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I was about to say, this is the most chilling HN sentence I’ve ever read. The totality of our existence from 8-5 is not owed to someone who profits from our lab

I was about to say, this is the most chilling HN sentence I’ve ever read. The totality of our existence from 8-5 is not owed to someone who profits from our labor and skills because they got lucky with some seed money or an inheritance a decade ago. That’s just the divine right of kings with extra steps.

eric4smith 5y ago
Wow. Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders. When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??
- _jal 5y ago
  > When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits Christ, this Superhero CEO bullshit has to stop. It is beyond absurd. Is the multi-hundred X income multiplier really insufficient, they need their egos stroked constantly, too? I have co-founded a startup, and otherwise have worked at them for almost the entirety of my adult life. I know how much work, risk, and pain is involved. But this apparent need for Glorification of the Supremely Worthy Job Creator nonsense is just cultish and gross.
  - aerosmile 5y ago
    I wouldn't have chosen the term noble either, but remember there are some non-native English speakers here. Fundamentally, people don't start companies for social status reasons - if anything, social status is the reason not to quit your comfy executive job at a large tech company and instead have to work out of a co-working space. And since your own description of your professional career implies that your startup didn't make you a billionaire, I really don't understand why it was necessary to bring up the "multi-hundred X income multiplier" fallacy.
  - andreilys 5y ago
    Society would be better off glorifying entrepreneurs than instagram celebrities. Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Instagram celebrities are just entrepreneurs of fame. Many have made entire fortunes by monetizing social media exposure.
      - andreilys 5y ago
        Sure and I’d rather society glorify those who decide to start things - mom & pop shops, new products, services, etc. than someone who takes photos of themselves to create an online persona that they go on to monetize.
        Apocryphon 5y ago
        There's often a thin line. A lot of these influencers end up peddling products or services of their own- after achieving fame, it's best to diversify one's business. And the online persona do at the very least provide a service to the public: entertainment.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      Hey now, those Instagram celebrities are "influencers". They're entrepreneurs too. I don't think either is particularly worthy of "glorification". I'd reserve glory purely for people who help other people without much monetary reward.
      - andreilys 5y ago
        So someone like Henry Ford who helped popularize cars gets no glory, but someone who dedicates their life to running an orphanage for free does? Sure the latter is important, and we should talk about them too. But civilization progresses due to risk-takers like Ford who spot an opportunity and dogmatically pursue it.
- astrognomy 5y ago
  > noble Telling that you'd use that term. Not all founders work hard. Not all founders are revolutionary. They are not lords and do not deserve worship. Altruism deserves praise. Employment deserves payment.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    There are multiple meanings to the word noble, and you have chosen one that makes little sense in the context of the rest of the comment. It is hard to read this as anything other than a bad faith argument.
- triceratops 5y ago
  When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? The ideal business would employ zero people, have zero expenses, and make a 100% profit margin. From a purely business perspective, every job created is an inefficiency. No one sets out to create jobs when they start a business. They set out to make money and create products or services of value - in that order. Employing people is an unfortunate side-effect of that.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? When it stops getting politicians elected. No one wants to vote for the person who assures them they will do everything in their power to put them out of work and transfer their value directly to shareholders.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well. The failure of collective markets stems from nobody has figured out how to get people to stop acting selfishly.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well The free market does not encourage pursuing action where the benefits accrue to people outside of the transaction, but it does encourage actions where the harms are so externalized. A hypothetical optimally regulated market systems with Pigovian taxes and subsidies to internalize externalities would in theory have the effect that pursuit of private gain would at least not be adverse to the common interest, but that’s very far from a “free market”.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Internalizing the externalities via taxation is very much a free market approach.
- 8note 5y ago
  Makes you wonder why all of these fancy tech businesses show up in California, as opposed to Niger. If all you need is this hard work, surely the wealthy businesses would be distributed all around the world
  - xallarap 5y ago
    Wanna make a deepdive into cultural aspects of the stanford prison experiment? Nah, just watch tokyo gore police.
steverb 5y ago
Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money. They may tolerate (and even enjoy) your personal quirks and causes, but they are paying you to get things done that they don't have the time or skill to do themselves. [Edit: Accidentally left ou a letter]
- Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
  > Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money. But if everybody is woke (and that is the case given that we are talking about tech and California) then the company has no choice but to accept wokeness because the money becomes a non factor if it can't be offered to somebody who is not woke . The supply of non woke workers just isn't there. Employees will keep wokeing about until they are replaced with non woke workers at the same price point or slight premium due to the efficiency gained by not having political discussions on the job
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    The supply of non woke workers just isn't there The responses to the Basecamp and Coinbase announcements were equally mixed between people who wanted to avoid them, and people who want to seek them out. There are plenty of people who want work to be about working together on work. I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not non-work.
    - cgrealy 5y ago
      > I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not non-work. Sure, if you’re a white, middle-aged, straight, cis male (speaking as one myself). But for other people, it’s not as easy to “leave your politics at home”, especially if you’re politics are “can I please be paid fairly in comparison to other workers” or “sorry, I’m late for work, the police unnecessarily stopped me because of my race” or even “I can’t get a job at this company because of my sexuality”. The fact is, the world is changing and companies have to change with it. It’s happened before (women in the workplace for example) and it’s going to keep happening. Everything is political. Even saying you don’t have a position is tacit endorsement of the status quo. Obviously, there are reasonable limits and expected standards of behaviour. It’s not ok to harass your coworkers about a political cause and it shouldn’t impact your ability to do your job. But we are all going to have to deal with it.
BurningFrog 5y ago
This is the kind of insanely exaggerated catastrophizing I never want to debate in the workplace. I have work to do!
ffggvv 5y ago
no you get this magical thing called a salary for your work. your compensation isnt woke virtue signaling. they arent "profiting off your labor because they got lucky on some seed money". youre profiting off their ingenuity and idea. If many other entrepreneurs didnt do this, you wouldnt have a job because they wouldnt be available. and most people dont have the risk appetite to do something like that. so no youre not being exploited by them. youre leeching off their idea and should realize who depends on whom.
- smegger001 5y ago
  while I agree in principle I would say leeching is a bit strong, more a symbiotic less zero sum.
- isaacremuant 5y ago
  I love how you don't think that many of us have worked both freelance and "employed" jobs. I have value and most people here probably do as well. How do I know that? Because I can make others earn money by solving their problems through different means (usually technological in nature).
smegger001 5y ago
It is not "divine right of king" by any stretch of the imagination. It is a contract for exchange of service between to parties. Because you agreed to exchange their money for your labor. During that time you are obligated to do what you are agreed to be paid to do under the conditions agreed to at time of hire. And yes they are owed your skills because they are paying you for them, that is how any exchange of services work. If you don't provide them you are not giving them what they are paying you for.
- galactus 5y ago
  You are right, we are selling our labour. But the idea that that means that we are selling our _time_ is a recent development in human history. Most societies in the past would have a hard time even understanding the idea that one's time could belong to your employer, es explained by David Graeber in "bullshit jobs"
  - iamgopal 5y ago
    Time is easy to measure. It could well be line of code or Completion of work, but that will quickly become highly subjective. If someone finds a better way to measure and pay for the software engineers, it could open plethora of possibilities.
  - mlloyd 5y ago
    I honestly don't think this would be a problem if people spent their time advocating on internet message boards vs internal corporate message boards - even on the clock. This isn't about selling time, it's about what's the appropriate place and audience for certain types of discussion. In practically every job I've ever had, some of the conversations that folks are advocating to continue would have gotten me first warned and then fired. But I've never worked for a 'tech' company per se, just in technology. I guess it could be different in SV but then that's probably the issue. Most of the country just doesn't operate this way and finds this kinda weird.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    It seems to me that past societies would have a very good understanding about the idea that one's time could belong to your employer as many of them were (and some had) full-time live-in servants, or season-long farm labor contracts for landless laborers, or serfdom/rent situations with a duty to work x days/season to cultivate the landlord's land instead of theirs, or indentured servitude or even slavery, or any other such relationships. Before industrial age it might be weird for the time of a free middle-class man to belong to an employer, but there weren't that many such men.
Spooky23 5y ago
People have been brainwashed by this type of attitude for years. I think people bringing their politics into the workplace are more interested in attracting attention than anything else. But the obsequious worship of the boss is just gross.

eric4smith 5y ago

Wow. Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders. When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??

_jal 5y ago
> When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits Christ, this Superhero CEO bullshit has to stop. It is beyond absurd. Is the multi-hundred X income multiplier really insufficient, they need their egos stroked constantly, too? I have co-founded a startup, and otherwise have worked at them for almost the entirety of my adult life. I know how much work, risk, and pain is involved. But this apparent need for Glorification of the Supremely Worthy Job Creator nonsense is just cultish and gross.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  I wouldn't have chosen the term noble either, but remember there are some non-native English speakers here. Fundamentally, people don't start companies for social status reasons - if anything, social status is the reason not to quit your comfy executive job at a large tech company and instead have to work out of a co-working space. And since your own description of your professional career implies that your startup didn't make you a billionaire, I really don't understand why it was necessary to bring up the "multi-hundred X income multiplier" fallacy.
- andreilys 5y ago
  Society would be better off glorifying entrepreneurs than instagram celebrities. Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Instagram celebrities are just entrepreneurs of fame. Many have made entire fortunes by monetizing social media exposure.
    - andreilys 5y ago
      Sure and I’d rather society glorify those who decide to start things - mom & pop shops, new products, services, etc. than someone who takes photos of themselves to create an online persona that they go on to monetize.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
        There's often a thin line. A lot of these influencers end up peddling products or services of their own- after achieving fame, it's best to diversify one's business. And the online persona do at the very least provide a service to the public: entertainment.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    Hey now, those Instagram celebrities are "influencers". They're entrepreneurs too. I don't think either is particularly worthy of "glorification". I'd reserve glory purely for people who help other people without much monetary reward.
    - andreilys 5y ago
      So someone like Henry Ford who helped popularize cars gets no glory, but someone who dedicates their life to running an orphanage for free does? Sure the latter is important, and we should talk about them too. But civilization progresses due to risk-takers like Ford who spot an opportunity and dogmatically pursue it.
astrognomy 5y ago
> noble Telling that you'd use that term. Not all founders work hard. Not all founders are revolutionary. They are not lords and do not deserve worship. Altruism deserves praise. Employment deserves payment.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  There are multiple meanings to the word noble, and you have chosen one that makes little sense in the context of the rest of the comment. It is hard to read this as anything other than a bad faith argument.
triceratops 5y ago
When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? The ideal business would employ zero people, have zero expenses, and make a 100% profit margin. From a purely business perspective, every job created is an inefficiency. No one sets out to create jobs when they start a business. They set out to make money and create products or services of value - in that order. Employing people is an unfortunate side-effect of that.
- krapp 5y ago
  >When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? When it stops getting politicians elected. No one wants to vote for the person who assures them they will do everything in their power to put them out of work and transfer their value directly to shareholders.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well. The failure of collective markets stems from nobody has figured out how to get people to stop acting selfishly.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well The free market does not encourage pursuing action where the benefits accrue to people outside of the transaction, but it does encourage actions where the harms are so externalized. A hypothetical optimally regulated market systems with Pigovian taxes and subsidies to internalize externalities would in theory have the effect that pursuit of private gain would at least not be adverse to the common interest, but that’s very far from a “free market”.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Internalizing the externalities via taxation is very much a free market approach.
8note 5y ago
Makes you wonder why all of these fancy tech businesses show up in California, as opposed to Niger. If all you need is this hard work, surely the wealthy businesses would be distributed all around the world
- xallarap 5y ago
  Wanna make a deepdive into cultural aspects of the stanford prison experiment? Nah, just watch tokyo gore police.

steverb 5y ago

Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money. They may tolerate (and even enjoy) your personal quirks and causes, but they are paying you to get things done that they don't have the time or skill to do themselves. [Edit: Accidentally left ou a letter]

Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
> Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money. But if everybody is woke (and that is the case given that we are talking about tech and California) then the company has no choice but to accept wokeness because the money becomes a non factor if it can't be offered to somebody who is not woke . The supply of non woke workers just isn't there. Employees will keep wokeing about until they are replaced with non woke workers at the same price point or slight premium due to the efficiency gained by not having political discussions on the job
- nitrogen 5y ago
  The supply of non woke workers just isn't there The responses to the Basecamp and Coinbase announcements were equally mixed between people who wanted to avoid them, and people who want to seek them out. There are plenty of people who want work to be about working together on work. I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not non-work.
  - cgrealy 5y ago
    > I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not non-work. Sure, if you’re a white, middle-aged, straight, cis male (speaking as one myself). But for other people, it’s not as easy to “leave your politics at home”, especially if you’re politics are “can I please be paid fairly in comparison to other workers” or “sorry, I’m late for work, the police unnecessarily stopped me because of my race” or even “I can’t get a job at this company because of my sexuality”. The fact is, the world is changing and companies have to change with it. It’s happened before (women in the workplace for example) and it’s going to keep happening. Everything is political. Even saying you don’t have a position is tacit endorsement of the status quo. Obviously, there are reasonable limits and expected standards of behaviour. It’s not ok to harass your coworkers about a political cause and it shouldn’t impact your ability to do your job. But we are all going to have to deal with it.

BurningFrog 5y ago

This is the kind of insanely exaggerated catastrophizing I never want to debate in the workplace. I have work to do!

ffggvv 5y ago

no you get this magical thing called a salary for your work. your compensation isnt woke virtue signaling. they arent "profiting off your labor because they got lucky on some seed money". youre profiting off their ingenuity and idea. If many other entrepreneurs didnt do this, you wouldnt have a job because they wouldnt be available. and most people dont have the risk appetite to do something like that. so no youre not being exploited by them. youre leeching off their idea and should realize who depends on whom.

smegger001 5y ago
while I agree in principle I would say leeching is a bit strong, more a symbiotic less zero sum.
isaacremuant 5y ago
I love how you don't think that many of us have worked both freelance and "employed" jobs. I have value and most people here probably do as well. How do I know that? Because I can make others earn money by solving their problems through different means (usually technological in nature).

smegger001 5y ago

It is not "divine right of king" by any stretch of the imagination. It is a contract for exchange of service between to parties. Because you agreed to exchange their money for your labor. During that time you are obligated to do what you are agreed to be paid to do under the conditions agreed to at time of hire. And yes they are owed your skills because they are paying you for them, that is how any exchange of services work. If you don't provide them you are not giving them what they are paying you for.

galactus 5y ago
You are right, we are selling our labour. But the idea that that means that we are selling our _time_ is a recent development in human history. Most societies in the past would have a hard time even understanding the idea that one's time could belong to your employer, es explained by David Graeber in "bullshit jobs"
- iamgopal 5y ago
  Time is easy to measure. It could well be line of code or Completion of work, but that will quickly become highly subjective. If someone finds a better way to measure and pay for the software engineers, it could open plethora of possibilities.
- mlloyd 5y ago
  I honestly don't think this would be a problem if people spent their time advocating on internet message boards vs internal corporate message boards - even on the clock. This isn't about selling time, it's about what's the appropriate place and audience for certain types of discussion. In practically every job I've ever had, some of the conversations that folks are advocating to continue would have gotten me first warned and then fired. But I've never worked for a 'tech' company per se, just in technology. I guess it could be different in SV but then that's probably the issue. Most of the country just doesn't operate this way and finds this kinda weird.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  It seems to me that past societies would have a very good understanding about the idea that one's time could belong to your employer as many of them were (and some had) full-time live-in servants, or season-long farm labor contracts for landless laborers, or serfdom/rent situations with a duty to work x days/season to cultivate the landlord's land instead of theirs, or indentured servitude or even slavery, or any other such relationships. Before industrial age it might be weird for the time of a free middle-class man to belong to an employer, but there weren't that many such men.

Spooky23 5y ago

People have been brainwashed by this type of attitude for years. I think people bringing their politics into the workplace are more interested in attracting attention than anything else. But the obsequious worship of the boss is just gross.