Damn, I suppose now someone is going to complain about long working hours meaning you never get to see your family anyway.
When I was at Amazon, this was the feeling with some employees around me: The stack-ranking meant they were made to a rat-race every year.
I can't seem to recall who, but someone higher-up let it slip when quizzed about higher attrition rate (back in 2010s) that Amazon believed in evolution, and that that meant the slow would eventually give the way for the fast and new. Someone even quipped in an internal email-list that employees were about 8th most important resource to Amazon right after the 7th most important resource: The paper-clips.
Interestingly, and in my observation, the managers got more leeway than individual contributors in terms of evolving slowly. I've also seen rest and vest among managers, but rarely among the engineers. Strange power imbalances, if you ask me, existed and could be felt across every organization I worked for.
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Cop-out rationalization: conventional wisdom holds that IT/CS folks should jump every 2-3 years or they're leaving money on the table -- and turnover rates reflect that. They're going in 2 years anyway, so get what you want out of them before they go. Most of them can't write fizzbuzz anyway, and it's easy to poach better talent by throwing money at them.
> Interestingly, and in my observation, the managers got more leeway than individual contributors in terms of evolving slowly
Managers run the system, so the system evolves to support them and their needs, like a more reasonable pace. Another way to look at it is if you've made it through the burnout phase then you're going to hang around longer, so it makes sense to hold on to proven performers who have much longer employment horizons.
Naturally it had the opposite effect of us dumping boxes of them in the trash.
Though it's not your intention, this blurring of categories justifies real slavery. If everyone is a slave then no one is a slave. If "bourgeois freedom" is an illusion then every kind of repression can be justified by the claim that it will bring about "real freedom".
Actually, the freedoms that we have are real and they matter.
It's a good book, I'd recommend it, and you can draw your own conclusions from reading it. It's like 80 pages, too.
> But we aren't owned.
This is a weird subjective/objective thing. While people may not be chattel slaves to a slaveowner, there is a case to be made of bonded/indentured labor for many. The view of chattel slavery seems to fit well into dominant narratives, as it relies on there being a subject who is enslaving another. Modern conceptions of indentured labor, however, are under an objective threat of violence, and this doesn't fit well into dominant narratives of how exploitation works.
> If everyone is a slave then no one is a slave.
There's nothing indicating that the parent comment believes that everyone is a slave. In fact, there's nothing indicating in the parent comment that he believes we are enslaved.
Note - this is only just an observation.
Really amusing - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The huge majority of companies operate on nothing like this model. Either they aim to build up a workforce for the long haul and as such care about having a sustainable workload, with occasional spikes and lulls, or they’re just jobs that are hard, that suck and that as a result have a high turnover and pay relatively well for low standards in hiring. See working in an Amazon warehouse.
The companies that do follow this model suck, like EA, but again that’s not a secret. There’s an inexhaustible supply of suckers for every industry that people really, really want to get into and whether it’s film or video games they’re always awful, though at least film pays better.
Fresh graduates absolutely do not know what they are getting into when they start their first job.
They understand what it means to soldier on despite being tired. They don't understand how much they've taken for granted all that support and feedback that was able to let them cope with the stress, and that now they're on their own.
I expect in a couple years it will get old, but people are waiting to settle down well into their 30s these days to extend these years of pure adult independence for as long as they can.
My ex-wife felt like she was on top of the world until she was burnt out and it developed into full fledged depression at age 27. I’m not saying everyone will end up like her, everyone won’t develop lung cancer from smoking either.
Are you saying that doctors entering their first residency have no idea it's going to be a long 2-4 years? When a friend of mine gradated law school and landed her choice job, her comment was 'the next 2 years are going to suck, but then I'll be set'. Years later she was right.
We are not talking about starting any random job, but those jobs that everyone knows have an initial hazing type of culture. The large majority of jobs are not like this, but big law and finance are and those graduates going into those industries are fully aware.
I take it you've never worked in a call center? When I did, anything under a `10` (out of 10) on the random surveys they sent out was considered a failure.
I have worked in a call centre.
I'm not sure, I see a lot of companies moving to this model and they are not well paying. They copy startup environments but only in appearance (like a ping pong table for decoration that you are not allowed to play), because of that they justify that you must be passionate and work long hours for a low pay.
wasn't my experience at all, I did get "well paid jobs" in startups, but in the end, combining 3 jobs in one and doing 80 hours a week isn't worth it even if your salary looks pretty high.
I've also seen this "culture" of "we're one big family" in startups, which just feels weird and forced.
Yeah no thanks.
When you're 25 and have no ties and no responsibilities, working 12-15 hours a day isn't the impossibility that it is when you are 35 and have a wife, kids, your own house, and social obligations.
I'm friends with accountants for the big 4 firms - they are in no way, shape, or form, high paying initial positions.
Maybe the downvotes are meritted, though i didnt mean the hard work, i did actually mean that myself and many i know feel its a grind, and not in a good way.
You somehow make it sound as if i have something against hard work, but its quiet the opposite. It may very well be that my job is a single case of good ol toxic work environment.
Some of us prefer burnout at reasonable pay than being raped, beaten, and denied all freedoms.
Towards the later stages of slavery, the first 2 were outright illegal, and the third is somewhere on par with wage slavery today.
It sounds like a hot take on the surface, but modern wage slavery is objectively worse than late-stage actual slavery in some regards. We have not really progressed as society. The only thing that has really advanced is the availability of entertainment to placate the masses and prevent most of them from realising that they are in fact little better off than slaves. More than half of all Americans are less than 1 paycheck away from homelessness and subsequent incarceration. There is only illusion of freedom, the reality is they're chained to their jobs.
Fun fact: medieval serfs had about 4 months of 'free' time each year. Of course it still included housekeeping and various chores, but it was nothing compared to the load of full time employment that everyone experiences today almost all year round.
I can only speak for myself here, but I work a full-time job as an SWE.
There are 52 weeks in a year, I have weekends off - that there is 104 days, or (roughly) 3 months of "free time" each year.
Factor in my PTO allowances, plus the fact that I only work 8 hour days, factor out the commute time (about 1-1.5 hours each day), and sleep time...
I'm pretty sure I have at least 4 months of "free time" available each year.
Ultimately, though, it's not the amount - it's what you do with that free time that matters.
I think the issue is that a lot of people don't believe they have a choice. When you are getting hired, make a point that you are not willing to work more than 40 hours a week (unless as completely necessary such as an actual emergency which requires your intervention), but for the hours you do work, you will put in your best effort. You're signing a mutual contract, not indentured servitude, serfdom, being "sold", etc.
It would be plain foolish not to hire someone like that (if they did in fact put in their best work). For some reason everyone thinks they have to be a slave to their company, but any company that recognizes their employees wishes will be able to reduce turnover (which can be very expensive) and in-turn have a higher morale which can improve performance.
I also think that parents are not teaching their kids good skills. I don't recall my parents saying anything other than "work hard" and "do your homework". They didn't tell me how to navigate the real world after school, I figured it out on my own. I learned how to find a company that not only wants me to work for them, but that I'd like to work for them as well. What questions to ask in the interviews, what signs to look out for that raise red flags on how employees are treated, how to research companies to see what the employees say about it and what benefits they may provide.
As a result I probably don't make as much as I could be, or I'm not as far in my career as I could be. But that's okay, because I get to go home at night and not worry about work, and spend time with my family. I also have the option to move jobs at will at any time, for any reason. I was in a job once that wasn't the perfect fit, and found an even better job as a result of the experience I gained working there for a fairly short time.
I love my job now, and I don't know what I would do without it. I'm very lucky that someone has put in the thousands (or hundred thousands, millions, tens of millions?) of dollars to create a business that is able to take advantage of the skill I have without me owning my own business.
Lastly, people are easy to be bitter and resentful. I'd hate to look back and feel like I was taken advantage of for the majority of my life, or missed out on important life events for a job that didn't matter.
- if they don't accept a job like this, they won't get a job anywhere else - this is the only way to make good money - there is no other way to rise up the ranks - loyalty is rewarded - this is a just sacrifice - they're invincible due to their youth
What they're doing however is working / giving away their life for free. It's cheaper for companies to hire people that give away an extra 10-20 free hours a week instead of hiring somebody to work for those extra hours. Even they say "we'll pay you x1.5", they're still making money because they aren't paying x2 for the second person on the payroll.
Unfortunately employees will vehemently defend these practices and even pride themselves on working 10 hours a day. They wear it like a badge of accomplishment and even look down others who don't do the same.
“The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project.”
”The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters...are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs
Turns out the author was onto something:
”When Microserfs first came out, most people thought it was a tightly focused anthropological look at a tiny group of historically transient information workers in the American Pacific Northwest. It turns out they were forming a template of the way everyone else in the world works in and around information. As time went on it became a lot broader, instead of a lot narrower, which is what happened with Generation X.”
— Coupland, The Times, June 1998
A person I met who is in the video game industry talked about something that happened at one of the companies he did consulting for. A poor guy at that place completely burned himself out and had to be hospitalized to recover. A month after this guy was burned out, a 23 year old was doing the exact same tasks, with the exact same workload and the same impossible deadlines. Sure, video game development with their crunch time is extreme but it's still very scary that something like this is even legal.
To your other points, one could simply say that as a society we need to move away from short-termism and the dogma of maximizing shareholder value.
That was pretty much the business model of the few startup jobs I tried
As a comparison, traditional slavery is extremely inefficient because traditional slaves are far less motivated, the master has to spend his time or hiring people to constantly threatening and beating slaves work.
"During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men every week, it seemed--it was a regular system; and this number they would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very cunning a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would some day come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that they could not prepare for the trial!
We have hundreds more books for your enjoyment. Read them all!
But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery--it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day. In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls' earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the indignation at this that they marched out without even a parley, and organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the end of it the girl who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great department store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week.
Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no telling when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been rumors that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to fifteen cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn would come soon. He had learned by this time that Packingtown was really not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust. And every week the managers of it got together and compared notes, and there was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one standard of efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price they would pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat in the country; but that was something he did not understand or care about."
I think you cut and pasted more than you meant to...
Cheaper than paying 6 figures, and the ones that stick around are permanently under 6 figure earners.
Losing employment is perilous for your career. It looks bad to get fired, take time off, or suddenly quit. Then there's the reality that the next job might not be much better. If every job treats you the same, you don't really have a choice. I can't just change my profession on a dime either. This is basically "if you don't like your country, you can just get out" logic... it doesn't work that way in the real world.
EDIT: Added a word. Also, I want to reiterate that I agree regarding the insanity of the slavery comparison.
It’s not opinion but fact: you are free to quit your job at any time. You are also likely free to move to any number of different cities that have different job prospects.
That is an important freedom, and you should use it whenever you want.
Why do you assume OP is concerned with only individual jobs? Sure, you can quit working at Target, but you better find something else to fill that gap or you're starving to death in the streets.
And starve to death shivering in the street, or go back to the same job again and again. That isn't choice, it just looks like it if you don't see the bigger picture.
Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out.
Increasingly this is the direction western corporations are moving. Their ideal model is: place performance quotas above long term sustainability, people then burn themselves out, you then fire them for performance reasons, and you have them on an aggressive noncompete and threaten them with it when they try to work elsewhere after. Totally consume them. Basically institutionalised "f--k you", gleefully chewing up other human beings.
In some ways we're moving to something worse than slavery. At least with slaves they were seen as "assets" rather than "temporary rentals". They had to take care of them out of necessity, so their evil had that limit on it.