4 ms·

Another 'good in theory' idea. Trying to run a business in Australia is 'death by a thousand paper cuts'. Far too many rules. Letting individuals interact freel

by nomilk 2y ago

Another 'good in theory' idea. Trying to run a business in Australia is 'death by a thousand paper cuts'. Far too many rules. Letting individuals interact freely creates good outcomes 90+% of the time. Most of these rules are cost-benefit negative because the administrative burden of adherence exceeds the benefit of the new rule. Politicians and govt departments like them though; they get to put a dot-point on their list of achievements. Unfortunately Australia has become a business-backwater (the upper bound of our capabilities is to dig stuff out of the ground and ship it overseas). Sorry if this sounds negative, but every rule - however well-intentioned - steals attention and creativity away from entrepreneurs, slows the economy, drives up prices, reduces customer service, and benefits large incumbents who can withstand the burden.

joshgermon 2y ago
If you rely on exploiting the fact that your employee does not have the right to ignore your call outside of hours, your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? It says it gives them the right to ignore, not to sue the business if they do call.
- nomilk 2y ago
  Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and services slightly more expensive. This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire a night shift.
    - nomilk 2y ago
      But who really pays? The employer? Yes, at first, but the cost is passed straight on to consumers. Prices are sky high in Australia for this reason, businesses have many laws that each increase prices by a fraction of a percent - almost imperceptible - but cumulatively very noticeable.
      - yawaramin 2y ago
        So your argument is that instead of consumers paying, employees should pay?
      - SturgeonsLaw 2y ago
        Typical whinging Aussie business owner. You lot won't be happy until you turn us into another America, with at-will employment and healthcare tied to employment like a yoke around an ox. You are neglecting to mention the power imbalance that exists between employees and employers. Like economists who view all actors as fully informed and rational market participants, your viewpoint is fantastic on paper, but in real life there are centuries of examples of ordinary workers getting exploited if regulations like these are not in place. And hey, you might be one of the good bosses who will shrug and say "sure, no problem" if an employee wants to prioritise their life over their job. There are plenty who won't, and this law will help reign them in.
      - intended 2y ago
        But you know what helps ? More money in wages ! Instead of business owners getting more money? If that went instead to workers (aka consumers) then everyone would have more to spend! Then you know who would have more money ? Good business owners !! ——- Demand side / supply side economics rhetoric is fun, but it’s rhetorical. Success depends entirely on what is appropriate for the market at that given moment.
      - lkois 2y ago
        So, paying for a night shift will increase the cost to customers, but higher salaries negotiated by on-call employees won't? Or did you leave out the part where those employees discover how little negotiating power they really have
  - koyote 2y ago
    > Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and services slightly more expensive. The business can put that into their contract so that a prospective employee can make a conscious decision: For example, I have two offers, one for x% higher salary but the contract stipulates a requirement for me to be available after-hours between Xpm-Ypm on x days of the week, I can then make the decision whether the x% more money is worth the stress and the free time I have to give up. That's how our business introduced on-call: it's opt-in and there is specific remuneration for being on call and for responding to an issue.
  - joshgermon 2y ago
    Yes, we know increased profits always go to the worker. Particularly when the business needs to rely on exploiting them to make those increased profits. Let me try your logic here... Employees benefit from no paid annual leave! How you ask? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Am I doing this right? Workers give up more rights but in theory they can negotiate higher pay because the business is more profitable?
    - nomilk 2y ago
      Start with a theoretical employee who offers no value and gets paid zero. Dial up their usefulness and consider what happens. The greater the value an employee offers, the stronger their negotiation power in pay discussions. It's not more complicated than that.
      - coderenegade 2y ago
        Start with a theoretical employee who offers excellent usefulness and is paid accordingly. Dial down the legal protections and security and consider what happens. The weaker the security of the employee, the stronger the negotiating power of the employer in pay discussions. It's not more complicated than that.
      - ausbah 2y ago
        this comment is a good example of why modern economics is seen as out of touch. you start with a theoretical model then try and apply it to the world vs starting with the lived expenses of workers and building off of that
    - djbusby 2y ago
      You forgot the part where individual workers are great at negotiating against a large entity.
  - lysp 2y ago
    > This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service. If you're paying someone to be on-call, this is not an issue. This is about unpaid out-of-hours work.
  - coderenegade 2y ago
    Nice in theory, but I've generated a tremendous amount of value for some of the places I've worked at, and it's rare to see any of it flow back the other way. Secondly, this is a right. An employee can waive that right if they choose, but they have the power. They can't be punished for exercising it, which is the important part.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    > This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service. Not at all. It means that if they want employees to be on call they have to pay for it.
    - buro9 2y ago
      This is nearly always a myth. On call has a huge precedent, it's not tech, it's the health sector. "Paid" on call is already defined as the active portion where you're responding to a page, not the passive portion where you're carrying the pager. Some countries have rules around time to respond within the definition of active vs passive, but most do not and the carrying the pager isn't compensated at all. Even with the active part, time-in-lieu can be the definition of paid... still 40h per week (or whatever), but if you only responded to 1h of active on call in a week, finish work an hour earlier one day the next week. People in tech like to imagine that their salary rises by some significant %, but it seldom does... nurses and A&E staff aren't paid far more for being on-call and carrying a pager, and that precedent travels far, countries aren't legislating in a way that makes their health services untenable. Some countries do legislate hard in this area, i.e. France, but then... they have a much smaller tech sector as a lot of companies will avoid hiring there or setting up an office there (especially when neighbouring countries do not have such legislation). To be clear I don't know what the exact text of the Australian law is, but I'm just clarifying that on call does not have to be paid, and as soon as one thinks about the health service and the impact of such legislation it's clear why. Sure one can also view this as wage theft in every industry, but in that case workers need to go make that case. Most large companies will likely continue to avoid such legislation by treating their workforce as fluid, and just withdrawing from some countries and only hiring in others. Note: None of the above is reflective of where I currently work, but are things I've learned from prior places of employment.
      - jen20 2y ago
        Payment buys time that people can't be doing what they want to. If what they want is to be drinking 10 beers, then the options are either paying them not to (i.e. paying for passive on-call time), or accepting that if there is a call they might not be able to handle it since they could be half in the bag. This practice will only continue as long as people accept it.
  - antimemetics 2y ago
    Surely you are joking
  - yawaramin 2y ago
    What you are describing is called wage theft.
    - lkois 2y ago
      But, but, if the employer doesn't steal wages from employees, where will they get the money to pay them higher salaries?
  - intended 2y ago
    Employees != customers.
  - stephen_g 2y ago
    Absolute nonsense - if you need on-call support from your engineers, put it in the contract and pay them the extra for the time when they're on-call, you're literally complaining that you can't rely on unpaid overtime for something you should be paying for!
- Daz1 2y ago
  > your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? Your take was worse
dabiged 2y ago
I have to respectfully disagree here. You place far too much stead in "individuals freely interacting" and none in "micromanaging bosses constantly hassling you at ridiculous hours for pissant assignments that can wait until the morning". My experience in working at Australian businesses, especially as an IC, is that there is far too much of the latter, and far to little of the former. This is especially true the younger the reporting staff member is.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  While I support his new law, more rules do act as a barrier to entry / competition for new / smaller businesses. Larger companies can more easily adhere to increasingly complex employment rules than smaller ones. The new law protects people from being bothered by micromanagers during off hours, but reduced market competition keeps people stuck with a shitty boss, and reduces their chances to get a raise.
  - intended 2y ago
    Yep. Rules and enforcement create compliance costs. So do contracts. We aren’t removing contracts though. If we are discussing market forces, an abundance of roles doesn’t equal an abundance of good managers. It does increases search costs for workers.
jp0d 2y ago
It's indeed a very negative take on a pro-labour policy. Entrepreneurship doesn't equate to exploitation of workers. If your business depends on that then it's not a death by thousand paper cuts, rather a death by poor management. Germany has similar laws and it hasn't exactly become a 'business-backwater'.
sandworm101 2y ago
>> but every rule - however well-intentioned - steals attention and creativity away from entrepreneurs Really? Every rule? How about safety in the workplace? Hardhats for construction workers? No more asbestos in the walls? I think the rules setting standards for cars/trucks have prevented vast numbers of accidents. Lord knows what insurance rates would be like without limits on how much a truck can carry, how fast it may drive. The innumerable rules that create and protect intellectual property rights have served entrepreneurs well too. And there was that ozone hole thing. Here is an idea: Lets remove the rules about embezzlement. When an employee takes from an employer that employer can fire them and sue to get property back. No need to involve the police. Let the hand of the free market separate the trustworthy employees from the bad.
moorow 2y ago
I own a tech consulting company in Australia. What rules are you talking about? The only change that's come in recently that's affected us is the changes to fixed-term contracts, and that's an entirely fair change to stop employees from getting dicked over by bad employers. Likewise, moving super through one-touch payroll is a great change that literally only affects dodgy employers. The reason we're a country that digs shit out of the ground in lieu of doing anything else is the same reason why virtually all investment in the country is in real estate: it's not taxed highly enough to encourage people to diversify, and it's a sector that's too big to fail. Why would you invest in your mate's new tech company and potentially lose it all when you can throw it into a property with almost literally zero risk and far better returns?
- zooq_ai 2y ago
  In Tech consulting, you can pass of all your regulations and cost to your client. In fact consulting thrives exactly because of government overreach. Startups are complete opposite of Consulting
  - trog 2y ago
    Huh? If you're a startup you still have to absorb regulatory costs somehow. If they're not getting passed on to the customer, they are getting picked up by the VCs. This is pretty normal.
  - moorow 2y ago
    Dunno about you guys, but we're not charging doing payroll, management or regulatory compliance to our clients unless it's specifically requested/required by the client. You could say "oh but that cost is bundled into your rates", but that cost is also bundled into your product fees for a product start-up, so..? We don't have to do r&d documentation but we also don't get r&d reimbursements. Not a lot else different from a back-office perspective.
crossroadsguy 2y ago
Right. Let the exploiters and the exploited, with that glaring power gap, settle it among themselves and keep it in the house. Couldn't agree more.
Yodel0914 2y ago
Sometimes governments attempt to make rules to promote a value other than the economy. Yes, those rules can (usually do) have negative economic impacts. More wealth is good, but lets not pretend that there are no tradeoffs. The last 10 years (and especially the last 3) have seen a massive shift in work culture and the once-precious work/life balance has essentially disappeared. Many people in white collar jobs are hooked into work every waking hour. That sucks, and a lot people don't want to live like that. Many people (myself included) are in a position to set clear boundaries, but many others aren't. I'm not a huge fan of government as a guardian of culture, but sometimes it is. In this instance, the law is essentially mandating a return to the cultural norms of ~10 years ago. If your startup fails because of that, well, that's OK - perhaps you can come up with something more pro-social.

by nomilk 2y ago

joshgermon 2y ago

If you rely on exploiting the fact that your employee does not have the right to ignore your call outside of hours, your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? It says it gives them the right to ignore, not to sue the business if they do call.

nomilk 2y ago
Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and services slightly more expensive. This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire a night shift.
  - nomilk 2y ago
    But who really pays? The employer? Yes, at first, but the cost is passed straight on to consumers. Prices are sky high in Australia for this reason, businesses have many laws that each increase prices by a fraction of a percent - almost imperceptible - but cumulatively very noticeable.
    - yawaramin 2y ago
      So your argument is that instead of consumers paying, employees should pay?
    - SturgeonsLaw 2y ago
      Typical whinging Aussie business owner. You lot won't be happy until you turn us into another America, with at-will employment and healthcare tied to employment like a yoke around an ox. You are neglecting to mention the power imbalance that exists between employees and employers. Like economists who view all actors as fully informed and rational market participants, your viewpoint is fantastic on paper, but in real life there are centuries of examples of ordinary workers getting exploited if regulations like these are not in place. And hey, you might be one of the good bosses who will shrug and say "sure, no problem" if an employee wants to prioritise their life over their job. There are plenty who won't, and this law will help reign them in.
    - intended 2y ago
      But you know what helps ? More money in wages ! Instead of business owners getting more money? If that went instead to workers (aka consumers) then everyone would have more to spend! Then you know who would have more money ? Good business owners !! ——- Demand side / supply side economics rhetoric is fun, but it’s rhetorical. Success depends entirely on what is appropriate for the market at that given moment.
    - lkois 2y ago
      So, paying for a night shift will increase the cost to customers, but higher salaries negotiated by on-call employees won't? Or did you leave out the part where those employees discover how little negotiating power they really have
- koyote 2y ago
  > Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and services slightly more expensive. The business can put that into their contract so that a prospective employee can make a conscious decision: For example, I have two offers, one for x% higher salary but the contract stipulates a requirement for me to be available after-hours between Xpm-Ypm on x days of the week, I can then make the decision whether the x% more money is worth the stress and the free time I have to give up. That's how our business introduced on-call: it's opt-in and there is specific remuneration for being on call and for responding to an issue.
- joshgermon 2y ago
  Yes, we know increased profits always go to the worker. Particularly when the business needs to rely on exploiting them to make those increased profits. Let me try your logic here... Employees benefit from no paid annual leave! How you ask? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Am I doing this right? Workers give up more rights but in theory they can negotiate higher pay because the business is more profitable?
  - nomilk 2y ago
    Start with a theoretical employee who offers no value and gets paid zero. Dial up their usefulness and consider what happens. The greater the value an employee offers, the stronger their negotiation power in pay discussions. It's not more complicated than that.
    - coderenegade 2y ago
      Start with a theoretical employee who offers excellent usefulness and is paid accordingly. Dial down the legal protections and security and consider what happens. The weaker the security of the employee, the stronger the negotiating power of the employer in pay discussions. It's not more complicated than that.
    - ausbah 2y ago
      this comment is a good example of why modern economics is seen as out of touch. you start with a theoretical model then try and apply it to the world vs starting with the lived expenses of workers and building off of that
  - djbusby 2y ago
    You forgot the part where individual workers are great at negotiating against a large entity.
- lysp 2y ago
  > This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service. If you're paying someone to be on-call, this is not an issue. This is about unpaid out-of-hours work.
- coderenegade 2y ago
  Nice in theory, but I've generated a tremendous amount of value for some of the places I've worked at, and it's rare to see any of it flow back the other way. Secondly, this is a right. An employee can waive that right if they choose, but they have the power. They can't be punished for exercising it, which is the important part.
- kergonath 2y ago
  > This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service. Not at all. It means that if they want employees to be on call they have to pay for it.
  - buro9 2y ago
    This is nearly always a myth. On call has a huge precedent, it's not tech, it's the health sector. "Paid" on call is already defined as the active portion where you're responding to a page, not the passive portion where you're carrying the pager. Some countries have rules around time to respond within the definition of active vs passive, but most do not and the carrying the pager isn't compensated at all. Even with the active part, time-in-lieu can be the definition of paid... still 40h per week (or whatever), but if you only responded to 1h of active on call in a week, finish work an hour earlier one day the next week. People in tech like to imagine that their salary rises by some significant %, but it seldom does... nurses and A&E staff aren't paid far more for being on-call and carrying a pager, and that precedent travels far, countries aren't legislating in a way that makes their health services untenable. Some countries do legislate hard in this area, i.e. France, but then... they have a much smaller tech sector as a lot of companies will avoid hiring there or setting up an office there (especially when neighbouring countries do not have such legislation). To be clear I don't know what the exact text of the Australian law is, but I'm just clarifying that on call does not have to be paid, and as soon as one thinks about the health service and the impact of such legislation it's clear why. Sure one can also view this as wage theft in every industry, but in that case workers need to go make that case. Most large companies will likely continue to avoid such legislation by treating their workforce as fluid, and just withdrawing from some countries and only hiring in others. Note: None of the above is reflective of where I currently work, but are things I've learned from prior places of employment.
    - jen20 2y ago
      Payment buys time that people can't be doing what they want to. If what they want is to be drinking 10 beers, then the options are either paying them not to (i.e. paying for passive on-call time), or accepting that if there is a call they might not be able to handle it since they could be half in the bag. This practice will only continue as long as people accept it.
- antimemetics 2y ago
  Surely you are joking
- yawaramin 2y ago
  What you are describing is called wage theft.
  - lkois 2y ago
    But, but, if the employer doesn't steal wages from employees, where will they get the money to pay them higher salaries?
- intended 2y ago
  Employees != customers.
- stephen_g 2y ago
  Absolute nonsense - if you need on-call support from your engineers, put it in the contract and pay them the extra for the time when they're on-call, you're literally complaining that you can't rely on unpaid overtime for something you should be paying for!
Daz1 2y ago
> your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? Your take was worse

dabiged 2y ago

I have to respectfully disagree here. You place far too much stead in "individuals freely interacting" and none in "micromanaging bosses constantly hassling you at ridiculous hours for pissant assignments that can wait until the morning". My experience in working at Australian businesses, especially as an IC, is that there is far too much of the latter, and far to little of the former. This is especially true the younger the reporting staff member is.

givemeethekeys 2y ago
While I support his new law, more rules do act as a barrier to entry / competition for new / smaller businesses. Larger companies can more easily adhere to increasingly complex employment rules than smaller ones. The new law protects people from being bothered by micromanagers during off hours, but reduced market competition keeps people stuck with a shitty boss, and reduces their chances to get a raise.
- intended 2y ago
  Yep. Rules and enforcement create compliance costs. So do contracts. We aren’t removing contracts though. If we are discussing market forces, an abundance of roles doesn’t equal an abundance of good managers. It does increases search costs for workers.

jp0d 2y ago

It's indeed a very negative take on a pro-labour policy. Entrepreneurship doesn't equate to exploitation of workers. If your business depends on that then it's not a death by thousand paper cuts, rather a death by poor management. Germany has similar laws and it hasn't exactly become a 'business-backwater'.

sandworm101 2y ago

>> but every rule - however well-intentioned - steals attention and creativity away from entrepreneurs Really? Every rule? How about safety in the workplace? Hardhats for construction workers? No more asbestos in the walls? I think the rules setting standards for cars/trucks have prevented vast numbers of accidents. Lord knows what insurance rates would be like without limits on how much a truck can carry, how fast it may drive. The innumerable rules that create and protect intellectual property rights have served entrepreneurs well too. And there was that ozone hole thing. Here is an idea: Lets remove the rules about embezzlement. When an employee takes from an employer that employer can fire them and sue to get property back. No need to involve the police. Let the hand of the free market separate the trustworthy employees from the bad.

moorow 2y ago

I own a tech consulting company in Australia. What rules are you talking about? The only change that's come in recently that's affected us is the changes to fixed-term contracts, and that's an entirely fair change to stop employees from getting dicked over by bad employers. Likewise, moving super through one-touch payroll is a great change that literally only affects dodgy employers. The reason we're a country that digs shit out of the ground in lieu of doing anything else is the same reason why virtually all investment in the country is in real estate: it's not taxed highly enough to encourage people to diversify, and it's a sector that's too big to fail. Why would you invest in your mate's new tech company and potentially lose it all when you can throw it into a property with almost literally zero risk and far better returns?

zooq_ai 2y ago
In Tech consulting, you can pass of all your regulations and cost to your client. In fact consulting thrives exactly because of government overreach. Startups are complete opposite of Consulting
- trog 2y ago
  Huh? If you're a startup you still have to absorb regulatory costs somehow. If they're not getting passed on to the customer, they are getting picked up by the VCs. This is pretty normal.
- moorow 2y ago
  Dunno about you guys, but we're not charging doing payroll, management or regulatory compliance to our clients unless it's specifically requested/required by the client. You could say "oh but that cost is bundled into your rates", but that cost is also bundled into your product fees for a product start-up, so..? We don't have to do r&d documentation but we also don't get r&d reimbursements. Not a lot else different from a back-office perspective.

crossroadsguy 2y ago

Right. Let the exploiters and the exploited, with that glaring power gap, settle it among themselves and keep it in the house. Couldn't agree more.

Yodel0914 2y ago

Sometimes governments attempt to make rules to promote a value other than the economy. Yes, those rules can (usually do) have negative economic impacts. More wealth is good, but lets not pretend that there are no tradeoffs. The last 10 years (and especially the last 3) have seen a massive shift in work culture and the once-precious work/life balance has essentially disappeared. Many people in white collar jobs are hooked into work every waking hour. That sucks, and a lot people don't want to live like that. Many people (myself included) are in a position to set clear boundaries, but many others aren't. I'm not a huge fan of government as a guardian of culture, but sometimes it is. In this instance, the law is essentially mandating a return to the cultural norms of ~10 years ago. If your startup fails because of that, well, that's OK - perhaps you can come up with something more pro-social.