5 ms·

This is not a technology problem. AI intensifies work because management turns every efficiency gain into higher output quotas. The solution is labor organizati

This is not a technology problem. AI intensifies work because management turns every efficiency gain into higher output quotas. The solution is labor organization, not better software.

ap99 8mo ago
This argument has been used against every new technology since forever. And the initial gut reaction is to resist by organizing labor. Companies that succumb to organized labor get locked into that speed of operating. New companies get created that adopt 'the new thing' and blow old companies away. Repeat.
- foxes 8mo ago
  Maybe society shouldnt be optimising for that.
- falloutx 8mo ago
  > And the initial gut reaction is to resist by organizing labor. Yeah like tech workers have similar rights to union workers. We literally have 0 power compared to any previous group of workers. Organizing of labour cant even happen in tech as tech has large percentage of immigrant labour who have even less rights than citizens. Also there is no shared pain like union workers had, we all have been given different incentives, working under different corporations so without shared pain its impossible to organize. AI is the first shared pain we had, and even this caused no resistance from tech workers. Resistance has come from the users, which is the first good sign. Consumers have shown more ethics than workers and we have to applaud that. Any resistance to buying chatbot subscriptions has to be celebrated.
  - co_king_3 8mo ago
    Labor organizing is (obviously) banned on HackerNews. This isn't the place to kvetch about this; you will literally never see a unionization effort on this website because the accounts of the people posting about it will be [flagged] and shadowbanned.
  - ap99 8mo ago
    I'm curious as to what previous group you're comparing yourself (and the rest of us) to. I'm also curious as to what you do, where you do it, and who you work for that makes you feel like you have zero power.
    - falloutx 8mo ago
      Just a regular senior SDE at one of the Mag7. I can tell you everyone at these companies is replaceable within a day. Even within an hour. Even the head of depts have no power above them, they can be fired on short notice.
      - ap99 8mo ago
        What would your version of fair balance of power look like?
  - uyhsadf 8mo ago
    This website is literally a place for capitalists (mostly temporarily embarrassed) to brag about how they're going to cheat and scam their way to the top.
- wiseowise 8mo ago
  So race to the bottom where you work more and make less per unit of work? Great deal, splendid idea. The only winners here are CEOs/founders who make obscene money, liquidate/retire early while suckers are on the infinite treadmill justifying their existence.
  - ap99 8mo ago
    You're describing all technological advances. I can harvest crops by hand, but a machine can do it 100x faster. I'm not paid 100x though so it's a bad deal - destroy the machines. The real advantage now that code is cheaper to write is who can imagine the best product. I'm happy to compete at that level.
    - wiseowise 8mo ago
      Thank you for proving the point for me. Productivity goes up, 70% of people are fired and salary barely grows up. Amazing deal. https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/103267/ERR-302.pdf https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publica... > The real advantage now that code is cheaper to write is who can imagine the best product. I'm happy to compete at that level. I’d probably be as happy as you, if I had such big ego.
- wolfcola 8mo ago
  Do you like working 8 hours a day instead of 12? 5 days a week instead of 7? You can thank organized labor.
  - PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
    Those same jobs are no where to be found in the places that the organized labor started. It moved outside the US.
    - wolfcola 8mo ago
      because of a concerted effort to break labor power… you’re making my point.
      - PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
        So your solution is to temporarily make big $$$ until the capitalists move overseas? What is wrong with a the status quo? A competitive market that keeps labor here.
MrBuddyCasino 8mo ago
The leftist thought process never ceases to amaze me: "This time, its going to be the correct version of socialism."
- elicash 8mo ago
  You can be libertarian and a capitalist and still be pro-union. At the end of the day, a Collective Bargaining Agreement is just a private contract between two parties. It can be a way to raise wages without government setting a minimum price for labor. While I'd agree most of its proponents (like myself) also favor other left-wing policies, I'm just saying it doesn't need to be.
  - simondoubleu 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - MrBuddyCasino 8mo ago
    Unions are labour cartels for the purpose of extracting above-market wages from the commons, a sort of mafia. They are incompatible with capitalism and libertarianism, especially with libertarianism.
    - co_king_3 8mo ago
      Who fucking cares. I would gladly start a mafia to exploit the commons if it meant I got paid more for working less.
    - elicash 8mo ago
      By this logic, every corporation is a cartel to extract below-market wages from the commons. Both sides are bargaining collectively. And so you'd be saying both are incompatible with libertarianism. There are strands of libertarian thought, I suppose, where government shouldn't be incorporating businesses at all. But it's still legit to say libertarianism is compatible with corporations and with labor unions.
zozbot234 8mo ago
The driving force is not management or even developers, it's always the end users. They get to do more with less, thanks to the growing output. This is something to the celebrated, not a problem to be "solved" with artificial quotas.
bckr 8mo ago
Labor organization yes! I don't quite know how to achieve it. I also worry that my desire to become a manager is in direct conflict with my desire to contribute to labor organization. On a separate note, I have the intensification problem in my personal work as well. I sit down to study, but, first, let me just ask Claude to do some research in the background... Oh, and how is my Cursor doing on the dashboard? Ah, right, studying... Oh, Claude is done...
- co_king_3 8mo ago
  > I don't quite know how to achieve it. Definitely not by posting on right-wing social media websites. > I also worry that my desire to become a manager is in direct conflict with my desire to contribute to labor organization. It is.
  - bckr 8mo ago
    not a very helpful response tbh
- 9rx 8mo ago
  > I also worry that my desire to become a manager is in direct conflict with my desire to contribute to labor organization. Nah. You can definitely do both. A labor organization of any meaningful size needs management. A labor union is effectively a business in its own right, after all. Some unions even opt to register as corporations, and some unions even see unions rise up to protect workers from the larger union! And certainly a tech union, to be effective, would have to be humongous given how easy it is to move the work around.
sawmurai 8mo ago
I am all for labor organization. I just don’t see how it would be of benefit in this particular case.
- co_king_3 8mo ago
  If I'm not mistaken it would appear that you're saying that you are in fact *not* for labor organization in this case.
  - sawmurai 8mo ago
    No, absolutely not. I would even be for labor organization if it had no impact on this matter primarily because I don't see why it would be a negative.
TFYS 8mo ago
Why does management turn efficiency gains into higher output quotas? Because competition forced them to. This is a feature of free market capitalism. A single participant can't decide to keep output as is when efficiency improves, because it will lose the competition to those that increase output. Labor organization could be the solution if it was global. Labor organizations that are based in a single country will just lead to work moving to countries without labor organization. This problem of efficiency gains never translating to more free time is a problem deep in our economic system. If we want a fix, we need to change the whole system.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]

This is not a technology problem. AI intensifies work because management turns every efficiency gain into higher output quotas. The solution is labor organization, not better software.

ap99 8mo ago

This argument has been used against every new technology since forever. And the initial gut reaction is to resist by organizing labor. Companies that succumb to organized labor get locked into that speed of operating. New companies get created that adopt 'the new thing' and blow old companies away. Repeat.

foxes 8mo ago
Maybe society shouldnt be optimising for that.
falloutx 8mo ago
> And the initial gut reaction is to resist by organizing labor. Yeah like tech workers have similar rights to union workers. We literally have 0 power compared to any previous group of workers. Organizing of labour cant even happen in tech as tech has large percentage of immigrant labour who have even less rights than citizens. Also there is no shared pain like union workers had, we all have been given different incentives, working under different corporations so without shared pain its impossible to organize. AI is the first shared pain we had, and even this caused no resistance from tech workers. Resistance has come from the users, which is the first good sign. Consumers have shown more ethics than workers and we have to applaud that. Any resistance to buying chatbot subscriptions has to be celebrated.
- co_king_3 8mo ago
  Labor organizing is (obviously) banned on HackerNews. This isn't the place to kvetch about this; you will literally never see a unionization effort on this website because the accounts of the people posting about it will be [flagged] and shadowbanned.
- ap99 8mo ago
  I'm curious as to what previous group you're comparing yourself (and the rest of us) to. I'm also curious as to what you do, where you do it, and who you work for that makes you feel like you have zero power.
  - falloutx 8mo ago
    Just a regular senior SDE at one of the Mag7. I can tell you everyone at these companies is replaceable within a day. Even within an hour. Even the head of depts have no power above them, they can be fired on short notice.
    - ap99 8mo ago
      What would your version of fair balance of power look like?
- uyhsadf 8mo ago
  This website is literally a place for capitalists (mostly temporarily embarrassed) to brag about how they're going to cheat and scam their way to the top.
wiseowise 8mo ago
So race to the bottom where you work more and make less per unit of work? Great deal, splendid idea. The only winners here are CEOs/founders who make obscene money, liquidate/retire early while suckers are on the infinite treadmill justifying their existence.
- ap99 8mo ago
  You're describing all technological advances. I can harvest crops by hand, but a machine can do it 100x faster. I'm not paid 100x though so it's a bad deal - destroy the machines. The real advantage now that code is cheaper to write is who can imagine the best product. I'm happy to compete at that level.
  - wiseowise 8mo ago
    Thank you for proving the point for me. Productivity goes up, 70% of people are fired and salary barely grows up. Amazing deal. https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/103267/ERR-302.pdf https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publica... > The real advantage now that code is cheaper to write is who can imagine the best product. I'm happy to compete at that level. I’d probably be as happy as you, if I had such big ego.
wolfcola 8mo ago
Do you like working 8 hours a day instead of 12? 5 days a week instead of 7? You can thank organized labor.
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
  Those same jobs are no where to be found in the places that the organized labor started. It moved outside the US.
  - wolfcola 8mo ago
    because of a concerted effort to break labor power… you’re making my point.
    - PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
      So your solution is to temporarily make big $$$ until the capitalists move overseas? What is wrong with a the status quo? A competitive market that keeps labor here.

MrBuddyCasino 8mo ago

The leftist thought process never ceases to amaze me: "This time, its going to be the correct version of socialism."

elicash 8mo ago
You can be libertarian and a capitalist and still be pro-union. At the end of the day, a Collective Bargaining Agreement is just a private contract between two parties. It can be a way to raise wages without government setting a minimum price for labor. While I'd agree most of its proponents (like myself) also favor other left-wing policies, I'm just saying it doesn't need to be.
- simondoubleu 8mo ago
  [dead]
- MrBuddyCasino 8mo ago
  Unions are labour cartels for the purpose of extracting above-market wages from the commons, a sort of mafia. They are incompatible with capitalism and libertarianism, especially with libertarianism.
  - co_king_3 8mo ago
    Who fucking cares. I would gladly start a mafia to exploit the commons if it meant I got paid more for working less.
  - elicash 8mo ago
    By this logic, every corporation is a cartel to extract below-market wages from the commons. Both sides are bargaining collectively. And so you'd be saying both are incompatible with libertarianism. There are strands of libertarian thought, I suppose, where government shouldn't be incorporating businesses at all. But it's still legit to say libertarianism is compatible with corporations and with labor unions.

zozbot234 8mo ago

The driving force is not management or even developers, it's always the end users. They get to do more with less, thanks to the growing output. This is something to the celebrated, not a problem to be "solved" with artificial quotas.

bckr 8mo ago

Labor organization yes! I don't quite know how to achieve it. I also worry that my desire to become a manager is in direct conflict with my desire to contribute to labor organization. On a separate note, I have the intensification problem in my personal work as well. I sit down to study, but, first, let me just ask Claude to do some research in the background... Oh, and how is my Cursor doing on the dashboard? Ah, right, studying... Oh, Claude is done...

co_king_3 8mo ago
> I don't quite know how to achieve it. Definitely not by posting on right-wing social media websites. > I also worry that my desire to become a manager is in direct conflict with my desire to contribute to labor organization. It is.
- bckr 8mo ago
  not a very helpful response tbh
9rx 8mo ago
> I also worry that my desire to become a manager is in direct conflict with my desire to contribute to labor organization. Nah. You can definitely do both. A labor organization of any meaningful size needs management. A labor union is effectively a business in its own right, after all. Some unions even opt to register as corporations, and some unions even see unions rise up to protect workers from the larger union! And certainly a tech union, to be effective, would have to be humongous given how easy it is to move the work around.

sawmurai 8mo ago

I am all for labor organization. I just don’t see how it would be of benefit in this particular case.

co_king_3 8mo ago
If I'm not mistaken it would appear that you're saying that you are in fact *not* for labor organization in this case.
- sawmurai 8mo ago
  No, absolutely not. I would even be for labor organization if it had no impact on this matter primarily because I don't see why it would be a negative.

TFYS 8mo ago

Why does management turn efficiency gains into higher output quotas? Because competition forced them to. This is a feature of free market capitalism. A single participant can't decide to keep output as is when efficiency improves, because it will lose the competition to those that increase output. Labor organization could be the solution if it was global. Labor organizations that are based in a single country will just lead to work moving to countries without labor organization. This problem of efficiency gains never translating to more free time is a problem deep in our economic system. If we want a fix, we need to change the whole system.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]