but only in certain professions - you try getting a builder/electrician/plumber to do unpaid overtime! why programmers are suckers for this is a bit of a mystery.
Where I live, programmers tend to be book smart and very arrogant about it.
Plenty of people from my college and department genuinely think they are smarter than everyone else.
This blinds them to the kind of street smarts required to understand even basic ideas of how to not get exploited, the utility of unions, power dynamics between employers and employees.
I’ve always said if you want to get a developer to do something, just question their intelligence. This works on way too may otherwise smart people.
It somewhat makes sense, many devs grew up smart and were told they were smart from a young age. You need to be to do the job. It becomes part of their identity and is a glaring blind spot for many.
I’ve worked with way too many devs that were so afraid of being wrong or had to prove they were right and were taken advantage of because of it.
Not sure how giving people motivation is exploitation. You still have to pay them to own what they built, otherwise you just motivated them to build something for themselves, either way it isn't exploitative.
If you say that a great teacher manipulates their students to do more overtime work is that exploitation just because we changed the words? Normally people would use the words "motivate" and "homework", but the meaning of the sentence is the same.
I'm getting paid by the hour, not by the task. As such, there is no point in "motivating" me to get more work done from my perspective, other than to manipulate me for your own benefit and replace me as soon as the overdrive's price needs to get paid.
If you could work without caring about pay but still get paid then that would be optimal, no? We are talking about that situation here, someone made people do work for non-monetary rewards but they still get paid, to me that seems like a good thing. I'd rather work because I want to than because I have to, call it manipulating or motivating I don't care, if they can make me forget the drudgery when doing it that is a good thing.
But apparently that makes me stupid, I don't see why that is dumb. Being manipulated to want to work is a good thing if you want the money.
Street smarts means you realize that the best payoff is to get a better job instead of trying to fix your current job. That level of street smarts is why many got into software to begin with.
If you could choose between starting a union or becoming a manager, then becoming a manager will almost always be a better payoff for your own time.
I admit this was a blindspot for me, and it was mostly a representation problem. simply put, all the examples I had were blue collar jobs, paying a cut of their lesser (but union inflated) salary to a union organization they had issues with.
I saw high profile futility. Union tried to negotiate something expensive, the company collapsed and laid off the entire town. People marching in a circle for 3 months in one city, against a multinational corporation that shouldn't really need to care. The people forming unions making demands that didn't seem ambitious enough.
I felt I was optimizing my salary, based on the current reality. But I've come to a different view, mostly that others in the working class are pitted against each other. Like, other workers are dismissive to highly compensated employees because of the numbers involved. But this is only beneficial to the executives, board and owners. I'm dismayed at how this sounds like a marxist handbook, instead of looking at how other developed nations do it. I've been inspired by codetermination in Germany, where the unions has like half of the board seats by law. Its like that perspective is completely missing in the US, in favor of false dilemmas trying to avoid marxist leanings.
I think more education on this topic is beneficial. People react to what they see.
> I'm dismayed at how this sounds like a marxist handbook, instead of looking at how other developed nations do it. I've been inspired by codetermination in Germany, where the unions has like half of the board seats by law.
Guess who's to thank for that German policy...it begins with an 'M' and ends with 'ists.'
Its nice to see compromise actually work amongst coalition parties competing amongst like 7 other parties with representation.
Even though that is not possible in the US, I think there is room for inspiration from a working system which can reach consensus. If there was more knowledge of that, plenty of people and representatives in the US would say "huh, that's actually a good idea". Worker board representation so to have influence on decisions that affect workers, not just the trendiest companies giving some shares out willy nilly.
I hate to break it to you, but the ruling class agreed to this compromise only after 2 world wars. The conflict to resolve was/is not between political parties, but rather between the working class and the ruling class. In this case, the ruling class upended the labor party during WW1, then were obliterated by the Soviet Union for doing a holocaust (WW2), which laid the conditions for the so-called compromise.
I guess I mind that it occurred that way because it was preventable and millions of innocent workers died as a result, but nonetheless it's history now.
The policy has been good for workers in Germany, and might be the best example of how universal material demands for (actual) worker power are extremely popular in practice. Not even the most conservative German politician would dare challenge the policy in public.
It is, nonetheless, unsustainable. Without the threat of the Soviet Union, pro-worker legislation is losing its necessity in legitimating the Western ruling class. Once its founding generation is gone in a few decades, the policy will dissolve along with them, short of a newfound radical workers movement throughout the EU.
Because the barrier to entry in programming is zero. Or near enough to it. Code on your free time, learn php on your free time. Suddenly you are WordPress developer.
Learning a trade can require very expensive tools, often time as an apprentice or journeyman, and learning at the very first stage of your career that your labor has value and you need to charge for that.
I can hire a programmer from anywhere in the world and often incredibly cheaply. I can't do that with a tradesman, they actually have to be local, often have more work than they can ever get done, and know that I can't outsource the construction project to someone 1,000 miles away.
I’ve done a fair bit of not-specifically-compensated overtime over my career.
In my 20s and early 30s, if I didn’t have anything going on socially or sports on a given evening, I was pretty likely going to write code (for enjoyment). Sometimes that was for me, but often it was for the company.
Doing what I enjoy is why I was a sucker in your estimation.
I mean, yes? You could have built side projects, contributed to open source, freelanced, etc. There are a ton of ways to do what you enjoy without allowing someone to profit off your unpaid labor.
yes, i certainly used the university that i worked for facilities when i was starting out, but only for my own projects (arguably bad, i might admit) - i never did or have done any work for my employers that i wasn't compensated for, and i can't imagine why anyone would.
It's like that in the USA, where I used to live. I live in Germany now, and I am a salaried employee. The law here doesn't generally allow any non-remunerated work beyond 10%-15%, and your daily work hour average over a 6 month period cannot exceed 8 hours. Anything above that, and they have to pay my hourly rate times a multiplier depending on how far over or if they are weekend/nighttime hours. I believe they're also required to pay for "on-call" hours, whether you are actually called in or not, at a lesser rate. All of this is statutory, not specific to my contract. Not surprisingly, I'm no longer on the pager duty rotation.
Your salary is rated on a basis of working a certain number of hours per week on average as that is a standard that most people in society run by - that number is otherwise meaningless.
Similar to how oil changes are rated between a driving distance or a change by date, or how your milk and bread has a sell by date. These numbers are guidelines that generally signal to people some amount of confidence in a product/service, but do not reflect the reality of use or worthiness.
Latelty we had a discusion about that too. There was a story from a hairdresser women who worked for 20 years and never git a raise in her salary. She worked for almost nothing. But I think person like this hairdresser are gulty too. Because they all work for this low salary, of course the boss would be stupid to pay more. All, every single person, who work overtime for free is kind of guilty.
Blue collar work has to be compensated with overtime. Many electricians/builders/plumbers are independent contractors, so they either get paid for job or by the hour or whatever, they make their own rules. Programming is considered white collar work for some reason, we are generally considered to be salaried employees, unless they are contracting.
