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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

That’s some BS that we were fed about competitiveness. I used to buy that BS at some point. But these companies (and the people having them) have a choice and they do have enough money.

One of the companies I’m following now is Oxide (https://oxide.computer/careers). They pay everyone the same salary ($200k) regardless of position. It’s a bit extreme but am following them precisely for that. It’d be interesting to see how Oxide fares down the road.

It’s funny that some years ago that software developers were complaining that they were getting paid less because of politics and because people who talked controlled the businesses and the money. It’s funny because now that the table turned, most of them are doing the same thing.

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Nothing funny about it, it’s called leverage, and realistically it’s not always a bad thing. The note up above about it not being slavery because it’s voluntary is really important. If someone is entering into an agreement willingly, that’s pretty good evidence at least (if not proof) that they expect or perceive it to be a mutually beneficial transaction. This can be the case regardless of some 3rd party’s (and especially a rich westerner’s) gut reaction that the wage is crazy low.

> If someone is entering into an agreement willingly, that’s pretty good evidence at least (if not proof) that they expect or perceive it to be a mutually beneficial transaction.

Respectfully, the existance, and the need, for minimum wage puts lie to this assumption. People need money to survive, and will take whatever job they can when they don't have one, even if it not for enough pay.

I'm not claiming this is the case here, but that this argument is badly flawed.

Not really? In a world with no minimum wage, working for sub-living wage is better than zero. That’s still beneficial compared to the alternative. So the analogous thing here, which I think is true, is that if you think it’s crazy people are accepting a job for $2, you ought to start looking for solutions amongst the jobs paying $1.99 and below.

That’s what minimum wage does. It eliminates the alternatives below the line, not above it.

> working for sub-living wage is better than zero

> That’s what minimum wage does. It eliminates the alternatives below the line, not above it.

You should go back and look at why minimum wage was established in the first place - so people could work and still have lives outside of work.

And frankly, the "option" of starving out on the street is not a real alternative we should even be including in our discussions in 2023. It smacks of treating poor folks as some subhuman species who has to earn their right to live from us.

Err, right. “The line” I’m referring to is below the wage itself, not below the poverty line or below the level required to live (the minimum wage being well below both of those in much of the country today).

No one is discussing that alternative. Not sure who you think is? We’re discussing whether a $2 wage in a country with an average wage of $1.50 is abusive.

My position is simply that 1) a wage in one country appearing low to the standards of a completely different country is not evidence of abusive employment; 2) people accepting those wages when they’re not coerced is evidence that the wages are not abuse, though it could also be evidence of other problems that preclude a better alternative.

> No one is discussing that alternative. Not sure who you think is?

From your own post:

> working for sub-living wage is better than zero.

Respectfully, I'm not interested in continuing. Have a great day.

It's telling that you had to remove the conditional from that excerpt you've taken. Rhetorically owned me and made zero progress on the actual conversation and problem we're trying to unpack together. You have a good day as well!

> It’d be interesting to see how Oxide fares down the road.

I have been hearing about Oxide since 2019 [1]. 3 years later, it seems they don't yet have paying customers that one can read about. And with a tag line like: "Servers as they should be" I'm inclined to ask: "Servers as they should be [by whom?]".

Is the demand for such ideal servers driven by engineers/sys admins or by businesses (i.e. businesses who are currently being served poorly by existing options in the market)?

Is the demand for such ideal servers enough to make them a sustainable business, especially with the enormous amounts they'll likely be pouring into R&D before they can bring a product to market that lives up to their ideals?

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360

When we started the company, we knew it would be a three year build -- and indeed, our first product is in the final stages of development (i.e. EMC/safety certification). We have been very transparent about our progress along the way[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7] -- and our software is essentially all open source, so you can follow along there as well.[8][9][10]

If you are asking "does anyone want a rack-scale computer?" the (short) answer is: yes, they do. The on-prem market has been woefully underserved -- and there are plenty of folks who are sick of Dell/HPE/VMware/Cisco, to say nothing of those who are public cloud borne and wondering if they should perhaps own some of their own compute rather than rent it all.

[0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/holistic-bo...

[1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-oxide-s...

[2] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/bringup-lab...

[3] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/more-tales-...

[4] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/another-lpc...

[5] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-pragmat...

[6] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/tales-from-...

[7] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-sidecar...

[8] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron

[9] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolis

[10] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/hubris

They outsource low paying jobs like "building their hardware" to other companies. I bet OpenAI content raters are also managed by a vendor, but even if not, the difference is smoke and mirrors.

Janitors at that company make $200k?

Probably everyone with roles that aren't part of the core business is outsourced. Am argument could be made that outsourcing is actually worth for the workers than earning less than highly skilled labor, but being a FTE and maybe get opportunity to grow.

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