is that if I want something my employer won't give me, I find someone else who will and go work for them (or start my own company). What's wrong with that model?

Re: The Burnout Machine

#349

Post by paulcole »

itsgrimetime wrote: post #346
paulcole wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want to get as much productivity out of you for as little pay as possible It’s only adversarial because you want to get as much pay as possible out of them for as little productivity as possible. > I somewhat agreed and got caught up in that culture until I got picked up in the fourth round of layoffs at a time when I felt I was doing my best work. Did everyone feel that way?

> It’s only adversarial because you want to get as much pay as possible out of them for as little productivity as possible. Or maybe pay that’s proportional to the value we provide

It’s always proportional to the value you provide. You just don’t like the proportion lol.

What specific proportion do you think is fair? And how do you calculate the value you provide?

Re: The Burnout Machine

#350

Post by harimau777 »

kulahan wrote: post #261
ghiculescu wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No industry has 0% unemployment. Most people would kill for the employability of the median software engineer.

This isn’t wrong. In every industry, there will always be people who struggle to find employment. It’s a necessary part of the economic machine. One hopes it is not always the same person suffering, of course. Still, absolutely everything about this industry is inflated. Pepsi just bought Poppi for $1.5B. That’s a HUGE DEAL, but hardly worth mentioning when compared with the $70B that Microsoft spent on Activision-Bl…

There's a lot of places in America where $80k is not a great salary. Unfortunately, as much of America slides further and further right people who don't fit the right's ideal have to be more and more selective about where they live.
Post reply on HN