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Comment by jongjong | Hacker News Reader

I'm joking yes but as an engineer who has seen the bureaucracy in most big tech companies, the joke is getting less funny over time.

I've met many software engineers who call themselves communists. I can kind of understand. This kind of communist-like bureaucracy doesn't work well in a capitalist environment.

It's painful to work in tech. It's like our hands are tied and are forced to do things in a way we know is inefficient. Companies use 'security' as an excuse to restrict options (tools and platforms), treat engineers as replaceable cogs as an alternative to trusting them to do their job properly... And the companies harvest what they sow. They get reliable cogs, well versed in compliance and groupthink and also coincidentally full-blown communists; they're the only engineers remaining who actually enjoy the insane bureaucracy and the social climbing opportunities it represents given the lack of talent.

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I understand completely.

I'm going through a computer engineering degree at the moment, but I am thinking about pursuing Law later on.

Looking at other paths: Medicine requires expensive schooling and isn't really an option after a certain age and law, on the other hand, opened its doors too widely and now has a large underclass of people with third-tier law degrees.

Perhaps you can try to accept the realities of the system while trying to live the best life that you can?

Psyching yourself all the way, trying to find some sort of escape towards a good life with freedom later on...

Maybe consider patent law? I have a friend who worked for the patent office, and the patent office paid for their law school. Now they’re a patent attorney and doing quite well.

Nice advice. I was also considering something to do with cybercrimes, leveraging the initial degree, but your advice got me thinking!

Sounds like you should just leave the company if you are that unhappy

Bruh, with some very rare exceptions like valve, every company is run as a dictatorship or oligarchy. That goes beyond tech, hell big tech at least gives some agency to their engineers.

The only way you don’t need to be versed in compliance or group think at a US firm as an employee is to either be

1) independently wealthy, so your job is a hobby you can walk away from

2) have some leverage on a currently in demand skill, but the second that leverage evaporates they will demand the compliance

Also I realized I undersold it, they aren’t just run as dictatorships/oligarchies, they are usually run as command economies as well.

The whole capitalist competition style behavior only happens with inter firm interactions, not internal ones

Find a small company with a founder who loves their team and wants them to be happy. They exist, I assure you. They're not even rare.

I spent most of my career working in companies with <50 employees, and only hit a couple of unpleasant founders. The few large companies that I worked in were always bureaucratic nightmares by comparison.

Small companies won't pay FAANG salaries, but they also won't make you feel like a meaningless cog in a vast unsympathetic, unproductive, machine.

> I spent most of my career working in companies with <50 employees

I’ve worked for 3 companies like that. It was really great if your views aligned with the founder. If they didn’t, you got fucked.

I really enjoyed when a bunch of juniors were fired the day before Christmas because the founder heard them discussing the latest movies they watched and decided that they had bad opinions and shouldn’t work at his company since he’d be embarrassed if his peers heard their tastes. Not hyperbole, direct statements. We referred to it as the Red Christmas at the time.

I believe you got lucky, I don’t find your advice actionable.

I've had a couple of experiences like yours, yeah, it can be a matter of finding the right founder.

I'm sorry you don't find it actionable. Please continue doing whatever you're doing now that is working for you.

>Please continue doing whatever you're doing now that is working for you

Lol.

It doesn't work out because I don't have leverage, and tried to stand up for what I believe in. I also don't believe it would work for you unless you had views that aligned with the current oligarchical leadership that the entire US industry is operating under.

If you only have a good time when you found the "right" founder, because they will and are capable of harming your career or income when you disagree with them, and the law does effectively nothing to protect you from their ego driven tantrums, then you are a serf at best.

I'd agree with you if it was relatively common that employees who had differences of opinions with founders of companies, weren't forced out, but that is not my experience.

I do not find contentment out of accepting that some assholes are my Betters because they have more money than me.

What is odd to me is hearing people talk as if somehow a job is supposed to be intrinsically enjoyable or enriching. Paid labor is and always has been a subservient role that pays exactly the minimum that the market allows for the circumstances.

Labor is the next option above slavery and indenture, and now that slavery and indenture are frowned upon, labor has absorbed that space as well.

If you want to have some control of your environment and destiny, you must be an independent agent, a contractor, entrepreneur, or consultant. A tradesman. You have special skills and expertise, your own tools, and a portfolio of masterpieces at the least.

There is nothing new in this space of human endeavour, it is as it has been, and I suspect will continue to be, for better or for worse. Sacrificing your agency for subservience is going to make you feel at the mercy of your “betters”. If you don’t want that, don’t do that. Labor law and other conventions have made it a little better, but the fundamental relationship is still master and servant.

> Labor is the next option above slavery and indenture, and now that slavery and indenture are frowned upon, labor has absorbed that space as well.

If we go down this path, what can I say that doesn’t get my account banned and my speech suppressed for what what I would suggest doing to people with your opinion?

We don’t have to go down that path, it’s the path we’re already on.

It’s not the way I think it -should be- but it is the way that it is. The incentive alignment keeps it at that local minima, and every attempt to move it to a new one so far has introduced so many perverse incentives that it ultimately causes the regression or even complete failure of the economies it is implemented in.

I don’t know what the answer is that maximises human happiness and minimises human misery, but I suspect it lies well outside of the paradigm of conventional market economics.

Within the dominant paradigm, It’s all a matter of risk management. With employment, you are paying your employer with your surplus value to handle the risks that you feel powerless to manage. Market risks, capital risks.

In exchange, you accept risks that your opinions and comfort won’t be prioritised, and in some cases even your physical well being.

In effect, you are betting against yourself being able to balance those risks against the risks posed by pursuing profitability.

The ability to manage risks is intersectional with your ability to manage discomfort and privation. When you run out of money, the house wins by default.

That’s why the foundational step for anyone should be to do whatever they must to obtain a safe fallback position. A place to be. A safety net. This is what enables risk accommodation. Without taking risk, there will be no advancement. If you don’t have a fallback plan, a safe spawn point, do everything in your power to create one, at least for your children.

> a bunch of juniors were fired the day before Christmas because the founder heard them discussing the latest movies they watched and decided that they had bad opinions and shouldn’t work at his company since he’d be embarrassed if his peers heard their tastes.

Just out of curiosity, was it something despicable like them liking Marvel movies? Or more akin to disagreeing whether Eyes Wide Shut could be considered a good Kubrick movie?

Serious question, why watch this movie by Kubrick when you have way more interesting guys like Pier Paolo Pasolini?

If you want to see weird sexual pictures, might as well go all the way with "120 days of Sodom".

Or just go and see one of those documentaries of serial killers from the 70's, like Ted Bundy.

You are barking up the wrong tree since I don't rate "Eyes Wide Shut" high. Just used it as an example of a polarizing Kubrick movie.

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