Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

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>In my opinion, that would be incredibly cruel and stupid.

Usually, it's more ignorance rather than (intentional) cruelty. If your office has a relaxed atmosphere, as a manager, it is very easy to make the mistake of thinking that you are just a regular part of the gang. But of course, you're not, and everyone (except you) is aware of your status and the fact that you control their continual employment, bonuses/raises and career advancement.

This view is reinforced in modern tech culture which is deeply uncomfortable with power and status hierarchies without realizing that a proper hierarchy with defined roles and responsibilities actually makes everyone more comfortable because everyone knows where they stand. The Valve case study of a fully horizontal organization is complete bullcrap because they replaced defined roles and responsibilities and chain of command with an ambiguous and implicit set of roles, responsibilities and chain of command. Nobody there believes that Gabe Newell is just a regular joe, regardless of what his title says.

> ignorance rather than (intentional) cruelty

Yes, and that ignorance is a _privelege_ of power. Most employees don't think they can risk-free joke about firing their boss.

>Yes, and that ignorance is a _privelege_ of power.

No it's not.

There we go. My statement has as much evidentiary support as yours.

Have you ever thought about the usefulness and evidentiary support of using this weird leftist nomenclature to reframe traditionally understood concepts? Like what value did you bring by reframing 'ignorance' as 'privilege' - but 'privilege' not in the sense of the dictionary definition but as a loaded concept that came out of dark recesses of some leftist writings that has no actual backing and does not actually lead to a better understanding of the world.

Seems like a pretty straightforward point to me. Powerful people are punished less for their lack of understanding of less powerful, even though the consequences of their ignorance are worse.

Who has more reason to worry, a manager making a joke about firing someone, or an employee making a joke about forming a union with their coworkers? There's a reason that one of these two groups needed to be given legal protection for their joke.

>Seems like a pretty straightforward point to me.

I'm sure it does, but it's not.

>Powerful people are punished less for their lack of understanding of less powerful

That's not true. Or it's true in some situations and not in others. It is also true in some situations of subordinates.

>Who has more reason to worry, a manager making a joke about firing someone, or an employee making a joke about forming a union with their coworkers?

There are occasions where an employee can make a joke that would get a manager into trouble or into MORE trouble if they made that joke. There are behaviours that would get a manager into trouble and not the employee. The managerial and subordinate positions each come with their own set of rights, responsibilities, and privileges. My good friend, for example, declined a managerial 'promotion' because he was happy doing what he was doing and didn't want the extra stress and pressure. Back in uni when I worked as a part-timer at Staples, my manager was the hardest worker I've ever seen. She pulled crazy hours while some of us messed around and did as little as we could to get through the shift. To top it all off, she is the one that got yelled at by difficult customers, and not us - even if we screwed up. You can come up with alternative examples where the manager was a lazy bum and employees were super hard workers ... why? Because human organizations are complex and each one has different dynamics at play and different cultures. So thinking about it terms of the idiotic and shallow 'privilege' idea misses all those dynamics and complexity. So no, 'privilege' is not the right metaphor for the discussion at hand, and it isn't straightforward.

Yes, I guess nothing is ever that simple. But the fact that you are able to have a dialogue about this shows that leftist nomenclature can lead to understanding in the same way as any other nomenclature, which is the understanding that's developed in a back and forth dialogue about a subject. Maybe if the OP had declared their belief as an unquestionable religious dogma (as many people do with their political opinions), there would be grounds to criticize them, but they didn't.

Privilege isn't weird leftist nomenclature, it's a well-documented fact about how the world works. Some people receive less blow-back for their misbehavior than others, because of their position in society. Whether their misbehaviour is from ignorance or cruelty is irrelevant to this point:

More powerful[1] people are more insulated from the consequences of their ignorance.

The response to you did not contradict your statement. It added important context to it.

[1] Two people can have more, or less power, relative to eachother, depending on the social context they are in.

>Privilege isn't weird leftist nomenclature

Yes it is.

>it's a well-documented fact about how the world works

Maybe in marxist writings, but it isn't a 'well-documented fact'.

>More powerful[1] people are more insulated from the consequences of their ignorance.

And that statement is factually wrong in the general case. I made this argument to another poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23479872

>Some people receive less blow-back for their misbehavior than others, because of their position in society.

Talk about a truism. Yes, some people receive less blow-back for their misbehavior due to their position in society.

It could be the case that one individual receives blow-back for this misbehaviour because, for example, they are in a position of responsibility whereas someone who isn't, wouldn't. That happens all the time. How about this, in my city, vagrancy is completely unpunished, even though it's illegal, but you're going to get tagged if you let your chihuahua off-leash in an empty park. Are homeless people privileged? Under a colloquial reading of definition, they sure are. But we know you don't mean that because you're importing extreme Leftist ideas into this definition and being dishonest that you are doing that.

With apologies for pulling out the dictionary, but here we go:

https://google.com/search?q=define+privilege

> a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.

Yes. That's the dictionary definition of 'privilege'. Now show me where in that definition is the position of 'manager' cast as a 'privileged' position or an example of 'privilege of power'? You had to import that from ideas put out from leftists writings where this word is reframed and redefined to mean something completely different. This bait-and-switch is a dishonest equivocation on your part because you're hijacking regular, commonly understood words in order to backdoor extreme ideas.

Back to the topic at hand, another way to look at a position of 'manager', that actually matches reality, is to admit that it is a necessary role in any sized organization of people focusing on completing a common task. This is true if the organization is a club, or a sports team or a corporation because there will always be a need, to manage and organize groups of people. This position comes with its own set of responsibilities and accountability and as such frequently the punishments and repercussions for 'misbehaviour' are greater than what a subordinate employee would receive for the same action. It's not an intrinsically 'privileged' position. I made this argument to another poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23479872

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