[reaperducer]

poor allocation of resources

Computers are resources. Iron ore is a resource. People aren't resources. They're people. The problem is the tech industry trying to treat people like resources.

If the delivery people are paid fairly by the delivery companies, then they will be more willing to do a good and thorough job, which includes navigating buildings.

I've been an Uber driver, and yeah, some people are awful.

But I'm also tired of getting calls from Favor delivery people telling me I have to meet them in a parking lot three miles away to collect my groceries because they're running late going to the club, and this is only a "side hustle" they do on Friday nights. If I'm paying a delivery fee, plus a tip, I expect them to complete their jobs.

[viscanti]

> The problem is the tech industry trying to treat people like resources.

Isn't that true for most types of jobs? There's a role called "Human Resources" in most medium and large sized companies. Are factory jobs leaning in to embrace the humanity of workers and not thinking of them and calling them resources? Would we find things substantially better in most fast food restaurants? Gig companies are at least letting people decide when they want to work and when they want to do something else with a degree of flexibility that seems unmatched everywhere outside of the gig economy.

[reaperducer]

There's a role called "Human Resources" in most medium and large sized companies

A title change which reflects the shift in business from treating people like people and turning them into "resources."

The role used to be called "Personnel," back when people were expected to be treated as persons.

[viscanti]

> The role used to be called "Personnel," back when people were expected to be treated as persons.

Was that before the 8 hour work day became standard? Was that before businesses were forced to stop exploiting child labor? It seems like a lot of progress has been made where things are much more humane now than they were historically. I think a more compelling argument here is that a large number of employers throughout history have been thinking of employees as cogs in a machine. I don't know that there was ever some worker utopia where they were treated like real people en masse.

[zardo]

When was it when workers could expect to be treated well by their bosses?

[petre]

When you want to get stuff done as opposed to having strikes, walkouts and other annoyances. People first and foremost want to be treated with respect, not like iron or coal or other stuff you'd dig up from the ground.

[vivegi]

Even before that it used to be called Industrial Relations (I am referring to the practice in India pre-1980s).

[googlryas]

Personnel has origins within the military...is that really what you want for some random employee?

[BurningFrog]

The labor we workers offer for sale on the labor market is a resource though.

[googlryas]

You can be both a resource for planning purposes and a human.

[shadowgovt]

The key thing here is that the optimization model for "deciding if an employee is doing a good job" has to be more complicated than "time to deliver," or it's simply anti-human.