[EarlKing]

I'm sure I'm supposed to sympathize with the plight of the poor Amazon coder, but since everyone in the valley are encouraged to systematically shit on everyone they believe is beneath them.... I can't.

...and don't tell me they don't. I've been to way too many corporate parties and seen how they act when they think no one is watching.

[martin-t]

Yes but not every dev is an Amazon coder.

I have the privilege of working for a robotics company small enough that I (a SW dev) can walk a few doors down the hallway and talk to anyone from mechanics, to electronics, to sales, to the people who actually operate the robors on customers' sites. And I have a lot of respect for people who pull a 16 hour shift in freezing cold or with water pouring down their necks.

For the company to function, it requires a lot of people with different skills to come together and each do what they're best at.

As Doctorow says, this is why huge corps segregate people into casts - to keep them from seeing the other's contribution and to keep them hating the other instead of hating those who exploit both.

[EarlKing]

> As Doctorow says, this is why huge corps segregate people into casts - to keep them from seeing the other's contribution and to keep them hating the other instead of hating those who exploit both.

This is my point. I've grown tired of telling people to hate those who exploit us all when they're tossed crumbs from their master's table and decide that is sufficient to make common cause with him.

I'll shed a tear for the common coder when they can spare a tear for the rest of us.

[nylon4831]

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

[palmotea]

> I'm sure I'm supposed to sympathize with the plight of the poor Amazon coder, but since everyone in the valley are encouraged to systematically shit on everyone they believe is beneath them.... I can't.

That's one of the mechanisms capital uses to keep the workers under control: divide and conquer. AI hurts workers, and benefits the shareholders, but some workers will stay on the sidelines due to schadenfreude towards arrogant software engineers.

But I've said it before: for people who see themselves as soooo smart, software engineers have been pretty fucking dumb. They fooled themselves into thinking their high salaries and 401ks to meant they were like their bosses and not other workers, so behaved like temporarily embarrassed billionaires: embracing libertarianism, regurgitating anti-union propaganda from their bosses.

If software engineers were actually smart, we'd have unionized decades ago, when we had more power.