6 ms·

My initial reaction to this whole thing was the same as yours (not that I have any love lost for academics). Software engineers do basically no physical labor a

My initial reaction to this whole thing was the same as yours (not that I have any love lost for academics). Software engineers do basically no physical labor and usually get paid better than many people who physically work way harder. On the whole, software engineers are not "the victim," as you said. However, your examples made me think. > In other places, you can have a typical 40h/week job at a salary way better than the average 9-5 job. Can you? Can everyone? I've job hunted before and known many more people who've taken way longer than me to find a position at all, in several different locations throughout the country (not coastal metropolises). You're kind of suggesting that unemployment isn't an issue in the industry, which is a pretty blanketed take. > Or you can freelance a dozen hours a week and live in a remote cottage. Can you meet friends while living in a remote cottage? Can you raise kids well in a remote cottage? (Does the remote cottage even have internet?) This one is technically true, but ignores many of the reasons most people work/live in the first place. I say that as someone who's considered going that route. So while I agree software engineers aren't a "victim class" as compared to other industries, I also think using the "it could be worse" excuse to avoid working for better conditions that are totally feasible isn't a great thing to do. The majority of software engineers are middle-class, and when the middle-class is under attack, they're going down with the rest of the ship, not up. Perhaps it'd be better to foster a little more solidarity instead of inviting us vs. them mentality.

echelon 2y ago
> I also think using the "it could be worse" excuse to avoid working for better conditions that are totally feasible isn't a great thing to do. Unions fuck up the incentives. Tenured positions are coveted and come with privileges that make the job easier and the position more cushy. New hires want those perks and will rest once they attain them. This is the opposite of what you want in a workforce: you want the top 50% to work hard and fight for raises and promotions. In our industry, when we don't get the promotions or raises we want, we switch jobs. Job switching has been an incredible means of advancing our careers and being exposed to new tech and new problems. Because of tenure and different jobs using different unions, unions will lead to fewer job changes and more "lifers" that stick around at a single job for a long time. That ossifies code, stops the influx of new ideas and talent, and causes super weird code / business unit ownership drama. It's also super boring. Tech companies aren't afraid of high salaries (evidently so!) as much as they are of non-fungibility and ossification of the workforce. Unions make slow businesses even slower. Because of this, unions lead to offshoring. Unions have ground so many industries to a halt in the US. Manufacturing, automotive. Most recently, the film industry (particularly crew) have been offshored -- in the last several years productions have moved to Eastern Europe and Asia sans any US workforce. They fly the cast (without crew) out for the shoots. It's all because of unions. If we wish this upon ourselves -- in one of the cushiest careers in the world -- we'll soon find all of our jobs moving overseas.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  Overseas to countries with better labour laws? Like, it's cheaper to hire engineers in Germany but it's much harder to fire them.
  - echelon 2y ago
    Overseas countries with worse labor laws. It's the same thing that happens with industrialization. This will naturally happen over time anyway, but unions will accelerate the trend.
    - azemetre 2y ago
      I don't understand how you can make these comments but not thread the needle that the problems you are worried about is strictly the result of capital. Acting as if labor creating a union means Capital should just pack up shop and leave is an extreme power imbalance. This imbalance not only justifies the need for collective bargaining, but that there should be more regulations wielded against Capital to stop this imbalance. A flourishing middle class helps a country prosper, a flourishing middle class means a strong labor class where Capital has limits and regulations on what they can inflict against civilians.
      - echelon 2y ago
        The capital flees almost in its entirety to non-union countries once unions grow in power, that's why. Go ask the IATSE (film) folks how many jobs they're getting this year. (All their jobs left to developing economies in Eastern Europe and Asia. Cast gets flown out, but the crew are hired and based overseas.) Unions contributed to the decline of US steel, US shipbuilding, US automotive, etc. A worker can be both fungible and highly compensated. None of us are irreplaceable, and nor should we be. A union tries to put in artificial barriers where businesses need flexibility, and businesses really don't like that.
        azemetre 2y ago
snozolli 2y ago
Software engineers do basically no physical labor I developed debilitating tendinitis in both wrists right about the time I graduated college. A decade later, I developed a bulged disc in my neck that ended my career. There are very real risks to your body from sitting at a computer, deep in thought all day. There's a whole other swath of health issues, too, beside injury risks.
- echelon 2y ago
  How does a union help you with your wrists? Why do you need help? I type every single day and I don't want your health problem placing limits on my job flexibility and career advancement. If our industry fills with unions, suddenly I won't be able to job hop to positions that look interesting to me. I'll have to consider things like seniority and tenure and a bunch of artificial rules. It'll be like going back to high school. I prefer to break rules, color outside the lines, and set my own path.
  - 4ndrewl 2y ago
    Would you like to remove all of the benefits unions have given you?
    - echelon 2y ago
      Working nights and weekends got me a close to ten figure exit at a now publicly traded fintech. So yeah, I don't mind. Rather than retiring on that money, I'm back at it again, and I'm working even harder. I know what mediocrity and complacency is. I've worked surrounded by it, and I'll do anything to avoid it. I don't want that bullshit where coworkers strive to do the minimum and everybody plays hot potato to see who will take responsibility. I'll take responsibility. And I'll take the high comp that comes with it. Not have some union pencil in my salary band according to arbitrary rules that don't directly map to solving customer problems.
      - 4ndrewl 2y ago
        Cross-posted to LinkedIn?
ghiculescu 2y ago
No industry has 0% unemployment. Most people would kill for the employability of the median software engineer.
- bombcar 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    How much experience with contract killers do you have to make that assessment?
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Most "contract killers" aren't the super pro movie kind. (Though I'm sure they exist.) Most are young guys, or children even, doing sloppy hit-n-runs to climb some gang hierarchy for really not a lot of money.
      - Aeolun 2y ago
        I agree with the theory, but have zero facts to back them up. I’d also argue that we shouldn’t call “I’ll give you $50 coke money if you off that guy” should be called “contract killing”.
  - rockemsockem 2y ago
    Is that data that's generally available somewhere??
    - _carbyau_ 2y ago
      I wonder whether you could extrapolate off other industries. IE things like sports or music where the top 1% make f*k-you money and the rest either get by or struggle. Do they have to do the occasional public performance to build hype? Or maybe it's more like a tradie. I always thought Leon:The Professional was a story about an apprenticeship, not that movies are a source of truth on real life.
wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
as a once remote cottage guy, yes you can have internet. kids love it out there. you bring your friends. its better out there man. i miss it. I was waking up with no alarm to blue sky and chirping birds, and then I could read papers and to pytorch all day. Never heard a car.
- mxkan3 2y ago
  > as a once remote cottage guy You imply you no longer live like this. What made you stop?
  - wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
    a sexy adventure. i met a hot japanese girl online. i wanted to meet her but during covid japan was closed. so i enrolled in a year at a japanese language school to get a student visa. well now we are married, baby is due soon. and i can speak japanese. in a couple years well be making a slightly larger cottage back in the US and then ill be a cottage man again. whenever we are having a tough day, we just think of waking up to the blue sky and chirping birds in the countryside. but now the vision includes little feet
pdfernhout 2y ago
Some tangential thoughts and rambles on this to try to get at the deeper issues, first from Jeff Schmidt about his book "Disciplined Minds" which encourages solidarity of intellectual workers: https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ "Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy. Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job." An even deeper point though from "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black: https://web.archive.org/web/20080702023453/http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080702023453/http://www.whywor... "Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By “play” I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child’s play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act. ..." Or, from a different direction, from "Buddhist Economics" by EF Schumacher: https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/buddhist-economics/ https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/buddhist-econ... "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure." And also from an even different direction by Marshall Sahlins' "The Original Affluent Society": https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/298-june-19-1979/the-original-affluent-society/ https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/298-june-19-1979/the-ori... "For there are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way, makes assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economies: that man’s wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improvable: thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that “urgent goods” become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, departing from premises somewhat different from our own: that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty—with a low standard of living. ... The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization. It has grown with civilization, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation—that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo. ..." Or from an even different direction as a cautionary tale (spoilers if you read the Wikipedia article beyond what I quoted): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands_... ""With Folded Hands ..." is a 1947 science fiction novelette[1] by American writer Jack Williamson (1908–2006). In writing it, Willamson was influenced by the aftermath of World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his concern that "some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run."[2] ... Despite the humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. ..." Or also touching on that theme, "The Skills of Xanadu" story by Theodore Sturgeon that helped create Ted Nelson's "Xanadu" and hypertext and so indirectly the world wide web: https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08 https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08 https://ia601205.us.archive.org/22/items/theodore-sturgeon-/Theodore%20Sturgeon%20-%20The%20Skills%20of%20Xanadu.pdf https://ia601205.us.archive.org/22/items/theodore-sturgeon-/... Or also on re-envisioning work and status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear "The Mayflower II has brought with it thousands of settlers, all the trappings of the authoritarian regime along with bureaucracy, religion, fascism and a military presence to keep the population in line. However, the planners behind the generation ship did not anticipate the direction that Chironian society took: in the absence of conditioning and with limitless robotic labor and fusion power, Chiron has become a post-scarcity economy. Money and material possessions are meaningless to the Chironians and social standing is determined by individual talent, which has resulted in a wealth of art and technology without any hierarchies, central authority or armed conflict. In an attempt to crush this anarchist adhocracy, the Mayflower II government employs every available method of control; however, in the absence of conditioning the Chironians are not even capable of comprehending the methods, let alone bowing to them. The Chironians simply use methods similar to Gandhi's satyagraha and other forms of nonviolent resistance to win over most of the Mayflower II crew members, who had never previously experienced true freedom, and isolate the die-hard authoritarians." Or more down-to-Earth by Doug Engelbart (creator of the 1960s Mother of All Demos showing interactive collaborative computing and teleconferencing and the mouse): https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/ https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/ "In Doug Engelbart's terms, an improvement community is any group involved in a collective pursuit to improve a given capability or condition. Some examples include a professional association, a community of practice, consortium, humanitarian initiative, initiatives to reform education, healthcare, government, corporate initiatives, a medical research community seeking to cure a specific disease. An improvement community that also puts focused attention on improving how it engages, and how it improves, by employing better and better practices and tools, is a networked improvement community (NIC)." Where a "networked improvement community" also connects with Brian Eno's idea of "Scenius": https://medium.com/salvo-faraday/what-is-the-scenius-15409eb6ac72 https://medium.com/salvo-faraday/what-is-the-scenius-15409eb... "There’s a common myth that genius is only produced and achieved in isolation. This is commonly referred to as the “Great Man Theory”, that innovation in art and culture only comes from great men working in solitude. Brian Eno, musician, producer, and inventor of the term “scenius”, describes scenius as similar to genius except embedded in a scene rather than in genes. ..." And by Howard Zinn on "The Coming Revolt of the Guards": https://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html https://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html "The new conditions of technology, economics, and war, in the atomic age, make it less and less possible for the guards of the system-the intellectuals, the home owners, the taxpayers, the skilled workers, the professionals, the servants of government-to remain immune from the violence (physical and psychic) inflicted on the black, the poor, the criminal, the enemy overseas." Other stuff I have collected on improving organizations (and ourselves): https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations-Reading-List https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations... Anyway, people can debate on whether unions will improve the day-to-day experience of software developers including regarding "burnout", but that is just scratching the surface of social change related to work compared to ideas like above.
SoftTalker 2y ago
Software developers, unlike many other professions, can be self taught at almost no cost. You don't need a license, you don't need to pass any qualifying/gatekeeping exams, you don't need expensive tools, you don't need any supplies or inventory. Consequently there is a never-ending supply of new young developers who are hungrier than you and will do the work for less or do more work for the same.

echelon 2y ago

> I also think using the "it could be worse" excuse to avoid working for better conditions that are totally feasible isn't a great thing to do. Unions fuck up the incentives. Tenured positions are coveted and come with privileges that make the job easier and the position more cushy. New hires want those perks and will rest once they attain them. This is the opposite of what you want in a workforce: you want the top 50% to work hard and fight for raises and promotions. In our industry, when we don't get the promotions or raises we want, we switch jobs. Job switching has been an incredible means of advancing our careers and being exposed to new tech and new problems. Because of tenure and different jobs using different unions, unions will lead to fewer job changes and more "lifers" that stick around at a single job for a long time. That ossifies code, stops the influx of new ideas and talent, and causes super weird code / business unit ownership drama. It's also super boring. Tech companies aren't afraid of high salaries (evidently so!) as much as they are of non-fungibility and ossification of the workforce. Unions make slow businesses even slower. Because of this, unions lead to offshoring. Unions have ground so many industries to a halt in the US. Manufacturing, automotive. Most recently, the film industry (particularly crew) have been offshored -- in the last several years productions have moved to Eastern Europe and Asia sans any US workforce. They fly the cast (without crew) out for the shoots. It's all because of unions. If we wish this upon ourselves -- in one of the cushiest careers in the world -- we'll soon find all of our jobs moving overseas.

disgruntledphd2 2y ago
Overseas to countries with better labour laws? Like, it's cheaper to hire engineers in Germany but it's much harder to fire them.
- echelon 2y ago
  Overseas countries with worse labor laws. It's the same thing that happens with industrialization. This will naturally happen over time anyway, but unions will accelerate the trend.
  - azemetre 2y ago
    I don't understand how you can make these comments but not thread the needle that the problems you are worried about is strictly the result of capital. Acting as if labor creating a union means Capital should just pack up shop and leave is an extreme power imbalance. This imbalance not only justifies the need for collective bargaining, but that there should be more regulations wielded against Capital to stop this imbalance. A flourishing middle class helps a country prosper, a flourishing middle class means a strong labor class where Capital has limits and regulations on what they can inflict against civilians.
    - echelon 2y ago
      The capital flees almost in its entirety to non-union countries once unions grow in power, that's why. Go ask the IATSE (film) folks how many jobs they're getting this year. (All their jobs left to developing economies in Eastern Europe and Asia. Cast gets flown out, but the crew are hired and based overseas.) Unions contributed to the decline of US steel, US shipbuilding, US automotive, etc. A worker can be both fungible and highly compensated. None of us are irreplaceable, and nor should we be. A union tries to put in artificial barriers where businesses need flexibility, and businesses really don't like that.
      - azemetre 2y ago

snozolli 2y ago

Software engineers do basically no physical labor I developed debilitating tendinitis in both wrists right about the time I graduated college. A decade later, I developed a bulged disc in my neck that ended my career. There are very real risks to your body from sitting at a computer, deep in thought all day. There's a whole other swath of health issues, too, beside injury risks.

echelon 2y ago
How does a union help you with your wrists? Why do you need help? I type every single day and I don't want your health problem placing limits on my job flexibility and career advancement. If our industry fills with unions, suddenly I won't be able to job hop to positions that look interesting to me. I'll have to consider things like seniority and tenure and a bunch of artificial rules. It'll be like going back to high school. I prefer to break rules, color outside the lines, and set my own path.
- 4ndrewl 2y ago
  Would you like to remove all of the benefits unions have given you?
  - echelon 2y ago
    Working nights and weekends got me a close to ten figure exit at a now publicly traded fintech. So yeah, I don't mind. Rather than retiring on that money, I'm back at it again, and I'm working even harder. I know what mediocrity and complacency is. I've worked surrounded by it, and I'll do anything to avoid it. I don't want that bullshit where coworkers strive to do the minimum and everybody plays hot potato to see who will take responsibility. I'll take responsibility. And I'll take the high comp that comes with it. Not have some union pencil in my salary band according to arbitrary rules that don't directly map to solving customer problems.
    - 4ndrewl 2y ago
      Cross-posted to LinkedIn?

ghiculescu 2y ago

No industry has 0% unemployment. Most people would kill for the employability of the median software engineer.

bombcar 2y ago
[flagged]
- Aeolun 2y ago
  How much experience with contract killers do you have to make that assessment?
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Most "contract killers" aren't the super pro movie kind. (Though I'm sure they exist.) Most are young guys, or children even, doing sloppy hit-n-runs to climb some gang hierarchy for really not a lot of money.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      I agree with the theory, but have zero facts to back them up. I’d also argue that we shouldn’t call “I’ll give you $50 coke money if you off that guy” should be called “contract killing”.
- rockemsockem 2y ago
  Is that data that's generally available somewhere??
  - _carbyau_ 2y ago
    I wonder whether you could extrapolate off other industries. IE things like sports or music where the top 1% make f*k-you money and the rest either get by or struggle. Do they have to do the occasional public performance to build hype? Or maybe it's more like a tradie. I always thought Leon:The Professional was a story about an apprenticeship, not that movies are a source of truth on real life.

wegfawefgawefg 2y ago

as a once remote cottage guy, yes you can have internet. kids love it out there. you bring your friends. its better out there man. i miss it. I was waking up with no alarm to blue sky and chirping birds, and then I could read papers and to pytorch all day. Never heard a car.

mxkan3 2y ago
> as a once remote cottage guy You imply you no longer live like this. What made you stop?
- wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
  a sexy adventure. i met a hot japanese girl online. i wanted to meet her but during covid japan was closed. so i enrolled in a year at a japanese language school to get a student visa. well now we are married, baby is due soon. and i can speak japanese. in a couple years well be making a slightly larger cottage back in the US and then ill be a cottage man again. whenever we are having a tough day, we just think of waking up to the blue sky and chirping birds in the countryside. but now the vision includes little feet

pdfernhout 2y ago

Some tangential thoughts and rambles on this to try to get at the deeper issues, first from Jeff Schmidt about his book "Disciplined Minds" which encourages solidarity of intellectual workers: https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ "Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy. Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job." An even deeper point though from "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black: https://web.archive.org/web/20080702023453/http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080702023453/http://www.whywor... "Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By “play” I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child’s play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act. ..." Or, from a different direction, from "Buddhist Economics" by EF Schumacher: https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/buddhist-economics/ https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/buddhist-econ... "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure." And also from an even different direction by Marshall Sahlins' "The Original Affluent Society": https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/298-june-19-1979/the-original-affluent-society/ https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/298-june-19-1979/the-ori... "For there are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way, makes assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economies: that man’s wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improvable: thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that “urgent goods” become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, departing from premises somewhat different from our own: that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty—with a low standard of living. ... The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization. It has grown with civilization, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation—that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo. ..." Or from an even different direction as a cautionary tale (spoilers if you read the Wikipedia article beyond what I quoted): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands_... ""With Folded Hands ..." is a 1947 science fiction novelette[1] by American writer Jack Williamson (1908–2006). In writing it, Willamson was influenced by the aftermath of World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his concern that "some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run."[2] ... Despite the humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. ..." Or also touching on that theme, "The Skills of Xanadu" story by Theodore Sturgeon that helped create Ted Nelson's "Xanadu" and hypertext and so indirectly the world wide web: https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08 https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08 https://ia601205.us.archive.org/22/items/theodore-sturgeon-/Theodore%20Sturgeon%20-%20The%20Skills%20of%20Xanadu.pdf https://ia601205.us.archive.org/22/items/theodore-sturgeon-/... Or also on re-envisioning work and status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear "The Mayflower II has brought with it thousands of settlers, all the trappings of the authoritarian regime along with bureaucracy, religion, fascism and a military presence to keep the population in line. However, the planners behind the generation ship did not anticipate the direction that Chironian society took: in the absence of conditioning and with limitless robotic labor and fusion power, Chiron has become a post-scarcity economy. Money and material possessions are meaningless to the Chironians and social standing is determined by individual talent, which has resulted in a wealth of art and technology without any hierarchies, central authority or armed conflict. In an attempt to crush this anarchist adhocracy, the Mayflower II government employs every available method of control; however, in the absence of conditioning the Chironians are not even capable of comprehending the methods, let alone bowing to them. The Chironians simply use methods similar to Gandhi's satyagraha and other forms of nonviolent resistance to win over most of the Mayflower II crew members, who had never previously experienced true freedom, and isolate the die-hard authoritarians." Or more down-to-Earth by Doug Engelbart (creator of the 1960s Mother of All Demos showing interactive collaborative computing and teleconferencing and the mouse): https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/ https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/191/ "In Doug Engelbart's terms, an improvement community is any group involved in a collective pursuit to improve a given capability or condition. Some examples include a professional association, a community of practice, consortium, humanitarian initiative, initiatives to reform education, healthcare, government, corporate initiatives, a medical research community seeking to cure a specific disease. An improvement community that also puts focused attention on improving how it engages, and how it improves, by employing better and better practices and tools, is a networked improvement community (NIC)." Where a "networked improvement community" also connects with Brian Eno's idea of "Scenius": https://medium.com/salvo-faraday/what-is-the-scenius-15409eb6ac72 https://medium.com/salvo-faraday/what-is-the-scenius-15409eb... "There’s a common myth that genius is only produced and achieved in isolation. This is commonly referred to as the “Great Man Theory”, that innovation in art and culture only comes from great men working in solitude. Brian Eno, musician, producer, and inventor of the term “scenius”, describes scenius as similar to genius except embedded in a scene rather than in genes. ..." And by Howard Zinn on "The Coming Revolt of the Guards": https://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html https://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html "The new conditions of technology, economics, and war, in the atomic age, make it less and less possible for the guards of the system-the intellectuals, the home owners, the taxpayers, the skilled workers, the professionals, the servants of government-to remain immune from the violence (physical and psychic) inflicted on the black, the poor, the criminal, the enemy overseas." Other stuff I have collected on improving organizations (and ourselves): https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations-Reading-List https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations... Anyway, people can debate on whether unions will improve the day-to-day experience of software developers including regarding "burnout", but that is just scratching the surface of social change related to work compared to ideas like above.

SoftTalker 2y ago

Software developers, unlike many other professions, can be self taught at almost no cost. You don't need a license, you don't need to pass any qualifying/gatekeeping exams, you don't need expensive tools, you don't need any supplies or inventory. Consequently there is a never-ending supply of new young developers who are hungrier than you and will do the work for less or do more work for the same.