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Comment by vermilingua | Hacker News Reader

> It's a new kind of exploitation we haven't really faced before.

Sure we have, serfdom. Serfs were not only expected to provide labour to their “employers”, but to fight for them, believe what they believe, and pledge their fealty.

Like serfs, and unlike the period from the industrial revolution to the postwar years, it’s becoming less common for people to change careers, an occupation being more than a job and becoming an identity. Sure we might change employers frequently, but it is not often (and is in fact a spectacle) when someone makes a drastic change of occupation.

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Jobs have been an identity for as long as civilization has existed. Hence last names like "Miller", "Smith", "Cooper", etc.

Having your profession be your identity, yes. That's not the same as having a particular employer be your identity.

Yes, to be fair, the town blacksmith or cooper was probably self employed, certainly not an anonymous representative of a public company.

Most people in the history of civilization were subsistence peasants, because throughout most of civilization, agricultural productivity was so low that it couldn't afford more than a small fraction of the population to work as 'professionals'.

Since we’re here: https://www.amazon.com/Microserfs-Douglas-Coupland/dp/006162...

This book was ahead of its time. Millionaires who live like college kids. Overworked and stressed out devs working for a faceless corporation. I read it a long time ago, but I recall it was super good.

I read this recently. I thought it was okay, but it didn’t really speak to me and I’m not entirely sure why.

Maybe it’s the cultural distance between the 90s and today. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for it.

I do think it covered some interesting ground and gave me a better understanding of the 90s in tech.

Not changing careers is an inevitable result of specialization and the state of the art getting more and more demanding. I think it’s a net positive though as this evolution also provides many opportunities.

Occupation being an identity is a very long tradition though (going all the way to surnames). If anything, social media allowed ordinary people to express themselves outside of - and in disconnection from - their professional environment. Maybe this is part of why people are disassociating from their employers to some extent.

It goes back to prehistory as we have evidence of a scribe class and accounting classes in Mesopotamia and vicinity via the clay tablets that survived.

I think it’s as natural as there being leaders of packs. Some people have specific qualities making them better than another person in a specific endeavor. That other person might be better in another area. Unless a hermit, it makes sense there was specialization and we don’t do much pursue jacks-of-all-trades.

>"social media allowed ordinary people to express themselves outside of..."

In a limited fashion, yes, but speak of something your employer disagrees with and one may regret that take as unrelated to doing your job it may be.

> Serfs were not only expected to provide labour to their “employers”, but to fight for them

That was never expected. It was never going to be expected. Fighting was much too prestigious for serfs to be doing it.

> believe what they believe

This changed over time. Mostly serfs were too unimportant for their non-Christian beliefs to matter. But it was always a formal expectation, and as the centuries went by it did develop into an actual expectation.

> and pledge their fealty.

Indeed. This is the difference between a W2 worker and a contractor; it escapes me why so much public rhetoric focuses on W2 status as if getting it were a victory for the employee.

i associate W2 status with an increased likelihood of getting benefits and job security (yes, i know what at-will employment is).

Uber has W2 engineers and "independent" drivers. I know which I'd rather be.

If you were a driver, and you "achieved" W2 status, would that make you an engineer?

What an weird nonsequitor, of course not? It would make you eligible for all of the benefits that Uber gives to it's W2 employees though. Which is obviously the point.

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