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by devchix
1963 days ago
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I'm discovering that a portion of HN is salty about what is "slave labor". You were paid a pittance, it's not slave labor. Were you chained to a pole and couldn't leave? No? Well clearly not slave labor. Oh, they left you a hacksaw, so you could have left if you wanted. Not slavery. Soon, "slave wages" will not be a thing because clearly slaves are never paid. Figurative language is not a thing, apparently. |
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It's the FAANG Silicon Valley cult way of thinking and it's why its so fucking gross; everything amounts to exploitation of 'low skilled' work force to make unprofitable things palatable for Seed rounds and then VC money in order to buyout your competition or suffocate it in the cradle and ensure a monopoly and massive 'growth' and then attach it to surveillance based business model(s) and call it 'optimized marketing' and now you have a billion dollar valuation and a frothy IPO exit scam for the VCs, which translates to bloated compensations and meaningless titles (they call themselves 'engineers' when it suits them but reduce themselves to mere 'coders' when shit blows up in their faces) for those with little to no morals and a narrow skill set--yes, I can code, too, and I also worked for a Megacorp at one point and I still maintain its a very narrow skill set.
Not to mention how soul-sucking it is to just sit at a desk all day and stare at a screen while editing or debugging some BS platform that optimizes how to make people hate each other more online and call it optimizing 'engagement' while using casino style addiction behavior models. So, I'm afraid it becomes inevitable since empathy is something that I fear erodes with time, and is lost altogether in the wrong environment--insular echo chambers with no room for dissent and stigmatization and cancel culture at arms length if you ever step out of line.
Ultimately, it's a reminder that people who benefit from the system are the first and most adamant to refute these claim, and we're on HN.
I just wonder how shallow their collective lives must be to be so willing to exploit another person and make light of their situation and still follow the 'making the World a better place' BS narrative that's become emblematic with all that is wrong with Silicon Valley and big tech in general these days.
I mean it's almost like people here forget that debtors prisons were a form of imprisonment with slavery at its core and were a thing in the US not that long ago, some still exist today [0], and dates back to the inception of Western Society (Greece) where it was common practice after succumbing to large amounts of debts which had to be paid off.
In the end its like creating a culture where everyone wants to be Jeff Bezos with an almost ambivalent of not outright misanthropic view of the World. It's pathetic but also why I'm glad we're seeing an exodus of them out of CA in masse, I mean how else could they see that amount of homelessness and poverty and be ok with buying endless amounts of distractions and toys to serve their infantile appetites to see the misery the helped create: CA now houses 50% of the US' homeless.
0: https://truthout.org/articles/these-seven-states-still-opera...