[mseebach]

Yup. We're all liberal pluralists. Live and let live.

Except, of course, for employment choices. We all agree that traditional working environments with all their industrial era baggage sucks, but if I don't leave on the minute after a 40 hours work week, and I don't get paid overtime (so much for the industrial era baggage) it's incontrovertible evidence of rampant exploitation. Employees to claim to like their workplaces are brainwashed because the only reason you like your workplace is if you drank the koolaid - and of course hating your job is evidence of incompetent management. Remote work is the thing of the future, except companies that provide for easy remote working are under deep suspicion for tricking their employees to work during their free time.

HN is really, really schizophrenic on work. The middlebrow is strong with this one.

[rayiner]

I'm neither a liberal nor a pluralist, so I totally feel comfortable calling this abberent and cultish. I don't think this is healthy for the kids involved, and I doubt they're getting paid enough to make the sacrifice worthwhile. It just seems like preying on some young males who don't have much of a social life and putting them in a situation that precludes them from developing one. This happens a decent amount in other fields. My friend is a chemical engineer in the middle of nowhere, and while he doesn't live on a cult campus he has a similar problem of social isolation, and its really hurt his mental state. And of course all the young guys working on oil rigs and whatnot. But those guys are often in a situation where they have few other options.

[pjc50]

Anything can be made to sound bad if you oversimplify. Any community can be made to sound incoherent if you collapse the opinions of very different people on top of one another.

It's pretty obvious that the article is describing an unusual arrangement that won't suit everyone - although it's not specific to tech, there are other jobs where you get stuffed into a remote, often mostly young male, community for months at a time. Oil, the military, certain religious and agricultural communities.

[it_learnses]

I sense deep irony in this comment...

[pjc50]

?

[netcan]

I agree. There is a lot of baked in dishonesty relating to careers and jobs and such.

It's very tied in to people's identity and realities often unpleasant to deal with. Many of us spend most our lives in a way we don't like. That's a tough pill. Some aspects of it can be dehumanizing emasculating (for men, of course) or demeaning in other ways.

In any case I think working life feeds you ills that are hard to swallow without a little delusion. Employer want passionate employees. What if you're not passionate? Are you supposed to grin and lie, delude yourself or go find a job spec without passion in it?

A knowledge company in 2014 is different to a factory in 1893 and they are both new on the grander scale. Before them we had lordships and serfodms, guilds, patrons, patriarchs, soldiers, knights, orders, ships, stations, slaves and lots of other things etc. Those things tended to be who you are in the way that we now think of being "A Canadian." A company is a social structure. psychological conformity is a part of all social structures.

note: I also agree with your detractors. It's tricky pointing to hypocrisy in a community Different people's opinions are incompatible. The opinion of a group can be inconsistent without crossing into hypocrisy.

[rayiner]

> A knowledge company in 2014 is different to a factory in 1893 and they are both new on the grander scale.

Yet this living situation isn't that much of a stretch from the dormitory-style housing you still see in China for factory workers, or the company towns you saw in the U.S. for mine workers and the like.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "Yet this living situation isn't that much of a stretch from the dormitory-style housing you still see in China for factory workers, or the company towns you saw in the U.S. for mine workers and the like."

You can't be serious. This is a Foxconn dormitory [1]. It's nothing like a beautiful mansion in the californian country side with swimming pool and tennis court.

[1] http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060623_01.jpg

[netcan]

I think there are interesting fundamental objections a lot of people seem to have.

Labour laws and conventions almost assume people do not have a choice in their place of employment. That's why a barman's right to a smoke free workplace is more recognized than a patron's. With that in mind I think people feel that employment needs to be accessible to everyone and that this is specifically designed for young singles.

There is also an objection to the cultish nature of this, the opposite of work-life balance. If an employer controls your work life and your home life… I think that's what rayiner is objecting to.

Think about it this way. In one case you have a high priced escort who takes on a select few clients and earns like a star stockbroker. On the other you have a lower end prostitute earning less, in worse conditions and probably and with all the associated social problems of prostitution. To many, they are fundamentally the same thing because being a hooker is the important part, not the consequences of being a hooker.

I'm glad to see experimentation like this. I think if some people really like it, that might outweigh the other cases where people dislike it. In the midst of such a demand for programmers, they should be able to leave.

[k-mcgrady]

I'm generally for strong labour protection laws but as you point out with such demand from programmers in the area nobody needs a job at this company, they take it because they want it and they can leave relatively easily at any time.

[bakhy]

"we are all".. "we all agree"..

a bunch of commenters on a news site don't all have the same opinion on everything. go figure.

[rodgerd]

I agree completely. Why wouldn't we want to embrace this neo-feudal model where we can enjoy our life with a literal Lord of the Manor controlling our work and living all in one?