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Yes, I find this kind of self deception about the nature of a job much more disturbing than having a negative attitude about having someone else tell you what t

by cgag 13y ago

Yes, I find this kind of self deception about the nature of a job much more disturbing than having a negative attitude about having someone else tell you what to do and when to do it. You're collaborating with colleagues to build software for someone else to sell, over which you retain no rights, and you receive a flat rate in the face of growing profits.

matthewmacleod 13y ago
That's the result if you work for a bad team, sure. In my case, I develop software that my colleagues sell and support (and they're nice guys.) I have input into what we build and how we do it. Yeah, I don't retain the rights, but I do get to publish a bit of open-source. And I know first-hand that I'm not alone in having a good working environment with an employer. Your argument seem to be that it's better to be in charge - and sure, I think we'd all ultimately like that. But that comes with costs—in some cases, pretty large ones—and it's a mistake to gloss over them so lightly.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > That's the result if you work for a bad team, sure. It's the result if you work for wage labor, period. You're not "sharing the profits", you're paid a negotiated rent for your time which is not dependent on the profits. Even if you get some kind of equity or profit-sharing component of your compensation, the basic relationship is still of time rent. > And I know first-hand that I'm not alone in having a good working environment with an employer. Having a good working environment with an employer doesn't change the basic relationship from "selling time to an employer" to "sharing the income", in the same way that having a good working environment with a slave master -- which undoubtedly there were slaves who did -- doesn't change the relationship from "being someone else's chattel" to "selling time to an employer". And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that the "good working environment" isn't so good. If you are really happy with what the relationship is, that you wouldn't need to misrepresent it.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    >And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that the "good working environment" isn't so good. Okay - I'll bow out here. I think you've probably latched on to a minor detail that's not really relevant — my main point being that focusing on "selling time to an employer" is only one interpretation of the employee-employer relationship. Maybe I could have described it as "charging a fixed rate to a client and doing interesting research" – the point is, in a market such as the current one for software developers, employment is as much under the control of the employee as the employer. To be clear, I don't have any intention of misrepresenting or lying about my work environment, so please don't make such assumptions.

by cgag 13y ago

matthewmacleod 13y ago

That's the result if you work for a bad team, sure. In my case, I develop software that my colleagues sell and support (and they're nice guys.) I have input into what we build and how we do it. Yeah, I don't retain the rights, but I do get to publish a bit of open-source. And I know first-hand that I'm not alone in having a good working environment with an employer. Your argument seem to be that it's better to be in charge - and sure, I think we'd all ultimately like that. But that comes with costs—in some cases, pretty large ones—and it's a mistake to gloss over them so lightly.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> That's the result if you work for a bad team, sure. It's the result if you work for wage labor, period. You're not "sharing the profits", you're paid a negotiated rent for your time which is not dependent on the profits. Even if you get some kind of equity or profit-sharing component of your compensation, the basic relationship is still of time rent. > And I know first-hand that I'm not alone in having a good working environment with an employer. Having a good working environment with an employer doesn't change the basic relationship from "selling time to an employer" to "sharing the income", in the same way that having a good working environment with a slave master -- which undoubtedly there were slaves who did -- doesn't change the relationship from "being someone else's chattel" to "selling time to an employer". And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that the "good working environment" isn't so good. If you are really happy with what the relationship is, that you wouldn't need to misrepresent it.
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  >And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that the "good working environment" isn't so good. Okay - I'll bow out here. I think you've probably latched on to a minor detail that's not really relevant — my main point being that focusing on "selling time to an employer" is only one interpretation of the employee-employer relationship. Maybe I could have described it as "charging a fixed rate to a client and doing interesting research" – the point is, in a market such as the current one for software developers, employment is as much under the control of the employee as the employer. To be clear, I don't have any intention of misrepresenting or lying about my work environment, so please don't make such assumptions.