Slashdot Mirror
Hi-tech Work Places no Better than Factories?
Anonymous Coward writes "A
tasty bit of truth.
Again, a Sociology Professor has found out what we all know. He wistfully comments on the state of geekdom in the modern corporation:
"They face the lonely insecurity of the individual entrepreneur in a marketplace and culture that stresses, with macho imagery from war and sports, that they are ultimately alone"
and adds that...
"For many this may be the shape of work in the 21st century."
You want to start a union? I mean how much is your boss making at your expense even if he did start the company long before you joined up?"
We're safer, we breath cleaner air. We don't suffer from hearing loss. We're not on our feet all day and we make good money.
Yeah, life sure is tough.
If you think a factory is better, go work in a factory! I'll stay in my cubicle and deal with being "lonely and insecure". I'm very thankful for my job and anyone who thinks a career in an office is difficult needs a big reality check. We have it very good, people.
spacefem.com
When I talk to the other employees in other departments, I see that the developers have much more security, and much better working conditions, than anyone but the executives.
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
Not everyone has the skills to start a business. Some of us of the skills to be employees. A business needs employees just as much as it needs a boss.
I did both white-collar and manual labor. When you had been carrying brick 12 hours a day for 6$/hour, you don't complain about being lonely and insecure from your climatized office. I'll take my high-paying, challenging and virtually risk-free tech job anyday, thank you very much. Comparing 21st century techies to 19th factory worker is ridiculous self-pity; the author
:wq
Spacefem wrote that "we have it easy..." and I strongly agree, based on experience. I have worked in factories for most of my adult life (I'm 35 now)
and I'm here to tell you that it can be quite debilitating. Medically and physically, it becomes quite expensive when your living depends on your good health and you have to take off a week or two for medical problems. In other words, a week or two of no income.
It's not the Golden Era of manufacturing anymore in my part of the US; $25k gross is considered a decent middle-class income here. If you are fortunate to have any financial reserves, they are probably very slim.
It's mentally debilitating; there are no fellow geeks, so it tends to get lonely beyond a certain point. (my answer is to do Linux at home). Certainly, there's little of the intellectually stimulating debate that I love. (I majored in English, with a few years each of Philosophy and Art. Now I'm into networking)
Now for the perspective: I have to wonder how much of this sociologist's observations are specific to the IT industry, or is it all just becoming part of the US corporate ethos? IMHO, business is a very human activity, but the way we go about it certainly isn't sometimes.
C|N>K
All I can say is that the individual coder is partially responsible for putting themself in such a position. Research the company, talk to the employees. Don't just jump into a job not knowing what the culture is like.
Perhaps the problem is that there aren't enough good companies out there along with the dilution of the number of tech workers and the dot bomb is forcing people to take jobs they otherwise would not.
Long gone are the days of drive up dentists to Yahoo's main offices
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
IT people think they have some right to work 4 hours a day and get paid 200k a year. The .com boom is dead, get over it.
Welcome to the real world; job insecurity and other "stresses" are what all other workers have always faced. IT people are no better. In fact, programming has become more of a commodity than most other fields. If you aren't adding any real value, than you shouldn't have a job. Simple as that.
I've also spent most of my career working as a janitor, a factory worker (Chain mail gloves, anyone?), carpenter, or a food service worker. I don't care whether an office programming job is isolated or anything like that. I just want one because I love to program. It's a job that I can do. I'm not a mechanic, and I'm a pretty lousy carpenter, but I'm a half-way decent programmer.
Sign me up for the white collar nightmare.
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
> Go start a business, THEN you can comment on how to do or do not like the salary structure.
So... only the rich mangement class are allowed to even voice an opinion on pay structure and labor issues ? That sounds... surprisingly like the current U.S. system, actually.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
When the company has billed the customers $4000, his cut is about $300. His customers are so loyal to his work that when he left one place and went to another, they followed. So I ask him "Why not just work for yourself, start out on your own?" After all, he manages the day to day operations, knows all the ins and outs of ordering, etc. Answer? NO GUTS.
Hmmm..well, the thing is out of the $4000 that was billed, on average, about $2000 is overhead -- rent or mortgage, utilities, marketing and so forth and materials. Then he gets his $300, plus it costs the company an additional $150. That leaves about $1550. Unless your friend reinvests part of that into the company, Uncle Sam gets about 1/3rd of that, or about $520. That leaves $1000. That's *IF* the shop is getting good margins. Most likely, the margins are a lot less than that and the overhead is more like $2500-3000. Meaning that the shop probably makes a whole $200-400 (not much more than your mechanic friend) or so on the whole $4000. Assuming everything's going well of course, and there aren't unforseen costs.
That $4000 sounds like a lot of money. Trust me, it isn't.
My journal has hot
Is this Marxism-101? An Anonymous Coward posts something about how we're all exploited by the Bosses, and it makes the Front Page?
Labeling something "Marxism" gets you nowhere and effectively stops the reasonable discussion.
I can too label the current state of the affairs "Wild Capitalism".
Nobody is "exploiting" you. If you work for what they pay, then its a business deal, and done.
That's right.
If you don't like your pay, renegotiate, quit, or SHUT UP.
And that's not, except "renegotiate". However, the problem is that you're not ABLE to negotiate, because there are some 10 people outside, waiting for the same job and they have all to insist in same benefits.
Because your company founder put his brains, personal capital, and personal life on the line to start a company, WHICH PUTS THE FOOD ON YOUR TABLE, and now makes more $$ than you, doesn't mean he's "exploiting" you.
Yes, it means. Because I put my brains too, I put my personal capital too (be it time or knowledge or abilities) and I put my personal life too for the company, WHICH PUTS THE FOOD ON HIS TABLE, and in addition puts the mannor, the spa, the limousine, the jet, etc.
It is OK, if he makes more than me, but making 500 times more is RIDICULOUS.
If that bothers you, start your own company.
This is just outrageous. You effectively claim the workers have no rights, and if they want rights they must become employers first !
~velco
I used to think an awful lot like the author of this article. I was fed up with how stupid my bosses were, how poorly I was treated and paid, and how wasteful I thought the company was.
- here, but how many of those very same people could effectively run a business, turn a profit, and employ someone else? This is not meant to be condescending, but instead a wakeup call to geeks. If you don't like how someone is doing something, go try doing it yourself. You may find that it's much harder than you first supposed.
So I started my own business. What an education that was!
I've found that, as a business owner, I have to work far harder than I ever anticipated in order to keep the company viable. There's a tremendous amount of work going on that employees of a company never see and are rarely aware of, work that has to be done by someone with good management skills. If that work is being done properly then the employees never know about it and they're able to do their jobs.
I have a great deal of respect now for entrepeneurs who risk a great deal to start a new business. It takes guts, patience, perserverance, and more to do that.
Any fool can sit around and bitch and moan about how much they hate their company/boss/workplace/insert-bitch-and-moan-noun
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
After seeing the shenanigans the Teachers Union pull I'll never join a Union.
Look at the crap the Unions are pulling with United. UAL has been in serious finacial shape since before the attacks, and now that it's in worse shape, the unions are asking for more and more money.
From what I've seen, all Unions pull dirty tricks. Have you seen a co-worker cry because she's scared to vote against the Union line?
Oh the Teacher Union wants more money, lets park in the spots the poor IT people park in and make them walk a half mile to and from thier cars, that'll make a point.
Screw Unions.
I used to feel the same way. I viewed unions as a blue-collar tool to protect people in low-skill jobs. Then I recognized that skilled professionals like airline pilots were unionized. I have started to realize that it would not be such a bad thing to have a tech workers union.
Can you imagine what the Teamsters would do if companies started bringing in the equivalent of H1-B visa workers to drive trucks at below-normal wages?
If we had a union, do you think that Congress would have been able to pass legislation that specifically exempted hourly computer professionals from receiving 1.5x overtime pay?
Do you think that a union would stand by idly while temp agencies regularly skimmed 30% and more off of the pay earned by immigrants and recent grads in the tech sector?
Do you believe that our industry would consistently lay off older, better-compensated workers only to replace them with recent grads if we had a union?
I know that there is going to a lot of macho posturing on here with people boasting that they are so good that they can set their own terms. But posturing is all that it is. For every 100 people that claim to be in the driver's seat in such contract negotiations, maybe one really is. The majority of companies have standard terms and don't deviate from them except for the most highly compensated corporate officers. Tell them you won't work for them unless they agree to include a buyout clause on your contract and they will tell you to take a hike. Just take a look at the average software engineer's office and compare it to the offices of people in other jobs that require similar quantities of skill and education. Do you think that corporate attorneys regularly sit in cramped cubicles?
The longer I am in this field (now more than 20 years), the more I start to believe a union would be a good thing.
Does anyone have any personal experience working with unions in Europe?
The company I work for is based in Europe, and I work in their US based headquarters. In the last year we have had five rounds of layoffs resulting in a massive (measured in thousands) number of US employees losing their jobs. With each round of layoffs the company had to spend tons of time negotiating with the unions in Europe before they could do anything. From the people I know overseas they tell me that (because of unions) it takes an act of god for someone to lose their job. Most of them are shocked to find out that 1) we get no vacation time compared to them, 2) we have to pay for our own education, and 3) we can get fired without any notice in most US states.
If unions can improve the quality of life and make it easier for us (in the US) to get training (for example) then what is wrong with that? I think we can learn from the mistakes of the auto industry unions and do better. After all we are talking about a totally different class of people here. How many people that worked on a car assembly line have graduate degrees? How many people that worked on a car assembly line started intellectual revolutions like open source and Linux? A majority of us are people who enjoy challenges, want to constantly improve ourselves, and want to work hard to see our employers succeed in the marketplace!
Of course all of this becomes a moot point when you consider that there are countries like India where people are willing to take our jobs and do them for something like $4 an hour.
No, he's not claiming anything of the sort. What he's claiming is that, in a captialist society, with competition both for the companies and the employees, you've got a few choices:
-Accept your current working conditions
-Work out new ones with your employer
-Leave and find new sources of work
Our industry is in a slump, and a bad one. We just came off one of the biggest booms of the modern economy, and we're hurtin'. It'll turn around, it always does. But while it's bad, it's going to suck. And people are very eager to find new work. You don't like your current job? Go find a new one. Oh, wait, none out there? Tough shit. This is what the market will bear, if you think you can do better, go do it. With the employment market so tight, you probably can't, unless you're Just That Good. It's reality, nothing more.
But get this: we did the SAME THING to our employers not two years ago. Don't want to pay me $100K/yr., pay my cell phone, and let me wear ripped jeans to work? Tough shit: go find another techie. Oh, they're really hard to find? That's too bad. The shoe's on the other foot, and we don't like it. It'll all even out, but until then, you put up/shut up, or bide your time. Stop whining about corporate greed/getting it from your boss. It's a symbiotic relationship.
Personally, I've been laid off twice this calender year, by two separate companies. Do I begrudge the executives? In the end, no: they're making business decisions, and while some of them are really stupid, in the end, their responsibilites are to their shareholders, and the greater good. I notice folks here screaming away about the burgious executives of the world trampling the masses. News flash, people: IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. Now, we simply have more visibility and awareness of the robber-barons, that we actually have a chance to get pissed off about it.
Take it from this perspective: do some research about starting a small business, or work for a small business (50 people). I have, on both accounts. Some of my best knowledge and insight into a business was from watching my bosses (the president and another officer) sweat payroll. And when you look at the sheer amount of effort in management and planning, administritivia, guiding the vision, hiring/firing, sweating the money, the details, the long hours, *plus* actually producing for the company...
I'll tell you what: if I'm ever lucky/good enough to put that business together, you're goddamned right I'm gonna be one of the highest, if not *the* highest, paid SOB in the group. And I'll do my best to treat my employees like gold. But this is not a charity-fucking-ball. Corporation exist to make money, and for no other reason. The balance will swing the other way. In the meantime, sharpen your skills, build that resume, and wait.
the rich mangement class are allowed to even voice an opinion on pay structure and labor issues
What on earth are you talking about? There is no "management class". You think all the managers in the IT industry went to the same prep schools, joined the same fraternities at college, play golf together at weekends? What rubbish, if anything the "management class" is more diverse than the "programmer class"
If you're talking about the company owner, then it's up to him/her to set pay structure... and it's up to employees to decide whether or not they want to work there. That's it. The system works remarkably well, and is the basis of all the successful economies in the world. Class War rhetoric is the hallmark of the world's economic basket cases.
In a tight market, though, you are forced to take what you can get, and employers know this.
That's because, in a tight market, you're worth less. Supply and demand: when supply exceeds demand, as in a tight market, price will decline, because there are more options available. It's called "competition," and it's amazing how certain Slashdotters call it a good thing when there's competition in the consumer goods market (lowering prices), but a bad thing in the employment market (lowering wages). The world is not structured to benefit you (the collective you) all the time; sometimes, you have to take your lumps, suck it up, and survive until you get another chance to thrive. Matter of fact, that's been a pattern in life since, oh, about the time life began. Famine and feast. You want to improve your value? Reduce supply. No, that doesn't mean getting rid of other techs, it means making yourself more valuable. If you add to your skillset, you move yourself to a new market, essentially the Skill +1 market. That's smaller than the Skill 0 market. Do it again, moving to Skill +2, and there are even fewer people against whom you'll need to compete. As you do so, you make yourself more valuable; you're worth more, and you'll get paid more. Just don't sit and whine because you're not living in a permanent "feast" time, and able to pull down the same salary you were five years ago because the supply was tight relative to demand.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
But since we (most of the Slashdot readership) do not drive trucks for a living this argument is a moot point.
No, it is not a moot point. It is an analogy. It shows what happens when a union is there to protect employees from unfair hiring practices.
Part of falling being a professional is negotiating your contract with your employer.
You don't get to. Employers aren't going to have staffs of tech people, each of whom bargained for different compensation related to overtime, office accomodations, hours, signing bonuses, severence packages, etc.
If you want overtime, ask for it.
I want a Mercedes Benz company car. I'll ask for that, too. That's the point of collective bargaining. The compensation is not set by the most desperate worker.
If they won't give you the hourly wage requested for overtime, you can always work your required 40 hours and be done with it.
And they can fire you and replace you with someone willing to work 80 hours per week.
You can try and find another position that doesn't require as much overtime (although in this economy it might be damn near impossible)
That's another argument in favor of union contracts. They prevent companies from taking advantage of workers during a bad job market.
If you can't tak ethe heat get out of the kitchen.
And here's the bravado I predicted. So, if I can't deal with excessive overtime, I should just drop out of the tech industry and work at McDonalds? Just give up 20+ years of experience and apply to be laborer on a construction site?
I'll fight you to the bitter end before I let you destroy my profession by unioniziing it.
I would not try to unionize something to destroy it. I would unionize it to improve conditions for the members.
If you want a bigger office go ask for it. Asking for a Union to step in and negotiate office space for you is pretty needless. If you can't have a talk with your boss in a constructive way about your needs then I feel sorry for you. It seems like alot of nerdy types lack the people skills required to carry on normal human conversation.
I am probably both more eloquent and convincing a speaker than are you, so don't talk down to me. You just don't get it. Companies are not going to give you a bigger/nicer office just because you want it. They are not going to piss off 40 of your coworkers by leaving them in cubicles while giving you a corner office from which you will do the same type of work. Have you ever managed professionals before? I have and I can tell you from experience that people will get jealous when a coworker's monitor is 1" larger. If something that petty upsets them, how do you think they would react to one of their own being moved out of a cubicle and into a windowed office?
But then again, it is easy for an Ivy Leaguer to come off as a pompous jackass.
Apparently so.
Name one industry that has benefited from the introduction of unions. Steel, Education, auto; of these industries would have been better off without unions. Sure the very vocal bottom 20% loves the fact that a union virtually guarantees their pay and job security, but what does that do to the final product?
Unions only increase costs, decrease productivity, and guarantee that the industry will need a government bail-out or protection in 20-30 years.
These down times are just what the tech industry needs. The excess capacity of HTML jockeys and MCSEs will go find other jobs flipping burgers where they should have been in the first place if not for the dot com boom.
-ted
Let's blame H1-B because they are all underpaid.
I'm not blaming you for anything. I don't blame you for taking advantage of a situation where the U.S. government allows large companies to employ foreign nationals to keep down costs. I blame the U.S. government.
It took me a week to find a new job, and I even got a signing bonus. Hmmmmm, why would they do this, since they can so nicely underpay me?
Because they can afford to.
Could it be that a degree and experience matters again all of a sudden?
Probably not as much as you would like to believe. I know plenty of people with one, two, or more decades of experience that are looking for work while newbies and H1-B workers are being hired much more quickly. Look around your workplace and see how many 55-60 year old software engineers you see and then tell me about how valuable experience is.
Many have already sounded off on the non-Dickensian nature of most technology work. The work is generally physically safe, conducted in generally well lighted and air conditioned/heated offices.
;-) have to count for something. Put another way, I
am much better at this stuff than anything else I could choose to do. And
with age comes the wisdom to see through the pretense of those on the other
side of the negotiation fence for what it is.
What I want to know is - how old are those posting the anti-union, pro-intelligentsia drivel that is in this thread?
So many here are missing one basic issue that the BBC article alludes to: IT work itself is ABSOLUTELY NOT RESPECTED by most companies nor managements, and neither are the practitioners. I think that is the underlying problem that is reflected in poorly designed, one dimensional, excessively macho work culture in this field.
To reflect this assertion, the proportion of top executives in most large companies whose background is engineering or applied sciences is truly insignificant, and the career track in IT and engineering is absolutely non-existent and must be manufactured ad hoc by the individual. This is as truly a young person's game as major league "anything".
My post is not about wanting anyone to guarantee me a job, nor a plea for anyone to kiss my ass in gratitude for knowing how to code a constructor or a GUI. I simply would like to see some genuine appreciation from the people whose businesses I help. Alas, I find that I am expected to: shut up; code my nuts off; not express any opinion; and conveniently disappear when my piece is done.
You may feel that you're doing great at 25 or 30. I challenge those beating their chests in shared exultation at the primacy of the uber-geek to say the same things at 40 or 50! At some point real soon now, unless you enter into some sweetheart partnership or start your own company, you're going to see your options shrivel unless you *aggressively* re-make yourself. In my area, I simply see almost nobody over 45 in high tech.
My background and perspective: I am a self employed IT contractor and have done this for 9+ years. Prior to that I was employed in several jobs for a total of 20+ years of experience in mixed HW and SW applications. I have mainly developed shrink wrap resalable applications for my clients and I have represented myself, so I have not had to contend with any static from a body shop agency.
My experience, overall, has been that I have pretty much been treated more as a temp or grunt worker along the lines outlined above. Here are some of the wonderful roses and tokens of appreciation thrown to my feet for developing mission critical applications for my client base.
- Threatened with death/disappearance/lawsuit/other by a startup's paranoid CEO if I were to quit a 1099 contract or reduce my work hours.
- Bullied continually by another company when working on a fixed cost contract, and treated like I was their janitor and their property - it was a conversion of their flagship vertical product to Windows. I pulled it off in a reasonable time and cost and I was told later that they felt I was 'sleaze'.
- The president of a long term client took something like four months and much wheedling and begging from me to write a simple stinking letter of reference. This from a guy that claims that he was grossly underpaid and abused when
he was "just" a programmer... IE: my brother, a corporate controller, says that he dashes off letters like this on demand within 2-3 business days so that he doesn't forget.... and feels that it's his duty when someone does their job well.
- Another client's owner insists on using me pretty much like a robotic pair of coding arms, reserving all design decisions for himself and treating all developers in his company like code technicians. "Here, put this 'Begin' starting at column 4, and space down two lines, and put a 'writeln()'.." etc.
- Got shingles (at age 37!) working in a boiler room office coding VB apps while the office's tech writer is constantly over my desk grunting inane questions at the other developer in the office.
Mostly, I find that flagrant hypocrisy, psychological abuse, ingratitude, and snotty holier-than-thou "I was a coder once but now I'm not a loser like that" attitudes are bestowed on software and engineering types by business owners and managers.
So why am I still doing this crap, you may ask? The major reason is degree of investment in the industry - at some point, age, cunning and (my) nastiness