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My friend's wife was previously in an abusive relationship. Some people would say she stayed too long. She's a great person and I'm glad my friend married her.

zorpner 10y ago
Comparing voluntary highly-compensated employment to domestic abuse is an insult to your friend's great wife, among many others.
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  ...yeah, you're going to have to explain that one. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that relationships are voluntary too, and there's groups offering help to anyone looking to escape a bad one. Yet, blaming people for not leaving immediately tends to be rather frowned on. Is the difference just that in one case you're getting paid, and are therefore transformed into a perfectly rational homo economicus? Is it that it's easier to (know you need to) leave if the only danger is to your morals rather than to your physical body? Is it somehow easier to recognize moral danger than physical danger?
  - lazyasciiart 10y ago
    I suspect you're just making a fun comparison without much thought, but it comes across as pretty obnoxious. Nobody at Uber is afraid they'll be murdered if they quit their job. Stop trivializing domestic abuse.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Doesn't read like trivialization to me, and I've been in abusive relationships both intimate and professional. If we want to talk about trivializing, we could talk about your implicit equation of all domestic abuse with the relatively rare case where murder a plausible concern, but that's beside the point; what reads like trivialization to me is saying "oh, anyone still at Uber prima facie has ethical problems, I wouldn't hire anyone like that." Not everyone who could easily change jobs realizes it, especially after being worked out on awhile by a workplace culture that seems to prioritize gaslighting good engineers into thinking they're poor ones - cf. Fowler, and imagine how much worse it is for someone less confident in herself. Not everyone who realizes they could change jobs does so, and not because they like the shitty culture where they are - Uber uses golden handcuffs, too, and that's not an Uber problem, but a startup culture problem in general. Abusive relationships tend to end when the victim gets a "wake-up call" - a moment that takes them outside the narrow perspective their abuser has been at such pains to create, and brings home the reality of their situation. There are certainly people at Uber for whom Fowler's article, and the follow-on exposés it's prompted, have constituted just such a moment. And now that they're trying to get away from their abuser, they get to deal with being stereotyped this way? That's trivialization.
  - watwut 10y ago
    People go into relationship with expectation of those being long term. People are expected to create ties to them and leaving your husband/boyfriend/wife/girlfriend is oftentimes seen as wrong - you are supposed to be loyal. It is not nearly the same with companies. Also the issue here is not that they accepted being abused, it is the suspicion that they contributed to toxicity. It might be unfair to quite a few of them, but it is still very different.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      > You are supposed to be loyal... It is not nearly the same with companies. I'm not defending the primary analogy, but this is bizarre to me. As I grew up, many different people told me about the importance of loyalty to coworkers (and by implication employers). I heard about how you have to show you're willing to stick around for the long haul, dedicate yourself to a business, and suck it up when things are bad. At least if you're the one suffering, lots of people will tell you to stay with a company regardless. The phrase "paying your dues" is all about this. Yeah, 20-somethings and software devs are both known for being a bit more mercenary than that. I think that s a good thing, since it encourages companies to act responsibly. But there is still a strong culture that expects loyalty to employers, even when they're treating you poorly. It's not universal, but for some people it comes from most of the people they care about.

zorpner 10y ago

Comparing voluntary highly-compensated employment to domestic abuse is an insult to your friend's great wife, among many others.

tbrownaw 10y ago
...yeah, you're going to have to explain that one. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that relationships are voluntary too, and there's groups offering help to anyone looking to escape a bad one. Yet, blaming people for not leaving immediately tends to be rather frowned on. Is the difference just that in one case you're getting paid, and are therefore transformed into a perfectly rational homo economicus? Is it that it's easier to (know you need to) leave if the only danger is to your morals rather than to your physical body? Is it somehow easier to recognize moral danger than physical danger?
- lazyasciiart 10y ago
  I suspect you're just making a fun comparison without much thought, but it comes across as pretty obnoxious. Nobody at Uber is afraid they'll be murdered if they quit their job. Stop trivializing domestic abuse.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Doesn't read like trivialization to me, and I've been in abusive relationships both intimate and professional. If we want to talk about trivializing, we could talk about your implicit equation of all domestic abuse with the relatively rare case where murder a plausible concern, but that's beside the point; what reads like trivialization to me is saying "oh, anyone still at Uber prima facie has ethical problems, I wouldn't hire anyone like that." Not everyone who could easily change jobs realizes it, especially after being worked out on awhile by a workplace culture that seems to prioritize gaslighting good engineers into thinking they're poor ones - cf. Fowler, and imagine how much worse it is for someone less confident in herself. Not everyone who realizes they could change jobs does so, and not because they like the shitty culture where they are - Uber uses golden handcuffs, too, and that's not an Uber problem, but a startup culture problem in general. Abusive relationships tend to end when the victim gets a "wake-up call" - a moment that takes them outside the narrow perspective their abuser has been at such pains to create, and brings home the reality of their situation. There are certainly people at Uber for whom Fowler's article, and the follow-on exposés it's prompted, have constituted just such a moment. And now that they're trying to get away from their abuser, they get to deal with being stereotyped this way? That's trivialization.
- watwut 10y ago
  People go into relationship with expectation of those being long term. People are expected to create ties to them and leaving your husband/boyfriend/wife/girlfriend is oftentimes seen as wrong - you are supposed to be loyal. It is not nearly the same with companies. Also the issue here is not that they accepted being abused, it is the suspicion that they contributed to toxicity. It might be unfair to quite a few of them, but it is still very different.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    > You are supposed to be loyal... It is not nearly the same with companies. I'm not defending the primary analogy, but this is bizarre to me. As I grew up, many different people told me about the importance of loyalty to coworkers (and by implication employers). I heard about how you have to show you're willing to stick around for the long haul, dedicate yourself to a business, and suck it up when things are bad. At least if you're the one suffering, lots of people will tell you to stay with a company regardless. The phrase "paying your dues" is all about this. Yeah, 20-somethings and software devs are both known for being a bit more mercenary than that. I think that s a good thing, since it encourages companies to act responsibly. But there is still a strong culture that expects loyalty to employers, even when they're treating you poorly. It's not universal, but for some people it comes from most of the people they care about.