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recycledfood commented on The perks workers want also make them more productive   fivethirtyeight.com/featu... · Posted by u/rustoo
thegrim22 · 2 years ago
So about WFH, the conspiracy theory is that all of these leaders across all of these businesses across the country are either incapable of measuring productivity, or they measured it and see that people are more productive when WFH and yet for reasons unknown want to bring them back into the office so they're less productive again, and make the business worse? They have years of data from before WFH, and years of data of WFH, and with all of that data, all of these companies across the country think what's best for their business is to bring workers back in. It just seems so outrageous to claim all of these companies have no idea or no data that justifies what they're doing.
recycledfood · 2 years ago
WFH tends toward commoditizing employers.

It makes perfect sense for business leaders, as agents of the owner class, to continue doing as much as possible to minimize and undermine labor power.

X% less productivity is more palatable to such creatures than the risk of workers gaining a real seat at the table.

recycledfood commented on Plan to incinerate soil from Ohio train derailment is ‘horrifying’, says expert   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/webmaven
roughly · 2 years ago
It's staggering that as the richest and most powerful nation ever to exist, we've put ourselves in a position where we can't safely transport chemicals, we won't provide comprehensive information about contamination to those affected, we either can't or aren't able to put any kind of comprehensive cleanup plan in place, and we can't find trustworthy parties to enact that cleanup.

This isn't just a politics problem - the entire investor and management class at the railroads has been gambling with lives for years and the incinerator company's clearly doing the same thing, and we can't even agree as a country that that's bad, because we've bought into the free market philosophy so far that we don't have a civic language for saying "It's not OK that the railroad company management has poisoned an entire town because it helped their bottom line" or "the incinerator company that's also trying to poison an entire town is not within its rights to do so."

The cult of the MBA has gutted this country and we've let it do so because we gave up any sense of actual civic or national pride or any sense of society or mutual obligation and can't get through a conversation about how we'd like society to be without someone saying it's going to cost money and is therefore a nonstarter or that we've got no right to tell them they can't render the land they happen to live on toxic for the next thousand years or wipe out a species they don't like.

recycledfood · 2 years ago
The twelve occurrences of "we" in your comment imply agency and consent where little to none existed.

"We", which is to say a majority of residents and citizens of the US, constituting the working class, had these things imposed on us by others who have systematically and successfully manufactured the appearance of consent over a period of decades, the ongoing results being consistently undermining the working class and incepting a kind of learned helplessness that justice can never be found.

The "cult of the MBA" is apt, although a more appropriate appellation might be the "cult of Mammon".

recycledfood commented on An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer   medium.com/@lloyd-f-hough... · Posted by u/chobeat
migf · 3 years ago
Author is ignoring the value of building a network of engineers and professional relationships that will withstand any particular gig. This is the mode we have for building solidarity among developers.

Software is unique as a means of production precisely because it is a much more efficient way to turn labor into capital assets (software programs). I think the way out it presents us is to start software focused businesses that are wholly employee owned without VC input; bootstrapped as employee cooperatives.

I'm working on this right now, although it's a hard climb to figure next steps. Anyone else interested?

recycledfood · 3 years ago
> I think the way out it presents us is to start software focused businesses that are wholly employee owned without VC input; bootstrapped as employee cooperatives.

I like this idea and think it's in the same vein as proposed in Developer Hegemony[0]. Stumbling blocks for me:

- I don't think anyone in my network also wants to do this and I'm afraid to take the first step. This one's on me obviously.

- health insurance. In the US, it seems small business health plans only cover full-time employees, and a certain number of covered employees are needed to have a decently-priced risk pool (so good luck if not everyone is all-in right off the bat). The individual insurance marketplace absolutely sucks, at least in my state, cynically viewed as by design but also probably because it's a Lemon Market.

- reputation. How do you generate quality leads and close deals without either an established reputation as a business or significant funding?

[0]: https://daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-that-...

recycledfood commented on An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer   medium.com/@lloyd-f-hough... · Posted by u/chobeat
recycledfood · 3 years ago
To the owner class and their handmaidens, all workers are just expenses to be minimized in a spreadsheet. A tech worker is the same to them as the plumber who fixed their toilet last week. The plumber doesn't imagine himself to be the next Elon Musk (if not for a sufficiently lucky break), though.

Tech workers are prone to giving away free labor and the author's "advice" illustrates one example (things which are "part of the job" but really separate from the core of The Machine). Continuing the analogy: when you hire a plumber to fix your toilet, he doesn't repipe the rest of your house or do your laundry unless you pay him specifically to do those things. Your relationship is transactional and without loyalty on either side. Just like how most employers view their relationship with employees.

Many if not most tech workers suffer from misplaced loyalty towards their employers, whose owners will continue coordinating as a class, taking all they can, while workers remain distracted and divided.

Dead Comment

recycledfood commented on Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you   mcsweeneys.net/articles/m... · Posted by u/rkachowski
LBJsPNS · 3 years ago
But you don't understand! These people who were laid off are important! So much so they didn't need a union, because the company couldn't possibly let them go. Unions are for all those other people who aren't important!

Perhaps some of you are beginning to understand the term Solidarity Forever.

recycledfood · 3 years ago
I am a BigCo SWE and I have long wanted to organize, but as a sole provider I don't know how to do so effectively without significant risk to my family.

The sad facts are that most workers in the US: lack class awareness thanks to decades of successful pro-owner, anti-worker propaganda and policies; are falsely divided along lines which are convenient to the owner class (left/right, boomer/millenial, gay/straight, receiving public benefits/not); are unknowingly and dangerously close to medical bankruptcy even when covered by "good" insurance; can't afford to be even temporarily unemployed, because their health coverage is tied to their employer; can't afford to protest or attempt organizing, because they could then quickly become unemployed and endanger their dependents.

The Silicon Valley engineer earning $500k/year is better off than the midwest bank junior IT worker earning $50k. But they are part of the same class and should organize accordingly in order to gain true leverage.

Having competing job offers is a kind of leverage available to some, at an exhausting personal cost. These can be used to obtain one-dimensional improvements like higher pay, more vacation days, or choice of projects. But true leverage could make CEO's weepy and meaningless "I take full responsibility" statements actually mean something, among other things. The recent layoffs in the US including a hefty severance rely on luck, not leverage.

Tech workers probably have all the tools needed to organize effectively, and not only among themselves. But whisper "union" and ten peers will chime in before your next breath with falsehoods and other generic claims based on misremembered anecdotes which miss the point entirely and diffuse useful discussion.

u/recycledfood

KarmaCake day55January 25, 2023View Original