Both sides got what they needed. The company got work done, and the employee got paid.
Calling either side "used" makes no sense to me. Employment is always a temporary relationship that can be ended by either side at will.
Similarly most non-marriage romantic relationship can be trivially ended "at will", but people get plenty upset when those end early than one party had anticipated.
More important though is the inherent asymmetry: it hurts employees much more to be terminated from an employer than the employer hurts when employees leave. You know, unless those employees organize and all leave at the same time. And we know well that companies put a fair bit of energy keeping that from happening.
Historically the way to resolve this asymmetry was an implicit understanding that you won't arbitrarily get terminated unless the employer has no other choice. This implicit assumption has been weakening over time.
I'm not arguing that layoffs don't suck for those involved, but if offered a contract where I couldn't be laid off or quit for N years, I probably wouldn't take it. Layoffs already have some legal protection in most places that require severance and other things that quitting or firing for cause don't.
For all the companies like Zoom and Shopify claiming they thought the COVID gravy train would never end, there was never a chance of that. But they hired as if that was the reality because because of the asymmetry: Your output is .000001% of what the company needs to function.
Meanwhile even if you're saving 50% of your pay and living on the other 50%, that's many orders of magnitude more need
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So yes, either side can walk away tomorrow morning, but who's more likely to be hurt? Definitely not the company, so there's no real punishment for overhiring knowing you'll need to fire.
If anything you get rewarded by the market: If company A hires in a sustainable way that can weather headwinds (believe it or not, this used to be somewhat common) and company B goes full "feast or famine", the market rewards B for their growth, then rewards B when they lay off a bunch of people. Meanwhile A is punished for limiting growth, and not really rewarded for not having fired people, since valuations are bad at capturing nuanced ideas like "B just fired their best minds, while A has cultivated an effective workforce" (just check out Zoom's ticker today)
I use a worker to build my house, but that doesn't mean I am abusing them. They are using me too. no hard feelings.
One of the primary definitions of that word describes a scenario where one person exploits another person for their own gain.
Any time the word is used to describe the nature of one’s relationship with another person, that definition is going to come to mind.
I can’t agree that there is no implication of injustice.
It all comes down to social expectations of if the nature of the transaction.
"I used Bob the contractor to build my house" has no implication of injustice.
"My ex-wife used me for money" has significant implications.
Used has no negative implication if used to describe a honest and mutually beneficial transaction.
I honestly wish HN would adopt a "no semantics arguments" rule. These debates over what one person thinks a word means vs what another person thinks they mean are just uninteresting and really never lead anywhere, especially when all sides pretty much agree on the underlying issue.
A couple days ago I made a comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34656626 , where I even started off by saying "well, perhaps word X isn't exactly the right word", and still the original commenter felt compelled to reply in 6 different comments why he was so sure his definition of that word was the right one and it was important that everyone else agree with him. :shrug:
That's all I was trying to do here, and in this other more interesting thread
Once you learn a second language, you have to confront this reality. But many Americans only ever use English, and it's maybe easier to never have to think about this then?
If anything, this is because Americans on HN think too much about the concepts underlying words and don't just take everything literally as defined.
That said, taking everything as textbook literal isn't viable in most languages. English isn't even close to the top of the heap of languages that use idioms and contextual clues to change the meaning of words and phrases. In the context of a thread where people are likely upset about layoffs, taking the use of the word "used" to have more of a negative than neutral connotation makes sense.
It's not as if we're looking at a textbook example with "Jack used their employee James" and you have to guess what definition of "used" is intended. No one is arguing that OP meant that Zoom literally picked up their employees and wielded them in combat, even though that could be a viable context-less definition for "used".
That's what a lot of people fail to internalize: If a company is able to grow, then it must equally be able to shrink. Otherwise, you hire contractors or third parties.
No one is confused about this.
The disagreement is whether this is how it should be.