> Trading of a worker’s labor to a company is not a fair deal between two equal parties. The power imbalance between a company and a worker is massive. I think

> Trading of a worker’s labor to a company is not a fair deal between two equal parties. The power imbalance between a company and a worker is massive. I think this only holds true in certain limited cases. Certainly it was a lot more common a hundred years ago and especially in manufacturing jobs in locations with few employers; today many information workers have an extremely liquid market into which they can sell their time. For the majority of the people here (ie working hackers), I don't think this is true at all. Big Tech is more dependent on its staff than the staff are dependent on Big Tech. This is one reason Google and Apple and others engaged in that illegal wage-fixing scheme: their staff were often availing themselves of their options to hop jobs for big raises. Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs (and others!) had to engage in an actual criminal conspiracy in order to tip the power balance back into the employer's favor.