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This statement: >> Productivity remains unrelated to pay, labour power is the real decider. Is in stark contrast to your next one: >> If you're irreplaceable

This statement: >> Productivity remains unrelated to pay, labour power is the real decider. Is in stark contrast to your next one: >> If you're irreplaceable, you can demand high wages. Extremely productive people carry high replacement costs. Very productive individuals have labor power. Whether they choose to band together and use it like a guild or a union is a separate matter entirely.

Dylan16807 4y ago
Being irreplaceable is very different from high productivity. Being more productive than your peers barely gets you anything in most jobs.
- icelancer 4y ago
  This is simply not true in technical fields, specifically software development. The most productive developers have high labor mobility and high rates of pay. If you don't think so, try employing the industry's most productive developers and see how cheap (or not) it is.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    If you're 50% more productive than someone else, that's a lot of productivity, but it's very hard to measure in a software development situation. I'm not really talking about the top handful of people.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  No, it is productivity. You're talking about how hard it is to measure productivity in some jobs. Not whether or not productivity is valuable.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Being replaceable is mostly about what special things you can do. If you do lots of quality work, but most potential hires can do the same thing slower, then you are productive but easy to replace. (A reasonable amount slower, not a ridiculous factor.)
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Can you give an example of being irrepleacable?
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        At the extreme end, being the only one that knows how some machine works, or how some code works. Or this guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/nrnf5j/part_1_of_2_an_absolute_epic_entitled_ahole_gets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/nrnf... At the less extreme end it's having a bunch of internal knowledge that isn't documented and is important to keeping things going. Or having business skills that whoever is in charge of hiring doesn't know how to hire for. Or knowing a programming language or framework that's fussy to learn and only 2% of your normal hiring pool knows. Very different from just being fast.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        You are describing productivity in each case. I think you could reduce each example you give to speed, as things will slow down until a replacement is eventually found, but it's simpler to call it productivity.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        Let me put it this way. The guy I linked has a very niche skill. And he talked about bringing in a Bulgarian with a similar but different very niche skill. Neither one of those is more productive than the other. But neither one can be replaced with the other. That's an irreplaceability advantage, without a productivity advantage. And you might find that a good bricklayer is actually more productive, but he can be replaced pretty easily with a different bricklayer. Those niche guys would be in extreme demand even if they slowed down 3x, because there is no way to replace them. Here's a hypothetical: You're in charge of purchasing supplies for making a machine. Then 9 other people build it. The whole team is pretty productive, but you think it's fair to say you do 10% of the work. Then it turns out some critical part can only be bought by you. You've become irreplaceable, but it's hard to argue that your productivity has changed. Then you decide to demand an assistant since you're irreplaceable. You start pushing more and more of your purchasing work onto your assistant, until you're only handling a couple products and you come in one day a week and leave at lunch. You're still irreplaceable, but your productivity has fallen off a cliff.

Dylan16807 4y ago

Being irreplaceable is very different from high productivity. Being more productive than your peers barely gets you anything in most jobs.

icelancer 4y ago
This is simply not true in technical fields, specifically software development. The most productive developers have high labor mobility and high rates of pay. If you don't think so, try employing the industry's most productive developers and see how cheap (or not) it is.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  If you're 50% more productive than someone else, that's a lot of productivity, but it's very hard to measure in a software development situation. I'm not really talking about the top handful of people.
robertlagrant 4y ago
No, it is productivity. You're talking about how hard it is to measure productivity in some jobs. Not whether or not productivity is valuable.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Being replaceable is mostly about what special things you can do. If you do lots of quality work, but most potential hires can do the same thing slower, then you are productive but easy to replace. (A reasonable amount slower, not a ridiculous factor.)
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Can you give an example of being irrepleacable?
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      At the extreme end, being the only one that knows how some machine works, or how some code works. Or this guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/nrnf5j/part_1_of_2_an_absolute_epic_entitled_ahole_gets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/nrnf... At the less extreme end it's having a bunch of internal knowledge that isn't documented and is important to keeping things going. Or having business skills that whoever is in charge of hiring doesn't know how to hire for. Or knowing a programming language or framework that's fussy to learn and only 2% of your normal hiring pool knows. Very different from just being fast.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        You are describing productivity in each case. I think you could reduce each example you give to speed, as things will slow down until a replacement is eventually found, but it's simpler to call it productivity.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        Let me put it this way. The guy I linked has a very niche skill. And he talked about bringing in a Bulgarian with a similar but different very niche skill. Neither one of those is more productive than the other. But neither one can be replaced with the other. That's an irreplaceability advantage, without a productivity advantage. And you might find that a good bricklayer is actually more productive, but he can be replaced pretty easily with a different bricklayer. Those niche guys would be in extreme demand even if they slowed down 3x, because there is no way to replace them. Here's a hypothetical: You're in charge of purchasing supplies for making a machine. Then 9 other people build it. The whole team is pretty productive, but you think it's fair to say you do 10% of the work. Then it turns out some critical part can only be bought by you. You've become irreplaceable, but it's hard to argue that your productivity has changed. Then you decide to demand an assistant since you're irreplaceable. You start pushing more and more of your purchasing work onto your assistant, until you're only handling a couple products and you come in one day a week and leave at lunch. You're still irreplaceable, but your productivity has fallen off a cliff.