[unhomedcoder]

you know the plausible conspiracy theory that FANG etc companies for the past 15 years have been deploying an anti-competitive strategy of soaking up tech talent into excessively compensated jobs and putting them to work on vaporware BS projects that get canned after 3-5 years? even though GoogaAppaFaceSoftZon waste billions of dollars keeping tech nerds on the hamster wheel, that is still cheaper than the risk of having a large pool of Ronin tech geniuses who will launch competion to FAANG.

i often wonder if the same strategy is at play in Private Military Corps. having tens of thousands of retired and hungry for action SOCOM super soldiers could be a disaster. Having a large pool of idle mercs would make it easier for some Dr No to hire them to launch coups or terrorist attacks, like we have seen with the Zetas Cartel and the Mexican military in general. so PMCs serve a purpose to soak up excess SOCOM labor capacity, and keep them busy on movie script busy work that doesn't actually accomplish very much. The Pentagon doesn't have to worry about a veteran's coup like Smedley Butler's Business Plot against FDR in 1933.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

while PMC's lavish compensation seems to us like an irrational market, counter-intuitively it is perfectly rational compared to the counter risk cost of coups and terrorism.

i would go even further and say 99% of the Infosec/CyberWhatever DFENS industry is also the same strategy of soaking up excess hacker labor on make-work. how much duplication of effort and futility is there in the Infosec industry. as we have seen from Snowden leaks and the Shadowbroker leaks of NSA source code, all digital security is a joke to Nation State hackers. NSA doesn't even need to break a sweat to disable all versions of every known AV, firewalls and traffic mirrors never spot them because they have countless exploits to root the scanners. so what purpose do marquee Computer Security corps like Crowdstrike, Mandiant, Symantec etc serve?

Infosec corps soak up hacker labor so we dont have 50,000 underemployed hackers who will get bored or angry and hack the planet.

it's cheaper to give potentially dangerous people fake jobs than to risk them destroying The System.

[ardy42]

> i often wonder if the same strategy is at play in Private Military Corps. having tens of thousands of retired and hungry for action SOCOM super soldiers could be a disaster. Having a large pool of idle mercs would make it easier for some Dr No to hire them to launch coups or terrorist attacks

If this that were the goal, it would make a lot more sense to encourage the "SOCOM super soldiers" stay in the legit military until retirement, where they're both better supervised and paid less. That could easily be done by 1) canceling all contracts these mercenary companies, 2) banning the mercenary business, and 3) banning former soldiers from joining.

The mercenary business is a business, and if the US government doesn't have any contracts these outfits are going to hire themselves out to whoever has money, which includes doing stuff like increasing the capabilities of the US's military adversaries (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/04/feat...).

[jorblumesea]

If you ever worked at any tech company you'll know that isn't the case.

1) many FAANG employees either are managed out (PIP'ed) or leave to pursue more interesting work. Turnover is 10-15%.

2) Many FAANG employees aren't as smart as HN or the media would believe. Don't get me wrong, definitely some geniuses, but also a lot of fairly "normal smart" people with a work ethic

3) Walls, moats and regulatory capture are more than enough to secure the dominance of Amazon or other companies. You don't need to employee people, you can use lobbyists and lawyers.

[SheinhardtWigCo]

> plausible conspiracy theory

More plausible still is the theory that managers move up by growing their orgs as rapidly as possible, not by using resources as efficiently as possible; and wages are high because these are the richest companies in the world all hiring from one constrained talent pool.

Hanlon's razor.

[dsl]

> i often wonder if the same strategy is at play in Private Military Corps

Of the tier guys I know... 10% go to PMCs, 20% end up in corporate security, and the rest end up working at Home Depot.

Most are burnt out enough with PTSD and failing joints that I don't know that they would make great henchmen.

[oh_sigh]

> into excessively compensated jobs

This is the problem with your conspiracy theory. I work for a FAANG, and maybe about 1/3rd of the people who quit end up leaving to start or join a startup. Paying them tons of money gives them the exact resources to go off and start that competitor.

[unhomedcoder]

if 90% of tech talent stays at FAANG, collects their pay check which puts them in the top 3% of income earners, and never leaves the Walled Garden Golden Handcuffs of FAANG, that shows the strategy works to suppress potential competitors. not to mention while you are employed at FAANG, you are forbidden from contributing to open source projects and the Company automatically owns any side projects you may create.

when i look at the 500,000 Galaxy Brain coders working at GoogaAppaFaceSoftZon, i hear a giant sucking sound from the open source ecosystem.

if only 10% of tech talent leave before 5 years, that is still a lot fewer Ronin wandering out there who might eventually threaten the Shogun.

[eee_honda]

Id like to have a chat w. you about all the above. How can get in touch?

[jmull]

That conspiracy theory isn't plausible at all.

Why pay huge amounts of money for something you can get for free? As a FANG, your start-up potential competitors will overwhelmingly fail on their own, or at least fail to grow into a significant competitor. No need to pay massive amounts of money to keep them from forming in the first place.

Also, I think FANG-type companies see more of a benefit from startups than competition. Startups give them a chance to see what new ideas seem promising. When they see one with promising tech, they can acquire or copy.

[tootie]

Like that guy in Florida who tried to overthrown the Maduro regime with a handful of mercenaries? I don't think there's much to worry about.

[6510]

As opposed to normal hamster wheels where people are paid just enough to keep running. The mantra "Everyone must have a job!" is not really compatible with productivity? is it? It looks a lot like people are kept busy.

[kyuudou]

Well said. That was a lot of information and I nodded my head the whole time while reading.