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> If I were in his position I would have made sure that their name are public and known to prevent others from being exploited. I respect and agree with your p

> If I were in his position I would have made sure that their name are public and known to prevent others from being exploited. I respect and agree with your points, but do not agree 100% with this advice. Exploiters are the default. (Just the higher up you go, the nicer face they show you. Because you can hurt them more.) I only agree with this advice if you can do it without suffering serious blowback. I try to carefully assist non-dev coworkers screwed by their bosses. This includes talking with crying coworkers who swear revenge because their boss humiliated them and thieved money — and they can't just quit because the next company may be even worse. One thing that helps is understanding this is an institutional problem. Not necessarily a "bad boss", nor their fault. Even with completely different people, the overall functioning would be pretty much the same. (That's why I keep recommending books like "Disciplined Minds".) Then we take effective steps to make their resume look good, increase their bargaining power, learning tech/PM/etc skills, start winning internal company politics...

PavlovsCat 11y ago
That's a valid temporary workaround to an institutional problem. And of course, someone with family in a dire situation needs just that, not to be a martyr for whatever is "right". But generally speaking, I wonder what solutions rather than workarounds would be, or at least small steps towards them. In the end, I see no reason to believe that exploitation doesn't just waste a whole lot of resources and time, while also utterly destroying untold amounts of human dignity; and the more people put up with it, the harder it gets for those who resist. This is not intended as a slight against your or anyone's advice here, seriously. But I chose my nick for a reason, and when I read things like scrubbing one's online presence from anything that suggests the sun doesn't shine out of one's butt 24/7, the hair on the back of my neck does stand up a little bit. The idea most people involved in such... theatre?... might actually be a great person "privately", but just feel forced to "play the game", makes this even more unsettling. If nobody feels responsible for causing it, who will fix it? The people who suffer a lot from it are too busy suffering or even dying, the overlap between finding this unbearable and having the means to fight it seems rather small.. sorry for ranting, but I guess with so much solid advice already given I thought I might as well :)
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Oh yeah 100% agree with you! I think the solution is "activism" but most people don't actually know what it means. (We associate it with screaming people or individual actions.) It's just about solidarity: teamwork. People learn how to act in teams under a boss. But not the arts of self-organizing, consensus [1], how to treat your teammates with respect [2], sharing knowledge/confidence to both lead & follow, etc. [1] Starhawk writes good books on consensus meetings. [2] Respect's often ridiculed as "political correctness": not using slurs; remembering that not everyone can afford a nice laptop; certain things can suddenly trigger painful memories and therefore create obstacles to lucid decisionmaking; etc.

PavlovsCat 11y ago

That's a valid temporary workaround to an institutional problem. And of course, someone with family in a dire situation needs just that, not to be a martyr for whatever is "right". But generally speaking, I wonder what solutions rather than workarounds would be, or at least small steps towards them. In the end, I see no reason to believe that exploitation doesn't just waste a whole lot of resources and time, while also utterly destroying untold amounts of human dignity; and the more people put up with it, the harder it gets for those who resist. This is not intended as a slight against your or anyone's advice here, seriously. But I chose my nick for a reason, and when I read things like scrubbing one's online presence from anything that suggests the sun doesn't shine out of one's butt 24/7, the hair on the back of my neck does stand up a little bit. The idea most people involved in such... theatre?... might actually be a great person "privately", but just feel forced to "play the game", makes this even more unsettling. If nobody feels responsible for causing it, who will fix it? The people who suffer a lot from it are too busy suffering or even dying, the overlap between finding this unbearable and having the means to fight it seems rather small.. sorry for ranting, but I guess with so much solid advice already given I thought I might as well :)

calibraxis 11y ago
Oh yeah 100% agree with you! I think the solution is "activism" but most people don't actually know what it means. (We associate it with screaming people or individual actions.) It's just about solidarity: teamwork. People learn how to act in teams under a boss. But not the arts of self-organizing, consensus [1], how to treat your teammates with respect [2], sharing knowledge/confidence to both lead & follow, etc. [1] Starhawk writes good books on consensus meetings. [2] Respect's often ridiculed as "political correctness": not using slurs; remembering that not everyone can afford a nice laptop; certain things can suddenly trigger painful memories and therefore create obstacles to lucid decisionmaking; etc.