[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.