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It shows how much of a bubble the protesters live in, too. Calling startups "sweatshops" is kind of absurd. To the extent that work is harder or pay is worse in
by beat 8y ago
It shows how much of a bubble the protesters live in, too. Calling startups "sweatshops" is kind of absurd. To the extent that work is harder or pay is worse in startups, it's for the ownership (or at least a sense of ownership) and excitement. Most people working in startups could, if they wanted, sidestep into safe, boring corporate IT work.
The protesters would be a lot more interesting if they'd start reading Marcuse and seeing middle class job security and mortgages and the like as a totalitarian system that works by its addictiveness. But reading the life work of old men who were once angry young Marxists who watched their revolution fail and then their nation turn to fascism isn't as much fun as yelling at Google.
- joshuakarjala 8y agoThe amount of free "non developer" labor being exploited by early stage startups is immense
- beat 8y agoIf someone is working for free on a voluntary basis, they're probably not being "exploited". When I was trying to build a startup, I got plenty of free help from various friends and interested parties who were excited about what I was building - but nothing on the level of employee-level work. Hell, if someone was remotely useful and willing to put in real hours, I'd have called them co-founders and given them equity, happily. This is important! If someone has enough skills/ambition to be actually useful to an early stage startup, they can make better money elsewhere. So if they're putting in their time with the startup, they're being motivated by something else. That doesn't mean they're being exploited. It means their interests can't be measured entirely in dollars.
- joshuakarjala 8y agoPlenty of startups have students / recent grads in marketing, pa roles working 20-40 hours a week for no pay.
- beat 8y agoAre they getting equity? Experience? Networking? Fun? As long as they feel like they're getting something useful from the experience, then I don't think "exploited" is the right word. And if they think they're not getting anything out of it, it begs the question just how that early stage startup is going to make them stick around. Exploitation involves more stick, less carrot.