Comment by stale2002 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stale2002 | Hacker News Reader

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> Given this situation we cannot in good conscience encourage you to pursue our profession while so many of our members remain unemployed. This is due to multiple reasons, the 2023 strikes, the on-going 2024 labor negotiations, and a once in a generation change within the entertainment industry as it searches for new business models to govern its content creation and distribution.

Let this be a lesson who think that labor relations are some sort of battle between good and evil and if only the "right" side wins, then your industry will be saved.

No. There are only markets and incentives. And if an industry is being massively disrupted, attempts to freeze that industry in time are going to fail. With broken hearts and lives along the way.

Yeah, sure, you might be able to push a little bit against the largest players in a market, but if you are too successful then that is only going to cause the smaller players to use the disruption to their advantage and to overtake said larger players.

Instead of staking your career or life on an unwinnable battle against disruption that could only possibly delay things by a few years, you are going to be much better off getting with the times and seeing how you can modify your career and work so it is compatible with or takes advantage of said disruption.

> modify your career and work so it is compatible with or takes advantage of said disruption

You say this like it's something that anyone can do. Reskilling takes time, and not everyone is such the tech entrepreneur (or aspirant) as—perhaps—you are. I'd wager that most people that make these kind of pronouncements to others to lift themselves up by the bootstraps, have never experienced hardship, wouldn't know how to adapt to disruption, and were born into privilege. And those that really have the chops to 'take advantage of said disruption' in spite of having no privilege or leverage, are the minority.

> You say this like it's something that anyone can do.

They can either do that now or lose their entire livelyhood later, with less time to transition. Its their choice I guess. If they want to be in an even more doomed situation, I guess they are free to do so. But I wouldn't recommend it.

> Its their choice I guess.

It's the lack of choice that I'm pointing out. Sheer force of will isn't going to get you employed in a completely different discipline.

Labor relations are what allow people to have the financial wiggle room in times like these (e.g., decent compensation, redundancy packages). Instead the industry overworked and underpaid the labor pool, and then dumped them as soon as they could to fend for themselves.

This is a lesson that if you work in any industry where you're liable to be outsourced or automated—ahem, software engineering—best you start organizing now, or saving your pennies if you're on FAANG wages.

> No. There are only markets and incentives. And if an industry is being massively disrupted, attempts to freeze that industry in time are going to fail. With broken hearts and lives along the way.

Nah. Declining industries take plenty of time to decline, more than enough for those there to finish out their careers in comfort. Just look at west coast shipping and the rise of containerisation. Labour solidarity absolutely works, not for saving industries but for saving humans.

> Labour solidarity absolutely works, not for saving industries but for saving humans.

In my personal experience, unions will prioritise the interests of senior members approaching retirement over fresh graduates coming into an industry. If you are in the latter group, breaking with “solidarity” may be more in your personal best interests than going along with it

Who suggested fresh graduates should enter declining industries?

To clarify, I’m not talking about declining industries. I am talking about union membership in non-declining industries. When I was young I was a member of Australia’s tertiary education union (the NTEU), and I really got the sense the union was prioritising the interests of senior staff over what was best for me personally. e.g. opposing performance-based pay, even though I personally was likely to get paid more under it

The aversion of unions to performance based pay always put me off. I think the fear is that management will rig performance metrics to punish union members in general and “troublemakers” in particular, but seniority systems always seem to reward the worst kind of coworkers.

> Declining industries take plenty of time to decline

Thats depends on the specific disruption that is happening to the market.

As stated, you can push at the edges. But no amount of incremental pushing stops 100X cost reducing disruptive technologies that are widely available to the public and that can't be banned unless all personal PCs are confiscated.

You say that, but people with simple returns go to tax prep companies every year…

Inertia really does seem to keep dying industries around for longer than seems reasonable because humans aren’t completely rational actors.

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