7 ms·

Parasitic implies one party (implied the employee?) is left worse off than otherwise. If these jobs are being accepted normally it's because the local offers ar

Parasitic implies one party (implied the employee?) is left worse off than otherwise. If these jobs are being accepted normally it's because the local offers are worse and the developer is not good/doesn't want to deal with the international business side (inc. finding clients, negotiating, etc). So it seems that in a free-ish market, this relationship would be strongly symbiotic, right? Interestingly in Japan they have "Key Money" and "Lock Change fee", which are two different non-refundable BS fees and they confused me initially. The key money also depends by region, with Kansai having it almost everywhere and in other areas "it depends".

hardwaresofton 5y ago
> Parasitic implies one party (implied the employee?) is left worse off than otherwise. If these jobs are being accepted normally it's because the local offers are worse and the developer is not good/doesn't want to deal with the international business side (inc. finding clients, negotiating, etc). So it seems that in a free-ish market, this relationship would be strongly symbiotic, right? It's hard to guarantee that the labor side wouldn't have been able to land the contract without the labor re-seller, so it's up to your own personal bias to see this as a service or as predatory. Could go either way but on a case by case basis this is subjective in my opinion. There's not much magic here (well if there is, it can vary greatly), the contracting agencies are middlemen reselling labor that is in various states of compatibility to the company purchasing the labor. Perfectly compatible market actors could be using middlemen when they don't need to, and middlemen are incentivized to make this the case. The usual questions of whether middlemen are good or bad apply and it's not as simple as it being strongly parasitic or strongly symbiotic in any case, it's more like a spectrum which is why I described it as such. A bit of anecdata: I know someone who worked for a contracting firm in NYC that hired Japanese developers (and relocated them) to work in the American market and paid them Japanese wages to work at American companies. The Japanese developers were always happy at first because they were blissfully ignorant and didn't know what the company actually charged. Just because the host isn't aware of the parasite doesn't mean it's not being adversely affected -- some hosts just live severely degraded lives with no idea that they're being drained. It's possible to take the stance that labor is simply paying for imperfect knowledge/market conditions but by that logic exploitation might as well not exist, and if that's the argument then we probably disagree on fundamental grounds about lots of things. > Interestingly in Japan they have "Key Money" and "Lock Change fee", which are two different non-refundable BS fees and they confused me initially. The key money also depends by region, with Kansai having it almost everywhere and in other areas "it depends". Sure, it's possible that the region a person wants to live in does not have Key Money in Japan, but I wouldn't count that a likely outcome. ~55% of apartments in Tokyo look to require Key Money[0], but I'd argue that even if it's not required, most first and maybe second time renters in Japan will pay it, thinking it's just a cost of doing business. All that changes in the second or third transaction ins knowledge on the renter's part. [0]: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-percentage-of-apartments-in-japan-do-not-require-a-deposit-and-key-money/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-percentage-of-a...
glandium 5y ago
Note that "key money" is a "translation" of 礼金, which literally means "gratitude money" and has nothing to do with keys. That doesn't make it less bullshit, but it makes it clearly unrelated to lock change fees.

hardwaresofton 5y ago

> Parasitic implies one party (implied the employee?) is left worse off than otherwise. If these jobs are being accepted normally it's because the local offers are worse and the developer is not good/doesn't want to deal with the international business side (inc. finding clients, negotiating, etc). So it seems that in a free-ish market, this relationship would be strongly symbiotic, right? It's hard to guarantee that the labor side wouldn't have been able to land the contract without the labor re-seller, so it's up to your own personal bias to see this as a service or as predatory. Could go either way but on a case by case basis this is subjective in my opinion. There's not much magic here (well if there is, it can vary greatly), the contracting agencies are middlemen reselling labor that is in various states of compatibility to the company purchasing the labor. Perfectly compatible market actors could be using middlemen when they don't need to, and middlemen are incentivized to make this the case. The usual questions of whether middlemen are good or bad apply and it's not as simple as it being strongly parasitic or strongly symbiotic in any case, it's more like a spectrum which is why I described it as such. A bit of anecdata: I know someone who worked for a contracting firm in NYC that hired Japanese developers (and relocated them) to work in the American market and paid them Japanese wages to work at American companies. The Japanese developers were always happy at first because they were blissfully ignorant and didn't know what the company actually charged. Just because the host isn't aware of the parasite doesn't mean it's not being adversely affected -- some hosts just live severely degraded lives with no idea that they're being drained. It's possible to take the stance that labor is simply paying for imperfect knowledge/market conditions but by that logic exploitation might as well not exist, and if that's the argument then we probably disagree on fundamental grounds about lots of things. > Interestingly in Japan they have "Key Money" and "Lock Change fee", which are two different non-refundable BS fees and they confused me initially. The key money also depends by region, with Kansai having it almost everywhere and in other areas "it depends". Sure, it's possible that the region a person wants to live in does not have Key Money in Japan, but I wouldn't count that a likely outcome. ~55% of apartments in Tokyo look to require Key Money[0], but I'd argue that even if it's not required, most first and maybe second time renters in Japan will pay it, thinking it's just a cost of doing business. All that changes in the second or third transaction ins knowledge on the renter's part. [0]: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-percentage-of-apartments-in-japan-do-not-require-a-deposit-and-key-money/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-percentage-of-a...

glandium 5y ago

Note that "key money" is a "translation" of 礼金, which literally means "gratitude money" and has nothing to do with keys. That doesn't make it less bullshit, but it makes it clearly unrelated to lock change fees.