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From the other side of the coin. Your employer is free loading off of you. You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates. If

From the other side of the coin. Your employer is free loading off of you. You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates. If your work generates 100 dollars... you're paid 10. So essentially your employer is fucking you and any other attitude other than to treat the situation for what it is, is delusional. Don't call us 'people'. You're the one that doesn't get it. Now I'm not saying you need to freeload. But I do what I'm paid to do because this is a business transaction that favors the employer. After I'm paid, I fuck off, because I just got shafted by my employer and I owe him nothing until he can pay me again. My work is only good to the point where my employer is willing to continue paying me.

alexashka 5y ago
I don't employ anyone. I'm not coming from a place of a disgruntled employer complaining about the workers being 'lazy' or whatever. I'm coming from a place of what the blog talks about - someone who came in starry eyed doing good work, only to find out you won't get paid 3x for doing 3x the work relative to everyone else, but instead they'll try to get you to do 4x the work for a 10% yearly bonus, until you drop dead of exhaustion. Oh, and your co-workers will hate your guts and try to undermine you. Nice system, right? That's the dynamic I'm addressing - if you're enthusiastic and starry eyed and think people are out there wanting to change the world for the better or at least take a modicum of pride in their work - be very careful, the real world is not like that, at all.
- ianbutler 5y ago
  For what it's worth I've only experienced this long term in corporations. Small companies that are actually still in the prime of producing and growth can't afford that with everyone and expect to survive. If it's systemic the startup just fails after meandering for a little bit. I derive a little satisfaction from that fact. It starts to tilt after you've gotten a couple hundred employees and people can hide more.
  - alexashka 5y ago
    Small companies have a different problem. I figure there are about 1 in 10,000, if not 100,000 software devs that have the brains and fortitude to eat shit for 4-5 years, solving hard problems. Not only do start-ups normally not have 4-5 years, but they don't even try to solve hard problems - they mostly just try to solve some trivial bullshit to exploit a legal loophole or insert themselves as middlemen in a corporate/legal swamp.
    - ianbutler 5y ago
      > Not only do start-ups normally not have 4-5 years, but they don't even try to solve hard problems - they mostly just try to solve some trivial bullshit to exploit a legal loophole or insert themselves as middlemen in a corporate/legal swamp. I don't really agree with that, the time horizon on a successful startup, one that's acquired or goes public, is 7-10 years. I also don't agree with the class of problems. Like everything there's tiers. C tier player get's a C tier company with C tier problems. Naturally there's more C tier people than A tier, but that's not an indictment specific or by any stretch unique to startups. Edit: Honestly, the prevalence of easy capital means bullshit like you say stands out more but I'm not sure if a lot of companies like that are the winning bet for another like Google or whatever. They're over pronounced for sure but the moment venture capital stops having so much money floating around they'll die out imo. It does mean you have to do a little more work to find the interesting ones though.
      - alexashka 5y ago
        I thought about it a bit more - I was unfair to start-ups. It's not that start-ups largely solve trivial problems - it's that humans largely solve trivial problems. There are factors that make start-ups more likely to solve trivial problems vs say, a research institute, but it almost doesn't matter in the scheme of things. There are exceptions - they come once every few decades, per industry, give or take. Then the millions of regular people take it and do what they can't help but do :)
        5y ago
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  I think I misinterpreted your post. We're talking about the same thing.
ironmagma 5y ago
> You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates There are organizations that don't do this. They are called nonprofits. Why don't people just work for nonprofits all the time? Because they are less stable and there is less upward mobility. So there's something that is actually bought by this extractive capitalism, and we sign up for it when we sign up to work at for-profit companies. It's hard to call it freeloading off of me, when I benefit from this arrangement.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  Nobody is promoting communism here. But capitalism is imperfect in the sense that it's unfair. The unfairness motivates productivity. It's the best system but it is still highly flawed. Wealth inequality is one of the major consequences of capitalism that we haven't quite figured out how to tame. It is freeloading in every sense of the word. You pay a slave a dime for work that generates you hundreds of dollars the slave still benefits, but you are still freeloading even if the slave is benefiting by a ten cents. It's how things are, I'm not calling for a better system. But I'm not so stupid as to sell 100% of my loyalty to a company that in the end is shafting me.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    You have a very different definition of freeloading. The slave situation is totally incomparable on account of how the slave cannot quit aside from by dying. > It is freeloading in every sense of the word. Every sense, except the dictionary definition, is what you meant, I take it? "Freeload - take advantage of other people's generosity without giving anything in return." Giving ten cents is not the same thing as not giving anything. And if an employer gave me ten cents for a day of work, I would quit and go elsewhere as would every other free person in America. As for capitalism being unfair, that's basically the point of capitalism, in the essence that "unfair" means "not everyone is compensated the same."
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      Oh my bad. Throw a penny at the employees face and it's no longer freeloading. This isn't freeloading. Maybe a better term is "fucking over". Employers fuck people over, they don't freeload off of them. My bad. >As for capitalism being unfair, that's basically the point of capitalism, in the essence that "unfair" means "not everyone is compensated the same." Why you're repeating something I stated is beyond me. I said capitalism is unfair. You say that being unfair is the "point" of capitalism. We're saying the same thing. Does the word "point" change the nature of what I'm saying? No.

alexashka 5y ago

I don't employ anyone. I'm not coming from a place of a disgruntled employer complaining about the workers being 'lazy' or whatever. I'm coming from a place of what the blog talks about - someone who came in starry eyed doing good work, only to find out you won't get paid 3x for doing 3x the work relative to everyone else, but instead they'll try to get you to do 4x the work for a 10% yearly bonus, until you drop dead of exhaustion. Oh, and your co-workers will hate your guts and try to undermine you. Nice system, right? That's the dynamic I'm addressing - if you're enthusiastic and starry eyed and think people are out there wanting to change the world for the better or at least take a modicum of pride in their work - be very careful, the real world is not like that, at all.

ianbutler 5y ago
For what it's worth I've only experienced this long term in corporations. Small companies that are actually still in the prime of producing and growth can't afford that with everyone and expect to survive. If it's systemic the startup just fails after meandering for a little bit. I derive a little satisfaction from that fact. It starts to tilt after you've gotten a couple hundred employees and people can hide more.
- alexashka 5y ago
  Small companies have a different problem. I figure there are about 1 in 10,000, if not 100,000 software devs that have the brains and fortitude to eat shit for 4-5 years, solving hard problems. Not only do start-ups normally not have 4-5 years, but they don't even try to solve hard problems - they mostly just try to solve some trivial bullshit to exploit a legal loophole or insert themselves as middlemen in a corporate/legal swamp.
  - ianbutler 5y ago
    > Not only do start-ups normally not have 4-5 years, but they don't even try to solve hard problems - they mostly just try to solve some trivial bullshit to exploit a legal loophole or insert themselves as middlemen in a corporate/legal swamp. I don't really agree with that, the time horizon on a successful startup, one that's acquired or goes public, is 7-10 years. I also don't agree with the class of problems. Like everything there's tiers. C tier player get's a C tier company with C tier problems. Naturally there's more C tier people than A tier, but that's not an indictment specific or by any stretch unique to startups. Edit: Honestly, the prevalence of easy capital means bullshit like you say stands out more but I'm not sure if a lot of companies like that are the winning bet for another like Google or whatever. They're over pronounced for sure but the moment venture capital stops having so much money floating around they'll die out imo. It does mean you have to do a little more work to find the interesting ones though.
    - alexashka 5y ago
      I thought about it a bit more - I was unfair to start-ups. It's not that start-ups largely solve trivial problems - it's that humans largely solve trivial problems. There are factors that make start-ups more likely to solve trivial problems vs say, a research institute, but it almost doesn't matter in the scheme of things. There are exceptions - they come once every few decades, per industry, give or take. Then the millions of regular people take it and do what they can't help but do :)
      - 5y ago
deltaonefour 5y ago
I think I misinterpreted your post. We're talking about the same thing.

ironmagma 5y ago

> You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates There are organizations that don't do this. They are called nonprofits. Why don't people just work for nonprofits all the time? Because they are less stable and there is less upward mobility. So there's something that is actually bought by this extractive capitalism, and we sign up for it when we sign up to work at for-profit companies. It's hard to call it freeloading off of me, when I benefit from this arrangement.

deltaonefour 5y ago
Nobody is promoting communism here. But capitalism is imperfect in the sense that it's unfair. The unfairness motivates productivity. It's the best system but it is still highly flawed. Wealth inequality is one of the major consequences of capitalism that we haven't quite figured out how to tame. It is freeloading in every sense of the word. You pay a slave a dime for work that generates you hundreds of dollars the slave still benefits, but you are still freeloading even if the slave is benefiting by a ten cents. It's how things are, I'm not calling for a better system. But I'm not so stupid as to sell 100% of my loyalty to a company that in the end is shafting me.
- ironmagma 5y ago
  You have a very different definition of freeloading. The slave situation is totally incomparable on account of how the slave cannot quit aside from by dying. > It is freeloading in every sense of the word. Every sense, except the dictionary definition, is what you meant, I take it? "Freeload - take advantage of other people's generosity without giving anything in return." Giving ten cents is not the same thing as not giving anything. And if an employer gave me ten cents for a day of work, I would quit and go elsewhere as would every other free person in America. As for capitalism being unfair, that's basically the point of capitalism, in the essence that "unfair" means "not everyone is compensated the same."
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    Oh my bad. Throw a penny at the employees face and it's no longer freeloading. This isn't freeloading. Maybe a better term is "fucking over". Employers fuck people over, they don't freeload off of them. My bad. >As for capitalism being unfair, that's basically the point of capitalism, in the essence that "unfair" means "not everyone is compensated the same." Why you're repeating something I stated is beyond me. I said capitalism is unfair. You say that being unfair is the "point" of capitalism. We're saying the same thing. Does the word "point" change the nature of what I'm saying? No.