[Frondo]

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too.

Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone.

Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave the world a better place for my successors; not just the same status quo. What's the point of life otherwise?

[lsc]

>Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave the world a better place for my successors; not just the same status quo. What's the point of life otherwise?

dude, I'm a silicon valley computer technician. I literally make 10x what the service people I see every day make, and on top of that, my employer cooks gourmet meals for me, 3x a day, and provides a luxury bus system. Yes, I'm at near the bottom of my local technical prestige hierarchy, but If you think these are crumbs, If you don't think that this is worth a little bit of bowing and scraping, I think you need to stop and look around... look at how normal people live.

If you want to work to make the world a better place, If you want to alleviate suffering, work to raise the salaries of those who make 1/10th what we do.

[Frondo]

Look, frankly speaking, if you're content with your lot in life, that's great. I'm happy for you.

Telling me to focus on the low-paid service workers is a nice distraction, but that's what it is: there are other groups working to improve their working conditions and working lives. I'm not connected to them, because I'm in the same pretty-well-compensated boat as you.

Maybe you're paid well, maybe you don't think you deserve more. Your employer almost certainly could pay you more, could give you more time off, more say in your job role, more flex time, whatever, but you don't seem to want more.

Again, good for you. Just don't tell the rest of us that none of us should want more pay, time off, autonomy, a voice in how the company is run, or whatever. If you want to hold fast to your own one-man empire of crumbs, go for it.

The rest of us can band together and work for more of that good stuff that comes with working and bargaining together.

[lsc]

Ah, the spirit of Glompers. "More" - fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with that, but really, there's no reason for anyone outside of your group to support you any more than there is for you to support my own personal quest for more money. It's just a larger empire of crumbs.

The problem is that I don't think this will work, for the same reason that management generally doesn't unionize. Management doesn't unionize because their role is to act in the interest of capital. If capital thinks that management is in it for themselves, management becomes dramatically less useful. (and really, I think that we see a lot of management capture of resources that would normally flow to capital. Management is less useful to capital than it has been in the past. Capital knows this.)

In the ways that matter to these discussions, people who create and manage automation infrastructure are management. It's just that we manage machines that do work, rather than humans that do work. For the same reason that management that was not seen as acting in the interests of capital is worthless, developers who are seen as not acting in the interests of capital will be seen as worthless, too. (I mean, from the perspective of capital.)

Now, I do think that culturally, we are very different and there are some things we could argue for that would improve our lot and that of capital. really, in some ways, I'm very much in agreement that technical workers should be getting a lot of what capital currently gives to management. We can start by making a culture of open salaries. this will eliminate a lot of what management's job is, at our level, which is to individually and secretly negotiate salaries. There's no reason to pay tech workers who negotiate well more than those who don't, so job roles should have pay rates that are known throughout the company. (Of course, there is still negotiation involved in who gets what role, but I think that's negotiation that the technically inclined are better equipped to deal with than straight secret salary negotiations.)

[Frondo]

OK, fine, so you don't think it'll work. That's a whole different story from "we shouldn't want more, we're already well paid".

If I'm going to be an Adam Smith-style rational economic actor, I'm going to seek to maximize my profit. If I don't, I'm leaving money/time/autonomy/working conditions on the table, and why on earth would I do that?

If the most effective way to do that is to organize and negotiate together with my fellow workers at Megacorp X--which is both ethically permissible (freedom of assembly, etc) and our legal right--why wouldn't I do that??

If your answer comes down to "you have enough" then you're already behaving like an irrational economic actor and I have no idea why I'd listen to you.

If your answer comes down to "it's hard," well, buck up, kid, life is hard.

[lsc]

>If the most effective way to do that is to organize and negotiate together with my fellow workers at Megacorp X--which is both ethically permissible (freedom of assembly, etc) and our legal right--why wouldn't I do that??

Sure, if that's the best bang for your negotiation buck... but there are a bunch of problems with the approach; the hardest to overcome is the fact that many technical jobs are essentially management jobs, except that we're managing machines for capital rather than managing labor for capital.

Do you understand what is special about 'management' as opposed to 'labor' here? I mean, management is labor, but it's different, because in labor, traditionally, you expect a human to execute a task. Management figures out what tasks ought to be executed in order to maximize the return to capital. You can see how this precludes management from unionizing in the traditional American way.

My argument is that same thing applies to the higher end individual contributor technical jobs, too. If I'm right here, American-style unionization would decrease the value we bring to the table and probably the value we can take from the table.

If you want to usefully organize, I suggest you spend your time looking at the IT jobs that are more regimented, where you follow procedures. Those jobs could be usefully unionized.

[Frondo]

Again, it sounds like you're trying to justify leaving money/time/autonomy/working conditions on the table.

You want to do that? You do you.

That's not the mark of a rational economic actor, willingly selling themselves short on a deal.

You can dress it up by saying "well, we work with machines," but at the end of the day, the machines don't own the company, the machines don't sign your check.

The bosses do, and they're the ones you've decided to give up your maximal time/money/autonomy/working conditions to.

Again, you do you, but the minute you say "we should all willingly give up some of our time/money/autonomy/working conditions to the bosses and owners," well, now you're telling all of us to stop being rational economic actors, which I can't get behind.

[sandworm101]

You are being fooled. Those meals and buses are to keep you at work. Anything other than cash only ties you more tightly to the company. Demand money, not better snacks at the company store.

[swampthinker]

Edit: Sorry, I shouldn't have said "you". I don't know your situation or how much you make, this is a very broad rant that is based off of previous discussions I've had.

This has to be the most pretentious thing I read in a while. You get paid 6-figures with incredible benefits, while making 2-3x of what the median HOUSEHOLD in this country makes[1], with one of the highest average base salaries, and your individual income ceiling is approximately $180-$200k.

All of this, without having to risk your health like many other blue collar jobs.

All of this, attainable very quickly after graduating college (if you even get to graduating).

Feel free to demand the amount of money you think you deserve. I do think programmers are underpaid for the value they create. But don't make it seem like engineers are lowly serfs or something of that ilk. You have it so much better than most Americans.

[1] $59,039 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-census-median-income-2017-...

[TheKarateKid]

You're failing to look at the situation in terms of perspective relative to the company - not society in general. Sandworm's point is that why should someone 2 levels above you be receiving 100x your salary?

Imagine you were at Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone gets a full plate of food, but you only get a quarter of a plate. Is that fair? Should you keep quiet since you're fortunately to have any food at all, rather than homeless on the street? It's all about relativity. Compare apples to apples.

[hueving]

And you're failing to realize that what others make is irrelevant. If you're at Thanksgiving and you get food to feed you for 10 years, it doesn't matter if others got food to feed them for 100 years.

[dlwdlw]

I think you're missing something fundamental about wanting and it's that we are wired to always want more. I think it's useful to accept this as something universal so we can understand why others and ourselves act the way we do.

One is that it accepts the imperfect was of others instead of deriding that others are not perfect from a moral high ground. The other is that it prevents ourselves from playing the victim.

It acknowledges the common strengths in each human by also acknowledging the common weaknesses.

At each level of the "game" , whichever game you playing, there always exists a master/slave winner/loser relationship. A pseudo happiness is achieved when comparing with other games and works both ways. "I'm glad I'm not a minimal wage monkey" and "I'm glad I'm not a souless sellout."

The games can be stratified into economic divisions but in terms of striving and human drama they are quite similar. The poor person who has never tasted really expensive food gets the same pleasure from something more simple than a rich person who has numbed his palate does from the most expensive things.

Acknowledging this constant suffering by everyone is the most humane thing you can do and is the only way out of the game of dehumanization others for the purpose of humanizing the self.

[lsc]

>The games can be stratified into economic divisions but in terms of striving and human drama they are quite similar. The poor person who has never tasted really expensive food gets the same pleasure from something more simple than a rich person who has numbed his palate does from the most expensive things.

My argument is that this is not true. there's a threshold below which not having enough causes significantly more suffering. having to wait two generations before buying the latest apple gadget is not the same level of suffering as having to delay a medical procedure because your job doesn't give you insurance until you've been there 6 months.

I don't know where the line is, but I am saying that going from $20K to $40K a year in total resources available to you makes more difference to your quality of life than going from $100K to $200K. - By a lot.

I mean, your description of being poor as eating plain foods sounds like you might have had a life like mine. Yes, there were times in my life where I had to eat inexpensive food, and yeah, it really wasn't so bad. But... I really think that's a fundamentally different kind of problem than having times in your life where there wasn't enough food at all.

Having times when you might have to get a smaller apartment or even roommates is also unpleasant... but I don't think it compares at all to having times where you might become homeless.

[sandworm101]

Lol. Money isnt everything. I stopped being an IT lawyer and joined the air force. Now im paid to do things that silicon valley hotshots only do in video games. Fancy meals? I just ate a burger while wearing a flightsuit. Tasted better than a thousand billable-hour lunches.

[lsc]

I was just talking to a guy who started out in the airforce; (enlisted, so probably no flight suit) he said the food was really pretty good, comparable to what we get here.

My friend who started out in the army, though, tells me that the food here in silicon valley is way better.

For myself, I don't think I'm really together enough (and I don't really have the tolerance for authority) to make it in the armed forces.

[sandworm101]

Some enlisted wear flightsuits. The SAR guys who jump out to save people are enlisted, so are loadmasters. There are lots of cool aircrew jobs outside the cockpit.

[snakeboy]

> You are being fooled. Those meals and buses are to keep you at work.

It would be extremely naive to think otherwise at this point, so I'm sure the parent is aware and enjoys the benefits despite the ulterior motives behind them.

[lsc]

> You are being fooled. Those meals and buses are to keep you at work. Anything other than cash only ties you more tightly to the company. Demand money, not better snacks at the company store.

I'm not being fooled. I totally understand the company's goal is to get more work out of me, but they are doing that in ways that make my life better, too. It's one of those situations where both parties to a trade come out better..

the food is really good, which means I don't waste time going across town (one of the unfortunate realities of most of silicon valley is that the homes, the food, and the offices almost always require driving to get between) - and dinner? well, again, I could drive more, or I could prepare food myself. Both are things I don't enjoy, that take a lot of time and that I'm not very good at. Employer provided food solve that problem, and saves me significant time. If they want some of that saved time? it still seems win win to me.

My employer providing good food makes my food situation almost as good as it would be if I lived in a real city with a good mix of offices and restaurants, and it gives me that without making me leave silicon valley (which has cultural and career conditions that suit me better than I think moving to new york would.)

The upshot is that if I get a job around here that doesn't give me three squares, I've gotta schedule another hour or so of effort into my day; effort that is as hard, for me as work, but where I'm not advancing my career or studying something I want to learn. Yes, my employer benefits a lot from giving me food... but I benefit, too.

[kome]

to be fair, you can do both at the same time. and not only you can, but to achieve the second, you need the first.

[lsc]

Perhaps I am not parsing. I'm reading this as "We should work to increase our wages in order to increase the wages of those who are paid less well"

I think that in a real way, people who create and maintain automation infrastructure are playing a role a lot like the role of management in the economy, except we manage machines that do the job of the worker rather than managing workers. Capital can pay for management to figure out how to pay the old professions to get a job done, or capital can pay us to automate that job away.

[antisthenes]

So why just the techies? Shouldn't you be advocating for everyone to be receiving a larger share of the pie when the company does well?

> I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done.

Oh please. US West coast engineers already have it nearly as good as it can possibly get on this planet, in all of human history. The violin playing for the horrible conditions they must endure is very small if at all existent.

I'd be totally with you if you were advocating for a fairer CEO/Owner vs Worker pay in general, but singling out 'techies' is kind of a disingenuous way to go about it.

[Frondo]

As I said in another comment, there are other groups working to help lower-paid service workers organize. They're better suited to that task than I'd ever be. (And I'm not even a part of any union, I just think we in the tech world are long overdue for organized negotiation.)

And, so, you do agree with me, but don't like some of my word choices? Can you maybe put that stuff aside and see that, organizing and negotiating together in our very individualistic field starts somewhere?

[antisthenes]

Yes, I do agree with you wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, in my own environment, any attempt to organize among workers has fallen upon deaf ears.

The workers themselves seem to be resistant (or perhaps fearful) to organizing in a manner that would give them more rights and fairer compensation.

[Frondo]

Awesome.

And yeah, I think there's a big element of fear to it--fear of losing what is, right now, a pretty sweet deal for a lot of technical folks. That fear isn't entirely misplaced, anyway; individually, any of us could get fired for almost anything at almost any time. And there's a long and storied history of firing folks when they even whisper about organizing.

So I don't think the fear of organizing is irrational--but it is a fear that, I think, should be overcome, because the benefits are, of course, huge.

I dunno, I don't think it's all fear, I just think that's a much larger underlying force than people really want to recognize. If the risk were minimal, why wouldn't people be lining up to do this stuff?

OH, and FYI I am all in on addressing CEO/worker pay disparity. And, while we're at it, on how low-paid workers (janitors, call center stuff, etc.) get outsourced to another corp, etc.

Those are just problems that, I think, would need to be addressed directly through the political system, and not one that workers can take on in an organizing campaign of their own. They're all part of this constellation of "the American worker is getting screwed" but I feel like I gotta pick my battles, at least when I'm posting on the internet.

[elmar]

> Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself.

no need to wait, you can change the sandbox right now, you can create your own startup and give equal ownership to everyone.

[Frondo]

I could do that.

And, at the same time, my fellow techies in any given megacorp (I'm not in one now, used to be long ago) can start organizing and negotiating together, to establish better working conditions, better pay, more autonomy, more of a say in how the company is run.

This isn't an either/or situation.

[elmar]

> I could do that.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

[Frondo]

Right?? Why do you think I'm writing about how much better we could make our working conditions, if we organized and negotiated together?

These ideas and methods aren't new (organizing and negotiating together), and they've been largely effective in this country and elsewhere.

And, hey, like I said to the other person, you don't have to do it, if you're happy with the crumbs the owners toss your way. You do you.

For the rest of us, we don't have to be content with our lot in life--we can be the change we wish to see. Good quote!

[slewis]

Equal ownership of something that’s likely to be zero.

[lsc]

> Equal ownership of something that’s likely to be zero.

I dunno; co-ops have been successful in other areas of endeavor. It's as reasonable a way of organizing a company as any other.

I mean, mostly they are businesses that provide goods and services for money; businesses who's value rests mostly at their profit in a point in time, but it's possible you could come up with a co-op like structure that would work for a tech company where a lot of the value is in the company and getting the company bought out by a larger entity.

I don't know how you'd do it, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't be done.

I can tell you that as a tech worker with options, I would be whole hell of a lot more likely to join a pre-IPO company if they structured the thing in a way that was more transparent and respectful to the workers when it came to the equity component of their compensation.

[hn_throw_1234]

"crumbs"

What field are you in in this industry? I started making more than my parents combined income by 25. This industry pays incredibly well.

Additionally, you're not all addressing any imbalance in impact. "Imbalance" as seen from a perspective of dollars per worker isn't very meaningful unless you advocate for removing incentives and defaulting to a system more reminiscent of communism.

[lsc]

>Additionally, you're not all addressing any imbalance in impact. "Imbalance" as seen from a perspective of dollars per worker isn't very meaningful unless you advocate for removing incentives and defaulting to a system more reminiscent of communism.

I actually... want to point out that there's a lot of disagreement there, at least in the technical field. There are a lot of people who claim that money is mostly a 'hygiene issue' in that you need to pay something in the realm of what your people could get elsewhere or else people will leave, but that actually paying more doesn't make that much difference.

Personally, I think it varies a lot. I know that you can pretty reliably get me to switch jobs by offering me an additional 20%...[1] but I know people in my field who are better than I am, technically, who basically don't ask for raises, and end up making a lot less than I do simply because I ask for more. These people mostly only switch jobs when the situation forces it. And some of those people are brilliant people and incredible workers.

I mean, we're talking on the order of 10 and 20%, not orders of magnitude here, but the point being that the relationship between money and motivation is not as clear cut as it is, say, in sales

[1]Another interesting side is that while you can totally get me to switch jobs by giving me more money, I'm not sure you can get me to do much better at my current gig by offering me more money; I think I'm already in the neighborhood of doing the best I can. But, would this change if my salary stopped going up?