4 ms·

Well, it is always 2-way street. Employees can leave employers and Employers can ask employees to leave. Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations.

by geodel 4y ago

falcolas 4y ago
The power imbalance between an employee and an employer means that no, it's absolutely not a 2-way street. An employee (especially in the US) depends upon the employer for the money required for food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, etc. The employee depends on the employer to get health care. An average employee is 3-6 months of unemployment away from being homeless. An employer does not, with very few exceptions, give a single fuck about any individual employee. They view those employees as expenses grudgingly accepted as necessary at the best of times, and expenses to be eliminated at the worst. They are not equals. Contracts between them were not made with the consideration of equal parties.
- bko 4y ago
  I disagree. I have a lot of options as an employee, as do most people. Health care is tough but cobra is helpful and ideally you'd find another job before you give notice. Even lengthy interview processes are relatively cheap for me. Many companies have to pay recruiters 5 figure amounts to get someone. I can just reply to the dozen recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn every month. People have options. Even low wage employees. The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave. That's why you see the manager behind the counter so often. If you don't believe me ask anyone working a service job how long they've been there and how many jobs they've had over the last 5 years. People jump around a lot. And training is a huge cost. Most employees aren't productive immediately, meaning that the company spends a lot of time and money training them with the expectation that they'll get some of that money invested back and you won't jump ship for a better job once you've been trained. Finally most firms (esp Meta) give generous severance. Imagine you'd have to work for free for 3 months if you wanted to do something else.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    > I can just reply to the dozen recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn every month. Congratulations, you're an outlier. I sincerely hope you enjoy your position while it lasts!
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Yeah I used to have a constant stream of recruiters hitting me up. Never spent more than 3 months on a job search, even when I was trying to get my first “real” job as a 18-19 year old kid. Then, around mid-December last year, it just stopped. I get an occasional recruiter every now and then but at this point I think I’m fucked.
  - piva00 4y ago
    > People have options. Even low wage employees. How disconnected from reality can one be? Do you hang out with low wage employees? The ones that need to keep a salary to feed their families, to shelter them, and to keep a bare minimum of life quality? If you had friends with families in any low wage job you'd know that reality isn't that simple, it's such an absurd reduction of what it is to be employed in fields that aren't sexy, or where promotions don't exist as we expect in tech. > The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave. Yeah, they jump a lot because low wage jobs are usually the most toxic ones, with low wage abusive managers, because low wage is not conducive to hiring the best and brightest. If you ever had a bad manager, imagine that 10x worse: no psychologically safe, no trust environments are not conducive to long tenure. People are people, we feel when something isn't right for us, deciding to leave is not because there is a much better option somewhere else but there's a chance of a less bad option than the toxic environment they find themselves in. Coupled that a well performing low wage employee might have to work with disengaged ones, the toxicity of the environment can only increase... Get out of your bubble, it might help you to have solidarity with other human beings.
jehb 4y ago
> Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations. I'm not sure that only one has ethical obligations. But one party is a human being and the other is a legal fiction, and so I think most people would support the notion that the human being's needs are paramount.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  The company is made up of human beings, who this argument dehumanizes.
  - piva00 4y ago
    A company is made of human beings but it's not the human beings, the human beings can all shift around, leave, new ones come, but the company as it is still exist and is not driven by human values but by profit. Profit motive dehumanises anything it touches.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      The company is owned by humans.
      - UncleMeat 4y ago
        “We have to hurt people, otherwise how would we return profits to our investors” is the cardinal sin of the modern world. We’ve tied basic things like retirement to ever growing stock prices and cannot do anything to stand in the way of corporations sucking the world dry anymore.
        andsoitis 4y ago
        In the case of layoffs, should a company instead invent work juts to keep people busy even if the company doesn’t consider that a good space to spend time on? Or if the workers don’t like it or find it pointless? If so, would you think we should compel companies to aim for (near) zero profit and in the process create jobs / work even if that work isn’t important (e.g. putting luggage upright when it falls over on an airport carousel)?
piva00 4y ago
> Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations. Companies use humans to get profits. Humans are developed by society, at the expense of society, a company has social obligations to that society as it's exploiting a resource we all deem quite valuable: a life. A company depends on the society it decided to build upon, for its market, for its human resources, if we completely extract a company from any social obligation what you have is an amoral corpus of people with no incentive at all to care for the people it exploits... And there's no 2-way street in a massive power imbalance like that, a company might not depend on a single employee for its survival, an employee definitely depend on a company and job for its survival. Being aware and recognising this power imbalance is a pretty good step for you to learn about solidarity.

Well, it is always 2-way street. Employees can leave employers and Employers can ask employees to leave. Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations.

by geodel 4y ago

Well, it is always 2-way street. Employees can leave employers and Employers can ask employees to leave. Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations.

falcolas 4y ago

The power imbalance between an employee and an employer means that no, it's absolutely not a 2-way street. An employee (especially in the US) depends upon the employer for the money required for food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, etc. The employee depends on the employer to get health care. An average employee is 3-6 months of unemployment away from being homeless. An employer does not, with very few exceptions, give a single fuck about any individual employee. They view those employees as expenses grudgingly accepted as necessary at the best of times, and expenses to be eliminated at the worst. They are not equals. Contracts between them were not made with the consideration of equal parties.

bko 4y ago
I disagree. I have a lot of options as an employee, as do most people. Health care is tough but cobra is helpful and ideally you'd find another job before you give notice. Even lengthy interview processes are relatively cheap for me. Many companies have to pay recruiters 5 figure amounts to get someone. I can just reply to the dozen recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn every month. People have options. Even low wage employees. The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave. That's why you see the manager behind the counter so often. If you don't believe me ask anyone working a service job how long they've been there and how many jobs they've had over the last 5 years. People jump around a lot. And training is a huge cost. Most employees aren't productive immediately, meaning that the company spends a lot of time and money training them with the expectation that they'll get some of that money invested back and you won't jump ship for a better job once you've been trained. Finally most firms (esp Meta) give generous severance. Imagine you'd have to work for free for 3 months if you wanted to do something else.
- falcolas 4y ago
  > I can just reply to the dozen recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn every month. Congratulations, you're an outlier. I sincerely hope you enjoy your position while it lasts!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Yeah I used to have a constant stream of recruiters hitting me up. Never spent more than 3 months on a job search, even when I was trying to get my first “real” job as a 18-19 year old kid. Then, around mid-December last year, it just stopped. I get an occasional recruiter every now and then but at this point I think I’m fucked.
- piva00 4y ago
  > People have options. Even low wage employees. How disconnected from reality can one be? Do you hang out with low wage employees? The ones that need to keep a salary to feed their families, to shelter them, and to keep a bare minimum of life quality? If you had friends with families in any low wage job you'd know that reality isn't that simple, it's such an absurd reduction of what it is to be employed in fields that aren't sexy, or where promotions don't exist as we expect in tech. > The people in these jobs jump around a lot and are notoriously unreliable or likely to not give notice when they leave. Yeah, they jump a lot because low wage jobs are usually the most toxic ones, with low wage abusive managers, because low wage is not conducive to hiring the best and brightest. If you ever had a bad manager, imagine that 10x worse: no psychologically safe, no trust environments are not conducive to long tenure. People are people, we feel when something isn't right for us, deciding to leave is not because there is a much better option somewhere else but there's a chance of a less bad option than the toxic environment they find themselves in. Coupled that a well performing low wage employee might have to work with disengaged ones, the toxicity of the environment can only increase... Get out of your bubble, it might help you to have solidarity with other human beings.

jehb 4y ago

> Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations. I'm not sure that only one has ethical obligations. But one party is a human being and the other is a legal fiction, and so I think most people would support the notion that the human being's needs are paramount.

BurningFrog 4y ago
The company is made up of human beings, who this argument dehumanizes.
- piva00 4y ago
  A company is made of human beings but it's not the human beings, the human beings can all shift around, leave, new ones come, but the company as it is still exist and is not driven by human values but by profit. Profit motive dehumanises anything it touches.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    The company is owned by humans.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      “We have to hurt people, otherwise how would we return profits to our investors” is the cardinal sin of the modern world. We’ve tied basic things like retirement to ever growing stock prices and cannot do anything to stand in the way of corporations sucking the world dry anymore.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        In the case of layoffs, should a company instead invent work juts to keep people busy even if the company doesn’t consider that a good space to spend time on? Or if the workers don’t like it or find it pointless? If so, would you think we should compel companies to aim for (near) zero profit and in the process create jobs / work even if that work isn’t important (e.g. putting luggage upright when it falls over on an airport carousel)?

piva00 4y ago

> Not sure, how only one party has ethical obligations. Companies use humans to get profits. Humans are developed by society, at the expense of society, a company has social obligations to that society as it's exploiting a resource we all deem quite valuable: a life. A company depends on the society it decided to build upon, for its market, for its human resources, if we completely extract a company from any social obligation what you have is an amoral corpus of people with no incentive at all to care for the people it exploits... And there's no 2-way street in a massive power imbalance like that, a company might not depend on a single employee for its survival, an employee definitely depend on a company and job for its survival. Being aware and recognising this power imbalance is a pretty good step for you to learn about solidarity.