Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by wpietri on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @02:13PM (#23406679)

And what kills me about this is it almost seems like the big tech companies are just grabbing up engineers to no purpose. When I hear stories about what people are actually doing at larger companies, it often seems somewhere between miniscule and just plain empty. And it's not like a lot of the people telling these stories don't understand that. But they're happy enough wasting a third of their day at that salary.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by tekdude on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @02:32PM (#23406975)

I'll just share an anecdotal experience:

Earlier this year (before COVID), I interviewed with Microsoft, as they were looking for people with security clearances to work on Azure services. I apparently passed at least one of the four interviews, as they made me an offer. However... the offer contained minimal details on what I would be working on or doing, just a vague description that it was an Azure infrastructure service team. The recruiter himself didn't have any information to answer my questions. If I were just coming out of college, I'd be fine with that level of unknown, but as someone with about ten years of experience and who knows what he likes to work on, I wasn't going to take the risk of ending up on a miserably boring project (again).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by danjac on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @02:49PM (#23407166)

Thankfully we have modern Agile/Scrum with all its process and meetings to soak up that time and give us the feeling of business.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by wpietri on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @05:49PM (#23409253)

I appreciate you putting "modern" in there. We tried so hard to make it people over process. Getting things done over internal BS. Alas, that's not how it ended up for most people.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by altoidaltoid on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @03:46PM (#23407812)

There was this cartoon about a guy graduating top of his class in a CS program and the hoopla of him being hired at a "Big Tech" firm. Then he discover that his role was basically to keep someone on a web page for a half second longer...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by mtberatwork on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @03:03PM (#23407322)

> But they're happy enough wasting a third of their day at that salary.

Who wouldn't be with those salary levels? You basically have the golden ticket in your hand.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by wpietri on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @05:47PM (#23409232)

I wouldn't be. I like getting things done.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by scruple on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @05:21PM (#23408934)

I worked for a brilliant but ruthless businessman at one point in my career who very openly "stabled PhDs" (his words) in the field (RF engineering / DSP). He'd give them some research projects to play with for years on end just to keep them away from the competition.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by stevens32 on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @03:29PM (#23407604)

I'd guess no one's really happy being bored all day. People get into a position where they feel like their life is settled, and unless they do something really horrible 'the good life' is all but guaranteed. Leaving something like that for uncertainty will calculate out to insanity for most people, because the value of 'the good life' is either very high or people under value their chances of success.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by downerending on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @07:02PM (#23410037)

A big problem with filthy rich outfits is that they can simply afford to do this. My two highest-paying jobs were almost sinecures. The teams were massively overstaffed, and it could be quite difficult to find productive things to work on. I spent a lot of time simply waiting, which is to say killing time.

If your goal in life is to be rich, it's not bad, I guess. If you really love doing good tech, it's stultifying.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by Andrew_Quentin on Thursday June 04, 2020 @07:38PM (#23423311)

Are you a bot? Where do you find those stupid words? No wonder you're attracted to useless positions for status.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by dang on Friday June 05, 2020 @04:08AM (#23426169)

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by Andrew_Quentin on Friday June 05, 2020 @12:34PM (#23430395)

Wow, this place has completely transformed then? More like pleb news nowadays I guess rather than hacker news. Shame.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explain... by dang on Friday June 05, 2020 @01:33PM (#23431257)

You'd always have been banned for posting like that (edit: I mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23423311).

[ Parent | on HN ]