Hacker News Reader

Comment by ainar-g | Hacker News Reader

> Wait a second. I was in a business relationship with Google.

> It may sound strange that it took me two and a half years to realize it, but Google does a good job of building a sense of community within the organization. To make us feel that we’re not just employees, but that we are Google.

> That conversation made me realize that I’m not Google. I provide a service to Google in exchange for money.

People, and especially young people, should think about this more. It's called “labour market”, not “labour community”. A company as a whole is a faceless, consciousness-less creature that will eat you alive if that increases the right metrics. And it's definitely not a loving parent-figure that some of the HR people want you to think it is.

Also, this needs a (2018).

View on HN

My dad had just one job all his life, for 33 years. While he didn’t become rich, he did enjoy relative peace of mind, pension etc.

Of course everything is relative, but there was a time where companies had a little bit of concern to their employees, however small it was.

Those days are gone. These days, companies don’t even pretend. A very small percentage of people are going to do well, for the vast majority it is just slavery, plain and simple

Nonsense. Everywhere I’ve been employed cared about my wellbeing and when I was an employer, I cared about the wellbeing of my staff.

Calling an employer/employee relationship slavery after a Googler complains he wasn’t promoted fast enough is peak self-importance.

I feel like you're underestimating how terrible Google's stack ranking system. It basically exploits you into doing more work than you should with the prospect of making more money, only to smack you back down and ask you to do 6 more month of back breaking work. More than you were hired to, mind you.

If you are comparing it to slavery I think you are vastly overestimating how bad the promo process is.

Or vastly underestimating how terrible slavery is.

This is my reaction when I see people complaining about tech jobs.

Especially when they use phrases like "back breaking work".

It mainly indicates a severe lack of perspective.

This statement is worded to lead a reader to believe you’ve never actually experienced “back breaking work”. It reads as incredibly privileged and insulated

Google hasn't done stack ranking for perf in years.

“back breaking work”

Mercy.

Without sounding judgy, this is something that I joke with my fellow Gen-x'rs and Boomers with. Millenials expect prepayment for what they're about to do, in hopes they can actually do it.

I was raised in a generation that you had to prove you could in fact, do the work.

I appreciate and enjoy their confidence, and don't much care for what you might call "being entitled", though I can see this will become a protected phrase in the near future.

You’re not wrong, but we have those expectations because we often have to go deep into educational debt to get the job in the first place. The costs always get passed along.

This reflects more on our generation’s distrust of the systems that we work in than any kind of entitlement or misplaced confidence. As well as our general economic adversity/anxiety, debt, lack of future prospects, exploitation, etc.

This comment amuses me because the same people seem to have a high level of trust in the government as a general rule. Or at least in candidates on the left who advocate for a government that is more involved in day-to-day life.

Yeah, they might pay for your insurance, give you free food, but that's it. The ultimate motive is to make profit, by getting every bit of work from you.

You can sugarcoat it however you want, but to an employer, you are just a liability, not an asset, even when the "current" they call you as one. Because, the "next" they might not. The terms "employer", "they" are relative. As in the previous comment, "A company as a whole is a faceless, consciousness-less creature".

No, a company just a collection of people with a common goal. And when you don’t like one company, you have incredible mobility to find another. In a job market as good as the one in the US at the moment, that mobility is irrespective of skill level.

And that keeps companies, even the bad ones, from getting away with dehumanizing its workforce.

""" No, a company just a collection of people with a common goal """ yes, which is to make profit and keep shareholders & investors happy. Companies like Facebook might have started with a simple goal of connecting family & friends. But, now its an entirely different beast, making money by selling you and with way too many security holes that it hopes it can fix.

""" And when you don’t like one company, you have incredible mobility to find another. """ You are joining another one that has the same common goal.

""" And that keeps companies, even the bad ones, from getting away with dehumanizing its workforce. """ Please tell that to the Amazon's warehouse workers who had to piss in a bottle, because they don't want a slippage in their quota.

There are vast swaths of the US that are in economic decline, and they most certainly do not allow for mobility irrespective of skill level. They don't even have sufficient economic activity to support a Walmart.

You seem to define mobility different from me. The people in those areas have the legal and opportunistic means of going elsewhere.

I have a hard time imaging the people are willingly sacrificing theirs and their kids' futures for no reason. It's hard to up and move somewhere without adequate savings, a family or friends network. What kind of landlord is going to rent to someone with no job? Will someone in that situation be able to get a job that even allows them to save up for a home purchase in an economically burgeoning area? Or will they always be treading water?

people have always had that mobility though; there's nothing special about the current US job market. want to become the king in a feudal society? just raise an army and take over

I'd like to agree with you, because the narrative that employees corral and motivate their employers is an attractive one, and to be encouraged.

Within tech specifically: I do think it's true that software employers shift and change their rhetoric and/or practices to meet the (sometimes entitled) demands of developers.

But some of the issues silicon valley tech firms are relentlessly unwilling to move on are ones around unionization and collective bargaining.

If employees are truly creating the market, and it's the companies that have to work to attract and retain them, then why are employers so fearful of anything except individual bargaining?

For people who are all of: confident, socially mobile (few family/social ties to bind them) and physically in good health you are probably absolutely correct. But I would wager that setting those expectations across entire populations doesn't scale.

I hate these flippant comparisons of unhealthy workplaces to slavery. People are paid and can go home to their families at night. Nobody is being whipped or sold or forced to have sex. Comparing a Google software developer to a slave is nonsense and undermines the horrors that real slaves went/go through.

> forced to have sex

The word you're looking for is rape.

For me you’re demeaning the word “slavery” by suggesting that anything in this discussion is even close to that level of horrific, evil brutality.

> it is just slavery

If working a cushy tech job is slavery then what would be working at a sand mine in cameroon called ?

Much of the workforce

1. cannot take a couple of days off, without informing their boss much in advance

2. cannot work on something in their off time, on their own computers without employer claiming ownership of it (I am talking specifically about software here)

3. cannot take a unpaid month off, to travel or just rest, for example without losing their jobs

4. have no hope of receiving pension, decent medical benefits etc

5. have no good way of progressing in their career, without having to play bullshit office politics

6. have no concept of maternal, paternal leave, beyond the token few days which is a joke

and so on...

Yes, it is slavery. Compared to Cameroon, this is much better, cushier, comfortable slavery, but it is still slavery, aka wage slavery. We have been brainwashed so much about work, being a good citizen etc etc, that most of us can't even recognize that we give away the best years of our lives in return for a car, a small house and some money - and this is just the lucky ones, most of us don't get even that.

Both are slavery, just different forms of it. Yes, one of them is much better than the other, but they are both slavery.

But the thread is about Google.

Google offers unpaid time off, 12 weeks of maternal and paternal leave (more if you are a birth parent), is generally on the more flexible side of IP rights for a US company, provides decent medical benefits, and has a promo system through committees explicitly to minimize the amount of politicking one needs to do.

A wage slave is a person who is tied to the system of making a wage. It's not literal slavery. Ever.

I am a white, upper/middle class Texan with family who are borderline racists, and you are FLAT WRONG my friend.

I suggest some travel in your near future.

You're extremely misinformed on what constitutes actual slavery (especially plantation 18th/19th century slavery), up to the point of being disrespectful of their descendants (not forgetting the victims of current forms of slavery).

So almost everyone on the planet is a slave ? makes it kind of a meaningless word.

It is just that your dad had different expectations.

Had your dad expected to be promoted every 2 years like this guy, after 33 years he would have been CEO of the company. It is real that a lot of people today expect to get promoted fast for only doing their job.

Ask your dad what would he think if his job had all the perks that Google and FB give, including relative salary. You will see that it will sound like heaven for him. Why not just stay working there?

I think you have a personal grudge against something.

Working is not slavery, you work for money to do what you want.

You have a bad boss, can happen. Change jobs and it's done

>Arguably the most pervasive element enabling exploitative office culture is the postmodern trickery of the contemporary working environment. Slavoj Žižek argues that modern employment tactics create the illusion that our employer is our friend. This fabrication empowers the employer while denying the employed the right to vocalize and protest dissatisfaction of their working conditions. “You’re not going to stick around and help out? I thought we were a team? I thought we were friends?”

>Žižek suggests that the environment of the workplace has been twisted, using architectural devices, to manipulate employees. Kitchens, ‘break-out spaces’, lounges, free food, free coffee – he postulates that this is a postmodern sleight of hand designed to manipulate and disarm staff. By fabricating the illusion of employer as friend, the employed is denied the opportunity to protest, argue, fight, be adversarial and demand more of their working conditions. These informal spaces are political spaces of control, surveillance and manipulation.[0]

[0] https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/slavoj-zizek-says-your-off...

There is nothing particularly insightful in that quote. Employee/employer relationship is like any other transactional relationship: exchanging some freedom for money. Other forms, e.g. freelancing, consulting are different, but pay less for the same amount of work

The quote remarks on the changing of the relationship, a point which is insightful. Several authors (from Zizek to Frederic Lordon) have noticed the dynamics of the relationship changing from pure unashamed totalitarianism in the workplace to the idea that the boss is your friend. The nature of the employee/employer transactional relationship has changed both in theory (management techniques) and practice (direction, micro-management) since the time of the old critiques of domination in the workplace. The employee/employer relation, it is argued, has not become more equitably transactional, but rather the old pre-Fordist techniques have been hidden and obscured - arguably more perniciously.

It is, if nothing else, an indication that critics of capital need to reformulate the conception of the employer/employee relationship. Nitzan & Bichler and Vrousalis take two divergent approaches to exaplaining the special nature of the employee/employer relationship as situated in modern life.

I was always aware that there's no relationship. That I'm just selling my life for money. Every moment that I'm not doing the thing that I want to be doing at that moment should better be worth it.

Employer can pay with money or with entertainment. Roleplaying as a "part of family" or "valued employee" can be worth something but never forget it's a game played for your entertainment to balance lower pay. When it's no longer worth for the players, game ends and everybody goes home to barely ever meet again.

Pick employers that offer best sum of pay and entertainment at the lowest cost to your life.

What always gets me about these statements is that, yes you're in a business relationship with the company, but that relationship is obviously highly profitable to you. What's the point of giving up that income just to "stick it to the man"?

IMO, knowing that it's a business relationship and not a community is important to getting your proper compensation and keeping your mental health. It's not about "sticking it to the man" at all, but getting your appropriate compensation.

IMO, too many people see their company as a family, but the company does treat them that way and knows the mistake that the employees are making.

I think it leads a lot of people to burnout by giving their all to the company while they just receive an average paycheck in return. Instead of putting that effort into their job, they could be enriching their own lives instead.

There is only one thing worse than being exploited by the capitalist corporations and that's being unemployed and not being exploited by anyone.

Sadly, this trap is designed quite well, while warnings about it are not designed nearly as well, and many fall into it for n years.

I'm always surprised at how people fall in this trap. Businesses are inherently not there for your interest (income/livelihood), they exist to capture money/resources. They hire people to be the human face to make it appear otherwise (HR) and market (propoganda) to workers in similar ways products/services are marketed to consumers.

If there's a position, businesses expect it contributes to their profit. If the position pays $200k/yr, you can rest assured in the long run, they expect your work (or at least an average of your team, branch, etc. over that time) to produce at least what you're being paid in value. That's optimistically speaking but realistically speaking, more value must be produced than your total compensation (you're always worth more than you're being paid or compensated if a business is doing its job well). That's labor in general across the board ("skilled" or "unskilled").

The catch is when businesses overestimate a worker's value... that's when we plebeian workers are actually pulling money/value from the relationship--we're getting back more than we contribute in.

For some reason, culturally, this scenario for the laborer to pull more value than a business is taboo and seen as laziness, fraud, theft, etc. but it's somehow not taboo when the direction of the relationship changes: for a business to make money off its workers.

If you're not better off working for a company than you would be if you left the company, then leave. If you can get a better offer elsewhere, or working on your own, then go.

In a voluntary exchange, both parties are better off than they would be otherwise - they both are both "getting back more than [they] contribute in."

If I buy an apple for a dollar, it means I consider the apple to be worth more than a dollar. At the same time, the seller values the dollar more than the apple. Both parties are better off by making the exchange.

Employment is the same: the employer considers the labor performed to be worth more than the compensation (or they wouldn't employ the person), and the employee considers the compensation to be worth more than the labor (or they leave).

If you're not leaving, then why not? Maybe you value the predictability/security of a regular paycheck (though that can end at any time). Maybe you don't know how to capture the value of your time working on your own (you can learn). Or maybe the resources/connections/structure of the company allows your labor to produce more value than you could alone, so your labor is more valuable for the company than it would be elsewhere (an expert on self-driving cars may not be able to add much value to a pharmacy, but can add a lot of value to waymo/uber/tesla).

Its not always zero sum. In the best case, a group of workers that could make 1x each on their own, combine and are able to make 1.5x each together, and get paid around 1.2x each.

The additional .3x is the corporate "profit" and is distributed in any number of ways depending on how the company is set up. Its still a rational decision for all of the employees to work there.

Not sure I believe emergentism. While it may be difficult to quantify, I don't find the "whole greater than the sum of its parts," just the perception of the sum being greater than its parts or the reality hiding in the complexity from us mere mortals.

Without emergent properties (your work + my work < our work), it really is a zero sum game. To me, you may be able to manipulate perception of value in this fashion but that's where it ends (which to be fair, is often enough).

No, differential preferences make free exchange a positive sum game (economic surplus/gains from trade). Emergent properties can magnify the value, but are not necessary.

The apple farmer sells apples because (he considers) the money is worth more than the apples. Consumers buy apples because (they consider) the apples are worth more than the money.

  My perceived benefit - my compensation to you > 0 (I win = consumer surplus)
  My compensation to you - your perceived cost > 0 (You win = producer surplus)

If either one of those is not true, no voluntary exchange takes place. In compelled exchange, only the first needs to be true. This takes various forms, including taxation, robbery, and slavery.

Note that those two equations are from two individual perspectives - I determine my benefit, you determine your cost. If you simplify to "benefit > your cost" and compel the exchange, you get a dystopia - compulsion "for the benefit of all/others/king/etc.", without realizing the full costs to those compelled to sacrifice. Voluntary exchange is required to allow each individual to determine their own benefits and costs.

Note also that this incorporates transaction costs inside the "benefit" or "cost". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem for more info.

It would be interesting to try worker co-ops for software... It is a woefully underexplored space. I expect three is /some/ emergent value (eg, I don't really do ux worth a damn...), and a worker co-op could get there without needing to get huge.

> It's called “labour market”, not “labour community”

It's also called human resources, not human community or human family. You are a resource just like a monitor or a stapler on the desk. A resource that the company uses for the benefit of the shareholders.

Being a useful resource doesn't have to be miserable though, especially if your role is more akin to a chainsaw or rocket engine than a stapler.

A farmer will put the animals' comfort and health and safety ahead of their own. They'll work long hours through heat waves and winter storms, get up in the middle of the night to check that everything is all right, spend every waking and sleeping moment worrying about the livestock, individually and collectively.

'course, the pig still gets eaten in the end.

You need to watch more PETA undercover videos.

there are thousands of chainsaws and rocket engines ready to take your place.

Really? So why does everyone complain about engineering shortage?

Because what they're really saying is that they don't want to pay more money.

By complaining about the "shortage" they encourage new entrants into the field and convince existing talent to accept lower wages.

It's purely marketing, IMO.

>convince existing talent to accept lower wages.

That seems like lousy marketing. If I'm told that something is constantly in a shortage my first thought isn't exactly to sell it for less.

Eh, you're right. I'm obviously not thinking clearly this morning.

Sorry, you're right, I should rethink my argument. Billion dollar businesses aren't made on chainsaws and rocket engines. They're mostly made in conference rooms by salespeople with capitol. So, identifying as a chainsaw or rocket engine is basically just an admitting that you're a tool willing to work for less than what the salespeople think what your labor is worth.

You aren't going to change the world as an IC. If you're really a 10x engineer, maybe put that 9x difference back into learning how to market yourself or a product, if you really want to make a difference.

You're not working for "less than what someone thinks your worth", you're working for a price set by the market and an assessment of what level of quality your work is.

A developer gets paid before the salespeople have anything to sell. It's up to the company and its salespeople to try to not lose money on their deal with their R&D people. Considering the context of the article (Google engineer) and how much people in that market get paid, making money after you pay them is a tall order. Most businesses fail.

>You're not working for "less than what someone thinks your worth", you're working for a price set by the market and an assessment of what level of quality your work is.

So what about that 1x engineer who negotiated for 50k more than you, even though your output is better than his. Your company isn't jumping to give you a raise. Is that just "the market"?

There are ~basically~ no employee shortages, only employee shortages at a given pay rate.

To justify the H1B and similar quotas so they can import more foreign born labor so they can pay labor less.

Indeed; "human" is an adjective in that phrase.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com