4 ms·
I'm not advocating for any specific policy change (although I think minimum wage should be raised and indexed to inflation), but rather am talking about cultura
by seem_2211 7y ago
I'm not advocating for any specific policy change (although I think minimum wage should be raised and indexed to inflation), but rather am talking about cultural changes that need to be addressed.
Broadly, as a society, we want people to have jobs that pay them enough to survive, and with enough margin to do other stuff. Not everything can (or should) tie back to economic value. Otherwise we end up cutting off our noses to spite our own faces, as we focus on the short term rather than the long term health of a wider community.
More than anything, we want to reward diligence, professionalism and effort, in whatever form that might take.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI'm increasingly of the view that we should have brakes on economic efficiency. The basic human values - friendliness, compassion, fairness, kindness, justice - they all wither and die when a business gets too efficient. They get optimized away in pursuit of that little extra margin. Part of the reason software jobs are nice and comfortable is of course the pay and the agency, both coming from demand exceeding supply. But a big part of it is also, IMO, that it's impossible to tell how much contribution to the bottomline a developer has on a day-to-day, or hour-to-hour basis. When my coworker and I start talking shit on the job, does that contribute positively or negatively to the ultimate productivity? By how much? Nobody can tell, which is why we can get away with it. Conversely, in retail or fast-food joints, you can track people's contribution to the bottom line at minute resolution. Which is why they're being treated like slave labor.