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Theory: overwork culture is a 'race to the bottom' when workers feel more pressure to (1) compete against each other instead of (2) organizing together to promo
by xpe 6y ago
Theory: overwork culture is a 'race to the bottom' when workers feel more pressure to (1) compete against each other instead of (2) organizing together to promote mutual interests.
Put this way, 'overwork culture' would be a collective action problem in the context of an economic system where owners have more leverage than workers.
So what about tech, where workers seem to have high leverage? Why do they still overwork? One factor that may be overlooked is this: workers are not only competing against their contemporaries but also future workers (which may be more numerous and perceived as less expensive).
- thomastjeffery 6y ago> So what about tech, where workers seem to have high leverage? Do they? In my experience, most software engineers do experience a better work/life balance, especially at startups where they have more leverage. Even so, we can do better.
- 1270018080 6y agoThere's also no tech union. And even though many tech workers are at the top of the working class bubble, it's still working class. You have more in common with someone working minimum wage than the executive who writes himself a bonus and hoards equity.
- yuppie_scum 6y agoThis is a very privileged viewpoint
- ThrustVectoring 6y agoCombination of two factors: 1. Efficiency wages. Highly motivated and skilled programmers are so much better at their jobs than unmotivated and unskilled replacements that it's best to "overpay" above the market-clearing price, giving employers meaningful choice in applicants and regain some of the negotiating power in the relationship. 2. Tournament theory of compensation. Quantifying performance of engineers is difficult, but rank-ordering them (especially without an explicit stack-ranking) is relatively easy. So an efficient solution is to overpay the best-performing "winners" and underpay the rest, getting the same incentive effects as piece work without the cost of quantifying work output.