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You accuse others of rationalizing these collective behaviors and end up sounding like an apologist. The fact is that companies engage and enable each other to

You accuse others of rationalizing these collective behaviors and end up sounding like an apologist. The fact is that companies engage and enable each other to perpetuate information asymmetries. They run me through the ringer of hours of take-home projects, algorithm tests, whiteboarding, phone screens, video calls, panel interviews, all in an effort to widen the information asymmetry. We simply ask for companies to reveal what they are willing to pay before wasting our time with bullshit. A real answer is for software engineers and other knowledge workers to unionize. It's very clear that these companies are willing and able to approach employment relationships asymmetrically. Historically, the answer has been collective bargaining. It took decades for remote work to be "approved" by these companies, and it's clear that reasoning was that the status quo was to the benefit of the companies. I relish imagining all of these outspoken techy leftists actually putting up and making moves that align with addressing the true center of inequities: economic relationships. I know it's wishful thinking. It's a lot easier to rail against Netflix content and Facebook algorithms than it is to engage in real radical politics.

aerosmile 5y ago
> You accuse others of rationalizing these collective behaviors and end up sounding like an apologist. Not true - I am not saying that the market cannot be whipped into shape. What I am saying is it cannot be done by someone who doesn't understand the market. It sounds you have a background in engineering - would you let a PR person tell you how to do your work? Obviously not. Well, Jessie Danielson is about as close to recruiting as a PR person is to coding (look up her bio and ask yourself what she's done outside of politics). Why trust that she knows how recruiting should work?
- nefitty 5y ago
  I could have clarified. I did not assume that you are an apologist, just that it's easy to construct an apologia from your points. I understand what you mean in regards to a market understanding. I think our comments compliment each other. That includes a lack of faith of government interventions in those types of atomic market relationships. I can't suss out your political leaning. Either my bias gives me tunnel vision or the only viable option is collective bargaining.
  - aerosmile 5y ago
    I don't have a political leaning - in the US, everything is either black or white (with very few shades of grey). In most other countries, the governments are formed through coalitions, and you get a much higher diversity of political flavors. I could find something good about most political parties, and would like to cherry pick those ideas into a package that you could no longer attach to any one single party. As far as collective bargaining goes, I first lived in a communist country, then in a social democracy, and now in the US. I think it could work, but I have never seen it implemented well. My main concern is that China will kick everyone's ass, and the friction that collective bargaining introduces into a system will make it more difficult to defend against that scenario.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Your (very naive sounding and almost certainly wrong) assumption here is that Danielson wrote this law without ever sourcing input from people who do understand the market. Generally speaking, that's how politics works. She may ultimately have sided with experts who disagree with you about how the market will/would/should function (as I'm sure some do), but like the idea that she sat down and typed out this bill is ridiculous. If you applied this ideal generally, you get a really counterintuitive legislative system ("you must elect a medical doctor before any laws regarding medicine can be passed", "only Google and Facebook and Amazon are experts in consumer advertising, so only elected ex-employees can propose consumer privacy legislation"), so it's probably not a very good one.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    > Generally speaking, that's how politics works. Based on many of the outputs of the system, I can believe that. However, based on context of your post, I think you intended to include a negating word in that sentence.

aerosmile 5y ago

> You accuse others of rationalizing these collective behaviors and end up sounding like an apologist. Not true - I am not saying that the market cannot be whipped into shape. What I am saying is it cannot be done by someone who doesn't understand the market. It sounds you have a background in engineering - would you let a PR person tell you how to do your work? Obviously not. Well, Jessie Danielson is about as close to recruiting as a PR person is to coding (look up her bio and ask yourself what she's done outside of politics). Why trust that she knows how recruiting should work?

nefitty 5y ago
I could have clarified. I did not assume that you are an apologist, just that it's easy to construct an apologia from your points. I understand what you mean in regards to a market understanding. I think our comments compliment each other. That includes a lack of faith of government interventions in those types of atomic market relationships. I can't suss out your political leaning. Either my bias gives me tunnel vision or the only viable option is collective bargaining.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  I don't have a political leaning - in the US, everything is either black or white (with very few shades of grey). In most other countries, the governments are formed through coalitions, and you get a much higher diversity of political flavors. I could find something good about most political parties, and would like to cherry pick those ideas into a package that you could no longer attach to any one single party. As far as collective bargaining goes, I first lived in a communist country, then in a social democracy, and now in the US. I think it could work, but I have never seen it implemented well. My main concern is that China will kick everyone's ass, and the friction that collective bargaining introduces into a system will make it more difficult to defend against that scenario.
joshuamorton 5y ago
Your (very naive sounding and almost certainly wrong) assumption here is that Danielson wrote this law without ever sourcing input from people who do understand the market. Generally speaking, that's how politics works. She may ultimately have sided with experts who disagree with you about how the market will/would/should function (as I'm sure some do), but like the idea that she sat down and typed out this bill is ridiculous. If you applied this ideal generally, you get a really counterintuitive legislative system ("you must elect a medical doctor before any laws regarding medicine can be passed", "only Google and Facebook and Amazon are experts in consumer advertising, so only elected ex-employees can propose consumer privacy legislation"), so it's probably not a very good one.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  > Generally speaking, that's how politics works. Based on many of the outputs of the system, I can believe that. However, based on context of your post, I think you intended to include a negating word in that sentence.