7 ms·

Was just talking last week that the last thing any of these large internet companies wants to do is hire a large room filled with low paid workers to do anythin

Was just talking last week that the last thing any of these large internet companies wants to do is hire a large room filled with low paid workers to do anything, especially here in the US. If they are making this move they must see some large liability looming on the horizon.

lallysingh 9y ago
Politically that's a great idea. Put those large rooms in the right states and you can get favorable bills passed.
- walshemj 9y ago
  and some tax breaks I bet
JMCQ87 9y ago
They don't want politics to get active to interfere with their business.
bogomipz 9y ago
I didn't understand the "especially here in the US" part of your comment. Can you explain?
- walshemj 9y ago
  its not like low paid and probably part time workers have many employment rights in the USA
  - excalibur 9y ago
    The minimum wage itself is a barrier here, along with overtime regulations and a host of other things designed to prevent employer abuse.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      That must be a very small host when compared to other first world countries
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Compare to Bangladesh, Vietnam, or the Phillipines. Low-wage American workers are not very competitive in a global marketplace. If the cost of shipping and importing goods and services < the cost of complying with U.S. regulations and paying American workers, there's every economic reason to have the work sent out to less regulated, lower-paid regimes. The way to fix this is to even the playing field by ensuring that it's not cheaper to pay to have this done overseas. Otherwise, the "American-made" companies just have to hope that's enough to convince customers to help them make up the gap in profits ... and it's usually not.
    - malandrew 9y ago
      That would require a thoughtful examination of our housing policies in the US that are designed first and foremost to drive up property as an asset class. It's probably the single biggest driver of inflation in the US that necessitates increases in wages.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    Both part time and low paid workers are protected by the same labor laws as full time workers in the U.S. Maybe I am not understanding, can you say what rights are you speaking of specifically? They would have more protections and rights than an "offshore" employee would have I imagine.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      You have to work more than a certain number of hours for ObamaCare to cover you. Its why Googles quality raters have been put on part time working Bad employers gaming the system its one of the drivers behind trump and brexit
- dan1234 9y ago
  Western workers tend be expensive.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  $$$
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    Which FB has no shortage of though, no?
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Capitalism operates on the basis of greed, not need. If a desired result can be accomplished at lower cost, it generally will be. Firms largely concern themselves only with first-order costs, leaving second-order costs to government, not least because the more abstract the nature of the cost, the fewer people are able to comprehend its existence. If you're interested in this topic you may enjoy Ronald Coase's economic essay The Problem of Social Cost (which brought him a Nobel prize) and his body of work in general.
cnnsucks 9y ago
Seems to me that keeping the labor cost reasonable isn't really that difficult. The only real problem is concealing the process well enough that it doesn't provoke outrage. Understand as you read what follows and the hairs on your neck stand up that this is --- after enough layers of BS are applied --- very close to what will evolve. Just yesterday we read about how Facebook 'helps' marketers 'track when people were feeling overwhelmed, worthless or insecure' [1]. Focusing on people that exhibit this frequently, particularly if they're being bullied, would catch a bunch of these online suicide cases without squandering labor on everyone else. Then all you need to do is invent enough euphemisms to enable a degree of profiling; the rape streams that go unreported for days are almost always gangbangers. Should be a trivial job to factor that group out, by their grammar alone. There you go; the chronically depressed types and the gangbangers account for probably 95% of the headline making cases Facebook has to worry about. Focus a small workforce on those two groups (and possibly a few others; extremists, etc.) and Bob's your uncle. [1] http://www.moneyandmentalhealth.org/facebook-mental-health/ http://www.moneyandmentalhealth.org/facebook-mental-health/
munificent 9y ago
I think it's a fairly common recent strategy to hire a big pool of low cost workers with the intention of gradually phasing them out as ML tech improves. See also: Uber drivers.

lallysingh 9y ago

Politically that's a great idea. Put those large rooms in the right states and you can get favorable bills passed.

walshemj 9y ago
and some tax breaks I bet

JMCQ87 9y ago

They don't want politics to get active to interfere with their business.

bogomipz 9y ago

I didn't understand the "especially here in the US" part of your comment. Can you explain?

walshemj 9y ago
its not like low paid and probably part time workers have many employment rights in the USA
- excalibur 9y ago
  The minimum wage itself is a barrier here, along with overtime regulations and a host of other things designed to prevent employer abuse.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    That must be a very small host when compared to other first world countries
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Compare to Bangladesh, Vietnam, or the Phillipines. Low-wage American workers are not very competitive in a global marketplace. If the cost of shipping and importing goods and services < the cost of complying with U.S. regulations and paying American workers, there's every economic reason to have the work sent out to less regulated, lower-paid regimes. The way to fix this is to even the playing field by ensuring that it's not cheaper to pay to have this done overseas. Otherwise, the "American-made" companies just have to hope that's enough to convince customers to help them make up the gap in profits ... and it's usually not.
  - malandrew 9y ago
    That would require a thoughtful examination of our housing policies in the US that are designed first and foremost to drive up property as an asset class. It's probably the single biggest driver of inflation in the US that necessitates increases in wages.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Both part time and low paid workers are protected by the same labor laws as full time workers in the U.S. Maybe I am not understanding, can you say what rights are you speaking of specifically? They would have more protections and rights than an "offshore" employee would have I imagine.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    You have to work more than a certain number of hours for ObamaCare to cover you. Its why Googles quality raters have been put on part time working Bad employers gaming the system its one of the drivers behind trump and brexit
dan1234 9y ago
Western workers tend be expensive.
anigbrowl 9y ago
$$$
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Which FB has no shortage of though, no?
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Capitalism operates on the basis of greed, not need. If a desired result can be accomplished at lower cost, it generally will be. Firms largely concern themselves only with first-order costs, leaving second-order costs to government, not least because the more abstract the nature of the cost, the fewer people are able to comprehend its existence. If you're interested in this topic you may enjoy Ronald Coase's economic essay The Problem of Social Cost (which brought him a Nobel prize) and his body of work in general.

cnnsucks 9y ago

Seems to me that keeping the labor cost reasonable isn't really that difficult. The only real problem is concealing the process well enough that it doesn't provoke outrage. Understand as you read what follows and the hairs on your neck stand up that this is --- after enough layers of BS are applied --- very close to what will evolve. Just yesterday we read about how Facebook 'helps' marketers 'track when people were feeling overwhelmed, worthless or insecure' [1]. Focusing on people that exhibit this frequently, particularly if they're being bullied, would catch a bunch of these online suicide cases without squandering labor on everyone else. Then all you need to do is invent enough euphemisms to enable a degree of profiling; the rape streams that go unreported for days are almost always gangbangers. Should be a trivial job to factor that group out, by their grammar alone. There you go; the chronically depressed types and the gangbangers account for probably 95% of the headline making cases Facebook has to worry about. Focus a small workforce on those two groups (and possibly a few others; extremists, etc.) and Bob's your uncle. [1] http://www.moneyandmentalhealth.org/facebook-mental-health/ http://www.moneyandmentalhealth.org/facebook-mental-health/

munificent 9y ago

I think it's a fairly common recent strategy to hire a big pool of low cost workers with the intention of gradually phasing them out as ML tech improves. See also: Uber drivers.