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

Tech Workers' Values

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 276 posts

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#51

Post by erikpukinskis »

djsumdog wrote: post #36
alphonsegaston wrote: post #11

There's already a solution for this - worker ownership of companies with corresponding democratic rights. We've just emerged from an era where benevolent tech companies were supposed to stand up for us and reflect our values. Instead, they put on a polite face, said the right words to us, and then did whatever served their interests irrespective of our concerns. Repeating this scenario is foolish and only going to wo…

I like the fictional future on Mars in the Kim Stanley Robinson novels where there are no companies, but co-ops. Your time goes into the co-op and everyone owns a portion of that for life. This is a greater dramatic shift and I'm not sure if we'll see it in our lifetimes, but it would be nice that, even that first high school job at a cinema would earn you shares in that company equal to the time you put in, for life…

It will happen. The limiting factor is we need to get the friction for forking an existing co-op down close to zero. Unfortunately most people who work for a co-op still think of it as proprietary ("this is my co-op, and we don't have any openings right now. If you want yours you have to start your own").

Intellectual resistance from co-opers isn't the main bottleneck though. Management infrastructure needs to be all digital and open source, and forking needs to be technically easy. That means the accounting, staffing, and operations procedures all written out in code, rather than in QuickBooks on some computer in the stock room. On github, with one-touch deployment to Heroku, or some equivalent. Ethereum maybe.

Once we're there I think it will be fairly easy to sell the employees on the "you should spend some time training people who are forking your business" concept, since they are (mostly) already amenable to anarchist (you don't really own anything) values. At that point it will be viral and anyone who is providing ops and logistical support for that ecosystem will get very rich.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#52

Post by _xhok »

theoh wrote: post #47
_xhok wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the phrase "tone-deaf" everywhere and still don't get what it means. Is it just another getting-along-with-other-people thing?

It's not "just" anything. It implies that the communication in question doesn't appear to be taking account of context or audience, as if it was a song sung by someone who was literally tone-deaf and didn't realise it (not availing of the feedback loop that keeps a voice in tune). It's not necessarily evidence of disrespect by the communicator, but it is applied when the message seems to be unintentionally inappropri…

Ok, thanks. (I think I shouldn't have used the word "just.")

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#53

Post by Banthum »

lackbeard wrote: post #35

I can't articulate why exactly... but I have a very bad feeling about this. > We also believe tech companies have an opportunity and an obligation to reduce the polarization we've helped create. I'm pretty sure this kind of thing is just going to make the polarization worse.

Because it means de-emphasizing individuals by merging them into a group with one unified set of values.

This necessarily means erasing the voices of people who hold minority positions in that group.

It has every potential to be another place where those with the most time to burn, the most anger, and the most refined ideological weaponry grab power over those with minority viewpoints or healthy self-doubt.

Unions are supposed to fight for the thing the workers definitely have in common - their direct economic interests. Lashing that union structure to entirely different political fights invites the above kinds of problems.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#55

Post by HarryHirsch »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #46
throwaway29292 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the root cause of this problem is that -companies violate privacy rights to gather more big data -more data translates to more investment (I'm seeing this happen at my current company right now) -VCs, who are the top of the food chain, are the ones pushing for higher returns (like any rational actor would do) -then shouldn't the government step in and regulate this area? Define standards that would limit the amoun…

The root of the problem is the authoritarian structure of modern enterprise. I know many good people who work at bad companies, who, were they given the chance to have their say, would change things wildly for the better.

You'd rather say that at-will employment and especially the tight labour market outside tech enables the authoritarian structure of the modern workplace.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#56

Post by x0x0 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10

We believe that employees should come together and clearly define the values and policies they'd like to see their companies uphold. A tech union isn't the perfect metaphor for this, but it's not far off. If it's going to do anything but be window dressing then it needs to have the teeth of union - so just call it what it is. I've argued for a while that tech workers need a union, but the chorus on HN and other place…

I have to wonder if this isn't an attempt to co-opt the movement started by @TechSolidarity / Maciej.

I also think -- particularly if the HN audience is in any way representative -- that engineering in particular is far too deeply bought into the narrative of the rights of capital owners to unionize. Much like America, we think we're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

I'm well aware unions aren't perfect. But they are a countervailing center of power who work for employees. The relationship between the employeed and the employers is a fundamentally contentious relationship: sometimes your incentives align, but often they don't. See eg things like the option trap vs 10 year exercise periods, or even founders getting millions of cash off the table while employees get $0. Much like how VCs can whine all they want, founders get better deals because of economic forces such as decreased engineering costs from open source software and better tooling, more capital seeking investment, etc; employee unions are a way to better the outcome of the employees themselves.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#57

Post by civilian »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10

We believe that employees should come together and clearly define the values and policies they'd like to see their companies uphold. A tech union isn't the perfect metaphor for this, but it's not far off. If it's going to do anything but be window dressing then it needs to have the teeth of union - so just call it what it is. I've argued for a while that tech workers need a union, but the chorus on HN and other place…

My main objection to unions is that, once they're in a company, employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation. I want to be able to skip my union dues and deal directly with the company. OR I want to be able to make a union of my own, especially for a functional or values-based subset of coworkers, and have us negotiate separately.

This is not just a tech-unions-related complaint, this is a critique of unions as a whole. But yeah.

I think that tech workers are in a special place because we have a lot of disposable income. I've gotten over my college-era "can't pay for anything" attitude, and I'm willing to pay for content that could be gotten for free. Entertainment was the first one, but now I'm also supporting some people on patreon and donating to causes. We don't need a union to drive that-- we can just remind tech workers that if we all donate a little, we can make big changes.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#58

Post by maxxxxx »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #5
maxxxxx wrote: post #2

"Tech companies are very receptive to their employees' influence. We believe that employees should come together and clearly define the values and policies they'd like to see their companies uphold." Maybe he should replace "employee" with "investor" and start working on that? In the end it's the investors that force companies to make money at any cost.

Engineers like money too. And demand it from their employers. If you are not doing that, you should.

Sure. But in the end it's the investors a company is listing to, not the employees.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#59

Post by coldtea »

rhizome wrote: post #15

Who is the "we" he's speaking to here? I know that Twitter and HN, i.e. the generic internet, are the only places Sam and I typically might cross paths, so who is the community he's speaking for? Gavin de Becker and "forced teaming" comes to mind. Is this YC trying to stay on top of the tech activism bubbling in various corners these days? He doesn't say, the entire post is expressed as self-evident, which makes me t…

>Who is the "we" he's speaking to here?

"Sam Altman, Debra Cleaver, Matt Krisiloff". They sign the post.

>I know that Twitter and HN, i.e. the generic internet, are the only places Sam and I typically might cross paths, so who is the community he's speaking for?

The tech community.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#60

Post by csneeky »

Tech workers are as disparate and varied as non-tech workers...

There is a hierarchy and I think it is unlikely we will see common ground emerge. Survival of the fittest and the best will still win the day. Just like the labor unions of the industrial era, efforts like this are doomed to be spikes of ideology rife with the same contradictions of those it proposes to keep in check.

Some tech workers run multimillion dollar businesses and some push bits around for them in the wee hours of the morning for much less.

Some have PhDs in category theory and write Haskell on a multiple 6 figure salary in finance and some maintain dated ruby on rails systems they didn't write for much less.

Some roll around on scooters in data centers putting out real fires in environments that need high availability. Others spend their days upgrading old versions of windows in small town school districts.

The same divides that existed before the internet will follow us. Nothing new here. Work hard, strive to get to the top, and hang on. Unions are not the answer. Darwin always wins the day.

Post reply on HN