Hacker News Reader

Comment by Accujack | Hacker News Reader

>I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in the last year.

Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset. People hadn't noticed, and now they have.

It'll probably happen all over again, but at least there's hope for now.

View on HN

>> Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset.

I think it depends on where you work and how the executives care or don't care about their employees.

I was working at a large corporation during the 08' recession. They took away all of our perks (free coffee, free milk, bottled water, bonuses, christmas parties with bonuses, etc) all in one year and then never brought them back which resulted in a steady flow of people quitting.

Likewise, I was at a much smaller family run company shortly after the aforementioned big corporation (less than 300 employees) and we had amazing Cadillac health care, yearly bonuses and generous salary increases and four weeks of vacation (double the norm at any other company) to start. Most of the company employees were 'lifers' for obvious reasons.

Right now? I work at a huge health care company. Its somewhere in the middle. We get a lot of technology perks, three weeks vacation, decent salary increases and yearly bonuses that are competitive. The health care plans ironically are some of the worst I've had, but its offset by the other things I get.

Everything is relative and I think people just need to find what works best for them. Its also a great time for all the people complaining they can't seem to find work anywhere. LOTS of mid tier gigs right now for those who want to get out there and find a solid gig, instead of staying home and collecting unemployment to the tune of $1,200/month.

One quick note is that the boiling frog metaphor actually doesn't happen in nature. When the water is too hot, the frogs jump out

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-b...

Well yeah, when the job is too crappy people quit, too. But they stay a lot longer when the job gets crappy slowly than when it suddenly gets crappy overnight.

To add a bit more here, when the job is suddenly crappy it’s easier to let go of anything holding you to it. When it progressively gets crappy you hold out hope that it getting better is just one seemingly simple decision away.

Don’t get caught up in the fantasy that it’s stopped in any appreciable way. The hammer is just starting to fall as vaccination rates go up. This is the start of the first battle, not the second act.

Whether we look back at this moment as fantasy or the beginning of something truly changing won't be the result of some deterministic historical process. It's up to us. Call your congressman, your senator. Meet with coworkers and discuss this stuff. Post shit on the internet and challenge yourself and others to think differently. Go out into the world, even if individual actions are tiny or barely perceptible.

The key thing about the world is that someone made it this way. I have to believe that it can be made differently.

I doubt you can say some 'one' made the world this way. The present day is the result of historical, economical, scientific, etc. processes that are only partly known by few people.

Țhere is a short term greed pushing wages down so in that sense I agree.

Yes you're right, no one person made it this way - that was a rhetorical efficiecy on my part. I meant some broader human "we" made it this way. People, us.

It's not just a rhetorical efficiency though. Phrasing it that way makes it feel like it's a lot easier to change, cause we can imagine personally overcoming a single person.

That broader human "we" is the deterministic historical process that is insurmountable for any one person. It can only be contested with a countervailing historical process when people organize and cooperate, and that's a lot harder to get rolling than just calling your congressperson.

I would venture to guess, though, that a very small, single-digit percentage (possibly even sub-one-percent) of all-people-ever made things this way. A vanishingly small number of people have the influence to shape "what work means" to this degree. Yes, people going along with things, or even supporting things (because someone in power told them to) plays a big part; the puppetmasters do need some amount of consent and compliance from the masses. But the drivers of change are few.

It’s a rewording of a Steve Jobs quote (not sure where, if anywhere, he got it from). Essentially it means rather than find reasons to disengage, get out and do something to help promote positive change. If everyone does this, then there’s you’re aggregate.

> It's up to us. [...]

And start interviewing for remote jobs, if you have the luxury to do so. Especially if you are in an industry where talent has the most bargaining power (i.e. tech). Don't tolerate this nonsense: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazons-covid-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com