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Comment by rexreed | Hacker News Reader

Why are employers increasingly being so hostile with their workforces? Truly this is becoming a them-vs-us situation with management and board vs their own employees. I can't see how any of this is healthy or helpful. I put a lot of the blame on finance-centric growth-at-all-costs customer and employees be damned thinking. I think it's toxic.

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I have a mild but potentially wild speculation that it might be the internet. The internet allows workers to communicate not just within the company but within the broader ecosystem of work. People are more and more aware of what a raw deal they're getting by executives and companies, and are becoming more and more hostile because they're aware of how hostile companies are to them. Additionally, companies are picking up eye-tracking technology and other hyper-controlling tech that was never feasible a generation ago, leaving employees feeling increasingly taken advantage of.

Doesn't seem that wild to me, tbh. It's always been the case that the employers are centralized vs. the employees are decentralized, so when it comes to negotiations the centralized party has enjoyed major benefits due to informational assymetry as well as possible coordinated bargaining. Open sharing of information between employees _should_ make it more balanced, which the employers may not be used to.

I don't think this is the case anymore, not with the internet at least. Yes an employer will know what they are paying others at the company versus you, but unlike before, it's exceedingly easy for an employee to come up with the "market number" of what they should be paid.

And often times that "market number" dominates whatever numbers an employer might have that they keep to themselves,

Its marginally better, but reddit threads or glass door are no subsititute for an actual union negotiating on your behalf. Employers can just fire you or let you leave if you get cocky like this. A union otoh can threaten to strike and effectively shut down an entire company.

It seems to me more like a USA thing. Maybe some other countries where there is little or no worker protection legislation, too?

Don't forget that, at least in the US, employers also implement key loggers, mitm, silent webcam activation, push notifications triggered by power events/playing media/browser activity, etc on their network and worker machines

I have a different take that most of the other comments here. I think what we are seeing is a direct reaction to what happened in 2020/2021 with many non-skilled positions.

We had the "great resignation" where employees were the ones holding the cards. Many places like McDonalds and other low-wage jobs had essentially bidding wars for employees and if you weren't keeping your wages at the current market rate, folks would quickly bounce to greener pastures.

Some employers rightly saw this as them just needing to pay more, offer greater benefits, and attract employees in a "positive" way. But for every business that did it in the "positive" way, you had many more that did it in a "negative" way by coercing their existing workforce to stay.

If you're running a McDonalds and you're paying your employees $12/hr while all your competitors are going to $15/hr, your only option for retention is to either raise your wages or to coerce your employees from leaving. Some places did it the right way by offering more money because that what the market demands, others did it in a coercive way of making employees pay for training and other BS.

This is my answer and I see it in the board room. Management feeling a lack of control as the leverage has shifted to workers is a major point of contention right now. Management is responsible for controlling costs and they have basically no control. They're also rich enough they are tone deaf to what inflation does to people at the lowest income levels. Generally they're also old enough to be tone deaf of all of the economic problems that younger generations have faced (student loans, underemployment, gig economy, etc). They also usually like to control productivity, so this is where the production of salaried employees comes into question - especially around WFH where the company/management is not bought in on that construct.

A recent example that almost made me laugh in the meeting, some of our senior living businesses have had major staffing issues (the industry pays nothing to do what is a difficult and disgusting job). Employees basically gave up working overtime or picking up extra shifts, etc. When asked why we don't leverage them more, the operations guys gave a couple politically correct answers but they kept getting drilled by some members of senior management (basically telling him to do what ever is needed to force these people to work and do it with no extra budget! ) so the guy said something like "look, we pay these people $12/hr to wipe old people's asses. They all have second and third jobs and we're almost certainly not even their #1 employer if given a choice. They literally can not get called in or pick up extra shifts when it's needed by us. They're already working a shift somewhere else. We need to pay them enough to give a damn or overstaff so there's always someone available. Both costs money but our businesses problems are not theirs so you choose"

Well, in the early 1900s employers were literally hiring thugs to kill their uncooperative employees, in full view of the public. So I'm not sure it's a new or increasing thing.

It’s a reversion to the early 1900s. It correlates well with Robert Putnam’s newer book. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50124402-the-upswing

Ooo this sounds super interesting.

Just rewatched The Century of the Self and restarted Can't Get You Out of My Head by Adam Curtis/BBC, which seem very much aligned to this. Highly recommend if you haven't seen either yet. Free to watch on youtube

Pinkerton[0] known for being hired to quash unionization attempts still exists to this day and has been used by Amazon and Starbucks.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)

It's wild that they did not hire some image consultants and change their name in the last 100 years. Though perhaps their notoriety is a net positive in the industry they operate in.

When you hire the Pinkertons, you're hiring legendarily cruel people. That's the brand.

Reminded me of something that happened 3 weeks ago. Had been meaning to share here in HN.

I am an h1b from India. Was talking to a colleague about the 100 year wait period for greencards through employer's MS teams. I shared him some twitter links (where people say they would be 115 when they get greencard and such) through whatsapp. While I was talking about it, Teams got disconnected. Didn't think anything about it, just thought its just a network issue.

Same day, while talking to another colleague, mentioned same thing, and shared the twitter links over whatsapp. Again, MS teams got disconnected. I thought it was an odd coincidence that it got disconnected twice when I talked about this subject.

Same day, at around 9.30 pm, I get an email from Twitter saying they have blocked a suspicious login from a city in US. So, someone knew my user name & password. I am guessing my employer was monitoring the conversation, and had my social media passwords.

> had my social media passwords

this feels ridiculous that it is even a thing; do they force 2fa as well?

Perhaps some (ill-advised) attempt to claw back control they've lost over the last couple of years where hiring had become ultra competitive, low-end wages rose to somewhat reasonable levels, etc. Seems like the slide into a recession is some signal to them that they can swing the pendulum back the other way.

> control they've lost over the last couple of years

Compared to compensation vs. productivity over the last half-century, employers should expect further pushback.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

> https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Ooh, I know this one. Nixon came up with a new strategy for jailing and enslaving opponents to conservatism and corporatism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

It was also about when thatcher first had a cabinet seat.

After that we had the end of history and the glory of the invisible hand of the free market raining abundance upon all.

I believe your perception is accurate.

Nixon also took the dollar off the gold standard "temporarily", and government proceeded to debase the currency continuously since then, hand in hand with the financial sector.

Probably best to be a bit wary of pushing narratives from a group that say the problem is there's too gosh darned much public control over things and we need to deregulate and transfer more power to the financial sector without a caveat then.

It's not accepted as fact, but an interesting theory on "WTF happened in 1971" was the "Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970" and how it made many actions, votes, etc, of the US congress more transparent.

The idea being that lobbyists were paying for certain types of votes when they were private, but that politicians could then vote their conscience anyway...because there was no way for a lobbyist to verify they got the vote they paid for.

But, once the specific vote by named representative became public record, the lobbyists could now see if they got the vote they paid for.

The idea of politicians voting based on their conscience is so alien to me. Do people have any evidence they ever had any?

I think there's a fair amount that do so in their freshman run. But it's a road that probably leads to getting voted out after the opposition gets money from the big groups you piss off by doing so.

I don't think you'd get the money together necessary to get your freshman run even off the ground without at least some kowtowing of the line of the major donors for your party. The nature of campaigning imo makes pretty much all politicians more beholden to money than to their constituents. Its expensive business, and if you decide not to play the game, you just end up smacked.

One theory I subscribe to is that 1971 is when the US hit peak oil production. By that metric, the Covid boost to real wages could be the aberration.

>One theory I subscribe to is that 1971 is when the US hit peak oil production

except now thanks to shale oil/fracking, we're actually producing more oil today than in 1971[1]. Why haven't we seen a reversion back to the good ol days?

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=43015

Apparently all is not what it seems in oil production, esp. versus the run up to the 1970's peak oil: https://peakoil.com/consumption/mit-researchers-us-oil-produ...

If the GP has the correct answer, it would be because the cost of producing the current US oil is much higher than the cost of the 1971 oil.

Anyway, the OPEC started to control the oil price in 1971 too, didn't it?

>If the GP has the correct answer, it would be because the cost of producing the current US oil is much higher than the cost of the 1971 oil.

Inflation adjusted oil prices were actually pretty close to pre-1971 oil prices between 1986 up until 2004. If the oil price theory was true, shouldn't we have seen a reversal in the trend during that time period?

https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/624487...

By "pretty close" you mean with a clear and very significant increase on the average (more than doubled, if you discard all the high points), higher peaks, and more volatility?

Actually a lot of today's realities can be traced curiously back to 1971 or the year before or after that. Consider the following:

* End of Bretton Woods System - "On 15 August 1971, the United States terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a fiat currency" [0]

* The Global War on Drugs - "The initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of psychoactive drugs that the participating governments and the United Nations have made illegal. The term was popularized by the media shortly after a press conference given on June 18, 1971" [1]

* Nixon's Southern Strategy that shifted the Republican base to the South 1970-1971 [2]

* Nixon' Visit to China and the Chinese economic reform, which resulted in China being the major economic power it is today, visit planned on July 15, 1971, visit in early 1972 [3]

* The Defunding of the Apollo program - "In August 1971, just after conclusion of the Apollo 15 mission, President Richard Nixon proposed canceling the two remaining lunar landing missions, Apollo 16 and 17." The two remaining already planned missions were completed, but the program ended in 1972 thereafter. [4]

Now you might say, correctly, that every presidential term has major, world-shifting elements that are consequential. However, something happened specifically in 1971 and 1972 across a very broad set of circumstances to global economics, trade policy, criminalization, space race, politics, and more, not to mention the Watergate affair which was during the 1972 campaign. These years were absolutely pivotal to where we are today.

Further follow-on actions to the above included the devaluing of the dollar in 1972, vetoing of US National Child-care (1972), continuation of the Vietnam war, Phase I and Phase II price freezes for wages and costs (1971, 1972), Economic Stablization Act of 1971[5], Revenue Act of 1971 [6], and more. 1971 was a hot year indeed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_visit_by_Richard_Nixon_to...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1971

> Truly this is becoming a them-vs-us situation with management and board vs their own employees.

It has always been a them-vs-us situation. It's just that 'them' (management/ownership) have been in a hugely advantageous position for a while and so were able to exercise their power discretely. Now that economic circumstances have tipped slightly in favor of laborers, 'they' have to exercise their power in ways that are more obvious.

Aren't the economic circumstances tipping back in favor to the employers?

When have employers ever been anything other than hostile with their workforces? America in particular doesnt have a good track record with "employment". Anytime something positive is done its because a company is forced to do it or compelled to do it because their competitors are.

I've been at my current employer for 12 years and I have a very narrow tolerance for bullshit so please believe me when I say there are decent employers out there. They are not easy to find, but they exist. I have friends who are in the same boat. And sometimes they are happy enough with their companies that they invite me to apply as well.

In my experience, the people who say that all companies are evil are just too lazy to do the work required to find a decent one. Or are projecting their own insecurities or lack of trustworthiness outward.

I'm pretty happy in my job now. I've had at least one job in the past that I was pretty happy with as well. The issue is that the companies that are nice to work for are typically not the companies that pay all that well. At least not well when compared to companies that are less nice to work for.

Because it's easier to crunch a spreadsheet than it is to do proper management. Leadership? Ha! We use that word too often when it does not apply.

Think about it.

Them - If you leave, you're going to pay for your training. You - Ok then, I don't want to learn anything new.

As long as Humans are positioned as just another Resource, we're going to see this type of (i.e., clueless) self-defeating decision making.

I think humans actually get treated worse than actual resources. I've never heard of charging a vehicle for its past oil changes when it inevitably fails beyond repair, for example.

>Why are employers increasingly being so hostile with their workforces?

Because the threat of unemployment isn't so severe right now, so they have to do things the older way by just scamming people into indentured servitude.

> Why are employers increasingly being so hostile with their workforces?

Because the workforce has had enough of the lopsided equation and is starting to push back.

> Truly this is becoming a them-vs-us situation with management and board vs their own employees.

Always has been.

They've never thought of you as anything other than a resource to be exploited as much as possible then discarded. Capital just gets more brazen when it has more power.

If you don't like it, stop voting for open fascists.

I personally suspect that their minds were broken by the great recession spoiling them. They already got in the habit of unreasonable demands in employees, this seems like an extension of that dysfunction to me.

> Why are employers increasingly being so hostile with their workforces?

They aren't. This is one unexpected headline. Most companies are being very nice to their employees because they know the job market is tight.

The unions that won us the 40 hour workweek and weekends, among many other significant worker protections, lost political power in the 90s when the democrats transitioned to neoliberalism.

It's so sad how unions were demonized in recent history. Even on HN I see a lot of commenters making that tired old "lazy union worker" argument come out of the woodwork with any unionization thread.

Like, why the hell would you not want to collectively bargain? You really think you have more leverage with your employer as an individual? What negotiation book taught you that strategy, the one called "what not to do"? Its always ironic seeing threads about how software engineers are fed up with stupid corporate stuff, like the interview song and dance or whatever else, then fail to see that by unionizing, software engineers could dramatically change how the entire industry works, and by continuing to just jump ship in hopes of finding better pastures they perpetuate this broken system that just finds another worker to exploit.

According to the Atlantic, religion gave us weekends and the five day work week

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-t...

An employer is just the employee of next the customer up the chain, and for various reasons, rising interest rates being a big one, that next customer is putting the squeeze on its employees so each link down the chain also starts to feel the squeeze.

I am not understanding your sentiment here. Are you forgiving any employer excesses because they have to respond to someone else? Is there really no limit or accountability? How about the buck stops with the bad employer.

> I am not understanding your sentiment here.

Because there is no sentiment. Information does not have feelings.

I think you misunderstood what he said. We are all links on a chain where employers pay us, customers pay our employer, and someone pays our customers. When the source of all the money starts to dry up because of rising interest rates and supply shocks across the world, customers and employees will respond naturally by tightening their purse strings, which ultimately affects how much money we get paid in cash and benefits. You would do the same too if your salary was suddenly slashed by 20%.

Does that excuse employers from treating you like shit? No, but it also doesn't excuse you from staying there if they do. You can always communicate with your employers about your grievances, and if they are not addressed your ultimate power is to leave that job. You should not underestimate what employers will do to retain someone...

>An employer is just the employee of next the customer up the chain

Well that customer must be a real moron to pay so much money for a CEO, which apparently they pay more money than they spend on whatever the actual product is.

The CEO is the employee of the board, so the board may be moronic, but they also need someone they can trust deeply. That is why they aren't afraid to spend a lot to secure the one they do trust. Almost nobody on earth has established that kind of trust with the board, so the pickings are slim. Basic supply and demand, as always.

The board works for the shareholders. The shareholders are the employee of the next customer in line.

Just as another perspective here:

I've also seen employees fighting to avoid paying back optional signing bonus that were given under the condition of staying for a couple of years...not attached to training at all.

It's difficult to separate "I don't think I should have to pay back anything, period" from "I don't think I should have to pay for training".

The training case can be made sure, but when somebody accepts some form of benefit with the explicit terms: if you leave before X you have to pay it back, I don't see the issue if the terms were clear.

EDIT: Now I'm curious about the down votes? Where is the issue with an expectation that people follow through with signed agreements?

The "issue with an expectation that people follow through with signed agreements" comes about when there is a power asymmetry between the two parties signing a contract. The reason we have tenant rights, and bans on indentured servitude, and employee rights is because when there is a power imbalance between the two parties the less powerful can often find themselves pushed into extremely unfavorable circumstances, to the point that it has societal-level negative effects. So we ban certain kinds of one-sided contractual clauses. And then corporations include them anyway, because they calculate that there's a non-zero chance that individuals will abide them regardless of their legality.

The number of completely unenforceable non-compete clauses I've seen in California is astonishing. Likewise, I've seen blatantly illegal lease agreements. The common factor? One party has far more negotiating power than the other.

Signing bonuses though?

Here's an extra 5-10% of your first year's salary (optional) if you commit to hanging around for 2 years.

I don't see the asymmetry there?

If you’ve seen the workforce, I would argue that employers are dealing with some of the worst employees in US History. I’m not joking. Demotivated, constantly job to job, easily bored, poor health, poor “Work ethic,” drug use, alcoholism. Both employer and employee probably share blame for this.

This might not be apparent in Silicon Valley, but it is much more real for the rest of America.

Worker productivity is still some of the highest it has been in US history, caring about motivation or "work ethic" is frankly silly considering that isn't what companies are optimizing for. If companies still offered pensions and kept benefits and salary comparable to competitors they wouldn't be seeing job hopping at the rate they are now.

It's a free market, want better employees with a higher "work ethic" that will stick around? You will need to compete. This isn't new, my dad growing up worked in IB and would switch jobs, or use existing offers as leverage for salary benefits, once every 2-3 years, and he switched jobs multiple times in my childhood.

The generalization aside, if organizations are having such labor issues, what is the motivation for mistreating employees? Doesn't it just exacerbate and compound labor issues? How is any of this helpful? Just retaliatory?

In my opinion the pattern looks very similar to that of an abusive parent/partner. Only rarely do such a person correct their ways once pointed out that they are being abusive, and most only ramp up their abuse to try to "silence" the complaints.

It's very hard to believe things are worse than they used to be. Go back to the "golden age" of manufacturing and boom times in the US post WWII.

Drugs were not illegal, drunk driving was not illegal. Drinking lots was totally normal. No one thought any of it was an issue, so they likely were a lot more messed up and just didn't really care. People were taking smoke breaks constantly during the day which was certainly a drag on productivity. All the bad behavior was so normalized they didn't even think it was a problem.

Heh, “don’t buy a car built on a monday” is a saying that continues to this day because everybody showing up so hungover to their jobs.

I assumed modern factories were operated 7 days per week, considering the huge up front capital costs of all the new technologies and automation.

It's almost certainly not true anymore, but the stories out of the Fremont Assembly plant in Oakland are legendary.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/transcript

Don't get to a hospital when new medical students start doing their residencies ;)

No one quits a job worth keeping.

Maybe in a perfect world.

> Both employer and employee probably share blame for this.

Management sets the terms and tone of the workplace and employees provide the labor. If they can only hire drug users and alcoholics with poor work ethic maybe look into why that is the case and fix that. Chances are your best employees are getting recruited away with better pay.

Also because when the parent says "drug use" they probably mean people who smoke weed. Referring, obviously, to the US moral decline along with disrespecting your parents and "gangster rap."

No, I think the parent means meth and fentanyl. It's a major problem right now in general throughout the US. It's being under-reported due to COVID but is making a major surge right now.

When it affects white Americans it gets reported as a health issue, but is criminal vice when its infected black communities. But this isn't it. Workers with a clean record and can pass a drug screen have no problem finding work right now.

Perhaps this is relevant: https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544

> constantly job to job

Just to comment on this specifically, it was pretty obvious to me from a young (<18 in the late 90s) age that the era of companies taking care of their employees and maintaining benefits like pensions was over. I'm sure I'm not the only one. If you treat employees as interchangeable cogs don't be surprised when employees treat you as interchangeable in return.

> don't be surprised when employees treat you as interchangeable in return.

how could it be otherwise? The concepts of "company loyalty" from the employee and "being taken care of" by the company always baffled me. Why would you think a company is going to take care of you? Why would a company expect loyalty from an employee? A deal is a deal, if either side doesn't uphold their part of the agreement then the agreement is over. I don't see how it can be otherwise.

>Why would you think a company is going to take care of you?

You would think that because 50 years ago it was the norm. Companies had pensions. Companies used to have cost-of-living wage increases in addition to annual performance increases. The reward for working at a company for 20 years used to be a cushy management position, less work and more pay. Now it's a coupon for $10 off at a chain restaurant.

If you put yourself in that mindset, company loyalty is obvious. Find a job you like, and stick with it until retirement. But that isn't the case anymore.

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