[sanitycheck]

But the power imbalance is the whole problem. Unfortunately it seems to be human nature that those who seek and gain power are compelled to exercise it to benefit themselves, to the detriment of others.

What sort of compromise are you thinking of? I get the impression that workers have done a lot of compromising (involuntarily) in the past decade or two and bosses have not.

The idea of a co-operative has always been appealing to me, but having encountered and worked with a lot of real live humans my idealism regarding that is pretty much shattered and in practice I suspect it would be very frustrating and fairly short-lived.

Personally I ended up as a business myself, I have clients rather than employers. It's far from perfect, but it feels more honest and 'real' somehow.

[SanderNL]

I understand and I too have clients. This feels completely different indeed, but that is exactly why I came to think of these things: the power structure is not fundamentally different. If anything, it’s more volatile and I need to watch what I am doing all the time. I can be dumped at a moment’s notice and to be honest, I like it that way because that works both ways. (My wife thinks differently about these matters.)

Thing is, without sounding too negative, because my team mates are all good people, but I have seen some negativity in them along these lines that in my opinion is uncalled for. Without proper care it is easy to fall into a black and white, purely transactional relationship with your employer. To be completely honest, I myself have fallen for it quite some time and it made me deeply unhappy.

I speak to the “bosses” perhaps on a different level now and it’s not like they are living to grind their staff into dust. There is a complexity to their job as well and it would perhaps be enlightening to keep that in mind even as an “employee”.

Perhaps my idea of compromise is that you, as an employee, need to come to terms that you might not be perfect and that there is a lot you do not understand, but that is OK. Try to do a good job and don’t point fingers (“they started!”). Try to imagine how your “boss” feels. We are all humans trying to do an adequate job, barring some pathological types. Not to make your boss happy, but yourself.

But I am rambling too long now. I of course need to add here that exercising wisdom is crucial: don’t let yourself be abused. Everything depends on the circumstances and they are always complex.

Edit: btw I work with small businesses and those are a completely different game than, say, Adobe. I still think the general point about trying to do good without falling into pure transactionalism is helpful.

[sanitycheck]

You can be dropped at a moment's notice as a salaried employee too, it just takes a bit more prep on the part of the employer. It tends to be more of a shock for people who take "permanent" literally, whereas for us we know we need a year or two of spare cash in the bank.

> Perhaps my idea of compromise is that you, as an employee, need

> to come to terms that you might not be perfect and that there is

> a lot you do not understand, but that is OK. Try to do a good

> job and don’t point fingers (“they started!”).

I think this describes most people already. I mean, I've encountered some prima donnas but that problem solves itself eventually (they flounce off). I'm not sure what you're suggesting ordinary employees should be doing that they aren't already, and what it would cause their employers to do differently?

It's a good point about small businesses, I much prefer dealing with them to bigger firms. If my point of contact is one of the directors then everything flows so much more smoothly. (Smallest direct client had 7 employees, biggest I think about 200K - very different experiences.)

When I refer to "the bosses" I really mean the set of people at the upper layers of larger companies who, week to week, have no contact with staff who are doing actual productive work - their subordinates are managers, and the subordinates of their subordinates are also managers. They're insulated from, and often unaware of, the effects of their decisions - they probably don't consciously intend to grind their staff to dust, but everyone they talk to is happy and the numbers look good so surely everything is fine.

Further down the chain you've got a bunch of middle-managers with no investment in the overall good of the company and no power to really improve the conditions of the workers beyond passing messages up the chain, and the truth in those messages is filtered and transformed with every extra layer of people. Nobody wants to tell their boss stuff he/she doesn't want to hear.