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Comment by TheAdamAndChe | Hacker News Reader

I have a Bachelor's degree in IT, hold a whole alphabet of certifications, and am happy to work part time at the company I work at making $20/hr. Why? Because I'm actually treated like a human being with tons of autonomy. I can crack jokes, control my own schedule, take breaks if I get frustrated, and do basically whatever I want as long as I'm honest with my work logs.

So many jobs here are dehumanizing. We are treated like cogs by a highly stressed management, and if you don't "pull your weight" and overwork yourself then you are cast from the group. Try to push back, and you get a talking to by silver-tongued executives who just don't understand why we don't Work Harder. In a previous job, I was scheduled shifts from 7am-9pm just a week after being in the hospital.

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I find this individualistic view of the problem fascinating.

It treats companies as individuals and thinks they're all different, which is bolstered by the BS terminology about "corporate culture" that the companies themselves push.

But to anyone who sees the big picture, it's obvious that this is capitalism. Under capitalism, you are a cog in a machine. Always have been, always will be.

This isn't some particular company treating its employees like trash. It's the entire system of commodifying all aspects of life in order for the line in the chart to keep going up indefinitely.

But individualism has people so utterly blind to this that they treat companies as people, which is dystopian to the max.

I don't think capitalism has a monopoly on this. It's an intrinsic property of any hierarchical organization.

I could see someone argue that, but would a monarch, for example, really hyperfocus nearly as much on optimizing crops to the point of driving the farmers to suicide, just so he could point to a line going up on a chart in a meeting with investors?

No, it's more likely to be a vague, emotional impulse for "more", without the bureaucratic apparatus to enforce it in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with human life.

Capitalism demands constant growth in ways and for reasons that are different from any other hierarchy.

This is literally what King Leopold II of Belgium did in Congo.

Companies do differ. Not a high proportion of people are fortunate enough to work for a successful worker's co-op, but there the forces you describe take a quite different shape.

Even in a capitalist-owned firm, enlightened self-interest can lead to decent management practice.

What city did you work in before? I live in the midwest and have hopes to move to NYC one day but you're painting a picture between the world I live in now and the world I want to live in. Meaning, the more relaxed environment but "lower" pay (relative to the tech field but definitely well paying for where I live) place is where I live. NYC I somewhat envisioned as a bit more cutthroat if I wanted to live in Manhattan (which I don't) but maybe not so much if I wanted to live in Brooklyn, Queens, or even Jersey City.

Both jobs were in the same somewhat small city in the Midwest, they were just different sizes and have drastically different cultures.

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