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How a Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes and a Software Sweatshop
- otoburb 8y agoWage arbitrage for software Continuing Engineering (i.e. maintenance) talent. This article is eye-opening due to the scale and effectiveness, but unfortunately not surprising.
- jiveturkey 8y agosorry, but what exactly is unfortunate about it?
- cyborgx7 8y agoWhen open this website, I get a pop-up to agree to data collection. My only other option is "more information". If I click on that, I get the option to reduce the data collection to "necessary cookies". Once I set my preferences, it presents me with an obviously fake "processing request" screen, with a percentage number slowly going up. I can, of course, cancel at any time. At the end it tells me that I changed my preferences but some "partners" could not recieve those changes because I'm using https. I really hope the EU actually intends to prosecute those not in compliance with the GDPR.
- csdreamer7 8y agoThey will if EU citizens report them.
- rosege 8y agoDoes it matter if the website doesn't have any physical presence in the EU?
- josephpmay 8y agoNo
- Tade0 8y agoAs long as it serves content on EU territory, GDPR applies.
- oh_sigh 8y agoNo, this is completely incorrect.
- protomyth 8y agoWhat is the sanction if you have no physical presence in Europe?
- shittyadmin 8y agoAbsolutely nothing. They're not about to block some of the biggest sites around for failing to comply with GDPR. Can you imagine the backlash? No one wants a Great Firewall of the EU. Anyone who thinks GDPR applies to companies operating entirely outside the EU is deluded at best.
- tjtrapp 8y agoIt doesn't matter where you live or where the company is based... afaik, the determining factor is where the company stores data. In other words, if they have servers in the EU, they are bound by GDPR.
- Kalium 8y agohttps://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/ Basically, it covers companies with some legal entity in the EU.
- gaius 8y agoHow do I actually make a GDPR complaint? Like is there a .eu website with a form for it?
- codetrotter 8y agoAFAICT you file it with the relevant authorities in your country. For example, if you live in the UK, you should contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) according to [0]. [0]: https://www.entrust.org.uk/privacy/privacy-and-data-protection/what-is-gdpr-and-how-do-i-complain/ https://www.entrust.org.uk/privacy/privacy-and-data-protecti...
- briandear 8y agoHas nothing to do with citizenship, but residence.
- ovi256 8y agoYeah. An enterprising ambulance-chasing lawyer could get temporary EU residency to get GDPR coverage, and cut some deals with whomever he cares to bully.
- briandear 8y agoWhile an entertaining thought, in practice that would be ridiculous as that lawyer would then be subject to EU taxation which would negate any advantages for acquiring EU residence. That lawyer would then also be subject to US taxes as well since the US taxes worldwide income regardless of country of residence, while most EU countries tax income earned while a resident of that country. Despite tax treaties, some taxes, such as Social Charges in France, aren't covered by treaties, thus subjecting that lawyer to an entirely new world of pain in terms of taxes. Not to mention that if that lawyer were practicing law in the EU, he'd have to get credentialed in the EU or face arrest for the illegal practice of law.
- scottlocklin 8y agoYou get to deduct your foreign taxes as a US citizen abroad. Otherwise no US citizen would ever live abroad.
- jen20 8y agoI just reported them to the UK ICO.
- Confiks 8y ago> it presents me with an obviously fake "processing request" screen You may argue about the (efficiency of the) implementation, but that processing screen isn't a fake; it sends out a large amount of HTTP requests to URLs like "cookie-policy?optout=1" and "optout" for various tracking parties. Those requests take exactly the amount of time the progress bar is indicating. Don't lightheartedly call somebody or some party a liar before being sure of your case.
- briandear 8y agoHow could EU law apply to a US publication? Would US law apply to EU publications? Is a representative from the EU going to show up in New York and serve Forbes a summons? I am genuinely curious how a US publication with no legal domicile in the EU have any obligation to follow EU laws. If a California resident goes to an EU insurance website, will that EU company have to comply with California insurance advertising laws? I think that there is a lot of wishful thinking about GDPR and a lot of ignorance on how jurisdiction works, especially internationally. GDPR has no jurisdiction over companies without an EU domicile or physical presence. And EU citizens aren’t protected unless they are actually resident in the EU.
- briandear 8y agoActually, I'm going to stand corrected.. While I stand behind the jurisdictional argument I've made per the Territorial Scope of GDPR (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/) -- however, in this specific case, Forbes does, in fact have an EU operation -- many in fact, (https://www.forbes.cz https://www.forbes.cz) as an example. However, the question might now be -- do visitors to the Czech site have to agree to the same conditions and tracking as do visitors to the US site. If they're doing the same shenanigans on their Czech site as they are in the US, then of course, they are potentially violating GDPR. However, if the Czech site (as an EU example) IS following GDPR but the US site isn't, then there could be a strong case made that they aren't violating GDPR since the main Forbes site would clearly not be intended for EU consumption; GDPR, while applicable to the EU-side of the Forbes business, doesn't provide a blanket requirement for GDPR compliance across Forbes's non-EU properties. As far as EU citizens vs. residents, that concept ought to be clear: an EU citizen doesn't have protection of EU laws when outside of the EU just as an American banking in France isn't protected by US banking laws. The passport of a complainant isn't relevant, but their physical location. An EU resident American who is visiting the US isn't protected by EU consumer protection laws for example, during a visit to the United States.
- icebraining 8y agoAs far as EU citizens vs. residents, that concept ought to be clear: an EU citizen doesn't have protection of EU laws when outside of the EU just as an American banking in France isn't protected by US banking laws. The passport of a complainant isn't relevant, but their physical location. Yes, that's a common point of confusion, but it's completely correct: the GDPR applies to people in the Union, not to EU citizens everywhere (for non-EU companies, that is - an EU company has to apply the same protections for every user in the world).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tfolbrecht 8y agoSure it's downward pressure on US wages without the benefits of having an employer, but for third worlders, $15 USD must be mana from heaven. Calling it a "Software Sweatshop" is a little hyperbolic.
- otoburb 8y ago>>$15 USD must be mana from heaven. It is definitely mana from heaven, but the barriers can be somewhat high depending on the contractor's locale: 1) they need to be able to successfully navigate their own country's tax and self-employment paperwork and regulations; 2) they need enough up-front capital to purchase powerful-enough equipment to do the job in the first place; and 3) they need telecom infrastructure that presumably supports high-speed internet (i.e. faster than dial-up).
- tfolbrecht 8y agoI'd hope they're capable of that. Lol, imagine as the farmers are in the fields, and merchants in the shops grinding away to make a few dollars a day. This remote dev is making a 10x multiple of their pay. Sweatshop? Ha.
- leroy_masochist 8y agoInternet cafes in developing countries are abundant, and you might be surprised how fast the connectivity often is. They cost a tiny fraction of $15/hour so I don't see how this is a capital-constrained job for anyone. The theoretically necessary self-employment paperwork is not going to be a meaningful barrier to action in most developing countries.
- arbuge 8y ago"His workers must agree to install spyware on their computers so Crossover’s productivity team can track the number of times they click their mouse or stroke their keyboard. The tracking software takes screenshots every ten minutes and, in some cases, snaps photos from PC webcams." If they really believe they can measure programming ability by the number of times their workers are clicking things, I'd give a wide berth to their software products.
- cat199 8y agoprobably a secondary system for auditing.. previously worked on-site at a web hosting company which had similar sorts of spy systems in place - these weren't really checked or used as a primary measure, but more that spot checks were done to see if people were 'generally busy', and also when actual productivity (support request qty/quality) was down or discipline problems occurred the systems would be used to inspect/audit other performance. programming is for sure less 'mechanical' than routine system support support requests, but I can see the same sorts of measurement as useful in a remote work / no trust environment.
- sova 8y agoI measure profundity of novels in ink expended, and the success of my parties in the amount of confetti cast. According to the spec this is the perfect procedure. My pet hamster has his doubts.
- geofft 8y agoBut writers actually do get paid by the word. Charles Dickens was famously paid by the page, and his novels ended up profound enough. I'd wager most professional writers are in the business to make a living, not to be profound.
- cobbzilla 8y agoAccording to this scholar[1], Dickens was not paid per word or per page, but “per episode”, as many of his books were published a chapter at a time. [1] https://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/faq/by-the-word.html https://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/faq/by-the-word.html
- bsiemon 8y agoThe pervasive monitoring reminds me of the villain in Snowcrash.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoSure but where’s the failed pizza delivering samurai or the mafia-backed punk skateboarder ;-)
- fallingfrog 8y agoThe resemblance of this guy to the protagonist in “sorry to bother you” is almost too on the nose.. get ready for life worry free!
- howard941 8y agoDoes the person screening the code for backdoors get paid more than $15/hr?
- gaius 8y agoShould be required reading for anyone pushing the “teach kids to kode” mantra in Western schools. Or the myth of the tech talent shortage.
- cat199 8y agoanyone pushing the “teach kids to kode” mantra in Western schools or the myth of the tech talent shortage wants this to be the case - the opinionated well paid tech workers who have more hard skills than the managers are a political threat..
- jgh 8y agoCould you expand more on this? I'm having a hard time picturing how the 'myth of the tech talent shortage' benefits the powers that be. Doesn't it cost them more?
- gaius 8y agoIt drives down wages by attracting a glut of workers to the industry, aids with lobbying for favourable immigration policies (e.g. indentured labour) and so on. It’s not just what we call tech either; this happens all across STEM.
- sulam 8y agoIt’s failing miserably at driving down salaries.
- spamizbad 8y agoI’m old enough to remember the late 90s when lots of “teach kids to kode” efforts were spun up and then torn down a few years later when the dottcom crash hit. The general public thought technology was going the way of textiles and all the gumption to teach coding evaporated overnight. My high school went from having 3 jam-packed programming classes to a single AP class that barely had enrollment.
- yborg 8y ago
- redleggedfrog 8y agoFrom everything I know about software development, I can't imagine anything of value being created under such circumstances. 50% of software development is not coding. I suspect what is getting created is crap, but crap that can be leveraged to make money and get that 3 billion to keep going up. That's the sad part about the article to me - at one time the emphasis in computing was, well computing. In our modern age, it's money. Glad I was there for the good part.
- ttul 8y agoTrilogy also created a great deal of crap. They came to my engineering school in the late 1990s and handed our student society $500 just to give us a free lunch. Many of my friends went to work in Texas for them, only to escape a while later after toiling away on projects for fortune 500 companies which were massively overbilled. Their formula was: hire new grads, pay them well and take them to parties, and soak big corps with dot com projects they neither needed nor understood. The article is correct in pointing out that many Trilogy grads went on to do great things. But this was not Trilogy’s doing. It was because these people are smart and would have succeeded anyhow. As for the new strategy of paying $15/hr for sweatshop C++ coders... I can only imagine the quality of that code. You get what you pay for.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- m23khan 8y agoJust a note on wage: $15/hr for C++ coders will get you a highly-talented coder from poor parts of the World who may rival your above-average C++ coder in developed countries. $15/hr is still a very good wage in poor countries.
- NicoJuicy 8y agoYou probably never tried working with remote parties. It's not that easy and you can bet that some hours are just doubled as well.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago> Liemandt and Trilogy’s other founders developed their software as undergraduates at Stanford. The young Liemandt seemed destined for business success. His father, Gregory, worked directly under legendary GE executive Jack Welch, and the Liemandts vacationed with the Welches. After his father left GE to be CEO of a mainframe software company in Dallas in 1983, Liemandt began programming but also took a strong interest in entrepreneurship, frequently reading the business plans his father brought home. As a Stanford economics major, he was determined to create the kind of business that either Jack Welch or his father would want to buy Color me surprised.
- aerovistae 8y agoRead far enough in and you'll find out he's a patent troll. I closed the article at that point. Not interested in articles idolizing patent trolls. Mysterious tech billionaire indeed.
- tomohawk 8y agoI didn't get the narrative that the article was idolizing the subject, but rather talking about what he and his company are doing, which includes being a patent troll among other things.
- aerovistae 8y agoWriting up a lengthy article about a person's accomplishments in a prestigious mainstream magazine, especially with a title calling them "mysterious," is definitely in the vein of hoisting the person up onto a pedestal.
- tomohawk 8y agoOr under a microscope. With the term "sweatshop" in the title, it doesn't seem like the intent is to idolize this guy. The guy's banked some serious bucks. Whether he's done that in a savory or unsavory way is left up to the reader to decide.
- ianai 8y agoI agree with GP, this articles more glory than spotlight. Hard pass.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI read this much more as a cautionary tale to the existing tech industry - i.e. forget about automation, you’re about to get globalized out of your lucrative dev jobs.
- Delmania 8y ago
- finnley 8y agoAs a consulting firm, this sounds like what Upwork and the whole gig economy for freelancers is going to end up becoming. In the end, I think we'll still circle back to quality and in-person relationships winning out every time.
- rezd 8y agoThis smacks of fake news
- sologoub 8y ago“His father, Gregory, worked directly under legendary GE executive Jack Welch, and the Liemandts vacationed with the Welches. After his father left GE to be CEO of a mainframe software company in Dallas in 1983, Liemandt began programming but also took a strong interest in entrepreneurship, frequently reading the business plans his father brought home. As a Stanford economics major, he was determined to create the kind of business that either Jack Welch or his father would want to buy. His obsession with sales efficiency spawned Trilogy, and in 1990, at age 21, he defied his parents’ wishes and dropped out of Stanford to build his software company. Six years later his sales were some $120 million and he was on the cover of Forbes.“ That’s a pretty remarkable insight that’s tough to illustrate without including someone as venerable as Jack Welch. It’s the knowledge of what’s possible and how things are already being done that lends an amazing edge to talented/smart people born to the right circumstances. The cognitive leap that you have to make without this knowledge frequently leads people to over-estimate complexity and excellence you’d have to compete against. This first hand knowledge of exactly how top business plan, value and view opportunities is amazingly valuable. The question is, how do you move this from being a family/birth advantage to being part of education?
- chubot 8y agoTo its credit, YC is trying to do that: https://www.startupschool.org/ https://www.startupschool.org/ I have no intention of starting a startup, but I watched some of the videos, and they seem like valuable new information.
- sologoub 8y agoMore thinking in terms of kids/parents. In order to know that YC exists, the kid needs to learn from somewhere. It’s the initial discovery problem. I feel that currently we have all the resources for those who want to start a company, but I don’t know if we are good at showing new genetraion what’s possible across the board. Imagine the innovation we could see if every capable kid got to hang out with Jack Welch and absorb that excellence?
- 8y ago
- chiph 8y ago> has no qualms about Crossover’s tactics, including its WorkSmart productivity tracking tool, which Tryba calls “a Fitbit for how you work.” If I were FitBit, I'd send a C&D letter over this.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ihaveahadron 8y agoThis tech billionaire seems like a real asshole.
- quotemstr 8y agoThis article is as good an occasion as ever to talk about supply and demand. As a matter of basic economic and mathematical reality, we can't graduate increasing numbers of programmers from CS programs and vocational schools forever without eventually creating a glut. Nobody wants to hear that, but it's true. Yes, so far, the amount of work has been keeping pace with the labor force, but this trend can't continue forever. You can't build an entire economy out of software production: nature abhors a self-licking ice cream cone. There's a lesson we can learn from the legal profession. Quite a few people got expensive law degrees thinking that they would quickly earn back the investment, but it turned out that 1) law has surprisingly shallow demand for low- and mid-tier legal skills, 2) law is able to automate much of the low- and mid-tier work, and 3) legal practitioner skill is real, obvious, and exists on a very broad continuum, 4) professional demand is not uniform across the skill continuum. Sounds a lot like software, doesn't it? The legal profession bifurcated [1] into completely separate low-paid and high-paid worlds. This "FAANG" thing people talk --- about how there's some qualitative (and quantitative) difference in employment experience between the "good" tech companies and the rest of the industry --- is this same bifurcation pattern ramping up in software. It's especially unfortunate that in a "bubble" industry like software is (and like law was), it's the marginal participants who are the worst hit by the inevitable crash. Demand for software talent is strong (for the moment), so wages are high and rising. But the people who clump together at the high-end compensation mode --- the ones who are exceptionally good at writing software and who really enjoy the field --- are already in the industry. A $1 increase in industry-wide average compensation won't, generally speaking, convince a star programmer to join. The person who joins due to that $1 increase is someone on the margin, someone who would really rather be doing something else with his or her life, but who's just barely convinced, by that $1 increase, to try programming. Is this the kind of person who's going to land in the high-compensation bucket? Occasionally, yes, but generally no. So far, software demand has generally kept pace with available labor, but this situation can't persist indefinitely. What happens when it stops? There's going to be some moment at which the industry recognizes that salaries are too high. There might be some precipitating event --- e.g., the coming inevitable business cycle trough --- or the progress of automation might greatly increase productivity for low- and mid-tier tasks --- or the industry as a whole just might slowly start to ask itself, "what exactly am I paying for?" In any case, when that event comes, expect more companies to turn into the kind of software shop you see in the likes of Trilogy, or some contract body shop, or Electronic Arts. When the developer bubble finally bursts, the whole industry will look like these places --- except at the very high end of the skill distribution, because the supply curve for high-skill programmers is much shallower than the supply curve for low- and mid-skill ones. At a certain point --- maybe not today, but probably some day soon --- it'll be irresponsible to tell people at the margins of software skill or enthusiasm to enter the field, because such a person will be able to expect only low-paid work in bad conditions, forever, just like a marginal lawyer today. But timing the market doesn't work, so who knows when that day will be? It could be tomorrow. [1] https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-the-legal-industry-and-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-law/ https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-...
- mooreds 8y agoDoes this story remind anyone else of L. Bob Rife from Snow Crash?