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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 int

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.

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.