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Comment by progne | Hacker News Reader

  sheep: we love our freedom, we'll never come baaack
  farmer: no problem, i'll just be over here by the food if you change your mind

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Wait til you learn what sheep eat and where one can find it

With the farmer? Because it's farmer's fields, as far as you can see? And he harvests and holds the crops?

Guess the sheep have little choice.

This is not the model of the world I want.

See also, Ken Burns documenting the death of the American Buffalo. Endless habitant encroachment keeps killing great parts of the earth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38056854

Interesting metaphor. In this case there are way more sheep then there are farmers. What happens if they organize?

They will become the farmers and need new sheep.

Sheep die in the wild.

Farmers protect sheep, supplement their feed, have medical care and also keep the grass healthy.

But tech workers know how to fend for themselves, like using their hands and traveling and social skills and they know how society and things like farms work, right?

Sadly tech works have become so useless they don't have multiple tech skills anymore, many don't have any tech skills, just look at HN. Many blame Google because they can't even use search.

Said the farmer, not realising that there were grass everywhere, not just on his farm.

Analogies are double-edged sword [0].

[0] sorry for the analogy.

Thought the sheep not knowing all the other grass was owned by other farmers…

There are a lot more sheep than farmers...

There are many self employed or employed by coöperatives but the majority aren’t and moreover most likely would not take either path, but I’m willing to revisit the question in a few years. I don’t think the dial will move much.

Only yesterday I was reading of a "lost" sheep that's been living on its own for 2 years (it's at the bottom of a cliff, people can see it from the sea but not reach it) and apparently doing great.

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/27/britains-lon...

Because big tech is the only job available...

Many tech workers are paid well but overworked so even if they can't find an equivalent paying job you can still find a less stressful still comfortable to live on wage.

This is like the exact opposite of my experience. They’re paid well and have so little to do they invent meaningless problems to solve. Most big tech companies I’ve seen could easily operate with 50% of the engineers.

The idea of not having enough work is foreign to me. Sounds like bad prioritization of what needs to be done or a mismatch of roles leading to a dry pipeline of feature requests.

After all the improvements are infinite time is finite.

those tik tok videos of showing those techies that do nothing at work.

This is true. It remains to be seen if they’re (as in most) willing to readjust their expectations.

I can understand someone believing that this is how the world is, but I can’t see why you’d phrase it in such a nasty way.

Pretty damning view of the shape of society if we think this is accurate.

PSA: when you renegotiate the most important issue is, mutton or wool.

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