Comment by moksly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by moksly | Hacker News Reader

Regulating big tech is a democratic issue. It’s not up to the individual tech worker to do so, and I’m not convinced that all these movements aren’t “soft-solutions” organised by big tech to avoid people working on real solutions. Solutions like legal intervention from the EU and whatever government you are under.

Poor working conditions are solved by forming unions. In Denmark we have strong unions, and while their power is weaning (in parts thanks to big tech platforms jbecoming the middle men and taking 25-50%) our unions are the sole reason we have some of the best working conditions in the world.

Because here’s the secret to good working conditions. If you and everyone else in your line of work stops working, along with anyone working jobs that somehow support your lone of work, things change overnight.

Just ask MCD why they pay the now famous $22 and hour (or however much it was) when they initially didn’t want to. It’s because it’s hard to sell burgers when the dock workers refuse to unload your bread and the truckers refuse to deliver it.

So I’m all for the ideals behind these things, but they need to think bigger if they want to change anything. We shouldn’t need whistleblowers and bad PR to keep Facebook away from our children, it should simply be illegal with mega business ending consequences. When that happens you can be fairly sure that business will start to actually regulate itself, because if there is one thing enterprise businesses care about it’s actual risk.

That example of dock workers striking or truckers stopping work to support McDonalds workers is outlawed in Australia. It is called industrial pattern bargaining. So it is not that union can do much always, depends on the country.

For the most part poor working conditions are not the problem at big tech. Unethical decisions surrounding wellness of users are.

Tech workers are very well paid yet complain the most and often have unchecked egos. Code will not fix the world. People fix the world.

You can still use unions to fight unethical decisions though

>For the most part poor working conditions are not the problem at big tech. Unethical decisions surrounding wellness of users are.

A reasonable point. However, it seems to me that those unethical decisions can create poor working conditions.

If I know that the work I'm doing is actively harming others, that, as someone with a conscience, directly affects my working conditions for the worse.

I guess it's a matter of perspective.

I do like the perspective that programmers with a conscience forced to do bad things to the world are adversely affected, but it seems off to me to call that poor working conditions, because it seems to misidentify the people who the actions are hurting. I don't see anyone feeling sorry for the investment bankers of the '80s for having to go through a debaucherous, morally corrupt lifestyle.

>it seems to misidentify the people who the actions are hurting.

Huh? How so? How does acknowledging that people of conscience may be distressed and appalled at the harm their company is doing (making their workplace an uncomfortable place) diminish recognition of that harm?

I'm not suggesting that we should care only about such workers, I'm suggesting that should care about everyone. Why is that, in your view, inappropriate?

It makes light of the personal responsibility that they have for the things that they do

>It makes light of the personal responsibility that they have for the things that they do

I take your point, and it is a valid one.

That said, there's a continuum here. Let's take Clearview AI[0] as an example. The end result of Clearview's activities are absolutely harmful, and I personally wouldn't work for them.

At the same time, not every employee (tech staff or not) is as culpable for the harms caused by Clearview AI's products as others.

What's more, each individual's situation informs their level of comfort/need WRT their employment. Is the dev responsible for front-end UI as culpable as the dev working on the actual facial recognition back end? How about the sales/marketing folks who approach governments and corporations to use their products?

If you have the means/ability to move away from an employer who is causing harm, assuming you see the harm (as the old saw goes, "it's hard to make someone understand something that their paycheck depends on them not understanding.") at all.

Clearview AI is an extreme example, selected specifically for that reason. but in many other cases, "harm" isn't as clear cut. Uber and GrubHub are great examples of that.

Those companies, in some cases, do provide some value, but they do so by extracting (in my view) a level of profit both undeserved based on the service provided, and exploitative of those actually providing real value (rides, food service and deliveries).

Is every Uber or GrubHub employee responsible for that? Should we blacklist them for shirking their "personal responsibility"?

As I said, I take your point, and it is valid it a bunch of cases. But I think there's a continuum here that you're ignoring. Perhaps I misunderstand you, in which case my apologies. If you'd care to expand on your point, I think it would add to the discussion.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/4/22266055/clearview-facial-...

In order to avoid confusion, it requires more specific language than "poor working conditions". Perhaps "morally-injurious working conditions"?

>In order to avoid confusion, it requires more specific language than "poor working conditions". Perhaps "morally-injurious working conditions"?

A reasonable point. I guess it really depends on how you define "poor" in this context.

Whether you use adjectives like "poor", "morally-injurious", "stressful" or anything similar, the underlying idea is the same.

That said, I appreciate your take on this. It definitely helps to explicate my thought. Thanks!

> For the most part poor working conditions are not the problem at big tech

...until you look for signs of burnout and ageism.

> It’s not up to the individual tech worker to do so

Correct! The handbook puts all focus on the individual and "forgets" to recommend collective action. I wonder why.

Curious what is the cost of a big mac meal with fries and a coke?

Probably the same as anywhere. From [0]:

> Menu prices vary from each McDonald’s location, so it’s a little difficult to say exactly how much an American would pay for a Big Mac while visiting Denmark. Anecdotally speaking, we checked menu prices via meal-delivery services (UberEats for the United States and JustEat for Denmark) to see how much this popular burger costs in their respective countries. At a McDonald’s location in Copenhagen, for example, this burger cost 30.00 kr (about $4.73). At a McDonald’s location in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a Big Mac costs $4.82.

> This single example lines up with the Big Mac Index, an interactive tool from the Economist that compares Big Mac prices around the world. According to the Big Mac Index, “a Big Mac costs DKr30.00 in Denmark and US$5.66 in the United States.” When adjusted for GDP, the Economist found that “a Big Mac costs 13% less in Denmark (US$4.90) than in the United States (US$5.66) at market exchange rates.”

[0]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-cost-denmark/

According to The Economist's Big Mac Index, the Big Mac is more expensive (at market exchange rates) than in the US in Norway and Sweden by some 10%, but cheaper in Denmark by some 16% (though much cheaper (>50%) in Hong Kong, South Africa, Indonesia, Romania, Turkey, Russia).

At GDP adjusted prices, Norway and Sweden are still more expensive, and Denmark cheaper than the US.

https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index

Burgers are both more affordable by a larger slice of the population (due to great equality and better low-end wages and working conditions) and people have more time to enjoy them (due to the shorter working hours and good GDP-per-hour-worked of the Nordics).

Considering this is extremely unhealthy and bad for the environment, I'd say "not enough".

Other people have answered your question directly, but I just wanted to add this: One of the things I have learned since starting and seriously optimising a consumer-focused full time business last year is that consumer discretionary spending, at least in the current era of opulence and advertising, does not follow the laws of economics in the same way that it does for commodity businesses.

Unless you're doing something really wrong, the labour cost to produce most consumer goods is both much smaller than the gross profit from the sale, and largely uncorrelated to the price.

Generally that's true in the consumer space but the food business has few barriers of entry so it's very competitive and low margin. Most restaurants barely make 30% gross margin after labor and COGS, before rent and marketing.

McDonalds is a special case though, both because of its franchise model and because its corporate owned restaurants are largely real estate plays. The latter have a much more complex pricing model that takes into account property taxes, available borrowing terms, VAT, etc along with the usual labor and cost of materials. A McD's in a cheap part of El Paso, Texas might be paying 2% property taxes on its prime real estate while an equivalent location in an expensive part of Denmark might pay a lower .92%. Meanwhile the latter is appreciating at thrice the speed and passing more of the tax burden onto the customer in the form of a 20% VAT that doesn't appear in the sticker price.

>Generally that's true in the consumer space but the food business has few barriers of entry so it's very competitive and low margin. Most restaurants barely make 30% gross margin after labor and COGS, before rent and marketing.

Not an expert in this area, but I'd be shocked if McDonalds' books looked anything like a typical restaurant's - real estate investments aside.

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