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What argument are you claiming is weakened? I'm not saying any argument is weakened. This is analogous to what I saw: 1. Article claims X, which is good for s

What argument are you claiming is weakened? I'm not saying any argument is weakened. This is analogous to what I saw: 1. Article claims X, which is good for software devs as a whole. 2. Software dev #1 says "Hmm...is X even true? Doesn't make sense for reasons A, B, and C." 3. Software dev #2 says "Hey, we're trying to negotiate here and it doesn't matter if X is true or not. You shouldn't even be pointing out that it might not be true and that we should have more evidence. You're a traitor!" Sorry, but I have a lot more respect for software dev #1's position than software dev #2's position. I want to be associated with a community of people who are looking for the truth, even if it leads them somewhere difficult, not protecting themselves at the expense of others, truth be damned. And I certainly don't want to be associated with a group that not only doesn't want the truth, but yells at anyone within that group who dares to challenge the consensus. Ugh.

gingerrr 10y ago
> It's not reasonable to expect other software developers to refuse to raise rational points of inquiry that you've based your argument on because it may result in weakening your argument on the merits. > I'm not saying any argument is weakened. Let's be consistent. > I want to be associated with a community of people who are looking for the truth, even if it leads them somewhere difficult, not protecting themselves at the expense of others A few things: 1. Nobody here has said "don't talk about it, period". Even Software dev #2 from your example has further commented that the criticism is aimed at the forum rather than the topic, due to its high visibility among people who often create labor policies 2. What exactly is "difficult" about a truth backed by scientific data? Also, what in aetherson's original, entirely-opinion comment resembles truth? They themselves are admitting a dearth of data on the issue, then proceed to classify the 40-hour workweek as "wishful thinking" and "probably mostly untrue" - again, without any data to support. How is that a quest for truth again? 3. Who are these "others" you say we are protecting themselves at the expense of? I'm really having difficulty understanding how a plea for labor solidarity alienates anyone except those who profit from undervaluing labor - i.e. management and moneygrubbers. >And I certainly don't want to be associated with a group that not only doesn't want the truth, but yells at anyone within that group who dares to challenge the consensus. A few more things: 1. Please tell me what part of saying "I'm sad" and "please don't" in ThrustVectoring's original response is yelling, again? 2. I'm not sure where you live, but where I live class consciousness and work-life balance is decidedly not the consensus. The consensus is actually very clearly aligned with aetherson's claims - that "working lots of hours is totally fine probably don't worry about it", and that as long as you're getting yours everything is fine. It doesn't even seem to be the consensus in this very thread - so it might be prudent to examine why you feel attacked as a minority when you very clearly aren't holding a minority opinion. 3. You haven't actually engaged with any of the arguments here about labor solidarity, but have instead managed to make the conversation about how mean the big scary class-conscious consensus is to the little folk who dare to question whether working more hours in a week might be a good thing. I have a hard time taking this as a serious discussion if you won't grapple with the issues on a substantive level. Associate with whatever group you like, but it is not the responsibility of people to make you comfortable with ideas you don't like. It's your job to figure out why they make you uncomfortable and investigate that anxiety - or not, you could just do what you did here and dismiss all discussion because people were being mean and "yelling". Thanks for the chat.
- ryanwaggoner 10y ago
  Haha, that's hilarious. I love how you managed to (non-ironically) try and twist this in your mind about me being the one needing a safe space. Excellent. I didn't engage on the merits of the discussion for the same reason I didn't say that X is necessarily weakened as an argument (you completely skipped the word "if" in your reading of first quote above), which is that I don't have a particular dog in this fight. But it's so lazy and intellectually dishonest to fault someone for pointing out that maybe we need more evidence. And to then basically call them a traitor? I felt like commenting on it. So I did. Without any disclaimers of any former mgmt experience so I guess I'm a monster as well. Enough entertainment for one night, I'm out :)
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
I do want to know whether or not X is true, and it does matter. And I do enjoy being part of a community of people who are looking for the truth. The problem is that hacker news is not a place where it's safe to ignore the political effects of your speech and focus purely on epistemic truth. Private mailing list? Sure. In person? Sure. On a public forum where management types will imply that you're an overpaid lazy hipster? Yeah no. If you want a place where people can focus on finding out what's true, you need to make it safe to do that. You're never going to get a truth-seeking discussion about gender or race on r/SRS for exactly that reason. Hacker News is better than most because it's well moderated, but it can't and won't be that way for things that touch on the economic relationships between software developers and their employers.
- ryanwaggoner 10y ago
  Wait, so you're implying that "management types" are so stupid that they would have read this article (plus many more like it) and been like "yeah, guess it's better for us to pay the engineers more", but then they see a short comment from someone on a forum saying "hmm, I'm skeptical of this; is there good evidence?" and so the management types are like "whew! never mind! turns out there's no evidence!" This is simultaneously: a) a bizarrely uncharitable view of "management types" and their intelligence level, b) a clear indication that you don't think the evidence is very good, and c) a ridiculously impractical view of how impossible it is to keep a simple thought from spreading, let alone just occurring. The fact that the person you were responding to is, in your words, a "management type", and came up with this objection should show how dumb it is to try and keep it out of the discussion. They can clearly think of this objection on their own.
  - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    You're missing the core of what I'm concerned about. What I care about is something like "what looking like you're putting in sincere and whole-hearted effort looks like". I oppose publicly talking about how you as a software engineer can put in 45 good hours of work reliably every week and feel like you have good work-life balance for the same reason people make comments if their coworkers over-dress for work. If you can, and you say that you can, and you don't complain about it, then that becomes expected. This is as true of wearing a suit and tie to work as it is for putting in long hours. Finance is in a really shitty place because of this and I don't want the tech scene to follow suit.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>I want to be associated with a community of people who are looking for the truth, even if it leads them somewhere difficult, not protecting themselves at the expense of others, truth be damned. Management wants to protect the company's profit at the expense of employees, so why shouldn't the employees push back and try to protect their quality of life?

gingerrr 10y ago

> It's not reasonable to expect other software developers to refuse to raise rational points of inquiry that you've based your argument on because it may result in weakening your argument on the merits. > I'm not saying any argument is weakened. Let's be consistent. > I want to be associated with a community of people who are looking for the truth, even if it leads them somewhere difficult, not protecting themselves at the expense of others A few things: 1. Nobody here has said "don't talk about it, period". Even Software dev #2 from your example has further commented that the criticism is aimed at the forum rather than the topic, due to its high visibility among people who often create labor policies 2. What exactly is "difficult" about a truth backed by scientific data? Also, what in aetherson's original, entirely-opinion comment resembles truth? They themselves are admitting a dearth of data on the issue, then proceed to classify the 40-hour workweek as "wishful thinking" and "probably mostly untrue" - again, without any data to support. How is that a quest for truth again? 3. Who are these "others" you say we are protecting themselves at the expense of? I'm really having difficulty understanding how a plea for labor solidarity alienates anyone except those who profit from undervaluing labor - i.e. management and moneygrubbers. >And I certainly don't want to be associated with a group that not only doesn't want the truth, but yells at anyone within that group who dares to challenge the consensus. A few more things: 1. Please tell me what part of saying "I'm sad" and "please don't" in ThrustVectoring's original response is yelling, again? 2. I'm not sure where you live, but where I live class consciousness and work-life balance is decidedly not the consensus. The consensus is actually very clearly aligned with aetherson's claims - that "working lots of hours is totally fine probably don't worry about it", and that as long as you're getting yours everything is fine. It doesn't even seem to be the consensus in this very thread - so it might be prudent to examine why you feel attacked as a minority when you very clearly aren't holding a minority opinion. 3. You haven't actually engaged with any of the arguments here about labor solidarity, but have instead managed to make the conversation about how mean the big scary class-conscious consensus is to the little folk who dare to question whether working more hours in a week might be a good thing. I have a hard time taking this as a serious discussion if you won't grapple with the issues on a substantive level. Associate with whatever group you like, but it is not the responsibility of people to make you comfortable with ideas you don't like. It's your job to figure out why they make you uncomfortable and investigate that anxiety - or not, you could just do what you did here and dismiss all discussion because people were being mean and "yelling". Thanks for the chat.

ryanwaggoner 10y ago
Haha, that's hilarious. I love how you managed to (non-ironically) try and twist this in your mind about me being the one needing a safe space. Excellent. I didn't engage on the merits of the discussion for the same reason I didn't say that X is necessarily weakened as an argument (you completely skipped the word "if" in your reading of first quote above), which is that I don't have a particular dog in this fight. But it's so lazy and intellectually dishonest to fault someone for pointing out that maybe we need more evidence. And to then basically call them a traitor? I felt like commenting on it. So I did. Without any disclaimers of any former mgmt experience so I guess I'm a monster as well. Enough entertainment for one night, I'm out :)

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

I do want to know whether or not X is true, and it does matter. And I do enjoy being part of a community of people who are looking for the truth. The problem is that hacker news is not a place where it's safe to ignore the political effects of your speech and focus purely on epistemic truth. Private mailing list? Sure. In person? Sure. On a public forum where management types will imply that you're an overpaid lazy hipster? Yeah no. If you want a place where people can focus on finding out what's true, you need to make it safe to do that. You're never going to get a truth-seeking discussion about gender or race on r/SRS for exactly that reason. Hacker News is better than most because it's well moderated, but it can't and won't be that way for things that touch on the economic relationships between software developers and their employers.

ryanwaggoner 10y ago
Wait, so you're implying that "management types" are so stupid that they would have read this article (plus many more like it) and been like "yeah, guess it's better for us to pay the engineers more", but then they see a short comment from someone on a forum saying "hmm, I'm skeptical of this; is there good evidence?" and so the management types are like "whew! never mind! turns out there's no evidence!" This is simultaneously: a) a bizarrely uncharitable view of "management types" and their intelligence level, b) a clear indication that you don't think the evidence is very good, and c) a ridiculously impractical view of how impossible it is to keep a simple thought from spreading, let alone just occurring. The fact that the person you were responding to is, in your words, a "management type", and came up with this objection should show how dumb it is to try and keep it out of the discussion. They can clearly think of this objection on their own.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  You're missing the core of what I'm concerned about. What I care about is something like "what looking like you're putting in sincere and whole-hearted effort looks like". I oppose publicly talking about how you as a software engineer can put in 45 good hours of work reliably every week and feel like you have good work-life balance for the same reason people make comments if their coworkers over-dress for work. If you can, and you say that you can, and you don't complain about it, then that becomes expected. This is as true of wearing a suit and tie to work as it is for putting in long hours. Finance is in a really shitty place because of this and I don't want the tech scene to follow suit.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>I want to be associated with a community of people who are looking for the truth, even if it leads them somewhere difficult, not protecting themselves at the expense of others, truth be damned. Management wants to protect the company's profit at the expense of employees, so why shouldn't the employees push back and try to protect their quality of life?