4 ms·

I wouldn't be easily fooled. Companies try as hard as they can to turn engineering talent into a commodity, and they're relatively successful. The High-Tech Emp

I wouldn't be easily fooled. Companies try as hard as they can to turn engineering talent into a commodity, and they're relatively successful. The High-Tech Employee Antitrust suit is an example of this. If you need to work for a living, employers will commodify your role to the best of their abilities.

pm90 7y ago
Sure, but those are the competing forces at work, right? Employees: get the most money for their labor. Employers: get the labor for the least possible money. It may not be ethical in your viewpoint, but those are the natural forces at play. It follows that employers will commodify my role as part of their strategy to pay me less. So I take other actions to make myself more valuable. As long as those actions are strictly technical (learning new technology, rather than management), I am quite happy to play this natural game driven entirely by reason.
- simple_phrases 7y ago
  Companies are vehicles for accumulated wealth and power for the ownership class. Labor, on the other hand, has very few vehicles to accumulate their wealth and power. In fact one such vehicle, the union, is often legally neutered such that private contracts made between unions and employers can be nullified in favor of the ownership class (see: right-to-work laws and union security agreements). There's an inherent asymmetry of power between labor and the ownership class enshrined in both law and contemporary markets. We live in a nation started by the wealthy merchant class, for the wealthy merchant class, and it shows in our labor history. So, yes, there are competing forces that are very unequal. You as an individual engineer will have little clout against, say, an industry-wide anti-poaching agreement like we saw in the High-Tech Employee Antitrust case.

4 ms·

I wouldn't be easily fooled. Companies try as hard as they can to turn engineering talent into a commodity, and they're relatively successful. The High-Tech Emp

by simple_phrases 7y ago

pm90 7y ago
Sure, but those are the competing forces at work, right? Employees: get the most money for their labor. Employers: get the labor for the least possible money. It may not be ethical in your viewpoint, but those are the natural forces at play. It follows that employers will commodify my role as part of their strategy to pay me less. So I take other actions to make myself more valuable. As long as those actions are strictly technical (learning new technology, rather than management), I am quite happy to play this natural game driven entirely by reason.
- simple_phrases 7y ago
  Companies are vehicles for accumulated wealth and power for the ownership class. Labor, on the other hand, has very few vehicles to accumulate their wealth and power. In fact one such vehicle, the union, is often legally neutered such that private contracts made between unions and employers can be nullified in favor of the ownership class (see: right-to-work laws and union security agreements). There's an inherent asymmetry of power between labor and the ownership class enshrined in both law and contemporary markets. We live in a nation started by the wealthy merchant class, for the wealthy merchant class, and it shows in our labor history. So, yes, there are competing forces that are very unequal. You as an individual engineer will have little clout against, say, an industry-wide anti-poaching agreement like we saw in the High-Tech Employee Antitrust case.