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Re: 996

#521

Post by petralithic »

martin-t wrote: post #511
RestlessMind wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by providing a non-essential service like salesmen... Sorry to break this to you but if you think Sales is non-essential, you don't know anything about startups.

You didn't understand what I wrote. Of course you need to sell your product but as a builder you can do it yourself. It's not your specialty so you likely will be worse at it than a dedicated person and will have less time for actual building. The key is that builders can exist without salesmen. But salesmen without builders have nothing to sell.

In civilizations, people used to primarily be farmers but as food production increased, this gave rise to the specialization or division of labor. In the nature of an evolutionary competition of companies, those that specialize into builders and sellers will do better than builders that try to do both, therefore the former paradigm will win out.

Re: 996

#522

Post by petralithic »

martin-t wrote: post #462
vkou wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A co-op or a partnership? But how will the non-productive class make money from it?

Funny that you say that because at some point I started dividing people in my head into what I call builders and redistributors: - Builders produce food, mine resources, build houses/machines, do research, provide essential services, etc. - Redistributors take a cut from builders, by providing a non-essential service like salesmen or assistants who call themselves managers, by getting themselves into a position of po…

> Yet at the same time it's not talked about at all.

You might be missing a whole paradigm that was written about in the 19th century and implemented in the 20th century, to deleterious effects.

Re: 996

#523

Post by crossbody »

analognoise wrote: post #360
crossbody wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure, helicopters is all you need to catch millions of sophisticated tax evaders using semi-legal loopholes developed and implemented by professional accountants and lawyers. Read about Laffer Curve for a start.

The Laffer Curve is frequently cited by the same people who refuse to see the failure of conservative-style economic policy over the last 40 years, for some reason. It’s clear all that “don’t tax the rich, they create jobs!” Is just trash. Noise. We have 40 years of data, it doesn’t work. But still, someone ignores all that to tell me the Laffer Curve, every time. What’s also amazing is that they don’t really underst…

So you disagree with the core principle behind Laffer Curve?

Lots of totally baseless assumptions and accusations in your comment. I wonder where on Dunning-Kruger curve you are at regarding this topic.

Re: 996

#524

Post by footy »

paulcole wrote: post #482
footy wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's a sucker born every minute after all.

If you were a football fan would you think that a baseball fan is a sucker? Or do you just like making insulting judgements when it comes to work?

There's nothing particularly unhealthy about being a baseball fan, the same cannot be said of working 996s.

Re: 996

#525

Post by immibis »

b_e_n_t_o_n wrote: post #403
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should educate yourself about corporate violence both inside and outside the US - the use of intimidation and murder for strike breaking, the role the Pinkerton agency, the original meaning of "banana republic." It's tragic - but not accidental - there's no mention of any of this in schools or any public memory of it.

It's tragic, but it was also illegal, and that's a crucial distinction.

Illegal things happen all the time. The current president has committed many crimes and suffered no punishment. Elon Musk is an illegal immigrant. Uber was completely illegal but they did it anyway. The law isn't actually the law - the real law is what gets enforced.

Re: 996

#526

Post by rightbyte »

qcnguy wrote: post #508
godelski wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right about your analysis but this only moves the question to ask what is the utility of this Kabuki theater?

People who work more get more done. Yes, there are limits. It's not obvious 45 hours a week is that limit. Observe that the two places in the world with cutting edge AI startups are America and China. Europe has none. Maybe Mistral if you're generous, or DeepMind if you ignore that they got bought by Google, which IMO is OK because a lot of US startups have no plausible future outside of being bought and nobody claim…

Any gain from working "20% more" time or whatever we put the limit at is in my opinion easily offset by employee attrition at these no life workplaces.

Re: 996

#527

Post by scubbo »

komali2 wrote: post #199
scubbo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and take all the upside And all of the risk. Encouraging anyone to start their own company is deeply irresponsible. Most startups fail. If you're needing encouragement to do it - if you're not already fully deluded that you're the special snowflake unique genius who will succeed where all others have failed - you shouldn't be doing it.

> Most startups fail. So, where's the risk? You still just were working anyway, pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years. And now you have "Founder" or "Founding Engineer" or "CEO" or "CTO" on your resume. So you didn't have a good exit. So what?

> pulling a salary from someone else's bank account for a couple years

We have a difference of understanding of what "startup" and "failure" mean. I'm not just saying "most startups don't have an exit event" - I'm saying "most startups make negligible money (either through revenue or investment), so the founders are taking a loss the whole time they're working".

If that's not correct, then a) I need to update my mental model of the whole situation, and b) thank you for bringing it to my attention!

Re: 996

#528

Post by scubbo »

whstl wrote: post #193
scubbo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and take all the upside And all of the risk. Encouraging anyone to start their own company is deeply irresponsible. Most startups fail. If you're needing encouragement to do it - if you're not already fully deluded that you're the special snowflake unique genius who will succeed where all others have failed - you shouldn't be doing it.

First: regular employees are already taking the risk of being jobless some time in the future when joining startups. Second: there is no CEO in tech taking a smaller salary than their employees.

> regular employees are already taking the risk of being jobless some time in the future when joining startups.

Never said they weren't. But they're taking _less_ risk because they are at least taking a salary the whole time.

Re: 996

#529

Post by scubbo »

moron4hire wrote: post #311
jvanderbot wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is different because you collect a salary the whole time and build your resume. Its not like you file an LLC and then receive a check in the mail for two years of whatever you want. For a CEO founder, 996 is necessary to even have a shot at building and fundraising, and even then you're likely to quickly fail. Instead an IC banks on joining a founder who has funding and can get more while you build and collect a r…

If you're a founder and not paying yourself a salary, you're one of the class of dumb canon fodder founders that VCs have indoctrinated to create a steady supply of cheap assets they can acquire and cheap engineers trained and vetted for their real investments.

> paying yourself a salary

From what?

Re: 996

#530

Post by citizenpaul »

epolanski wrote: post #449
citizenpaul wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Ive yet to encounter a job that expected less than 55hr as general minimum.

I don't really like the comment I'm about to write but get a life and set foot outside that bubble. It's also cringe how this kind of comments on "how long one works" come from north americans. It's not cool.

Yeah your comment says a lot about what kind of person you are. Not a good one.

I've not had much choice in life as to what kind of work I can get. I was not born with rich parents and could only afford a non prestigious Uni. I absolutely hate that this kind of exploitation is common (in USA).

Its nice that some people like you have a spoiled life and can dump on the less fortunate though.

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