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>seems to taint young people into thinking that their employer is their enemy Is this not true to a first approximation though? I mean you do have to "hide you

>seems to taint young people into thinking that their employer is their enemy Is this not true to a first approximation though? I mean you do have to "hide your power level" in some way, but the fact that the employer isn't your friend or family is a good working model to keep in the back of your mind. It's a prisoner's dilemma type situation, and defect/defect seems to be the equilibrium we've converged at.

zachthewf 1y ago
It’s not that simple. Even if you take the cynical view that the company is your adversary, the other people who work at the company (including founders, investors and execs) are actually playing a career-long collaborative game rather than a one-off prisoners dilemma.
- michael1999 1y ago
  That's only true for the young. As they get older, or the exit grows large enough, some people smell that last iteration and defect hard.
aspect0545 1y ago
There’s a big difference between somebody not being your friend and somebody being your enemy. I’ve had a similar experience with a sub par employee, who at some point admitted that he wasn’t doing his best at work because he was "only there to exchange his time for money, not make any meaningful contributions". That guy was absolutely immersed in internet culture, making him less self-aware and very unpleasant to work with.
- lloeki 1y ago
  This mindset existed well before reddit; hell, it existed well before the Internet. Some people simply show up at work solely to put food on the table, doing the minimum amount of work so as not to get fired.
  - rectang 1y ago
    The mindset exists because historically commercial entities have often been horrendously abusive to their workers. Dickens, anyone? The flip side is the terror of an entrepreneur seeing their enterprise struggle.
    - mythrwy 1y ago
      That is the antidote the toxic attitude. Go into business yourself for a bit and see the world from an entirely different angle. If you don't make it and come back to employment (most likely) you will be a much humbled and more enlightened person.
      - pixl97 1y ago
        I mean really no, and yes I've been on both sides. Owners have skin in the game. That's why when Musk says we should work 80+ hours a week he should be summarily ignored. He stands to gain billions while the rank and file stand to gain ulcers and an investor class that fights against them getting health insurance. The number of absolutely toxic business owners is insane.
        Ferret7446 1y ago
        The number of absolutely toxic employees is also insane. Are businesses justified to treat employees as if all of them were that toxic? Should not employees then not treat their employers as if all of them are toxic?
        rectang 1y ago
        I think it’s important to distinguish between human leadership and the capitalist entities they work within. I’ve worked for multiple small businesses, led by wonderful humans, which ran out of money. When those businesses went under, it tore their leaders apart to let workers go — but those leaders were still constrained in how the could act by economic realities. There are both leaders and workers who are too cynical about each other. But it makes sense to be guarded with every company, even if I think it’s debatable how best to act — and how we might dream of improving matters at the macroeconomic level.
- zwnow 1y ago
  This mindset is completely sane. Sorry but if you work 40+ hours a week and barely can afford a vacation there is no reason for me to work hard. Especially not if I see managers with new cars every year.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > Sorry but if you work 40+ hours a week and barely can afford a vacation Software developers are relatively highly paid. When they start acting like they’re minimum wage workers flipping burgers at a dead-end job, they’re missing the big picture. That’s the problem I’m trying to communicate.
    - zwnow 1y ago
      This is a generalization. Salary in Europe is different to salary in the USA for example. I earn median wage currently. Also lots of non degree having devs out there that aren't 6 figure earners.
      - jimbokun 1y ago
        That's the tradeoff you're making for universal health care and generous public benefits.
        imtringued 1y ago
        I don't know why you come up with an ideological statement like that. The management culture, anti software/nerd mindset among the population and eastern European competition in the offshoring market have a much bigger impact. E.g. even though Germany is practicing mercantilist beggar thy neighbour export surplus policies, the country has failed to become an exporter of software or be known for quality software. Anyone who wants to work in the software industry is better off leaving the Eurozone and going to Switzerland where they get paid more in addition to the things you claim are the cause.
  - jimbokun 1y ago
    Then find a different job with better compensation.
- jjav 1y ago
  > "only there to exchange his time for money, not make any meaningful contributions" I sometimes wish companies were more open to accepting these roles, instead of the up or out model. There is in many teams a lot of busywork that for various reasons can't be automated (or new incoming busywork that takes over when the older one gets automated). If an employee is content with just handling this kind of lower level busywork and go home at 4:30pm in exchange of not pursuing raises and promotions, there's nothing wrong with that. That work still needs to get done, so rather than getting a never ending stream of junior new hires constantly having to get trained, I'd be fine with having someone who is happy to stay at that level and take it easy.
  - jrozner 1y ago
    Up or out generally stops once someone reaches engineer or sr engineer. Most of the time a jr engineer is going to need substantial mentoring and support. Them never moving beyond that point likely results in a net negative gain if you need another person always available to provide that for their entire time there if it goes beyond 1-2 years.
  - aitchnyu 1y ago
    How do candidates express that in interviews?
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > I sometimes wish companies were more open to accepting these roles, instead of the up or out model. But companies live or die by talent / passion density. If you try to only hire talented / passionate people, then many of them will still just be fit for grunt work so grunt work still gets done. If you on the other hand hire for grunt work you wont find much talent at all so company fails after a while.
    - II2II 1y ago
      Companies require different attributes in various roles. Those attributes extend far beyond passion and talent. The trouble with hiring based on those two attributes alone is that you're setting up a culture where the people who do the necessary grunt work are failed hires and where the employee themself feels held back. In otherwords, you are setting up a toxic workplace.
- x0x0 1y ago
  I've had the same experience -- employees who do the minimum and then whine when (one case) asked for a raise or he'd quit and I said sgtm; and (a different person) I chose to mentor and promote other people on the team. Some people can't wrap their minds around the idea that our interests aren't always aligned, but sometimes they are and also why would I invest in someone who doesn't invest here. Mentoring and promoting people is one of the best pieces of my job, but my time is finite and I want to also spend it productively :shrug:
rectang 1y ago
It's true for many companies, but to be successful it helps to act as though it isn't. Senior leadership sincerely believes that they are a force for good even when they are doing things to harm their workers, their customers, or society at large. It's human nature to feel that way, and to contradict that is to offend them and risk getting labeled as "hopelessly immersed in Reddit toxicity". And the easiest way to keep up the act is to fool yourself, because most of us aren't good at faking it. Find the best in senior leadership and emphasize it to yourself; find win-win opportunities (or make them!). Maybe it's even true that the company is a force for good! (I genuinely believe this about all my past employers in varying amounts, but I've been choosy and have made sacrifices.) But be stern about never putting yourself in a position where you can be taken advantage of, because senior leadership, being weak humans like all of us, will succumb to temptation.
- BoarMarket 1y ago
  To add clarity, that's caused by social programming not human nature.
  - rectang 1y ago
    I disagree. The tendency towards self justification is a universal human trait. Even if some may overcome that tendency, it is still qualifies as “human nature”. This is germane because while labor and capital may perceive each other as the “enemy” and may in fact act counter to each other’s interests, nearly everyone perceives their own actions as justified. To the extent that there is “social programming” involved which could conceivably change (unlike “human nature”), it has to do with the acts themselves, not the strong impulse to believe that your own acts are justified.
- thfuran 1y ago
  >And the easiest way to keep up the act is to fool yourself, because most of us aren't good at faking it. The better way is to work for a company that doesn't suck.
- graemep 1y ago
  That is true, but the problem is that nearly everyone believes it. Every dictator and revolutionary thinks they are doing good. I can understand what you are suggesting, but the balancing act of assuming they are acting for the best and also ensuring you do not let yourself get taken advantage of is very difficult.
jjav 1y ago
> >seems to taint young people into thinking that their employer is their enemy > Is this not true to a first approximation though? No, not at all. The company wants the employee to do well so that the team does well and the company overall does well. If the company was "the enemy", they company would be wishing for the employee to fail, which is not why they spent a lot of time and money to hire you in the first place. Now, of course the company isn't your friend (or family) either. The employer doesn't exist in the friend-enemy axis, they're just an employer which is a different type of relationship. Also, who is "the company"? People in upper management and HR, i.e. those who see you as a number on a spreadsheet but don't ever interact with you personally. But most of your interaction is with your first and second level managers who are specific people. One would certainly be well advised to cultivate a professional friendship with them. Not only will you do better, but work will be a lot more pleasant.
- rectang 1y ago
  > The company wants the employee to do well > Also, who is "the company"? The company doesn't "want" anything other than to become a bigger pile of money — it's an amoral abstract construction, lacking human wetware and all its messy idiosyncrasies. I think I'd express similar sentiments in a slightly different way: the company benefits when it gets maximum value for minimum outlay over the lifetime of the employment relationship. That model allows for companies which act in ways wildly counter to the interests of their workers. For example, the private equity firms asset-stripping Toys 'r' Us and KMart mostly "cared" that the workers at a given retail facility not quit before they could be let go.
mcv 1y ago
Sometimes it is, sometimes not. In 2009 I worked for a really chill company with small but nice management. The owner/CEO wanted to turn it into a worker-owned co-op. But one of my coworkers was so stuck in the "management is evil" mindset that he became hard to work with. (Although he also radicalized politically; I think he went from SNP to UKIP.)
Aurornis 1y ago
The way I explain it is that your company is not your friend, but that doesn’t make them your enemy. The trap is when they see everything as a false dichotomy between friend and enemy. Enemies are something you avoid or even work against. When someone starts seeing their employer as the enemy and they don’t want to do things that help out their enemy, they trick themselves into poor performance out of spite. Which leads to performance management and eventually firing if they don’t get a handle on it. This makes them even angrier, confirming their belief that their company is out to get them, leading to deeper spiraling into spite and poor performance. Breaking someone out of that mentality is hard but everyone is so much happier once you’ve cracked them out of the “friend or enemy” dichotomous thinking.
- rectang 1y ago
  In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employer? Something like the analogue to the “Reddit-infused worker” archetype, where leadership is inappropriately cynical about their workers and see them as “the enemy”?
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employer? Of course. If you don’t see that, you’re missing the point. In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employee? Or do you assume all employees are inherently good and do appropriate work for their pay and don’t need constant performance management to simply do their job? In my posts I’m not talking about all juniors. I’m talking about a problematic subset. You seem to be assuming I’m generalizing to all of them. I am not. This is a phenomenon specific to a subset of juniors that is unfortunately a repeated pattern where they all share some very common and obvious characteristics. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to break them out of that mindset and have them join their much happier peers, but to be honest once someone is that deep into the cynical mindset it’s hard to wake them out of it.
    - rectang 1y ago
      > In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employee? Of course — I implied as much via the “inappropriately cynical“ characterization. The tension between capital and labor is inescapable and ancient. I didn’t think you were generalizing to all juniors. Rather, what caught my interest was that before this last message I perceived the perspective of capital in your words.
jimbokun 1y ago
> the fact that the employer isn't your friend or family is a good working model to keep in the back of your mind. That's completely different than being your enemy. What you want to avoid are work environments where most workers are focused on gaming internal politics to get ahead. Those environments are soul destroying. But that's not all work environments. And most work environments are some mix of internal politics and wanting to actually create good and useful products.
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago
  Executives are almost solely focused on financial rewards. Employees (middle management and down) are explicitly structured to use salaries (to reduce costs/earnings from going to them). Salary is generally a flat monetary incentive, and bonuses aren't big enough typically. You make more money by promotion up a rigid hierarchy: so that is the true motivation. And that is politics. If you have salaries, you have politics, and a downward trend towards more of them. Engineering workers are often idealistic, which is a different set of motivations to exploit by management for monetary advantage. But idealism/creation leads to turf wars and emotional investment in "your code", which is another entire axis of politics.
  - monkeyelite 1y ago
    > Executives are almost solely focused on financial rewards. This is not true at all. Far more important in upper management is ego - they will lose money to improve their legacy or beat a competitor. > If you have salaries, you have politics, and a downward trend towards more of them Nobody said politics do not exist. So let’s take what you said at face value - management is paying for jobs but they are looking to cut costs, etc. Is that arrangement something you can use to benefit your life for a season? Or an inherent war zone?
monkeyelite 1y ago
No. opposition is not the right model It’s just business. You have something they want, they have something you want. Try to take advantage of places where your incentives aligned and watch out when they are not.

zachthewf 1y ago

It’s not that simple. Even if you take the cynical view that the company is your adversary, the other people who work at the company (including founders, investors and execs) are actually playing a career-long collaborative game rather than a one-off prisoners dilemma.

michael1999 1y ago
That's only true for the young. As they get older, or the exit grows large enough, some people smell that last iteration and defect hard.

aspect0545 1y ago

There’s a big difference between somebody not being your friend and somebody being your enemy. I’ve had a similar experience with a sub par employee, who at some point admitted that he wasn’t doing his best at work because he was "only there to exchange his time for money, not make any meaningful contributions". That guy was absolutely immersed in internet culture, making him less self-aware and very unpleasant to work with.

lloeki 1y ago
This mindset existed well before reddit; hell, it existed well before the Internet. Some people simply show up at work solely to put food on the table, doing the minimum amount of work so as not to get fired.
- rectang 1y ago
  The mindset exists because historically commercial entities have often been horrendously abusive to their workers. Dickens, anyone? The flip side is the terror of an entrepreneur seeing their enterprise struggle.
  - mythrwy 1y ago
    That is the antidote the toxic attitude. Go into business yourself for a bit and see the world from an entirely different angle. If you don't make it and come back to employment (most likely) you will be a much humbled and more enlightened person.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      I mean really no, and yes I've been on both sides. Owners have skin in the game. That's why when Musk says we should work 80+ hours a week he should be summarily ignored. He stands to gain billions while the rank and file stand to gain ulcers and an investor class that fights against them getting health insurance. The number of absolutely toxic business owners is insane.
      - Ferret7446 1y ago
        The number of absolutely toxic employees is also insane. Are businesses justified to treat employees as if all of them were that toxic? Should not employees then not treat their employers as if all of them are toxic?
        rectang 1y ago
        I think it’s important to distinguish between human leadership and the capitalist entities they work within. I’ve worked for multiple small businesses, led by wonderful humans, which ran out of money. When those businesses went under, it tore their leaders apart to let workers go — but those leaders were still constrained in how the could act by economic realities. There are both leaders and workers who are too cynical about each other. But it makes sense to be guarded with every company, even if I think it’s debatable how best to act — and how we might dream of improving matters at the macroeconomic level.
zwnow 1y ago
This mindset is completely sane. Sorry but if you work 40+ hours a week and barely can afford a vacation there is no reason for me to work hard. Especially not if I see managers with new cars every year.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Sorry but if you work 40+ hours a week and barely can afford a vacation Software developers are relatively highly paid. When they start acting like they’re minimum wage workers flipping burgers at a dead-end job, they’re missing the big picture. That’s the problem I’m trying to communicate.
  - zwnow 1y ago
    This is a generalization. Salary in Europe is different to salary in the USA for example. I earn median wage currently. Also lots of non degree having devs out there that aren't 6 figure earners.
    - jimbokun 1y ago
      That's the tradeoff you're making for universal health care and generous public benefits.
      - imtringued 1y ago
        I don't know why you come up with an ideological statement like that. The management culture, anti software/nerd mindset among the population and eastern European competition in the offshoring market have a much bigger impact. E.g. even though Germany is practicing mercantilist beggar thy neighbour export surplus policies, the country has failed to become an exporter of software or be known for quality software. Anyone who wants to work in the software industry is better off leaving the Eurozone and going to Switzerland where they get paid more in addition to the things you claim are the cause.
- jimbokun 1y ago
  Then find a different job with better compensation.
jjav 1y ago
> "only there to exchange his time for money, not make any meaningful contributions" I sometimes wish companies were more open to accepting these roles, instead of the up or out model. There is in many teams a lot of busywork that for various reasons can't be automated (or new incoming busywork that takes over when the older one gets automated). If an employee is content with just handling this kind of lower level busywork and go home at 4:30pm in exchange of not pursuing raises and promotions, there's nothing wrong with that. That work still needs to get done, so rather than getting a never ending stream of junior new hires constantly having to get trained, I'd be fine with having someone who is happy to stay at that level and take it easy.
- jrozner 1y ago
  Up or out generally stops once someone reaches engineer or sr engineer. Most of the time a jr engineer is going to need substantial mentoring and support. Them never moving beyond that point likely results in a net negative gain if you need another person always available to provide that for their entire time there if it goes beyond 1-2 years.
- aitchnyu 1y ago
  How do candidates express that in interviews?
- Jensson 1y ago
  > I sometimes wish companies were more open to accepting these roles, instead of the up or out model. But companies live or die by talent / passion density. If you try to only hire talented / passionate people, then many of them will still just be fit for grunt work so grunt work still gets done. If you on the other hand hire for grunt work you wont find much talent at all so company fails after a while.
  - II2II 1y ago
    Companies require different attributes in various roles. Those attributes extend far beyond passion and talent. The trouble with hiring based on those two attributes alone is that you're setting up a culture where the people who do the necessary grunt work are failed hires and where the employee themself feels held back. In otherwords, you are setting up a toxic workplace.
x0x0 1y ago
I've had the same experience -- employees who do the minimum and then whine when (one case) asked for a raise or he'd quit and I said sgtm; and (a different person) I chose to mentor and promote other people on the team. Some people can't wrap their minds around the idea that our interests aren't always aligned, but sometimes they are and also why would I invest in someone who doesn't invest here. Mentoring and promoting people is one of the best pieces of my job, but my time is finite and I want to also spend it productively :shrug:

rectang 1y ago

It's true for many companies, but to be successful it helps to act as though it isn't. Senior leadership sincerely believes that they are a force for good even when they are doing things to harm their workers, their customers, or society at large. It's human nature to feel that way, and to contradict that is to offend them and risk getting labeled as "hopelessly immersed in Reddit toxicity". And the easiest way to keep up the act is to fool yourself, because most of us aren't good at faking it. Find the best in senior leadership and emphasize it to yourself; find win-win opportunities (or make them!). Maybe it's even true that the company is a force for good! (I genuinely believe this about all my past employers in varying amounts, but I've been choosy and have made sacrifices.) But be stern about never putting yourself in a position where you can be taken advantage of, because senior leadership, being weak humans like all of us, will succumb to temptation.

BoarMarket 1y ago
To add clarity, that's caused by social programming not human nature.
- rectang 1y ago
  I disagree. The tendency towards self justification is a universal human trait. Even if some may overcome that tendency, it is still qualifies as “human nature”. This is germane because while labor and capital may perceive each other as the “enemy” and may in fact act counter to each other’s interests, nearly everyone perceives their own actions as justified. To the extent that there is “social programming” involved which could conceivably change (unlike “human nature”), it has to do with the acts themselves, not the strong impulse to believe that your own acts are justified.
thfuran 1y ago
>And the easiest way to keep up the act is to fool yourself, because most of us aren't good at faking it. The better way is to work for a company that doesn't suck.
graemep 1y ago
That is true, but the problem is that nearly everyone believes it. Every dictator and revolutionary thinks they are doing good. I can understand what you are suggesting, but the balancing act of assuming they are acting for the best and also ensuring you do not let yourself get taken advantage of is very difficult.

jjav 1y ago

> >seems to taint young people into thinking that their employer is their enemy > Is this not true to a first approximation though? No, not at all. The company wants the employee to do well so that the team does well and the company overall does well. If the company was "the enemy", they company would be wishing for the employee to fail, which is not why they spent a lot of time and money to hire you in the first place. Now, of course the company isn't your friend (or family) either. The employer doesn't exist in the friend-enemy axis, they're just an employer which is a different type of relationship. Also, who is "the company"? People in upper management and HR, i.e. those who see you as a number on a spreadsheet but don't ever interact with you personally. But most of your interaction is with your first and second level managers who are specific people. One would certainly be well advised to cultivate a professional friendship with them. Not only will you do better, but work will be a lot more pleasant.

rectang 1y ago
> The company wants the employee to do well > Also, who is "the company"? The company doesn't "want" anything other than to become a bigger pile of money — it's an amoral abstract construction, lacking human wetware and all its messy idiosyncrasies. I think I'd express similar sentiments in a slightly different way: the company benefits when it gets maximum value for minimum outlay over the lifetime of the employment relationship. That model allows for companies which act in ways wildly counter to the interests of their workers. For example, the private equity firms asset-stripping Toys 'r' Us and KMart mostly "cared" that the workers at a given retail facility not quit before they could be let go.

mcv 1y ago

Sometimes it is, sometimes not. In 2009 I worked for a really chill company with small but nice management. The owner/CEO wanted to turn it into a worker-owned co-op. But one of my coworkers was so stuck in the "management is evil" mindset that he became hard to work with. (Although he also radicalized politically; I think he went from SNP to UKIP.)

Aurornis 1y ago

The way I explain it is that your company is not your friend, but that doesn’t make them your enemy. The trap is when they see everything as a false dichotomy between friend and enemy. Enemies are something you avoid or even work against. When someone starts seeing their employer as the enemy and they don’t want to do things that help out their enemy, they trick themselves into poor performance out of spite. Which leads to performance management and eventually firing if they don’t get a handle on it. This makes them even angrier, confirming their belief that their company is out to get them, leading to deeper spiraling into spite and poor performance. Breaking someone out of that mentality is hard but everyone is so much happier once you’ve cracked them out of the “friend or enemy” dichotomous thinking.

rectang 1y ago
In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employer? Something like the analogue to the “Reddit-infused worker” archetype, where leadership is inappropriately cynical about their workers and see them as “the enemy”?
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employer? Of course. If you don’t see that, you’re missing the point. In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employee? Or do you assume all employees are inherently good and do appropriate work for their pay and don’t need constant performance management to simply do their job? In my posts I’m not talking about all juniors. I’m talking about a problematic subset. You seem to be assuming I’m generalizing to all of them. I am not. This is a phenomenon specific to a subset of juniors that is unfortunately a repeated pattern where they all share some very common and obvious characteristics. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to break them out of that mindset and have them join their much happier peers, but to be honest once someone is that deep into the cynical mindset it’s hard to wake them out of it.
  - rectang 1y ago
    > In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employee? Of course — I implied as much via the “inappropriately cynical“ characterization. The tension between capital and labor is inescapable and ancient. I didn’t think you were generalizing to all juniors. Rather, what caught my interest was that before this last message I perceived the perspective of capital in your words.

jimbokun 1y ago

> the fact that the employer isn't your friend or family is a good working model to keep in the back of your mind. That's completely different than being your enemy. What you want to avoid are work environments where most workers are focused on gaming internal politics to get ahead. Those environments are soul destroying. But that's not all work environments. And most work environments are some mix of internal politics and wanting to actually create good and useful products.

AtlasBarfed 1y ago
Executives are almost solely focused on financial rewards. Employees (middle management and down) are explicitly structured to use salaries (to reduce costs/earnings from going to them). Salary is generally a flat monetary incentive, and bonuses aren't big enough typically. You make more money by promotion up a rigid hierarchy: so that is the true motivation. And that is politics. If you have salaries, you have politics, and a downward trend towards more of them. Engineering workers are often idealistic, which is a different set of motivations to exploit by management for monetary advantage. But idealism/creation leads to turf wars and emotional investment in "your code", which is another entire axis of politics.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  > Executives are almost solely focused on financial rewards. This is not true at all. Far more important in upper management is ego - they will lose money to improve their legacy or beat a competitor. > If you have salaries, you have politics, and a downward trend towards more of them Nobody said politics do not exist. So let’s take what you said at face value - management is paying for jobs but they are looking to cut costs, etc. Is that arrangement something you can use to benefit your life for a season? Or an inherent war zone?

monkeyelite 1y ago

No. opposition is not the right model It’s just business. You have something they want, they have something you want. Try to take advantage of places where your incentives aligned and watch out when they are not.