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> fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result

> fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. Hmnn but doing it that way feels like it would devalue doing things smarter which seems to be more beneficial to society. Single-mindedly incentivizing labor seems like it would skewer efficiency -- I guess like most things the right answer is in the middle. I'm not sure what you mean by "viral" things but I'm trying to discuss only about work output. If the work output is virality (let's say a social media manager), then it makes sense to measure that way, but usually businesses don't deal in that currency -- they deal in product shipped out or contracts landed, etc. That said, I'm well aware that systems that think themselves to be closest to the capitalist ideal are pretty brutal on the cogs in the machine. As a side note, it's a red flag for me when I see github projects that are too concerned with stars/going viral, or even when I see presentations about projects that mention stars. Everyone thinks it's silly but everyone keeps doing it -- if only we'd stop then people would start judging projects on things other than adoption. Then again, adoption is the biggest metric for most people, because it generally is a proxy for "availability of free support/feature development", and in that sense I'm guilty of the same. > The fact that you completely ignore the hardware is very telling. CPU has been improved according to Moore's law in the past few decades, if anything modern software engineering failed to live up to that potential and has been free riding on top of progress in hardware. > It's insane to make robots move but software is a small part of that, there is also mechanical/electrical engineering, battery techs etc. Software sitting at the top of that stack shouldn't takes all the credit. It's very hard to innovate on the lower layers with all the lab work and physical constrains. Agreed! There is more than enough value to go around to be shared between all those kinds of engineering -- just because I didn't mention lithography engineers or materials science engineers or people who smelt silicon doesn't mean they don't exist and don't deserve to be paid.

nsonha 5y ago
Viral or scalable in business/tech terms, means things that can be sold multiple times. Often times the value is already created and rewarded. In our economy we're not only incentivizing value creation but also building walls around innovations and gatekeeping the fruits of them, so that the innovators, the software developers like you wish, or whoever can earn royalty while no longer innovating.
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  Yeah, I get where you're coming from but I can't really agree that incentivizing raw labor is the way to get there (to a more equitable outcome for labor). The capital/labor struggle is a deep deep topic, but I think we can say at this point that with automation becoming increasingly common, labor is losing it's leg to stand on. We're going to get a lot farther by reining in capitalism than trying to return to piece work payment.
  - nsonha 5y ago
    > I can't really agree that incentivizing raw labor I read history books, I'm not that stupid. The reason I bring this up is a couple of comments up you said software creates tremendous value, I guess this is true for many other types of innovations too. You proceeded to say software developers need to be paid proportionate to that value and I disagree there. If we look at salary as incentive I would say that software engineers get enough incentive to do our job. As long as we get paid better than most other professions, society/the economy don't need to pay us more. While pay should not be based on labour, it should be capped, probably based on the labour. Otherwise every cog in the machine earns some royalty (infinitely, if the machine scales infinitely) and there is no money left for "non-machine". The bad thing in this industry is work/life balance, we just need to fix that. Although the pay in some countries are atrocious, I'd say that software engineers in most western countries are fine.
    - hardwaresofton 5y ago
      > I read history books, I'm not that stupid. Didn't imply you were! I am assuming the best as people do here on HN. > The reason I bring this up is a couple of comments up you said software creates tremendous value, I guess this is true for many other types of innovations too. You proceeded to say software developers need to be paid proportionate to that value and I disagree there. > If we look at salary as incentive I would say that software engineers get enough incentive to do our job. As long as we get paid better than most other professions, society/the economy don't need to pay us more. > While pay should not be based on labour, it should be capped, probably based on the labour. Otherwise every cog in the machine earns some royalty (infinitely, if the machine scales infinitely) and there is no money left for "non-machine". So I still disagree with this point, but I want to point out that I am in favor of the idea that every cog in the machine earns a royalty on every piece of the process. I believe both machine and non-machine could win in that situation. If you have a new idea (and the funding to go after it, etc) then you get to decide the cap table essentially -- so it's up to you to set rates on the royalties and up to labor to agree/deny. How you'd work out royalties in relation to work done/etc is difficult, but it's something that feels like it can be worked out. Pensions used to be a thing, and they're kind of like that. > The bad thing in this industry is work/life balance, we just need to fix that. Although the pay in some countries are atrocious, I'd say that software engineers in most western countries are fine. Weird, I think that work/life balance for software is actually really good -- you're not going to find much work/life balance (or companies that even pretend to care about that) in the blue collar job market. The ability to up and move with transferable skills is really remarkable in tech as well... In short I agree with you that tech has it good, but I don't think it makes sense to restrict that "good" based on the "bad" of other fields -- we don't need to be equal. If workers are getting exploited outside of tech, let's make them less exploited and get them what they're worth -- if tech workers are exploited let's get them what they're worth. The question of how to determine that worth is the big difference we're at loggerheads about I think, and I don't think it makes sense to judge by amount of "work" done. That very idea is rooted in some sort of moralistic argument that work/expenditure is good/virtuous/worth being paid for, and I don't think that's a shared value. Labor is given meaning by the fruit it produces, and that's how I'm trying to judge the value of labor -- the value it produces (whether immediately or down the line) -- royalties do that rather well compared to our current system.

nsonha 5y ago

Viral or scalable in business/tech terms, means things that can be sold multiple times. Often times the value is already created and rewarded. In our economy we're not only incentivizing value creation but also building walls around innovations and gatekeeping the fruits of them, so that the innovators, the software developers like you wish, or whoever can earn royalty while no longer innovating.

hardwaresofton 5y ago
Yeah, I get where you're coming from but I can't really agree that incentivizing raw labor is the way to get there (to a more equitable outcome for labor). The capital/labor struggle is a deep deep topic, but I think we can say at this point that with automation becoming increasingly common, labor is losing it's leg to stand on. We're going to get a lot farther by reining in capitalism than trying to return to piece work payment.
- nsonha 5y ago
  > I can't really agree that incentivizing raw labor I read history books, I'm not that stupid. The reason I bring this up is a couple of comments up you said software creates tremendous value, I guess this is true for many other types of innovations too. You proceeded to say software developers need to be paid proportionate to that value and I disagree there. If we look at salary as incentive I would say that software engineers get enough incentive to do our job. As long as we get paid better than most other professions, society/the economy don't need to pay us more. While pay should not be based on labour, it should be capped, probably based on the labour. Otherwise every cog in the machine earns some royalty (infinitely, if the machine scales infinitely) and there is no money left for "non-machine". The bad thing in this industry is work/life balance, we just need to fix that. Although the pay in some countries are atrocious, I'd say that software engineers in most western countries are fine.
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    > I read history books, I'm not that stupid. Didn't imply you were! I am assuming the best as people do here on HN. > The reason I bring this up is a couple of comments up you said software creates tremendous value, I guess this is true for many other types of innovations too. You proceeded to say software developers need to be paid proportionate to that value and I disagree there. > If we look at salary as incentive I would say that software engineers get enough incentive to do our job. As long as we get paid better than most other professions, society/the economy don't need to pay us more. > While pay should not be based on labour, it should be capped, probably based on the labour. Otherwise every cog in the machine earns some royalty (infinitely, if the machine scales infinitely) and there is no money left for "non-machine". So I still disagree with this point, but I want to point out that I am in favor of the idea that every cog in the machine earns a royalty on every piece of the process. I believe both machine and non-machine could win in that situation. If you have a new idea (and the funding to go after it, etc) then you get to decide the cap table essentially -- so it's up to you to set rates on the royalties and up to labor to agree/deny. How you'd work out royalties in relation to work done/etc is difficult, but it's something that feels like it can be worked out. Pensions used to be a thing, and they're kind of like that. > The bad thing in this industry is work/life balance, we just need to fix that. Although the pay in some countries are atrocious, I'd say that software engineers in most western countries are fine. Weird, I think that work/life balance for software is actually really good -- you're not going to find much work/life balance (or companies that even pretend to care about that) in the blue collar job market. The ability to up and move with transferable skills is really remarkable in tech as well... In short I agree with you that tech has it good, but I don't think it makes sense to restrict that "good" based on the "bad" of other fields -- we don't need to be equal. If workers are getting exploited outside of tech, let's make them less exploited and get them what they're worth -- if tech workers are exploited let's get them what they're worth. The question of how to determine that worth is the big difference we're at loggerheads about I think, and I don't think it makes sense to judge by amount of "work" done. That very idea is rooted in some sort of moralistic argument that work/expenditure is good/virtuous/worth being paid for, and I don't think that's a shared value. Labor is given meaning by the fruit it produces, and that's how I'm trying to judge the value of labor -- the value it produces (whether immediately or down the line) -- royalties do that rather well compared to our current system.