| > The hypocrisy, it burns! Sorry. Would you like a cool compress? ;-) > So it's ok to exploit one's personal situation (family and financial commitments stopping one from moving to a location where the cartel is not in force, for example), but hey, no physical violence please, psychological one will do! I don't know how to describe the ludicrousness of describing not cold calling someone as "psychological violence". In general though, I'm no libertarian, but I'm pretty sure they'd be the first to admit that the libertarian model is without exploitation, immorality, or evil. They'd just argue that the use of force to exert controls would invariably be a greater exploitation/immorality/evil. > employers own original capital At least with startups in the valley, they most certainly don't. To clarify: investors by definition are risking original capital, so they always own original capital... of course with a typical investment model, once they invest that capital, they no longer own said capital and in fact may no longer own any original capital. Employers are generally the businesses themselves, and so don't necessarily have original capital and statistically at least are disproportionately likely to either be in debt or at least have negative cash flow, particularly with startups. Employees on the other hand, have almost no capital at risk tied to their involvement in a venture beyond equity/warrants in the company. It is entirely possible (and particularly in the case of the tech industry, and particularly in the case of senior employees like those targeted by these practices) that they'd have original capital, and in fact in I think every case of the named companies they have opportunities to contribute original capital into their employer at better than market rates, as well as having sweat equity translated in to options or straight out equity/grants in their employer. So they are more than encouraged to have either original capital or at least the equivalent thereof. In short, the power dynamic you are implying as universal to the employer-employee relationship isn't universal and most importantly is a particular ill fit to the context in question. > employees don't At last with startups in the valley, that is far from necessarily true. > The penalty for employers (losing some profit if all workers quit or get fired) is virtually nonexistent: limited-liability companies are set up with the explicit aim of exonerating capital owners from responsibility beyond the invested capital. Yeah... but that limited liability is very hard to escape and often significantly outweighs the relative penalty for employees of quitting or getting fired. Again, at startups... most employees don't recoil in horror about the economic (psychological is a different matter) consequences of quitting or getting fired. > Workers don't own original capital (which is why they are workers, after all). Again, at a startup up, it'd be a huge assumption to think they are working there because they don't own original capital. > The penalty for them is much higher, they could lose their house and/or livelihood. Assuming there is demand from other employers, the penalty is almost 0. Particularly as a logical consequence of the hiring practices alluded to in the article, an engineer who is laid off is going to get snatched off the market almost immediately. In fact, they are likely to not even miss a single paycheck and could very well end up with a raise out of the whole thing. > Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best. Refusing to consider the full impact of distortions on labor relationships is disingenuous at best. Engaging in a debate about this same stuff in 2014 without considering the market & economic realities that motivate these practices in the first place is beyond sad. |
Cold calling is not necessary, a worker has networks of his own. Given a situation where the worker is trying to improve his condition by getting fairer compensation for his work, and is forced to renounce by a localised cartel of employers exploiting his conditions (i.e. that he can't leave the area), I'd say that's psychological violence alright... but I guess we'll never agree on the exact degree of intensity of such force.
>At least with startups in the valley, they most certainly don't [own original capital].
We are talking about Apple, Intel, Google etc; they are not startups anymore. Startups are not the ones who colluded, they already cannot pay market wages in most cases. It's the companies who could and should pay full wages, the ones who tried to scrimp on salaries.
I agree that the fundamental asymmetry in labor relationship is mitigated by factors such as business size and investor's own history, but it's still there (how often do we get stories on HN about startup workers being screwed out of rewards for successful business outcomes), and anyway these factors simply do not apply to Google, Apple et al.
>Assuming there is demand from other employers
That's a big assumption. It might be true for Silicon Valley as of 2014, but in most years and in most areas that's simply not the case.
> Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best. >> Refusing to consider the full impact of distortions on labor relationships is disingenuous at best.
I agree, it's a complex matter, but you cannot take as fundamental principles for economic doctrine some localised, exceptional and very limited situation: you take the common scenario and build principles from it, then you tweak it for outliers. "Engineers in Silicon Valley" is the outlier, not the common scenario, and people trying to use that as the basis for "new" theories are, in most cases, just rehashing old excuses for exploiting the workforce.