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The Burnout Machine

unionize.fyi

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Re: The Burnout Machine

#631

Post by try_the_bass »

ForTheKidz wrote: post #451
delichon wrote: post #54

When I was a high school teacher you either had to belong to the union (CTA) or pay the same dues anyway, and the difference was that they didn't let you vote. I felt that about 90% of the dues were used against me and the students. That was the other big reason I quit, besides the low pay, which the union didn't fix. So I moved on to become a much higher paid developer who has zero pressure to join a union. My dad w…

> I'm happier making my own deal with the boss. And i bet your boss is even happier!

You say this like it's some kind of zinger, but software engineers that actually negotiate their salaries generally earn more than those who don't.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#632

Post by paulcole »

fwip wrote: post #622
paulcole wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can for sure tell me the proportion that you think is fair right? Should it be 25%, 50%, 99%?

You're not arguing in good faith, dude.

How so?

The whole discussion stems from someone saying that they should be paid relative (in proportion to) their value.

All I want to know is what proportion (i.e. a percentage between 0 and 100) someone would deem fair. Why is that so hard to provide?

Re: The Burnout Machine

#634

Post by kulahan »

harimau777 wrote: post #350
kulahan wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Outside of, like, the 6 most expensive cities in the richest nation on the planet, where is this true in the US?

The nation has like 4 million square miles - we can focus on more than 80 of them.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#635

Post by MichaelZuo »

namaria wrote: post #611
Mo3 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure many of us have figured this out, it's just that there's no alternative for most. I live in Europe and we are all unionized and I hate to break it to you but we're still creating much more value than we earn for someone else. Our work conditions may be significantly better - I work 40h/week with unlimited vacation (within reason ofc) and sick days - yet still burnout happens frequently and necessitates costl…

Turns out when your work is thinking, you end up thinking a lot about the alienation of your labor's fruits. Burnout isn't about pace of work or ability to take vacations. Burnout is about a disconnect between effort, meaning, and rewards.

What is “the alienation of your labor's fruits.”?

I haven’t heard of any way for objectively measuring the value of anything, or whether that is even a logically coherent concept.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#636

Post by noduerme »

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…

I'm not a fan of the original post, but this is absurd and offensive. You're taking the creme-de-la-creme of tech workers and comparing them to medical interns. "Playing life in easy mode"? Would you say that an MD who chooses to specialize in, say, dermatology, and ends up the head of a department, and spends a lot of their 50s golfing, has lived life in easy mode? Probably not, because as you explained, grind is not optional to get to an optimal point in one's career.

Is it privileged to be able to live in a society where you can develop your career and not, like, have to go pick crops for three months? Yeah. Does the geographical freedom of SWEs (in a minority of cases) exceed that of a higher-paid traveling nurse? Sure, but that's a trade-off; the engineer takes less money than the nurse, but gets to travel further.

I'm not asserting that your comment was offensive because I'm whining about global systems of grind and exploitation. It's offensive because you seem to think that no one in the tech industry outside AAA game dev has come up from the mines. I started my career as an unpaid intern, then made $7.50/hr and freelanced on the side. I worked 12-16 hour days coding, and/or 8 hour days while doing 8 hour shifts as a waiter and taxi driver. So now, 30 years later, I can bill $300/hr and work a few hours a day. Is that easy mode?

And if you're referring to the people half my age who are trying to make it in this industry, they have it much harder than I did. They're living after the time when they can specialize and be adopted in as part of the technical debt for clients or companies. They have virtually no chance at job security. They have to constantly scrape and invent in order to stay relevant. So yes, people like me may appear to have easy lives compared with 24 year old medical students, but you seem to be taking for granted the lateral shift in your career - I suppose it's probably easier mucking with python than writing academic papers - but you're taking for granted your status, age, job security, etc. And missing the fact that other people do not get into this industry because it's easy, but rather because they are up for a challenge.

And how many people have said that working in academia is playing life in easy mode? That's the joke of the century.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#637

Post by noduerme »

medhir wrote: post #359
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…

two things can be true: - tech work is relatively privileged - we, as tech workers, are losing out immensely due to a lack of collective bargaining I look at the recent SAG-AFTRA strike as a reference: these are jobs with similarly privileged work conditions. However, there being a union meant they could inflict significant pain on industry players until their demands around AI training were met. Meanwhile, we’re all…

This is true, but it's also true that any 12 year old kid with an ancient laptop on a random island in Indonesia will be proficient enough at writing code 4 years from now to take my job. There's no job security in big tech because it's a global marketplace. And it always will be.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#638

Post by noduerme »

wat10000 wrote: post #536
karaterobot wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High pay is usually a sign the job is compensating for being shitty in other ways. Or that it requires a set of skills that not everybody has, or that there is a competitive market where employees can select jobs based on pay. Those are two other reasons. Indeed, I have to question the premise that high pay and shitty jobs go together. I can think of plenty of shitty, low-paid jobs.

I'd say there's a strong inverse correlation. Low-paid jobs are usually terrible in other ways too. Well-paid jobs are usually nice. High pay means that the person creates a lot of value and that there's low supply relative to demand. High pay is offered because employers want to attract workers. If they're paying well, they're probably going to try other things to attract workers as well, such as offering better wor…

It's nice when someone explains capitalism calmly without being overtly pro- or anti-. The world needs more clear explanations of how things work, and fewer opinions.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#639

Post by noduerme »

bawolff wrote: post #312
karaterobot wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High pay is usually a sign the job is compensating for being shitty in other ways. Or that it requires a set of skills that not everybody has, or that there is a competitive market where employees can select jobs based on pay. Those are two other reasons. Indeed, I have to question the premise that high pay and shitty jobs go together. I can think of plenty of shitty, low-paid jobs.

> Or that it requires a set of skills that not everybody has Sure, but its skills easy enough that teenagers self-teaching is considered common. Its much easier than most "professional" jobs, like doctor.

It may be cheaper to learn, but the volume of knowledge you need at your fingertips and the ability to synthesize it to make good decisions is not necessarily less for a highly competent 28 year old tech worker who started coding at 12 than it is for a 28 year old doctor who started medical school at 22.

Self-teaching is also possible and a common route for auto mechanics, who make about as much as tech workers. They know how to do things that both doctors and SWEs are willing to pay for. Can your doctor rebuild his own car engine?

When I explain my job to people, I usually compare it to being an auto mechanic, not a doctor. That is what most software engineering boils down to. And in fact, our paths are converging with mechanics.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#640

Post by noduerme »

nradov wrote: post #433
hirvi74 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like being a dev has taken a toll on my body in the opposite direction ---- "use it or lose it." Perhaps it's because my brain is full of software issues itself, but I don't have enough energy nor motivation before/after work to do anything else. Luckily, I am somehow healthy-ish in terms of medical metrics, but I know at my current trajectory, I won't be able to sustain it for many more years.

Energy and motivation are irrelevant. Discipline is all that matters. Go out and do a hard workout every day no matter how tired you are or how miserable it makes you. Eventually it will just become a habit.

I think about doing this sometimes, and then I think how ironic it would be if I died next week and my last thought was I wish I'd spent those hours sleeping late, eating, drinking and fucking.
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