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>>> it is okay if the talented developer narrative doesn’t necessarily involve the company in five or ten years. That’s fine. I always get queasy reading lines

>>> it is okay if the talented developer narrative doesn’t necessarily involve the company in five or ten years. That’s fine. I always get queasy reading lines like this. In the US, most employers can fire at will. The corollary should be that any employee can leave at will. There should be no cultural stigma against the latter. >>> humans are not motivated economically toward self-actualization The RSA video that supposedly supports this claim cites research that is only tangentially related to full-time employment. I'm not sure it's as applicable as the video host thinks: I can't help but note that ownership of tasks doesn't come with ownership of the company relative to the value of the tasks. It's all about who started it, or who got big equity. Am I the only programmer who doesn't like being economically exploited (in the formal microeconomic sense)? For me, it's demotivating to know I'm putting forth effort for which someone else is reaping huge value. Asking me to stick around for salary only (and perhaps a few worthless options) doesn't overpower my understanding of economics and make me excited to drive someone else's value creation process.

vinceguidry 13y ago
> I always get queasy reading lines like this. In the US, most employers can fire at will. The corollary should be that any employee can leave at will. There should be no cultural stigma against the latter. If you think about it, there's a pretty good reason for why this perception exists. Human social dynamics. Just like pack animals, we tend to ascribe virtue to the collective and vice to the individual. We've a fairly individualistic society, but still, jumping out of a safe and secure collective for an uncertain and possibly lucrative future is still going to be looked at as somewhat sociopathic. Even if it's the only way to receive fair compensation for your services.
- skyraider 13y ago
  I understand what you are saying, but cannot see how employees are comfortable with ascribing virtue to large-scale microeconomic exploitation. To me, the behavior of employers towards employees ("here, go create all of our value; go let us economically exploit you") is the sociopathic behavior (and somewhat misanthropic too.. except not really, because founders take the risk and expect a reward, and that's how the economy works). I guess this gets into all kinds of deep economics, but employees either let it happen, are powerless, or most likely, are completely oblivious to their exploitation.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    > I guess this gets into all kinds of deep economics, but employees either let it happen, are powerless, or most likely, are completely oblivious to their exploitation. They generally know but don't care, as they have what they consider to be more important things to worry about. Lives, family, friends. These things take up all their mindspace, leaving no room for career machinations. You should read Venkatesh Rao's series of essays called "The Gervais Principle". http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle&#x2F http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
einhverfr 13y ago
> Am I the only programmer who doesn't like being economically exploited (in the formal microeconomic sense)? For me, it's demotivating to know I'm putting forth effort for which someone else is reaping huge value. Jobs are the problem and self-employment is the answer ;-)
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  #ShitHNSays
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    The point is, self-employment is the way out of that, and a real eye-opening. Personally I can't imagine going back to formal employment as a long-term goal and I know many who feel this way. However, the tradeoff is real. You accept risk in exchange for freedom and reward.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      Sure, and I agree with you. I just don't think self-employment will be the solution for more than a small percentage of the population any time soon.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Am I the only programmer who doesn't like being economically exploited (in the formal microeconomic sense)? For me, it's demotivating to know I'm putting forth effort for which someone else is reaping huge value. No, far from it. Personally, I'm willing to take an "unfair" deal if I get something for it. If the risk reduction merits the lower expected value, then fine. Increasingly, though, organizational life is becoming about a world in which the higher-ups play "heads, I win; tails, you lose". You still get the mediocre compensation, but not the risk reduction and career development and easier lifestyle that have, traditionally, made mediocre remuneration tolerable for 90% of the population. Now employment is, for most people, not about genuine risk reduction or career support, but just a shit deal they take because they have no leverage.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Increasingly, though, organizational life is becoming about a world in which the higher-ups play "heads, I win; tails, you lose". Economics and the market economy, as instantiated, is about a number of things other than the usual platitudes of Pareto efficiency, wealth creation, and "freedom". I'd realized quite some time back that there's a fundamental relationship between economic and political power, a point driven home by Citizen's United and Lawrence Lessig's work. The inability of Libertarians to understand (or admit) this is the central weakness of their philosophy (not helped much by the exploitation of the American Libertarian and Tea Party movements by the Koch brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koc...). Economics and business are also very much about risk management, reduction, and offset. Business legal structures (literally: LLCs -- limited liability corporations, among other forms) exist to reduce the risks of investors. Which can be a positive, but also a harm to society at large. Niall Ferguson, as much as I find him generally personally repulsive, hammers home this point in his Ascent of Money (see especially "Safe as Houses"). The shift of retirement plans from defined benefit to defined contribution is a handy way of shifting risks from fund managers (generally: employers) to employees. The fact that it's also leading to a general gross underfunding of retirement planning isn't unrelated. The story of the oil and energy industry (themselves really the core economic engines of the past century-plus of growth) are largely a continuous story of violation of free-market assumptions through monopoly, collusion, cartel, government ownership, military and diplomatic interventions, and commodity-markets manipulation (Standard Oil, As-Is agreement, Seven Sisters, OPEC, Saudi/Iranian/Venezualan/Mexican oil companies and others, broadly most 20th century wars but particularly WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Gulf I & II, Arab-Israeli conflicts, Britan's coup against Iranian Mohammad Mosaddegh (and all that's emerged from that)). Read or watch Daniel Yergin's The Prize. The same risk transfers are seen within organizations -- the front line generally takes risks, management sees rewards (though tenure at top spots in firms has also become increasingly brief). The economy is also as much about wealth concentration as it is of wealth creation, and moreso during decline. Especially in the absence of a progressive taxation system (or even a fair national lottery). John Michael Greer expands on this nicely: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-peak-oil-looks-like.html http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-peak-oil... And while I agree with your observation that life as a cog in the corporate machine is increasingly less rewarding (again: see the early economists, including Smith's observations on labor wages and Ricardo's Law of Rent for the mechanics behind this), it's a bit less of a vast conspiracy (though there are conspirers) and more of an inevitable Greek tragedy. Not that you might not be able to wage your own Horatio Alger victory over the short or perhaps even longer term, but the fundamental issue is reduced real growth rates within the economy as a whole, very likely caused by increasing constraints on energy flows, availability, and costs. And that is a subject largely ignored by orthodox neoclassical economics, but increasingly the focus of heterodox economics. I'm finding thermoeconomics (a/k/a biophysical economics) and ecological economics rather more powerful in explaining past, recent, and likely future economic events than the neoclassical models. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics
mc-lovin 13y ago
>Am I the only programmer who doesn't like being economically exploited (in the formal microeconomic sense)? For me, it's demotivating to know I'm putting forth effort for which someone else is reaping huge value. There is no formal micro-economic sense of exploitation, except perhaps not getting the competitive wage, which is not what you are describing.
- skyraider 13y ago
  Not getting a wage equal to your productivity at the margin may be considered exploitation in several schools of microeconomics. If an employee provides value X and receives wages X-10, the amount of exploitation is 10. However, depending on who you talk to, workers are not 'exploited' in a loose sense because they can move to another organization that pays the prevailing wage. But the fact remains that the prevailing wage may be below the worker's contribution to organizational productivity at the margin. Thus, my econ professor still taught that exploitation, in a formal sense, occurs whenever wage(worker) < marginal_productivity(worker).
  - mc-lovin 13y ago
    >Not getting a wage equal to your productivity at the margin may be considered exploitation in several schools of microeconomics. If an employee provides value X and receives wages X-10, the amount of exploitation is 10. And this is, by definition, the competitive wage in neoclassical theory. Suppose there is a group of employers, and a group of employees, and each employee adds value X to any of the employers. Then any employer will want to hire all the workers for themselves, if the prevailing wage is X - 10. So competition ensures that there is no exploitation in that sense. So while neoclassical theory does allow for "exploitation", it also predicts that it is very unlikely to actually occur. You seem to be reinterpreting neoclassical theory where "marginal value" is decided according to your accounting rules, rather than the competitive market.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    So if an employee produces 0 or negative (as happens in several organizations) but receives wage X, are they exploiting their employer? Microeconomic models that assume the marginal productivity of a worker can be calculated in advance are drastically at odds with the reality I see, where employers are terrified of a bad hire and even if they get a good hire, they may still end up with zero to show for it because of bad management or simply market conditions. You could argue that the reason we have corporations at all is to spread the risk of unknowables across many people, so that it becomes bearable and not everyone is exposed to ruin if luck doesn't turn their way.

vinceguidry 13y ago

> I always get queasy reading lines like this. In the US, most employers can fire at will. The corollary should be that any employee can leave at will. There should be no cultural stigma against the latter. If you think about it, there's a pretty good reason for why this perception exists. Human social dynamics. Just like pack animals, we tend to ascribe virtue to the collective and vice to the individual. We've a fairly individualistic society, but still, jumping out of a safe and secure collective for an uncertain and possibly lucrative future is still going to be looked at as somewhat sociopathic. Even if it's the only way to receive fair compensation for your services.

skyraider 13y ago
I understand what you are saying, but cannot see how employees are comfortable with ascribing virtue to large-scale microeconomic exploitation. To me, the behavior of employers towards employees ("here, go create all of our value; go let us economically exploit you") is the sociopathic behavior (and somewhat misanthropic too.. except not really, because founders take the risk and expect a reward, and that's how the economy works). I guess this gets into all kinds of deep economics, but employees either let it happen, are powerless, or most likely, are completely oblivious to their exploitation.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  > I guess this gets into all kinds of deep economics, but employees either let it happen, are powerless, or most likely, are completely oblivious to their exploitation. They generally know but don't care, as they have what they consider to be more important things to worry about. Lives, family, friends. These things take up all their mindspace, leaving no room for career machinations. You should read Venkatesh Rao's series of essays called "The Gervais Principle". http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle&#x2F http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

einhverfr 13y ago

> Am I the only programmer who doesn't like being economically exploited (in the formal microeconomic sense)? For me, it's demotivating to know I'm putting forth effort for which someone else is reaping huge value. Jobs are the problem and self-employment is the answer ;-)

michaelochurch 13y ago
#ShitHNSays
- einhverfr 13y ago
  The point is, self-employment is the way out of that, and a real eye-opening. Personally I can't imagine going back to formal employment as a long-term goal and I know many who feel this way. However, the tradeoff is real. You accept risk in exchange for freedom and reward.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    Sure, and I agree with you. I just don't think self-employment will be the solution for more than a small percentage of the population any time soon.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Am I the only programmer who doesn't like being economically exploited (in the formal microeconomic sense)? For me, it's demotivating to know I'm putting forth effort for which someone else is reaping huge value. No, far from it. Personally, I'm willing to take an "unfair" deal if I get something for it. If the risk reduction merits the lower expected value, then fine. Increasingly, though, organizational life is becoming about a world in which the higher-ups play "heads, I win; tails, you lose". You still get the mediocre compensation, but not the risk reduction and career development and easier lifestyle that have, traditionally, made mediocre remuneration tolerable for 90% of the population. Now employment is, for most people, not about genuine risk reduction or career support, but just a shit deal they take because they have no leverage.

dredmorbius 13y ago
Increasingly, though, organizational life is becoming about a world in which the higher-ups play "heads, I win; tails, you lose". Economics and the market economy, as instantiated, is about a number of things other than the usual platitudes of Pareto efficiency, wealth creation, and "freedom". I'd realized quite some time back that there's a fundamental relationship between economic and political power, a point driven home by Citizen's United and Lawrence Lessig's work. The inability of Libertarians to understand (or admit) this is the central weakness of their philosophy (not helped much by the exploitation of the American Libertarian and Tea Party movements by the Koch brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koc...). Economics and business are also very much about risk management, reduction, and offset. Business legal structures (literally: LLCs -- limited liability corporations, among other forms) exist to reduce the risks of investors. Which can be a positive, but also a harm to society at large. Niall Ferguson, as much as I find him generally personally repulsive, hammers home this point in his Ascent of Money (see especially "Safe as Houses"). The shift of retirement plans from defined benefit to defined contribution is a handy way of shifting risks from fund managers (generally: employers) to employees. The fact that it's also leading to a general gross underfunding of retirement planning isn't unrelated. The story of the oil and energy industry (themselves really the core economic engines of the past century-plus of growth) are largely a continuous story of violation of free-market assumptions through monopoly, collusion, cartel, government ownership, military and diplomatic interventions, and commodity-markets manipulation (Standard Oil, As-Is agreement, Seven Sisters, OPEC, Saudi/Iranian/Venezualan/Mexican oil companies and others, broadly most 20th century wars but particularly WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Gulf I & II, Arab-Israeli conflicts, Britan's coup against Iranian Mohammad Mosaddegh (and all that's emerged from that)). Read or watch Daniel Yergin's The Prize. The same risk transfers are seen within organizations -- the front line generally takes risks, management sees rewards (though tenure at top spots in firms has also become increasingly brief). The economy is also as much about wealth concentration as it is of wealth creation, and moreso during decline. Especially in the absence of a progressive taxation system (or even a fair national lottery). John Michael Greer expands on this nicely: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-peak-oil-looks-like.html http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-peak-oil... And while I agree with your observation that life as a cog in the corporate machine is increasingly less rewarding (again: see the early economists, including Smith's observations on labor wages and Ricardo's Law of Rent for the mechanics behind this), it's a bit less of a vast conspiracy (though there are conspirers) and more of an inevitable Greek tragedy. Not that you might not be able to wage your own Horatio Alger victory over the short or perhaps even longer term, but the fundamental issue is reduced real growth rates within the economy as a whole, very likely caused by increasing constraints on energy flows, availability, and costs. And that is a subject largely ignored by orthodox neoclassical economics, but increasingly the focus of heterodox economics. I'm finding thermoeconomics (a/k/a biophysical economics) and ecological economics rather more powerful in explaining past, recent, and likely future economic events than the neoclassical models. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics

mc-lovin 13y ago

>Am I the only programmer who doesn't like being economically exploited (in the formal microeconomic sense)? For me, it's demotivating to know I'm putting forth effort for which someone else is reaping huge value. There is no formal micro-economic sense of exploitation, except perhaps not getting the competitive wage, which is not what you are describing.

skyraider 13y ago
Not getting a wage equal to your productivity at the margin may be considered exploitation in several schools of microeconomics. If an employee provides value X and receives wages X-10, the amount of exploitation is 10. However, depending on who you talk to, workers are not 'exploited' in a loose sense because they can move to another organization that pays the prevailing wage. But the fact remains that the prevailing wage may be below the worker's contribution to organizational productivity at the margin. Thus, my econ professor still taught that exploitation, in a formal sense, occurs whenever wage(worker) < marginal_productivity(worker).
- mc-lovin 13y ago
  >Not getting a wage equal to your productivity at the margin may be considered exploitation in several schools of microeconomics. If an employee provides value X and receives wages X-10, the amount of exploitation is 10. And this is, by definition, the competitive wage in neoclassical theory. Suppose there is a group of employers, and a group of employees, and each employee adds value X to any of the employers. Then any employer will want to hire all the workers for themselves, if the prevailing wage is X - 10. So competition ensures that there is no exploitation in that sense. So while neoclassical theory does allow for "exploitation", it also predicts that it is very unlikely to actually occur. You seem to be reinterpreting neoclassical theory where "marginal value" is decided according to your accounting rules, rather than the competitive market.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  So if an employee produces 0 or negative (as happens in several organizations) but receives wage X, are they exploiting their employer? Microeconomic models that assume the marginal productivity of a worker can be calculated in advance are drastically at odds with the reality I see, where employers are terrified of a bad hire and even if they get a good hire, they may still end up with zero to show for it because of bad management or simply market conditions. You could argue that the reason we have corporations at all is to spread the risk of unknowables across many people, so that it becomes bearable and not everyone is exposed to ruin if luck doesn't turn their way.