[Ombudsman]

To put it in perspective, the average income in Kenya is around $1.25 an hour and tbh (as a Kenyan) I really can't see it as a bad thing. A lot of people here live in abject poverty, they live in situations you can't really begin to imagine. So any sort of help coming our way is good.

[kuboble]

I also think it is probably good. Similarly when I was born in 1980's in Poland my father's salary was roughly 0.1$/hrs. My first job in 1999 paid me less than 2$/hrs. If any American company would be allowed to hire pepole in Poland in 1980 for 1$/hr people would pay bribes to get this job even if it was a humiliating, damaging, life-shortening physical labor. Why Poland got richer after 1990 is partly that we allowed western companies to buy cheap polish labor. The labor was good enough that the companies started competing for it and long story short now the salaries aren't 5% of western but depending on the sector maybe 20%-50%.

[ptero]

Another vote for "this is likely good".

I was a student in the former Soviet Union in early 1990s when the old system collapsed, taking with it stipends that were sufficient for school cafeteria food. After that I occasionally worked for 30 cents per hour doing somewhat-synchronous translation for preachers who came from the US to convert the masses.

While the money sounded laughable (the US minimum wage at the time was $4.25/hr) and some employers got borderline uncomfortably weird, working 4-5 evenings for a week allowed me to feed myself for a couple of months and focus on my studies. I never considered myself to be taken advantage of. Just my 2c.

[oneoff786]

Who were they trying to convert? Russian orthodox into their denomination?

[ptero]

In early 1990s most of the population was declared atheists, but because atheism was one of the pillars of the rejected Soviet rule it was being reexamined by the people. So there was a lot of orgs of all kinds who flew in to preach and increase their denomination base.

The fact that to the outside Russia looks orthodox Christian today mostly reflects last 20 years of the state efforts to build an official religion, not some deep predisposition of the population. My 2c.

[david12345]

Yes and no, it is definitely easier for the state to build on existing 19 century traditions then to invent a new religion..

[ptero]

I think those 19th century religious traditions were thoroughly gutted by the second world war and 70 years of state suppression.

But a bigger question is why does a secular state is building a state religion?

[Tade0]

I was surprised to note that at least in IT and comparing to e.g. the UK, that last figure is closer to 70% nowadays.

Go to southern EU and you'll see numbers which are either very familiar or... actually lower.

Weird times. I wonder when will this growth in salaries stabilise?

[ricardobayes]

Yeah, in eastern EU salaries are not as low as they used to be, anyone with 3-4 years of experience now expects around 3.5-4k€ a month, which in my experience is not that far off of UK salaries.

[aiilns]

Not so in Greece. Salaries are way lower than 3,5-4k per month. Doctors, for example, in public hospitals get around 2k per month and the consultants maybe around 2,5-3k.

[tasuki]

I believe that when ricardobayes said "anyone with 3-4 years of experience" they really meant "anyone in our industry". In my part of Eastern Europe, 2.5k EUR is a very good salary, but software devs earn way more.

[vladvasiliu]

Is that before or after tax? If after, it seems comparable to, if not better than, France.

[Tade0]

To me it looks like before. Translates to up to 2.6k€ take-home-pay provided you don't take advantage of any tax breaks and you're on a permanent employment contract.

That being said young people(less than 26yo) are either exempt from the first tax bracket(~20k €) or start off as contractors who pay lower taxes and contributions.

[_fat_santa]

As soon as I started reading the article I realized that "SamaSource" in this case is the same company that was outsourced to help moderate content on Facebook. IMO the point of contention isn't that $2/hr isn't a livable wage in Kenya, is that $2/hr isn't enough when you're talking about looking at vile content for an entire shift. Granted this is ChatGPT so at worst you're tagging vile text rather than tagging vile images and videos.

This raises more of a modal/philosophical question for me which is: should we be outsourcing some of the most vile parts of social media? Is it fair to go to someone in a developing country and offer them a wage lightly above average in exchange for having to look at this content for hours? I have no answers to these questions myself but it's a question I ask when social media companies outsource the content moderation.

[mikrotikker]

Not only that but what effect does their culture, religion, norms have on their moderation actions?

It would suck if responses to questioning the bible got worse because of religious moderators.

[coderoffortune]

Partly due to cheap labor and partly due to enormous invenstmets from EU funds.

[yawboakye]

fellow african here, with a few questions.

could the average income in kenya be around $1.25 because companies decide to pay abysmally? or the people don't merit any higher? would openai be offending the kenyans if they paid them, say, $5/hour? i think this is the question you should grapple with. openai will be selling this tech around the world, and i wonder if these $2/hr workers can afford it at all. would they, or their loved ones, be able to enjoy produce of their labor?

[dylan604]

I've heard arguments in the past of paying "acceptable" US wages to people in other countries would destabilize the other country more than it would help. I'm not an economist, so I don't know how valid those arguments are. I have always thought they were more scare tactics used in favor of being able to pay those low wages for as long as they could get away with it. I could see though how paying a small-ish number of people wages that dwarfs the larger number of people could cause a bit of turmoil.

to me, it goes back to the argument about remote workers should be paid less than the in office worker. or workers living in cheaper areas should be paid less than those living in expensive areas. to me, the salary should be paying for the work being done and that's it. if the same level of work is being done by both employees, it shouldn't matter if one is in Kenya and the other is in the US. the value of the work is what should be getting compensated. again though, i'm no economist.

[NickC25]

>I've heard arguments in the past of paying "acceptable" US wages to people in other countries would destabilize the other country more than it would help.

Which honestly is a bullshit argument. The only destabilizing thing here is it would make the person in the higher-paying profession more valuable to society and more able to make economic impact where it might not normally. In this case, a rising tide does lift all boats...because you're giving more economic purchasing power to more people. Will this kill some businesses or disrupt the status quo? Yeah. Will it help more people than it hurts? Maybe, probably, who knows? But I personally see no problem with paying people relative to their output, no matter where in the world they are.

Having been to Kenya myself and worked with Kenyan developers for several years, most of whom were quite talented, I see absolutely no problem with paying them their value relative to the work being done. I have no problem with high skilled Kenyans making much more than the local average because they have a skill that is in demand all around the world.

>the salary should be paying for the work being done and that's it

100% agree. If a business derives $X profit from a laborer and agrees to pay a given % of $X to the laborer as compensation, it should not matter if the laborer is in a high cost or low cost of living area - the business still makes the same amount in profit, and shouldn't get to say "hey yeah we made $10mm off your application, but we're going to only pay you 5% of our profits as compensation because you live in Bangladesh and the cost of living is lower, so be happy with what we're giving you" when if you did the exact same labor and lived in, say, LA or NYC, they'd give you 10%. Just bullshit IMO.

[autodev1]

BS? Based on what experience of yours?

I spoke with a US Civil Engineer who worked in Honduras in the 1980's, clearing paths in forests for electrical transmission lines.

He initially paid workers significantly higher than local wages-- US-level wages.

The result:

--> He was threatened with harm by bosses of local companies.

Why? He took all their workers.

The local companies couldn't compete-- they lost all their labor to his company which paid relatively (relative to Honduras) exorbitant wages.

His US company literally destabilized the local labor economy.

So, I wouldn't be so quick to jump to "that is BS", as in my opinion it exemplifies naivete & ignorance.

[henryfjordan]

Who got hurt by "destabilizing the labor economy"? The bosses who were perfectly fine resorting to threats and extortion? It certainly wasn't the workers.

It is fine to recognize that people who wield economic power might be upset when a new economic power arrives in town, but to describe the new guy who is trying to do the right thing as somehow immoral is classist nonsense.

[colechristensen]

The entire rest of the local economy. If you eat up a significant portion of the local labor poor with very high wages, who is left to do all of the normal local jobs? Working in retail, food production, sanitation, construction, education, etc.

What happens to prices when a significant portion of the workforce suddenly has tons more money? What happens to the people not lucky enough to have the new high paying job? What happens to the local economy when you leave?

When you pay locally crazy high wages you seriously distort the economy for everyone, it doesn’t just magically snap to a new normal where everyone is happy and free, you can very easily create huge wealth disparities that make situations for many people way worse off, and the people who “win” that you don’t employ were generally already winning.

Just pouring money into a highly impoverished place can be very harmful. “Above average” is good, “ridiculously above average” and you have to start considering your effects across the economy.

[carom]

It is like when you give away mosquito nets and put all the local makers out of business. It is worse in the long run if you tank the job market then leave.

[Aunche]

At least in the case of Honduras, more people clearing paths for transmission lines accelerates the development of infrastructure that the locals can use. On the other hand, OpenAI moderation doesn't do anything for Kenyans. You can see the effect of this is countries that heavily rely on tourism like Thailand and Bali. The smartest and hardest working people end up serving foreigners rather than their domestic population. Places that aren't catered towards tourists are completely neglected.

[autodev1]

"On the other hand, OpenAI moderation doesn't do anything for Kenyans."

Have you worked at OpenAI in Kenya?

Because you're speaking in absolutes-- as though you're an authority on the topic.

Let's use basic logic: Working at a technology company by its nature provides:

- Increased experience with Computers

- Increased experience with Data

- Increased experience with Business Processes

- Increased experience with AI Technology & AI Business

- Increased experience with Potential business ideas for startups due to exposure to the business processes of the company and the potential therein for improvement

- Pay

[boeingUH60]

The civil engineer’s experience rings true from what I’ve seen, but there’s some exception for developers and people of other high skilled professions because they are few relative to the population…paying local developers the same as foreign won’t destabilize but it may for manual labor almost everyone can do.

[hex4def6]

Sure, but doesn't that mean their absence will have a disproportionate effect on the industries that rely on them? If you're a small 15-person dev company, and now there's a multinational company that's gobbling up developers at 4x the going rate, you're not going to be able to compete.

This is one of those things in which it's better to sudden upsets (even if they're "positive"), might have negative consequences.

If you're paying +25% over the going rate, you're going to attract a range of people. Someone that designs software for reactor controls might not care (or be compensated enough anyway).

However, if you're offering 200% over, you're guaranteed to hoover up the top talent from strategic industries, and that might end up being a net negative in terms of the damage caused.

[ElevenLathe]

Seems pretty clear to me (pretty much an identity) that labor paying more is good for laborers but bad for their employers. Not sure how to argue with that.

[anigbrowl]

BS? Based on what experience of yours?

The GP told you: they've been to Kenya themselves and worked with Kenyan developers for years. Please read the whole comment before you fly off the handle at someone. This is unfortunately increasingly common on HN.

[autodev1]

Have some consistency.

If me questioning someone using the term "BS" = flying off the handle.

Does the original poster using the term "BS" != flying off the handle ...?

[yawboakye]

i wonder if they would have ever hit saturation here. you can only hire so many people. i would compare it to the discomfort that is felt by private transport operators in the wake of a public transport scheme. when the government of ghana introduced public buses that charged less than half the regular fare, they shook the market. but the public buses could only carry so much--many, due to their circumstances, were served by the private operators. it remains so to this day. in fact, private operators have flourished.

likewise, mining companies launching in ghana have usually paid higher than the incumbent. it could be strategic as it allows them to hire highly skilled workers without the cost of pre-training. here too, a saturation is reached, and things stabilize, with people doing the same job but receiving different compensations. we at devcongress (https://devcongress.org) have worked hard to ensure that local companies pay top-dollar for tech talent. we enforce this through our job boards. still, there are companies out there paying $500/mo and they receive a flood of applicants. but these are my experiences. makes me believe that after the market has been excited, it will definitely dissipate the energy, and return to previous equilibrium (or achieve equilibrium at a higher orbit). i honestly believe that an equilibrium will be reached.

[mensetmanusman]

This. Money distorts markets. Try to distort less unless you know exactly what the consequences will be.

[Dylan16807]

If you have enough job openings to hire everyone, that's going to cause issues even if you just pay a competitive local rate.

[6510]

could create a single pool of workers on a fixed salary and rotate them.

that is, if you are stubborn about paying more

[NickC25]

>BS? Based on what experience of yours?

In addition to having lived (for a short time) in Kenya, worked for a company based out of Nairobi for nearly 5 years, and worked with Kenyans that whole time (in other words, I've seen this stuff firsthand in Kenya, which is the whole point of the article, and my comment)...I have also lived in, worked in, and studied in other developing countries, and seen firsthand what happens when high-paying companies swoop in and change the economic landscape.

You know what actually happens? Positive economic change. Isn't the whole point of HN (and YCombinator) to disrupt the status quo, and promote growth? Destabilizing a corrupted, top heavy, status quo where more people now have a chance to grow in life rather than live in abject poverty is a good thing. Nobody cried for the Taxi companies when Uber & Lyft came along, because they destroyed a parasitic, rent-seeking system (Taxi medallions) and the experience for the end-user (both driver and rider) was significantly improved. Same logic applies here.

>The result:

--> He was threatened with harm by bosses of local companies.

Why? He took all their workers.

Yet there's a flipside here that you're completely missing. Those same workers had a significant improvement in their lives, most likely able to accumulate what for them was generational wealth, or enough to give their kids a shot at a real chance in life. Those people had enough to stimulate their local economy much more than anyone beforehand. THAT is what drives positive change in 3rd world or developing countries. Keeping things the way they are economically with no disruption in the 3rd world keeps people poor and unable to grow which leads to bigger problems down the road. Giving them a real chance in life by paying them more gives them and their families a larger ability to make real change in their countries and communities. That should be celebrated.

Put yourself in the worker's shoes - if someone offered to 10x your wages, what would you do with the extra wealth that you now posses?

Having also lived in that part of the world (Mexico, which isn't the quite same as Honduras but analogous enough) , I understand how things sometimes play out in cases like this. The local bosses in your example were probably doing quite well for themselves and keeping a fat cut of the output of their laborers who were paid pennies, and not happy that their game was now being played by a bigger fish than they could fry. So, they acted like a cartel and tried to threaten the new king in town. Did some of the local companies in your example die? Yeah, probably. But nobody is entitled to stay in business....that's sort of the whole point of globalized capitalism - you compete, and you can win or lose, sometimes through your own fault, or sometimes through no fault of your own. Sometimes someone will steal your lunch, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. That's the reality of it.

[nostrebored]

Your assumption is so short sighted that it's hard to explain how wrong you are.

Let's not think about the noble but the practical: did the man whose life was threatened continue to stay in the country and pay those workers, or did he leave or drop wages? Did people make decisions about where to work based on the idea of long-term compensation? What amount of people left an otherwise stable job to take this high-paying gig that disappeared? What is the net impact on these people _especially_ if the distortion was prolonged and did put other companies out of business?

This is not a 'compassionate' thing to do, it's short-termism that messes with other people's lives. Moreso depending on the function of how large the distortion was and the relative purchasing power of the job. An example of how this works is AWS jobs in other regions -- they pay significantly higher than base rate in many developing countries, but it is both a pedigree and leaves people in a position to get another white collar job that's fine later on. However, the same is not true for something like a gig-work cleaning agency paying 3 times market rate. I have the feeling based on the source that your experience might be closer to the former, which might leave you with a different take than what's happening here.

[notahacker]

> Having been to Kenya myself and worked with Kenyan developers for several years, most of whom were quite talented, I see absolutely no problem with paying them their value relative to the work being done. I have no problem with high skilled Kenyans making much more than the local average because they have a skill that is in demand all around the world.

We're not talking about developers though, we're talking about people with good enough English and internet connection to be able to tag or flag strings of text and images. That's not highly skilled work even in a country where native English fluency and internet connections aren't as universal as the US. It's just that the cost of living differences mean that the "get paid just enough to make rent" money that unskilled labour is worth in the US is "more than the local doctors" money in Kenya.

[NickC25]

>That's not highly skilled work even in a country where native English fluency and internet connections aren't as universal as the US

Just as a point to that - English is one of 2 official languages in Kenya, and is the national language of business and education. Practically everyone speaks it well enough to get by.

[aeternum]

It often requires extra overhead to work with someone in Bangladesh. Tax implications, legal complexities, potential communication & timezone challenges.

Also companies often can't tell how much profit they will make and can almost never tell how much profit each employee is contributing towards. IP, machinery, business processes, brand value, all contribute to the company profits. Some companies with very significant profits can even exist with zero employees. This idea that a laborer deserves some percentage of business profits is just fundamentally flawed.

[eddsh1994]

When Mansa Musa toured Africa he built new mosques and paid the local workers in gold. Sounds great - skilled labour should get paid well, and he was paying very well. He ended up destabilizing (some people go as far as saying "wrecking") the Egyptian economy for decades. Basically put 22 tonnes of gold into a gold-based economy and suddenly it was deemed less valuable.

[alpos]

> If a business derives $X profit from a laborer and agrees to pay a given % of $X to the laborer as compensation, it should not matter if the laborer is in a high cost or low cost of living area

That would be true if that were deal the business had with their employees. However, you made up the percentage thing by observation and are working from the assumption that because you can represent a wage as a percentage of a profit margin, that means the business agreed to share a fixed percentage of profit with the employee. This is incorrect reasoning.

Businesses generally don't contract with their employees to share a percentage of revenue or profits, with the narrow exception of commissions for people in sales. With regard to developers and almost all other employees, the contract both parties agreed to is almost always a trade of specific amounts of time for specific amounts of money and possibly some flexible additional benefits. And to the employee's benefit, the amount of pay does not flex based on whether the company is even producing a profit from the sale of the the products of their labor, only how many hours they put in. Caveat all manner of fuckery in labor relations, of course. Which is a giant caveat, I agree in advance.

However the fundamental agreement is still time for money without the employee having to worry whether the products of their labor can be sold for more than their hourly wage, that's the business's problem to deal with. The employee expects their paycheck to show up on time all the time, or the deal is off.

With that sort of agreement, it is absolutely expected and reasonable that the business keeps any profit from selling the product of the labor after the agreed upon fees for said labor have been paid. That was the deal.

---

If you'd like a different deal for most people, as I would love to see more of in the world economic future, then most people need to change over from needing a job to needing some form of income to support their long term future growth as they live currently off of savings.

Instead of expecting someone else to ensure there is a buffer of money to pay you so you can pay your expenses, you will have to keep that buffer yourself and be okay with the fact that sometimes you will get paid a lot and sometimes not so much, but you will then be getting that percentage of the profit you wanted and it will be totally reasonable to expect the same percentage regardless of what the cost of living is.

You also won't have to worry about layoffs as much because the company's costs now also scale directly with it's profits, so there is no need to cut head count when things get really bad and the company's buffers run low.

But again, that also means you will be responsible for keeping a big enough buffer yourself to deal with the fact that your income fluctuates with both short an long term market swings. Otherwise all you have done is trade the annoyance at seeing the company profit massively from your fix-time-cost labor for the annoyance of being broke even though you have a job whenever the market takes a shit.

Most people still don't want to deal with that, even in super wealthy countries like the US. In fact most people in wealthy countries actually scale their own living expenses in step with any increases in their income such that they can be living paycheck-to-paycheck even at $200k+/yr.

So the balance of things present day is that most people take full-time or even part-time contracts as employees and hope they don't get fired at the wrong time in life.

This is possible to change though, for yourself and for others if you like. So if you think your current deal is bullshit, feel free to change the deal.

[blagie]

The basic argument is a little bit different. There is a huge population in Kenya living, or in some places, failing to live for under $2/day. Most of these people are independent -- for example, street-side sellers in an urban slum, or living in a village far from Nairobi.

The key question is how we improve lives of these people.

It is difficult for me to overstate the impact a 5-fold improvement in income has on people's lives. I've seen initiatives which train people to do tasks like basic data entry, bricklaying, or otherwise, taking $2/day workers to be $10/day workers. Programs like these are typically a few months long. They don't train people to have the equivalent of even a middle school diploma, and they won't be competitive with even the least educated Western workers.

Still, breaking generational poverty is a long process, and that basic increased stability is a first step.

If we shut off employment paths following those programs by giving bad PR to anyone who employs people for $2/hour, we've doomed a key pathway for hundreds of millions of people to escape abject poverty.

Gapminder shows four income levels:

https://www.gapminder.org/fw/income-levels/

Westerners tend to group levels 1-3 together. However, the gap in quality-of-life from level 1 to level 2 is much greater than the rest of the stack. Level 1, life basically sucks. Hunger, lack of basic life-saving medicine, and early death.

Levels 2-4, I've lived at (for at least a few months), and it's okay once you get used to it.

It takes surprisingly little to bring people from 1 to 2, and these sorts of jobs are one way to do that.

As a footnote: People often confuse financial stress with simply being poor, since in the US, those correlate almost completely. Financial stress sucks. Most people worldwide living at levels 2-3 don't have high levels of financial stress. A much more typical situation is a village, where no one has a lot of stuff, but people own the land and their homes. Financial stress sucks. I'd rather own a home at Level 3, with savings, a stable family, income, etc. than live paycheck-to-paycheck at Level 4.

[nerdathlete]

Thanks for sharing, the Gapminder level stratification (and Dollar Street photos) was very eye-opening and a humbling reminder of how privileged I am as a software engineer.

[blagie]

A few years back, Bill Gates bought every university graduate who wanted one a digital copy of the book Factfulness. It's like the insight from that stratification, over and over, in book-length format. It's really quite excellent.

One of the interesting trends you'll see is we've gone from /the vast majority/ of the world at Level 1 really not all that long ago to around a billion people today (probably less when as I write this).

The world is getting a lot better very quickly for a lot of people. At the same time, solving the problem is no longer intractable.

I will also mention: "Privilege" is complex, and life isn't all about money. Starting around level 2 or 3, "stuff" usually isn't the biggest problem in life. You get used to the inconvenience of needing to boil running water or having to ride a bike instead of a car pretty quickly. You don't experience it as inconvenience at all if you've never had it (as most of humanity hasn't for most of time).

On the other hand, humans are social creatures. Many places where people live at level 2 or 3 have communities and families of a type you've never experienced if you grew up in the US. The US is a very lonely place, and there's a mental health crisis in the US that would be completely foreign in many places at level 2 or 3.

The US also experiences much greater financial stress. If you're in a poor village, but you grow your food and own your home, you stress out a lot less about money than if you're making a 6-figure income, but worried about college debt and making your mortgage if you have a short-term job loss, divorce, or medical crisis, as is common in the US.

Who's more privileged?

[fragmede]

OpenAI is operating rationally as a corporation, and choosing labor, legally, in a cheaper country - if they were to pay US wages, why not hire American workers? The entire point is because it's cheaper. There's a different world where OpenAI chose to hire Americans for this job, but it's simply cheaper for them not to. The loss of American jobs is a whole other discussion, but it's the very economics of the situation that drove them to do that in the first place.

[bmitc]

That’s a very narrow minded view of economics though. Minimizing costs and wages is not the only optimization that matters.

[mensetmanusman]

true, But it generally has helped raise billions out of poverty.

[ninjagoo]

that were first thrust into poverty to start with by a different system of exploitation.

I have to admire the beauty of this argument as it has occurred over time - let's exploit them using force and make them poor (enriching ourselves), then use the poverty to justify paying them less (enriching ourselves), using the argument that we are slowly lifting these billions out of poverty (enriching our souls).

[ambicapter]

Would you have a problem if a bunch of billionaires moved into your neighborhood? What do you think would happen to the prices around you? Why do you think people in, say, Lisbon, are so dismayed at the amount of "digital nomads" moving into their cities at the same time as their housing prices rise wayyy above their average wage?

> to me, it goes back to the argument about remote workers should be paid less than the in office worker.

Can you make a stronger link here? Because I'm not seeing the connection other than wages are involved.

[zenith14]

I don't know about "destabilizing" per se, but whenever people try to set prices significantly above or below market, there tend to be consequences. If OpenAI paid $5/hr when people are more than willing to accept $1.5/hr, demand for those jobs would far outstrip supply, leading to intense competition for those positions. Situations like this often lead to corrupt practices where the bureaucrats/middlemen who find themselves in a position to determine who get these jobs end up capturing a significant portion of the profits, either directly or indirectly.

[practice9]

> the salary should be paying for the work being done and that's it.

I agree with you. The issue is quantifying the essential cost of work. As companies sometimes have no idea how & where they lose or earn money, they tend to rely on external factors to select a "justified" level of wages: average industry wages, location, local laws, whether you need to commute etc.

[wkat4242]

> I could see though how paying a small-ish number of people wages that dwarfs the larger number of people could cause a bit of turmoil.

The same way that a CEO in our world is getting paid 100 times as much as a janitor?

[ogeiczvm]

Phil Knight mentioned this in Shoe Dog. I don't remember the details but he was paid a visit by some officials and they told him he cannot pay factory workers more than they can pay their doctors.

[pas]

central banks' main task is to keep economies from im- or exploding. if there's suddenly a big influx of money they have to raise interest rates to balance that out.

development economics is not about the wages, it's more about market access. the problem is that many developed economies (looking at you USA) have protectionist tariffs which make it hard for developing ones to gain market share.

[spamizbad]

> I've heard arguments in the past of paying "acceptable" US wages to people in other countries would destabilize the other country more than it would help.

Interesting. If true, that sounds like a good argument for capping salaries. Would the US be a little less chaotic if we set a maximum wage?

[dylan604]

Boy, that's a brave thing to suggest on a forum of people with aspirations of getting cushy jobs at FAANGs to get those uncapped wages. It appears it's going over as well as a lead balloon too.

[ninjagoo]

An astute observation. I had a good chuckle. Thank you!

[6510]

cap income at say 300 m annually then gradually lower it. Get all those mentally ill people out of decision making. Make exceptions for truly mad skills.

Around 50 m have some construction where further work is paid with a salary for life or until the company goes bankrupt.

[ninjagoo]

Lovely! Have an upvote, such as it is!! It is rare to see such a complete demolition of an argument or the real-time validation of that demolition through the rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me reaction to it!!!

[astrange]

That's why income taxes are progressive.

[ertian]

If they were going to pay $5/hour, why wouldn't they do the same work in India, Vietnam, or some other country with wages in that neighborhood, but with a more stable political environment, better infrastructure, and more experienced and educated workforce? Choosing Kenya at that price point would essentially be charity, and might end up being costly charity (because of the extra costs associated with doing business in Kenya vs more established markets).

And then Kenya doesn't gain the benefit of the $2/hr wages (which, as mentioned, is already above average), plus the benefits in knowledge & experience, improved infrastructure, and secondary jobs, as well as the possibility of similar jobs in the future.

China started out competing almost exclusively on wages (like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan before them), and now the US and EU worry about Chinese advanced industries (eg. semiconductors) surpassing their own, the same way Taiwan did with chips and Japan did with cars.

Competing via low wages is, unfortunately, a necessary first step to growing an economy.

[true_religion]

I can't about Kenya, but this wage translates to around $240 per month (1.5 per hour, 40 hours a week, 4 weeks a month).

This is the average rate the government pays secondary school teachers in Ghana, after 2-3 years of experience. It's almost 2x the rate that private schools pay teachers.

With this wage, no allowances, a single person can live independently in an apartment, and eat out every single night of the week if they choose. It's a fine and decent wage for what amounts to work only requiring a good pair of eyes and basic literacy.

[NickC25]

>* a single person can live independently in an apartment, and eat out every single night of the week if they choose.*

And that's a good thing, because you're increasing the spending power someone who will keep the money velocity high has, which by definition helps the local economy. They are spending that money, which will move about and cause growth.

[int_19h]

Spending all that money also increases demand on goods, raising prices for everybody else eventually. The people who serve the direct needs of those who get the first dibs on the money are likely still better off, but the further away in that chain, the less favorable the balance. At some point, it may well become negative. So I don't think there's a universal answer here that applies to all such situations in general - one has to crunch the numbers to make any meaningful conclusions on the overall economic effect.

[true_religion]

There is some inelasticity to some classes of goods, so you don’t immediately have to worry about upturning an entire nations company because a foreign company decided to pay middle class wages to a few dozen people.

Now for instance, the class of goods we were talking about is restaurant food. This may be a pure substitute for home cooked food, leading to no increase in food demand and money simply being spread to the service workers. Or it could be that they eat different food (e.g chicken imports rather than local fish), which also wouldn’t affect the balance of demand/supply for the poorest and neediest.

[int_19h]

I would be more concerned about housing.

[bayesian_horse]

Look for "Nash equilibrium". Game theory makes it really hard for all companies in a free market to conspire to keep wages down. Can they conspire to a small degree? Certainly, probably disguised as a cultural or traditional bias.

Employers don't pay $5 per hour because they wouldn't make a profit either.

[pretendscholar]

That's a theory that only models certain market conditions. In practice there is an information asymmetry (contrary to the presuppositions of the Nash Equilibrium) and often the employer side has a small number of companies so coordination is easier. Check out this settlement from the 2000s in Silicon Valley[1]. This involves highly desired, well educated employees so imagine how it is in other fields.

In my own experience I've had several prospective employers at conferences say that they were interested in poaching me but mentioned that they were wary to start a poaching war. They knew the CEO of my company and were conscious of the fact that he would likely make an effort to respond in kind. The Nash Equilibrium is an interesting concept but reality is complex and messy.

[1] https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon...

[bayesian_horse]

That is a particularly niche situation...

[pretendscholar]

Take your pick. Even just in the tech sector in silicon valley there are many examples of collusion. Mind you this involves some of the most desirable employees on the planet.

But back to the central point the basic nash equilibrium is in the spherical cow realm of models as they relate to actual reality. There are some interesting additions to it involving time series and asymmetrical information to try and model real economic data.

[psyfi]

> Employers don't pay $5 per hour because they wouldn't make a profit either.

Nope, they might be able to make profit at $5 or $10/hr, but there it doesn't make sense to pay more than you have to, that's why Chinese devices are significantly cheaper than their western counterparts, they can still compete if they raise the prices but they can allocate cheap labor in china that allows them to become a strong competitor

[bayesian_horse]

We're talking about African economies. Those businesses don't have margins that would allow a five times higher wage while still making profits.

Big tech companies, maybe. But even those.

Once you raise prices the demand shrinks which also leads to smaller profits. There's no free lunch. If employers could make more money by paying higher wages, they generally would.

[benlivengood]

Without free movement of workers across borders labor is not a free market.

[bayesian_horse]

Free enough. Especially in large enough countries the market is free enough. There is no such thing as a completely free market. But in general, and in most places, no, most employers can't conspire to dump wages. Even if it looks like conspiracy, it may be something else, like a bidding war on the supply side.

[serverholic]

We are not payed what we are worth.

We are payed what the company can get away with.

It’s about power, not value. Value is much less of a factor than people like to think.

Same goes for people who are payed a lot (like CEOs). Sure they have impact on the organization, but they also have power.

[leetbulb]

I don't understand this argument. Ask for what you think you are (your time is) worth. If you aren't receiving that, you are (your time is) probably worth less

[serverholic]

Your argument doesn't take into account power dynamics. When negotiating price, each side comes to the table with bargaining power. If bargaining power is sufficiently uneven then you really can't claim they'll come to a fair agreement.

When an amazon warehouse worker has to pee in bottles to meet a quota do you think the worker and amazon came to a fair agreement? Or perhaps amazon had more bargaining power.

[hbrn]

> We are not payed what we are worth. We are payed what the company can get away with.

Is there a big difference between the two in a free market?

How exactly are you measuring what you're worth?

[serverholic]

Worth and value are inherently subjective. Price is an attempt to assign an objective value to something subjective. It kinda/sorta works, but it also kinda doesn't.

Let's imagine there is no minimum wage in America. Now let's say that workers in America demand $10/hour and African workers ask for $2/hour for the exact same job. What's the correct value for that labor? It's a non-sensical question.

You could say it's the minimum value at $2. But then some other worker asks for $1. Did you make a mistake? Was it not actually worth $2 the whole time?

[hbrn]

> Worth and value are inherently subjective

If they are inherently subjective, why are you claiming we're not paid what we're worth? This statement is meaningless, isn't it?

> It kinda/sorta works, but it also kinda doesn't

In what way it doesn't work? Clearly it has more utility than other attempts at measuring value. I can agree it's not perfect (nothing is), but that's very different from not working.

> let's say that workers in America demand $10/hour and African workers ask for $2/hour for the exact same job. What's the correct value for that labor?

The correct value is whatever someone is paying for that labor on a free market.

> You could say it's the minimum value at $2. But then some other worker asks for $1. Did you make a mistake?

The only mistake is treating value as inherent and static.

[yoavm]

why $5 then? seriously asking... it also sounds low. in reality companies pays employees (even an american company with an american employee) the bare minimum they can pay them and still have them do the job. the "could the employee afford it" test is a little strange - an astronaut probably can't buy a spaceship, I can't afford some enterprises software that i wrote myself, etc etc.

i suspect that when we look at what caused a raise in salaries at a certain place it is rarely companies from abroad paying more, but simply the local economy developing, causing people to ask for more (which often meant that international companies stopped hiring there, e.g. china).

[charlieyu1]

Paying too high can often lead to more extortion. There are people who worked as domestic helpers from Philippines or Indonesia at other countries. They are paid about US$500 a month, which is 5-10x of average salary in their home country. The bad news is that you would need take huge loan, with multiple family members as guaranteers, to pay for the “training fees”.

[bayesian_horse]

At a rate of $5 or more they may be competing with higher skilled jobs in that country (I haven't checked, but four times the average wage...). Doctors and teachers would quit their jobs to earn this much.

That is what's happening in Cuba where highly skilled people with good English skills rather work in tourism than as doctors, engineers or teachers. Not a good long-term situation.

[marcosdumay]

As any other place, the salary is low because people don't have money, or high because people have money.

The more people go there looking to hire somebody, the quicker it gets pushed up. But salaries do basically never change suddenly anywhere, because it's the local people that pay most of them.

(And, no, this is not fair. And locals should push for higher pay.)

[ryan93]

Why does Africa need charity? Many countries didn’t have to beg for a special feel good rate to improve

[argc]

Yeah it seems like it would only be worth mentioning if its less than the local livable/minimum wage or the employees were mistreated.

[alex_young]

TFA: “at the time these workers were employed the minimum wage for a receptionist in Nairobi was $1.52 per hour.”

Also, they were labeling graphic and illegal (in the US) content including child porn.

Seems like paying them around the minimum wage for a receptionist is way way too low to me.

[__derek__]

Folks are also pinning to the top of the range:

> The data labelers employed by Sama on behalf of OpenAI were paid a take-home wage of between around $1.32 and $2 per hour depending on seniority and performance.

[Cthulhu_]

Minimum wage should never be a benchmark; if someone is paid minimum wage, their employer would pay them less if they were allowed to.

Which makes $2 a RELATIVELY better wage, however for the work - basically content filtering through the worst of the internet - there should be a higher compensation and psychological help available.

In this case, if Facebook and other online services had it available, they would have been better off reusing what they already developed for their side of content filtering. I want to believe 99% of bad content is already automatically filtered out, and anything that comes through and flagged by content moderators fed back into the systems that automate the process.

[dekhn]

it's common in the US to use US-dollars (and the magnitude expectations around) them when you want to imply somebody is making a tiny salary in another country with a completely different economy.

How much does rice cost? Beans? Other subsistence food? If it's all cheaper than the US, then not pointing that out (or showing how a wage compares to the average for a country), it's misleading journalism.

[HWR_14]

That's what PPP is for. For Kenya, I think it's around 2.8, so that would be the equivalent of $5.6 in the US.

Of course, PPP doesn't constrain itself to subsistence food.

[replwoacause]

Not sure I would call this "help". These workers were subjected to the most vile and graphic depictions of sexual abuse content imaginable for next to nothing.

This whole thing makes OpenAI seem evil if you ask me. Just another company exploiting people who are already being exploited. It's depressing.

[lolinder]

It's kind of insulting to tell someone that you know better than they do what's good for them.

A Kenyan has told you that this job pays substantially better than average and that they wish more companies would make such jobs available, and your response is "no, you're wrong, this job pays too little". On what basis do you make that claim? What makes you better qualified than OP to comment on conditions in Kenya?

[replwoacause]

Just because a group of people is accustomed to poor working conditions doesn't make it any more right or ethical.

You could apply your logic to sweatshop scenarios where the people in those countries are just happy to have work, even if the work pays unfair wages, requires unreasonable hours, uses child labor, and provides no benefits to the workers. But hey... the disenfranchised are just happy to have a paycheck right?

[eloff]

It’s a necessary stepping stone on the path to better working conditions and wages. I think people forget what the early days of the Industrial Revolution looked like in our countries.

Can you get there without that? Likely not.

What you’re suggesting is to actually keep them poor for their own good. It’s a nonsensical and counterproductive argument that your making.

[replwoacause]

Not exactly. I'm suggesting that work like this be paid at a fair rate and mental health precautions are considered and taken seriously.

You can chop logic on this all day long if you like, but the point is, this work is terrible and damaging, and that's why we farm it out to countries like Kenya where the people there don't have a choice.

[blagie]

People in Kenya do have a choice, and they pick the best choice for themselves and for their families.

The set of choices for people earning $2/day is different than $20 or $200, but not smaller.

Your aggression is better targeted towards manufacturing jobs in parts of Asia, or Walmart workers in the rural US, than to this context.

[eloff]

The work is better than the options people have there, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. Don’t try to spin it as a negative thing for them. They don’t see it that way.

[PeterisP]

Kenyans are able to win this business because they can do this job at a competitive price. If Kenyans would require more, they would not get this (relatively good compared to their alternatives) job, it would go someplace else and Kenyans would lose out.

[lolinder]

What would constitute a fair wage? The same as what we would have been paid in the US? Maybe India?

If we insist upon that, then why hire in Kenya, which is an unstable and unpredictable environment that has a lot of inherent risks for the company?

Or are you arguing these jobs shouldn't exist at all?

[replwoacause]

I'm not a labor wage specialist so your guess is as good as mine. Do you think $1.32/hr. is fair? Are you of the impression after reading the article that the worker's wellbeing was taken seriously and the pay was set at a fair amount considering the kind of work they were doing? I wasn't.

[lolinder]

If you're not a wage specialist and my guess is as good as yours, why were you so quick to dismiss someone who actually lives in the country you're opining on?

[PeterisP]

If for the local market $1.32-$2/hour take-home is good compared to alternatives (of which I have no idea, but local claims seem to support that, listing comparable rates but for gross not take-home), then yes, it's fair, and it would harm the workers if we'd prohibit that, because they would have to take a worse local job.

[naasking]

> Just because a group of people is accustomed to poor working conditions doesn't make it any more right or ethical

I think this kind of moral puritanism is an enemy of real social progress. Maybe we shouldn't or can't expect some supreme, pure state of "ethical", maybe all we can or should expect is "better".

[AlexandrB]

Fair point. But this is also the exact problem with allowing a small number of individuals to accrue massive wealth by arbitraging labor costs like this. It doesn't matter how much philanthropy Bill Gates engages in, he doesn't understand the needs of the poor better than they do.

Instead of having this elaborate, inefficient system of funnelling money to first world billionaires and then having them (maybe) send some of it back to the developing world, wouldn't it be better if these workers were just paid better in the first place?

[lolinder]

In theory, yes, but at some wage level it wouldn't make sense to choose Kenya over India. At another threshold it wouldn't make sense to choose India over the US.

There is overhead to sending jobs to poor, unstable countries in timezones far from headquarters. If we insist that everyone, worldwide should be paid the same wages we are in the US, what incentive do companies have for not just hiring locally and avoiding those costs? If we step it back and say "okay, you should at least pay what you would in India", then why not just hire in India, which is a far more predictable environment than Kenya?

[supriyo-biswas]

The job pays too little based on the fact that it can leave the "employees" traumatized and scarred for life.

But it does not take away from the fact that it can negatively affect the employees in an adverse way long term, and takes advantage of poor people to give them an objectively bad deal based on an information asymmetry where the person in question might not know that they have to read graphic descriptions of bestiality and pedophilia.

[lolinder]

This is an argument that the job shouldn't exist at all. That's an okay argument to make (I personally lean that way), but has no relevance to whether $2/hour would be worth it to a Kenyan.

[daveguy]

You don't see any logic in the difficulty of a job influencing the wage of that job?

[misja111]

So you think that it's ok to traumatize and scar workers for life, as long as you pay them enough?

[quonn]

> traumatized and scarred for life.

Scarred for life by reading/labeling text? There is obviously a big difference between labelling pictures or video and text. I would be open to seeing an actually study, but my prior would be that text must be harmless. I would certainly be open to reading any text, especially if the context is that the text is for training purposes.

[replwoacause]

Sounds like you haven't read the article.

[quonn]

Correct. But then the headline is confusing.

[key_stroker]

Some had images, also they did other work for the hiring company.

[yawboakye]

what's insulting is that you assume one kenyan speaks for all of them. even worse, that the random kenyan not being paid $2/hr by openai is qualified to speak on their behalf. on what basis do you accept the first statement. if another kenyan claims the opposite would be then become some vacillating organism between two (or more) positions?

[lolinder]

I only assume that one Kenyan is more representative than one westerner. I'd happily invite other Kenyans to comment their own perspective!

[Graffur]

Do you think that person speaks for all Kenyans? Clearly $2 an hour is too little but people are exploitable when they need money.

[blagie]

You're confusing being poor with being financially stressed. The two are not the same.

[lolinder]

I already replied to this question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34427780

> I only assume that one Kenyan is more representative than one westerner. I'd happily invite other Kenyans to comment their own perspective!

[Ombudsman]

You also have to realise most lot of people here are not sheltered. We've experienced post election violence first hand in 2008, tribes killing other tribes, we also have a culture of burning petty thieves alive. We experience violence first hand. I don't think violent text is going to affect anyone the way you think it is.

[replwoacause]

A lot of people aren't sheltered, but it doesn't mean they should be required to do traumatic work for little pay. Also, it was more than looking at violent text. Just because the people there already face hardships that may be greater than looking at graphic text and imagery doesn't mean the world should just pile on because their daily lives are already bad. That just makes a bad situation even worse.

[nickthegreek]

They are not required to do traumatic work.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

How is reading text traumatic work?

[replwoacause]

Sounds like you haven't read the article either. It was more than just reading text but the text was traumatic too:

"One Sama worker tasked with reading and labeling text for OpenAI told TIME he suffered from recurring visions after reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child. “That was torture,” he said. “You will read a number of statements like that all through the week. By the time it gets to Friday, you are disturbed from thinking through that picture.” The work’s traumatic nature eventually led Sama to cancel all its work for OpenAI in February 2022, eight months earlier than planned."

[zoklet-enjoyer]

Did he have to read the entire thing? Just skim it and mark it as obscene. I don't understand what the big deal is.

[falcolas]

> We experience violence first hand. I don't think violent text is going to affect anyone the way you think it is.

I'll be glad when this kind of "suck it up buttercup" bullshit is gone from our world.

Yeah, violence hardens people. Most often to the point where they're one light tap away from shattering. PTSD is a real thing, and just because folks in Africa aren't being diagnosed with it doesn't mean witnesses to this violence don't have it.

This kind of attitude - that since we've seen some shit we're immune to it all - is just a badly misplaced sense of pride.

And that misplaced pride just hurts people.

[Ombudsman]

I'm not taking any pride in that statement. I'm just trying to highlight how because of the way our culture is, these sorts of texts are relatively tame. I'd actually like for us to get to a place where violence is not ingrained in our society.

[judge2020]

> for next to nothing.

The point of the OP comment is that it's not "next to nothing". The cost of living differs from place to place and a small amount of USD can be worth a _lot_ in many developing nations.

[Mtinie]

> These workers were subjected to the most vile and graphic depictions of sexual abuse content imaginable for next to nothing.

Let’s imagine an alternative timeline where OpenAI pays $200/hr for this service.

At that price point is it still exploitive?

Is it ever appropriate or ethical to ask humans to voluntarily subject themselves to traumatic experiences in exchange for compensation?

I’m still processing my own thoughts on this topic so I’m curious to learn about other viewpoints.

[bakuninsbart]

A couple of years ago I seriously considered joining the federal police department in charge of dealing with internet crime here in Germany, so I've thought quite a bit about this topic.

Basically, it is a job that needs to be done in society, but one that is torturous, and can leave you with long-term or permanent problems. In essence though, it is not fundamentally different in the way a coal miner would jeopardize their physical health, just with mental health instead. This risk/possible damage should be rewarded with a higher wage, and adequate measures should be put in place to minimize the possible damage, eg. in the case of content moderation with access to therapy and only exposing employees to short intervals of traumatic content.

This is of course how things should be, in reality coal miners working environments only reached a decent level through unions and a long fight for better rights. Content moderators are not paid well anywhere either.

[alpos]

As a war veteran I can confidently say most veterans would probably not be traumatized by work like this. We've all seen much worse and the things that became problematic memories for me had little to do with reading/hearing/seeing the worst humanity has to offer in terms of violence and fucked up shit people do to each other. The stuff that really sticks and eats at you is usually stuff that happened to or close the individual or something that happened as the result of actions taken by the individual or their immediate group.

Probably the most important measure a company could take to prevent lasting harm with this kind of work would be to spread it around a whole lot more than just 36 people. The real risk of long term impact here would probably be with persistent exposure to it all day long. Most people can handle reading or seeing some graphic stuff with proper mental preparation for it but to see nothing but that day and day out would quickly wear you down.

>Is it ever appropriate or ethical to ask humans to voluntarily subject themselves to traumatic experiences in exchange for compensation?

Probably not. Yet people still voluntarily sign up for military service around the world by the millions, and they do so for a bunch of personal, family, idealistic, cultural, and societal reasons that are hard to reduce to a few easy to argue points like a lot of people online try to do with stuff like this.

Personally, I think it's admirable to hold the ideal that we should like to never offer jobs like this, we should also like to never offer jobs that involve going to war, cleaning up hazardous materials, dealing with explosives, working around heavy fast-moving machines, cleaning sewers, or a myriad of other terrible experiences either; but we're probably not in a position to make those better choices just yet. Until then, people are willing to do these things for a dozen different reasons per person, only two of which are the pay and support they get from the employer.

[falcolas]

> At that price point is it still exploitive?

My belief: When you have a legitimate choice of your place of employment, and all of the opportunities will let you live your definition of a comfortable life, that's when it's no longer exploitative.

So many times - especially for poor folks - there is no meaningful choice. "I do this or I don't have a place to live." "I hold two jobs so I can feed my child."

[Sebb767]

> My belief: When you have a legitimate choice of your place of employment, and all of the opportunities will let you live your definition of a comfortable life, that's when it's no longer exploitative.

By that argument, paying 200$ an hour would be much more exploitative. This would be like landing a job paying $6 million a year in the US; it would be insane to quit such an opportunity, especially since every other opportunity is basically poverty (not even in comparison). Following this logic, it's 'graceful' to only pay 2$/h, since that makes them equal to the other opportunities and therefore not exploitative (while still paying reasonably well).

Effectively, it seems like you're calling OpenAI exploitative based on factors they can't change.

[falcolas]

Huh?

> paying 200$ an hour would be much more exploitative

I didn't say that - I only said that it depends on choice. Does the employee have a choice if they have a $60k (average individual income in the US) option and a $6M option? Yes. Are they de-facto forced into taking the $6m one? No.

I know many people who didn't take higher paying jobs, or left such jobs, because they knew the high paying job was going to be miserable.

There was even an article about one such individual just the other day here on HN: Quitting the Rat Race

"I’m currently working at a top tier investment bank as a software engineer. I’m an insignificant cog in a machine that skims the cream from the milk. I’m earning the most money I’ve ever made and yet I’m the least fulfilled I’ve ever been."

[Sebb767]

Maybe I should have steelmanned your position a bit more. That being said, the grand³parent said:

> This whole thing makes OpenAI seem evil if you ask me. Just another company exploiting people who are already being exploited.

In that context, there is no way for OpenAI not to be evil, since they are (by definition) only one option in the market. In fact, taking your argument to the extreme, there is no way to offer jobs in Kenya as the first company to offer jobs would either be exploitative by paying minimum wage or exploitative by being the only real option. Going from that, paying a higher wage just worsens the situation, as it makes the alternatives even less feasible.

That being said, I do get where you are coming from. But it is not a good point to accuse OpenAI on, as they are making the situation better by offering options at a (for a Kenyan level seemingly reasonable) rate and they really don't have any other option[0].

[0] Except maybe paying Americans a lot of money for the job, but I find it morally hard to argue that they should pay US citizens a lot of money instead of paying Kenyans (comparatively) good money, even leaving aside economical feasibility.

[km3r]

If a huge portion of Kenya can survive off of less than $2/hr (either from local companies or OpenAI) how do they not have a legitimate choice?

[danuker]

I suspect the most vile and graphic content was confidently classified by the AI.

The difficult part, where you'd get the most out of human labeling of data, is the grey area where the models diverge or are uncertain.

[replwoacause]

Sorry but did you read the article? There were some clear examples in which the workers were subjected to this content.

"That month, Sama began pilot work for a separate project for OpenAI: collecting sexual and violent images—some of them illegal under U.S. law—to deliver to OpenAI"

"Sama delivered OpenAI a sample batch of 1,400 images. Some of those images were categorized as “C4”—OpenAI’s internal label denoting child sexual abuse—according to the document. Also included in the batch were “C3” images (including bestiality, rape, and sexual slavery,) and “V3” images depicting graphic detail of death, violence or serious physical injury, according to the billing document."

[eloff]

It’s a job that is safer and pays better than the alternatives. Don’t go imposing your view of the world on others and thinking you know what’s best for other adults. You won’t like it if I come into your life and do that, even if I were right.

In this case is text. There’s no graphic depictions of anything. There could be foul, abusive, or racist language. But that’s much less difficult to deal with.

[replwoacause]

You sound like a few of the other commenters here who haven't read the article. Go and look at some of my other comments where I've quoted excerpts for others who couldn't be bothered to read before commenting.

[nickthegreek]

I was with you on the first part, but text can and does contain graphic deceptions.

[eloff]

Graphics descriptions, yes, depictions no.

[gsatic]

More than anything else these companies call themselves high tech. They act as if they are doing revolutionary things. But under the surface its just armies of cheap labour cleaning up ever growing mountain ranges of shit.

[peteyPete]

Compare this to being a developer in Canada and working for a US company. Coworkers in the US make more as a base salary and pay less taxes than Canadians do even though the actual cost of living is not different. The argument there is its not about the value of the work delivered, its the cost of competing in a market. Say your average dev for that position makes 140k USD in the US, and in Canada, the average dev for that position makes 100k CAD (74.5k USD), most will pay that dev a modest amount over 100k CAD to attract the talent and compete in the local market, say 120k CAD, which is just below 90k USD. Is it abuse to pay them less than others who do the same work in the US? Most who do the work in Canada are probably in agreement that it would be nice to make the same amount, because who doesn't want more money, but in reality, its still a good salary in comparison to most other jobs locally.

Its not exploitation if you're paying people higher than their local cost of living and higher than other local jobs. If you're just appalled about people being paid an amount of money that to YOU, based on your cost of living isn't fair because you'd want to make more, then be appalled at capitalism as a whole and how much work is being hired outside of company's originating countries. The production of almost everything globally is outsourced to locales where the cost to compete is lower than in the originating country.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

Textbook example of socio-economic appropriation. That Karen should be identified ASAP and outed on Twitter.

[langitbiru]

Similar theme.

https://thefederalist.com/2016/05/18/beyonces-use-of-sweatsh...

[edgyquant]

What an idiotic and condescending title that article has.

[AlbertCory]

Oddly enough, my post this week https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-ads

includes a section about Google hiring Americans to do vaguely similar work, at $15/hour. I say "vaguely" because I don't think my cousin Missy had much racist or sexual content to deal with; at least that wasn't the whole point of the job like the Sama example.

Some of you may have heard this story before. The big company uses a small company to be insulated from the legal complications of hiring. That figured into the story: Google claimed they couldn't fix an obvious inequity, and HR told them to try harder. Missy got paid.

(In case you're wondering, that's not a fake name. I showed this to her beforehand, and she said it was fine.)

[vit05]

This salary is higher than the minimum in Brazil. Of course, without labor rights. They would probably also get thousands of employees in Brazil if they needed to, as well as in several other countries.

I myself do work with mediation of content for several social networks, getting a little more than that. The only problem is that the monthly hours are irregular, there are very few hours.

If someone has an offer of 4 dollars an hour for 200 hours a week without any benefits, I accept it immediately. And that's half the US salary, as I understand it.

[sischoel]

When one talks about the average income, does that average only consider people that work? Otherwise, in countries with a high rate of unemployment, I would imagine that a single salary might have to feed the whole extended family, so that one needs to have a salary that is much higher than then average income to be sustainable.

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

Additionally, Time is reporting the after tax wages, which seems motivated.

[bmitc]

But are the companies / people in Kenya paying that $1.25 average because they can’t afford to pay more? OpenAI can afford to pay more, but they’re just taking advantage of a less robust economy. Just because someone benefits from something doesn’t mean they aren’t being taken advantage of.

[pontilanda]

The point of bringing jobs to Kenya is that they can pay less. If you don't see that as a benefit, why should I, a business, go to the trouble of working with a Kenyan company rather than just do it locally?

I could pay a Kenyan $17 an hour, or I could pay a Kansan instead and get US government benefits. The same applies at every payment level. Your logic fails the moment you realize that not every person/worker on earth is equal.

Insisting on this sort of articles just goes to show how sheltered these offended people are. I live in the third world and I know people who are thankful to Coca Cola for their "$2 wages."

[absrd]

Do you think then, that they deserve to be mentally scarred without any support and paid less than the minimum wage for a receptionist, on the basis that they are not "equal" to us?

[actusual]

This is a nice sentiment, but I think the answer is way more nuanced. You can't just roll into a developing economy and pay way over market without also disrupting the local economy and the people that live there. Imagine some similar situation in America, where for some reason, an international business comes in and pays 10-30X the market rate as similar businesses in the area, for the same product. The new jobs become highly (and potentially dangerously) desirable, other similar business go under because they can't keep up with the wage growth, etc.

To remain stable, economic growth must be slow and steady. The alternative is you simply don't go to Kenya, rather, you go somewhere else, and Kenyans get $0/hour.

[ejstronge]

The concern about danger really does not follow your hypothetical situation. Anyway, our view of capitalism would suggest that the failure of companies that use labor less efficiently is a net good.

I think the question we are all considering is why OpenAI behaves differently overseas than they might when trying to poach a smart engineer from a competitor in the Us.

[bmitc]

It’s not a sentiment. It’s the definition of taking advantage of. Of course there are various arguments for justifications, but it doesn’t change the situation.

I also didn’t suggest anything like paying way over market.

[actusual]

So then what? If paying $2/hour is taking advantage, and paying over market isn't part of your solution...what is the solution? Not hire people in Kenya?

Also...yes it is a sentiment (a view of or attitude toward a situation or event; an opinion). Our opinions about what constitutes "taking advantage" are different. Saying otherwise doesn't make your argument more compelling.

[marcusverus]

> OpenAI can afford to pay more, but they’re just taking advantage of a less robust economy.

This is a bad take. Globalization (what you call "taking advantage") raised a billion people out of abject poverty in the last few decades.

When a company pays more than the prevailing wage, they're doing good and deserve kudos. Expecting economic deals with less developed countries to be driven by charity (which is what you're advocating for) rather than mutual benefit is A) paternalistic and demeaning, and B) cannot possibly be the basis of sustainable economic gains for developing countries.

[Dylan16807]

OpenAI did pay more. They paid 12.50. The employees doing the labeling not even getting half of that is awful and they were definitely taken advantage of.

[blagie]

Why do you think Kenya's economy is any less robust? The per-capita GDP has increased fivefold in the past two decades. It's a fraction of the income level of the US, but it's a robust, dynamic, and growing economy.

(And I think most of what you wrote is based on similar stereotypes)

[bmitc]

Robust was probably the wrong word, but I couldn’t capture the right word. But notice I did say “less”.

What stereotypes?

[blagie]

I can think of few better outcomes than someone "taking advantage of" 200,000 people living in Kibera slum in Nairobi by giving them $10/day desk jobs. Or some of the poorer rural populations. Or the hundreds of thousands some of the refugee camps.

That would be transformational.

[naasking]

> Just because someone benefits from something doesn’t mean they aren’t being taken advantage of.

Doesn't it? If you have some kind of objective measure of fairness, I would like to hear it.

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

It looks like OpenAI is paying $12.50/hr for the work, but only ~10% of it makes it to the workers.

[km3r]

If the alternative is paying them comparable American wage, they would just hire Americans.

[SkyBelow]

Is something deemed bad in one place acceptable in another if it isn't as bad as the alternatives? I could give numerous examples where this is not the case. So assuming we will be consistent in what we consider acceptable or wrong, what then is the deciding factor?

[mola]

It's good, but most of the wealth of this labor will not go to Kenya, and it'll be huge. So in that perspective not so great.

[CatWChainsaw]

Hope it pays for the therapy they'll need.

[pastacacioepepe]

That's not the point. Could OpenAI have afforded it if they had to pay first-world wages? Probably not.

What kind of business model is one that relies on exploitation of extreme poverty in order to succeed?

[yoavm]

> What kind of business model is one that relies on exploitation of extreme poverty in order to succeed?

that's a very good question, but asking it as if it is a problem of OpenAI and not a problem of literally all of our economy sounds a little strange to me.

[newlogicblock]

Created an account just to disagree with this. I’m sorry but this is a totally backwards attitude. We need to get to a place where the labor of human beings has a globally defined fair minimum wage. It’s outrageous to me seeing the conditions at Foxconn where young college age children spend decades sitting on a production line doing skilled labor for a fraction of the US minimum wage in order to feed their families, where if they were compensated fairly they could spend that extra time getting an education to escape poverty. There’s no way to slice that that isn’t exploitation and the arguments supporting this won’t age well. It’s right next to slavery, it’s a high offense and we need to call it out bigtime and that we don’t really defines a low point in our moral stance. Because tomorrow we might just find that we are no longer at the top of the food chain and that generation are going to remember how we exploited their poverty to steal their time, keep them poor and keep them subservient.

[zajio1am]

> We need to get to a place where the labor of human beings has a globally defined fair minimum wage

That is just economic nonsense. Labor productivity of economy depends on utilization of capital and ideas in that economy and it is pretty hard to increase. Average wage per hour in that economy cannot be higher than average productivity per hour. If you set minimal wage higher than its productivity, then you just destroyed almost all legal employment and forced everyone to grey economy or subsistence agriculture.

[newlogicblock]

It’s not nonsense to pay a fair wage. It’s basic human decency. Actually, it’s a sacred obligation. If someone gives you some of their time - literally a slice of their living experience, to help you build your wealth then you need to compensate them fairly. It’s not complicated, not at all. I’d like a detailed explanation as to why you think a young skilled worker in China deserves less than an American performing the same task. Explain it to me like you would face to face with a Foxconn worker over coffee after a 10 hour shift on the production line. Explain that economic nonsense like I’m five

[ninjagoo]

You are right - equal pay for equal work is an easy concept to understand - it is basic fairness. Instead, Africans are played off against local labor groups and it leads to structural imbalances like women still being paid only 82 cents on the $. And folks go around ridiculing equal-pay advocates as "social justice warriors in SF or NY" or "self-anointed do-gooders"!

[csomar]

I don't think your comment makes it any better. With all respect but given the HDI of Kenya, I don't think your average Kenyan worker is that versed in English, has a laptop and an Internet connection. $2/hour for a company like OpenAI (which can, most likely, afford more) is pure modern slavery.

[ajmurmann]

It's not slavery though, since nobody is forced to take the job. This clearly was something Kenyan workers were happy to have as an option, otherwise they wouldn't have taken the job. If everyone did what OpenAI did and moved work like this to Kenya, salary would quickly go up. If few companies moved their work there, comp will stay low. It seems the low price is one of the main attractors right now. So shaming companies into paying more, likely will just move the work elsewhere and leave workers there with $0/hr.

[csomar]

That’s some BS that we were fed about competitiveness. I used to buy that BS at some point. But these companies (and the people having them) have a choice and they do have enough money.

One of the companies I’m following now is Oxide (https://oxide.computer/careers). They pay everyone the same salary ($200k) regardless of position. It’s a bit extreme but am following them precisely for that. It’d be interesting to see how Oxide fares down the road.

It’s funny that some years ago that software developers were complaining that they were getting paid less because of politics and because people who talked controlled the businesses and the money. It’s funny because now that the table turned, most of them are doing the same thing.

[ethanbond]

Nothing funny about it, it’s called leverage, and realistically it’s not always a bad thing. The note up above about it not being slavery because it’s voluntary is really important. If someone is entering into an agreement willingly, that’s pretty good evidence at least (if not proof) that they expect or perceive it to be a mutually beneficial transaction. This can be the case regardless of some 3rd party’s (and especially a rich westerner’s) gut reaction that the wage is crazy low.

[falcolas]

> If someone is entering into an agreement willingly, that’s pretty good evidence at least (if not proof) that they expect or perceive it to be a mutually beneficial transaction.

Respectfully, the existance, and the need, for minimum wage puts lie to this assumption. People need money to survive, and will take whatever job they can when they don't have one, even if it not for enough pay.

I'm not claiming this is the case here, but that this argument is badly flawed.

[ethanbond]

Not really? In a world with no minimum wage, working for sub-living wage is better than zero. That’s still beneficial compared to the alternative. So the analogous thing here, which I think is true, is that if you think it’s crazy people are accepting a job for $2, you ought to start looking for solutions amongst the jobs paying $1.99 and below.

That’s what minimum wage does. It eliminates the alternatives below the line, not above it.

[ayewo]

> It’d be interesting to see how Oxide fares down the road.

I have been hearing about Oxide since 2019 [1]. 3 years later, it seems they don't yet have paying customers that one can read about. And with a tag line like: "Servers as they should be" I'm inclined to ask: "Servers as they should be [by whom?]".

Is the demand for such ideal servers driven by engineers/sys admins or by businesses (i.e. businesses who are currently being served poorly by existing options in the market)?

Is the demand for such ideal servers enough to make them a sustainable business, especially with the enormous amounts they'll likely be pouring into R&D before they can bring a product to market that lives up to their ideals?

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360

[bcantrill]

When we started the company, we knew it would be a three year build -- and indeed, our first product is in the final stages of development (i.e. EMC/safety certification). We have been very transparent about our progress along the way[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7] -- and our software is essentially all open source, so you can follow along there as well.[8][9][10]

If you are asking "does anyone want a rack-scale computer?" the (short) answer is: yes, they do. The on-prem market has been woefully underserved -- and there are plenty of folks who are sick of Dell/HPE/VMware/Cisco, to say nothing of those who are public cloud borne and wondering if they should perhaps own some of their own compute rather than rent it all.

[0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/holistic-bo...

[1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-oxide-s...

[2] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/bringup-lab...

[3] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/more-tales-...

[4] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/another-lpc...

[5] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-pragmat...

[6] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/tales-from-...

[7] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-sidecar...

[8] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron

[9] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolis

[10] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/hubris

[gowld]

They outsource low paying jobs like "building their hardware" to other companies. I bet OpenAI content raters are also managed by a vendor, but even if not, the difference is smoke and mirrors.

[themitigating]

Janitors at that company make $200k?

[ajmurmann]

Probably everyone with roles that aren't part of the core business is outsourced. Am argument could be made that outsourcing is actually worth for the workers than earning less than highly skilled labor, but being a FTE and maybe get opportunity to grow.

[key_stroker]

You're right nobody is forcing them, they simply lack an alternative, some money is better than none, no matter what it costs, right?

[lkbm]

OpenAI offered them work at $2/hour.

You and I offered them no work for no pay.

The workers have made clear they prefer OpenAI's offer.

We could tell the workers that we know what's best for them. Sitting here in my rich country with my six-figured job, I'm supposed to tell the workers they're wrong, they should have taken my offer instead?

It's a terrible incentive that helping people a little bit will get you criticism while helping not at all earns you no criticism. In fact, as non-helpers we get to sit and sanctimoniously criticize the people actually doing something.

[ajmurmann]

Poverty and inequality are terrible. OpenAI should be ashamed that they just made it marginally better for some folks in Kenya instead of solving this massive problem in its entirety that has nothing to do with their company. /s

[gautamdivgi]

Why is that an OpenAI problem? It’s something the Kenyan government needs to solve. I fail to see why every company needs to subscribe to an SJW mindset.

They paid decent wages by Kenyan standards it seems. They did not force, exploit or abuse the workers.

[CoastalCoder]

It sounds like you're suggesting some different approach for how to calculate a wage offer. Can you elaborate?

[chrischen]

Yes, some money is better than none. That is exactly why it is better. They are literally doing something whereas you are probably doing nothing (or much less than what they are doing).

[gowld]

https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

By your logic, you are more evil because you pay Kenyans $0.

[guerrilla]

> It's not slavery though, since nobody is forced to take the job.

Yes they are, that's what borders are: rent-seeking in the labor market.

[ajmurmann]

I'm 100% in favor of open borders. However, what can OpenAI do about that?

[guerrilla]

I was just responding to the specific claim, but I think what they could do is pay as if they weren't leveraging borders to decrease wages. I'd rather solve the problem at the root than require such exceptionalism from them though, as that doesn't really seem scalable.

[falcolas]

Not exploit closed borders. Everybody here is acting like they had no choice but to employ Kenyan workers specifically.

[ajmurmann]

If there Kenyan workers would prefer not to have this job, they would quit. This is clearly a win/win for OpenAI and the Kenyan workers.

[tw1984]

> $2/hour for a company like OpenAI (which can, most likely, afford more) is pure modern slavery.

by using the same argument, you can claim that someone taking home $300k USD a year living in CA is a victim of modern slavery simply just because his/her employer can afford more.

[0xbadcafebee]

This is a really good troll. I almost tried to debate with a person on the internet over whether getting a data entry job that pays 50% over the national average was slavery. Kudos, sir.

[CoastalCoder]

It's anyone's guess as to whether or not the OP was trying to troll.

That said, I can see some benefit in occasionally testing viewpoints that are "obviously" true.

[affgrff2]

The choice of words reveal the intention.

[adolph]

> I don't think your average Kenyan worker is that versed in English

Kenya is a multilingual country. Swahili, a Bantu language, and English are widely spoken as lingua francas and serve as the two official languages. English was inherited from colonial rule (see British Kenya).

https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Languages_of_Kenya

[clucas]

If we're going to expand the term "slavery" to include at-will employment for pay, we should probably repeal the 13th Amendment and replace it with something a little more precise.

[coffeebeqn]

It used to be called globalization

[davidguetta]

Today Anon discovered poverty and economic inequalities.

[welshwelsh]

>a company like OpenAI (which can, most likely, afford more)

Hate this argument. As a for-profit company, OpenAI is legally and ethically obligated to minimize unnecessary expenses. It's purpose is to develop AI systems, not to provide people with high-paying jobs.

[abenga]

Half of Kenyans have smartphones, practically every corner of the country has 4G internet. Large parts of Nairobi have broadband connections to the home. It's not nirvana, but it's really not as dire as you are implying.

[kris_wayton]

It does seem a fair observation that having a group of people that aren't 100% well versed in the language and culture of the subject matter might not deliver the best results.