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We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right? No. They n

• ashtonkem 6y ago
  > “Graveyards are full of indispensable men”. — Charles de Gaulle.
  • spaced-out 6y ago
    Wow, that's an awesome quote. I Googled it out of interest, and it wasn't coined by Charles de Gaulle though: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/21/graveyards-full/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/21/graveyards-full/
    • ashtonkem 6y ago
      Ah, that’s a shame. But hardly surprising, most iconic quotes seem to be fake.
  • pjc50 6y ago
    "I can make a new major in ten minutes, but a regiment of artillery is difficult to replace" -- misattributed to Napoleon, on staff promotions
• ForHackernews 6y ago
  This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers. Maybe if we call it a "guild" (like the screen actors guild) it'll be more palatable to software developers who fancy themselves beyond the need for something as blue-collar as a union.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • ghaff 6y ago
    >This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers. Yes, in part. But it's almost always enabling collective action that benefits the (current) workers (and the union officials).
    • orhmeh09 6y ago
      Do you have a source for that claim?
      • amiga_500 6y ago
        Union membership up, 1% share down: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_States_union_membership_and_inequality%2C_top_1%25_income_share%2C_1910_to_2010.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_S...
    • ardy42 6y ago
      >> This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers. > Yes, in part. But it's almost always enabling collective action that benefits the (current) workers (and the union officials). What's the problem with that? Corporations almost always enable collective action to primarily benefit (current) shareholders (and executive management).
• random9763 6y ago
  Engineers should begin to understand that they are not some enlightened beings that have somehow grown beyond the need for workplace organization. They are still cogs in the machine that can be replaced at any time; pricey cogs for sure, and replacing them may take some time, but they are still cogs.
  • stronglikedan 6y ago
    Indeed, and even the ones where "replacing them may take some time" are only a very small percentage.
  • inetknght 6y ago
    > Engineers should begin to understand that they are not some enlightened beings that have somehow grown beyond the need for workplace organization. They are still cogs in the machine that can be replaced at any time This kind of thinking is exactly why Amazon warehouse workers are fed up.
  • stjohnswarts 6y ago
    That's why you have to learn to live for your own "selfish" good as opposed to giving yourself to your company. You use them like they use you. That's why I have worked for an assortment of companies that HN would turn their noses up to. I would never work with an "evil"company per se, but companies that don't do "life changing" or "socially aware" software is perfectly okay with me. Software is just a tool in my tool box to live the life that I want to live. Let go of the rat race and find out who you are. A yacht, a sports-car, a superb algorithm, a vapid partner on your arm, will never make you happy or feel like you're living your best life. Don't let work become your life. Otherwise you'll just be a burnt out programmer, salesperson, businessperson, or whatever, it's not a field that's doing it to you, it's yourself.
• lidHanteyk 6y ago
  What is an ocean, but a sea of drops? It starts with employees speaking up individually. Raise your voice and be heard. Upper management won't learn moral lessons on their own; they need to hear employees nagging them to be better people.
  • spaced-out 6y ago
    Or, what if we passed a law that required companies to give a certain percentage of their board seats to elected employee representatives? Then, employees wouldn't just have to hope their voice is heard, they can make management listen.
    • inetknght 6y ago
      > what if we passed a law that You want to pass a law with the current pro-big-company politicians in power? Like the laws that companies ignore on a regular basis because the enforcement arm of has been dismembered? Even in cases where it hasn't been, the cost of complying with the law is often more expensive than breaking it and eating the fine. Yeah passing a law sounds like it'll solve the problem real quick. /s
      • ardy42 6y ago
        >> what if we passed a law that > You want to pass a law with the current pro-big-company politicians in power? Like the laws that companies ignore on a regular basis because the enforcement arm of has been dismembered? Even in cases where it hasn't been, the cost of complying with the law is often more expensive than breaking it and eating the fine. There are a lot of problems to be solved, as your list shows. Cynicism-fueled paralysis isn't going to fix any of them. Neither will fixating on a few easy but known-ineffective methods of change (e.g. petitioning the local lord, er, company management to voluntarily do the right thing, even though the king, er, shareholders have other ideas). The way hard problems are typically solved in a democracy is someone organizes a political movement that pushes for a platform of laws to solve them. Oftentimes those laws are more radical than what eventually gets passed, but that's bargaining. You'll never get what you want if you make all your concessions even before you make your first offer.
• jp555 6y ago
  "the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital" ... so they can direct collective actions (eg. a free enterprise). So why would your top-down collective action be any different?
  • NotAnEconomist 6y ago
    Empirically, places that focus on "collective actions" and "society-level solutions" tend to be worse than places that allow that power to be bestowed in response to capital flows. I'm hoping for a really good answer here.
  • headsupernova 6y ago
    they did not imply top-down organization.
    • jp555 6y ago
      I felt they did. I think we've only ever seen things work sustainably when every individual adopts a particular set of behaviours, but maybe this is mostly just semantics?
• RookyNumbas 6y ago
  Companies like Amazon were not always in the position you've described. It took decades to get there. And there would have been numerous opportunities along the way where a single engineer could have had a massive impact. A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today. 10 or 12 years ago they absolutely could have changed the course of the company. Almost all collective change is spearheaded by the ideas and leadership of a few individuals.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    So you're saying Amazon is all my fault? :) [ employee #2 ] Edit: to be a little less terse, in 1996 I quit working for Amazon. There were multiple reasons, some not connected with the company, but a number that were based on my perception of what sort of corporate culture it was going to be have. And yet ... here we are. Is there anything I could have done in the 14 months I helped build the initial version of amazon to change how things turned out? Is there anything I could have done after that time if I had stayed? Employee #1 had similar misgivings but stayed for 5 years, and was arguably equally ineffective at altering the "nature of the beast". So sometimes, even though it appears that we do have the power to either (a) withdraw our labor from an organization (b) remain and voice dissent, it ends up doing no good if the actual leadership is following a clearly defined (in their mind) path. There will always be enablers for the sort of culture that a company like one of the FAANGs want to build.
    • cryptica 6y ago
      This makes a very good point. This is a systemic problem. Our political and economic system facilitates monopolies. This gives certain individuals a disproportionate amount of power over society. The people who tend to get power are far from being the most qualified to shape society. People who are good at taking tend to be bad at giving. Shaping society in a good way requires an altruistic (not opportunistic) mindset. Opportunists will constantly see a way to profit and will not be able to resist the temptation. Their personal interests will always get mixed up in their philanthropy so it will never be truly effective. The faith which winners place in the virtues of capitalism is part of the problem. Ultimately, profit is the product of exploitation. Most successful people will refuse to acknowledge this and that is why they tend to not be effective at shaping a healthy society.
• ori_b 6y ago
  The corporations are their workers. The suits are only powerful because we collectively chose to listen to them.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    They are their workers AND all the other people who aspire to work for them.
  • mywittyname 6y ago
    The suits control the purse strings, that's why they are powerful. If you don't listen, you get shown the door and they'll pay someone who will listen.
    • i_d_rather_read 6y ago
      You still don't get it? The "purse" is just a social construct.
• tarkin2 6y ago
  When you help a dubious firm progress, you further that dubious behaviour. Techies, and everyone else, included. Edit, re the enlightening discussion below: You are complicit in your employer’s behaviour, more-so if you are reasonably able to find another job, but decide against it.
  • Verdex 6y ago
    That's really not a useful distinction though. If you drive or ride in any sort of vehicle that uses gasoline, then you're helping big oil get away with the deepwater horizon oil spill. ... Or even if you purchase any good or service that was transported by a vehicle that uses gasoline. By using gas you're normalizing a system that accepts oil extraction as necessary which furthers the dubious behavior of the people responsible for deepwater. Also by not using gas or any good or service that uses gas then you're making yourself look crazy which also furthers the dubious behaviors of big oil. So now that everyone is evil; it really doesn't matter if anyone is evil. Might as well catch fish and drown them with oil by hand. Either way dubious behavior is furthered, so why not. You're going to need a lot more nuance and practicality to make a meaningful statement in this realm.
    • tarkin2 6y ago
      It’s not binary. There are degrees. Filling your car with petrol and choosing to stay with a dubious firm are at opposite ends. The difference, to me, is your ability to avoid the complicity. It’s hard, for most, not to drive in their petrol-based car. But for many techies, it’s not hard to choose a different tech firm.
      • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        I agree there is a spectrum. I'm not sure what evidence there is, or even what metrics you would use to decide that these two are at opposite ends.
        • tarkin2 6y ago
• op03 6y ago
  That's pretty much what Gandhi felt too, before he got kicked off the train. For those interested his story is a pretty interesting example of a weird bumbling nerd who annoyed most people, transitioning into a sort GodFather of Collective Action. How he built such a large network of backers is as interesting as the tools he used and what results he produced.
• neilv 6y ago
  Side note: Tim Bray isn't merely one technologist. I suspect his public writings about working at AWS, and his implicit endorsement, have helped AWS to attract some top talent. Certainly, when I was considering going there, people pointed me to his writings, and overall the writings increased my positive impression of the idea of developing AWS, beyond my already positive impression from using it. This also suggests one way in which we each could, perhaps should, make an individual difference: when we're working at an organization, we're implicitly endorsing and representing it to other prospective hires. We should hope that our presence there would make others want to work there more.
• zozbot234 6y ago
  > What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians I couldn't agree more. It's quite tiresome to constantly hear about techbros somewhere "solving problems", "changing the world", achieving "disruption" yadda yadda yadda. You're building apps and websites, that's just about it. It just sounds unprofessional to describe yourself any differently. What's wrong with just being properly on-task as a well-oiled cog in some huge collective machinery?
• hinkley 6y ago
  There’s a tendency to take something like this as lecture on humility or delusion, but it’s also a bit of a warning. How do con artists work? They let you think you have the upper hand while you are being taken to the cleaners. If you think of it this way it’s not just the sort of hubris that gets one into “trouble”, it’s the sort that gets one exploited.
• abandonliberty 6y ago
  When the vast majority of ultra-successful companies engage in undesirable practices, we must accept that those practices experience evolutionary positive selection. They are advantageous in the current environment. This is a structural problem, rather than a problem with any specific company. More distressingly, this means that any work at a funky, independent, ethical company is merely laying the foundation for future unethicality, like Y2K Google. The industry is known for contempt of the law, tax evasion, and oppression of the poor and minorities because this is what our society is known for. Fantasies of personal power abound as we engage in cultural wars with our fellow citizens on personally important, but nationally and structurally irrelevant topics. We feel strongly about gender/animal/gun/vaccination/religious rights and engage in passionate debates and demonstrations as wealth, power, and freedom is gradually and inexorably stolen from all of us.