It’s happening with pretty much all professions. I’m a chemical engineer and it’s pretty much every role at my plant, the plan is just make everyone work so much they hate their lives, and then those people quit and make things worse for everyone else that’s left and it’s all fueled by an endless supply of fresh college grads who are just thrown into the deep end with the understanding that over half of them will get fed up and quit within a few years and those who stay will train the new ones coming in. It’s not just engineers, it’s operators, mechanics, maintenance coordinators, safety reps, anything you can think of. While technology technically allows fewer people to do the same work, that same work is just getting worse and worse because each employee has to do so many different types of things and have so much riding on them personally that they feel like they can’t leave or take any time off without messing up the whole operation - there is no redundancy.
Everyone I know in the chemical industry is saying the same thing. Everyone is overworked and wages for chemical engineers have been stagnant for the past 20 years in spite of inflation and each employee delivering much more productivity than they used to. I have started to envy the production line staff who at least get overtime pay and don’t have to think about this shit once they clock out. They just leave and it’s the next shift’s problem.
Holy crap, that’s me! Just with heavy machinery.
I often wish my old job at Lidl back. I very often also regret buying a house that makes me reliant on a well-paying job.
“I fight for the user” has been lurking in the hindbrains of so many tech workers since the Tron years, somehow nestling comfortably alongside of the idea that “I don’t need a union, I’m a temporarily embarrassed founder.”
Oof. I don’t like this sentence, because I’m in it.
I feel like the entire US engineering industry is in it. My Swedish and German colleagues all have unions. One of my coworkers tried explaining to a Swede the other day how we have the “right to work” 😂😂 I was so embarrassed for him.
Hey it’s you, the reason I fucked off from IT 22 years ago. Things are going exactly as I imagined
I don’t get it, what does “a temporarily embarrassed founder” mean?
I don’t get it, what does “a temporarily embarrassed founder” mean?
It’s a combination of “temporarily embarrassed future billionaire” with the (mostly mythical) “garage software business founder”.
Many software programmers (including me) spent the first decade of our careers sure we would produce a world-shaking program in our garage, and then found a company to scale it to the world.
It’s a reference to this quote:
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (source)
Edit: apparently the original John Steinbeck quote was:
“I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
“i would totally be a founder right now if it weren’t for [excuse xyz]”
Damn bro, you ain’t pitching the next disruptive idea to VC parasites?!?!
Fucking pleb
“The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.”
– from George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda
vs
“Vocational awe” describes the feeling that your work matters so much that you should accept all manner of tradeoffs and calamities to get the job done. Ettarh uses the term to describe the pathology of librarians, teachers, nurses and other underpaid, easily exploited workers in “caring professions.”
I do not like the 21st century. Richard Scary you were my only hope.
Nice thing about gen Z it seems like they finally going to refuse to do these shit fucking jobs for peanuts because.
The parasite class either gonna have to start paying PR more likely quality of these services will be gutted even further.
I’m not holding my breath. We have a Z that insists no one in her generation wants to put up with the 24/7 availability expected from those who want to advance in our industry. Yet I received emails from her over the weekend.
They’re human, same as the rest of us, and will justify all the bad labor hygiene that older generations have.
All respect to Mr Doctorow, but he’s got this wrong:
Tech workers are workers, and they once held the line against enshittification, refusing to break the things they’d built for their bosses in meaningless all-nighters motivated by vocational awe.
…and…
Tech workers stayed at the office for every hour that god sent, skipping their parents’ funerals and their kids’ graduations to ship on time.
It wasn’t “vocational awe” it was money that lead tech workers to work long hours and sacrifice. Lots and lots of money, five to ten times what your non-tech same-aged peers were getting. It was so much money that if you didn’t live too high on the hog, it set you up for a very nice retirement and having “fuck you” money in your late 30s and 40s. During those days the only thing a tech union would do would make your life balance better, but at the cost of your salary.
With all the tech layoffs and enshitification, those meteoric salaries are starting to come down to Earth. They’re still high comparatively to other professions though. So I think tech unions will gain more traction now, but employers also have more tech workers (right now) so they can bully their current workers to try to avoid unions. However, tech is cyclical, as is hiring. I’ve been in tech long enough to see 3 large downturns, but when the pendulum swings, the hiring returns and (so far) those high salaries have too. If the pendulum swings too quickly and the high salaries (and now “work from home” requirement) returns, tech unions will be back to where they were struggling to establish themselves in the industry of job hoppers jumping ship from one employer in under a year or less chasing the larger compensation.
I hear this argument against unionization all the time:
During those days the only thing a tech union would do would make your life balance better, but at the cost of your salary.
It feels like fear mongering when there are no data to back it up (this is not a knock against your post, it’s a complaint against the argument against unionization). I only know one person in a union and they have limited anecdotal data that shows that the cost of being in a union is offset by salary gains.
It feels like fear mongering when there are no data to back it up (this is not a knock against your post, it’s a complaint against the argument against unionization).
If an org, under union influence, would do 15% to 400% salary increases year over year for their entire company/department, they’d likely go bankrupt. Yet that was possible on an individual level without a union in place. I didn’t really mention it before but employers that treated their workers poorly were many times an asset to this method. That bad behavior drove away workers, meaning the bad employers would have to increase their salary offerings much higher to attract a worker to join even with the bad behaving employer. It also meant that the IT worker, who may not have been entirely qualified, would would have a shot at getting the position (and become qualified on the job). Once that that worker is qualified (after the year or two), they can take that knowledge and experience and jump ship to a good quality employer, gaining yet another with a big raise. The worker also just collapsed 5 to 10 years of slow career growth into 1 or 2 years.
I only know one person in a union and they have limited anecdotal data that shows that the cost of being in a union is offset by salary gains.
I’m guessing those quotes are about salary gains across a the entire company/department. This was nearly mercenary-mindset IT work. As in:
- Get in with the raise
- Learn the next thing you need
- Work the thing for a bit until you know it and have the experience and expertise at that employer
- Get out
Rinse repeat.
None of that is assisted with a collectivist union mindset or union implemented rules. Please correct me if I get any of the following union benefit bullet points wrong. As I understand it, the union would do everything to undo that situation. They’d:
- work to normalize pay across workers fairly.
- emphasize a proper work/life balance
- enforce conflict resolution with strong worker advocacy
- encourage/provide training across the company/department for continued competency among everyone
- establish rigid rules for promotion
IT has been a raging river, but if you were able to navigate it, you’d get to the end very quickly. You’d certainly come out with some cuts and bruises though. If getting to the end (comfortable money in our case) is what you were looking for, then it was the fastest way to it.
I’d take those last 5 bullets. I’ve worked hard to gain salary only to find that it didn’t matter. Every review I’ve ever had was a lie. If I was given a good raise, I was told that it was my hard work. If it was a bad raise, they found one item to give me ‘satisfactory’. A bunch of us shared our salaries over drinks one evening and we all were about the same. That was a big surprise to me.
Back to the point of the original article, employees talking is bad for employers. Unionization is one way to solve the collective agreement problem, but there are others. When employees (or any group for that matter) organize, they can make things happen.
I’ve worked hard to gain salary only to find that it didn’t matter. Every review I’ve ever had was a lie. If I was given a good raise, I was told that it was my hard work. If it was a bad raise, they found one item to give me ‘satisfactory’. A bunch of us shared our salaries over drinks one evening and we all were about the same. That was a big surprise to me.
You’re proving my original point. Staying at a single employer for years, and you’ll get minuscule raises irrespective of the level of your efforts. Further, you get a sham of job security. When tough times come (as I’ve seen three cycles in IT), layoffs can come and take your job anyway. Without having built up a war chest of savings to live on, your living situation and that of your family is at risk.
Back to the point of the original article, employees talking is bad for employers. Unionization is one way to solve the collective agreement problem, but there are others. When employees (or any group for that matter) organize, they can make things happen.
You’re trying to fix employers. You’re welcome to go that route. In the original article Doctorow posited that “vocational awe” was the reason IT people put up with such conditions. Apparently that’s true for some. However, I also know it was not true of others who preferred to make the money they needed to eventually stop working for someone else.
Pease tell me you know of someone where this actually was true: that they made crazy money and they’re set for life.
Because, based on 30 years in and a complete lack of knowledge of anyone who got out and retired early, either personally and via someone I know, I conclude the only people for whom this worked were C-level. Even the smartest man I know didn’t cash in and get out.
I do know someone who retired at 48, though. He was a heavy duty mechanic. Paid off his house in a town he chose specifically for location, and bikes and kite-surfs all summer and skis all winter.
Yeah, mechanic. Union. Half pay for life is still half pay, but it’s FOR LIFE. He won.
Pease tell me you know of someone where this actually was true:
I know many personally that earned this kind of money.
that they made crazy money and they’re set for life.
Yes, but only for some of those because most chose lifestyle increases instead of savings. So I know tens of the folks that can retire right now and have more than twice the median income of the USA for their entire life without running out of money. This means they’d have a couple million in the bank. This would be an annual retirement income of about $80k-$90k/year USD for one person (thats also without any Social Security benefit added on top yet). Many times a married couple both work in tech so that would be household retirement income of $160k-$180k/year for as long as they live (again I’m not even adding in Social Security benefits in this yet) if they chose to retire early. These folks have another 7 to 15 years in the workforce if they choose to retire in their mid 60s.
Thats not “chartering jets to Monaco” money, but its a very comfortable retirement. That was realistically attainable for lots and lots of people in tech after working for 15-25 years.
Because, based on 30 years in and a complete lack of knowledge of anyone who got out and retired early, either personally and via someone I know,
There were lots of IT jobs that paid decently (not amazingly) and if you worked for that one company for 20 years you would NOT have the money I’m talking about. To get this in IT required chasing newer technologies (or sometimes chasing specific older ones), and changing jobs frequently, usually every year or two but sometimes as short as only a few months. The trick is (which took me longer to figure out than I’d like to admit) that corporate annual raises were minuscule. You’d work your ass off for maybe a 2%-5% raise each year. Whereas if you did the exact same work and effort and changed jobs your new employer would give you essentially as low as 15% and sometimes as high as 400% salary increases in a year. You can quickly imagine that you only have to do this a handful of times for your annual salary to be huge. Think about how long it would take you to have a million dollars if you were making $180k to $400k and invest that savings ten years ago.
I know many one that has actually chosen to retire early even though many have the funds to do so. When you’re at the end, you’re at your peak earning phase. So working just a few more years means massive increases in retirement income. This is the bit of a trap that keeps you working voluntarily. Sometimes retirement gets forced early with RIF/redundancy/layoffs in your 60s and you may not be able to get another tech job however.
The even more risky path if you want the many multimillionaire path, is you started your own business. High risk of failure, especially tech types that don’t know the business side, but for those that have the right partners/help and can thread the needle, this is the tech path to the tens of millions of dollars of wealth.
I conclude the only people for whom this worked were C-level. Even the smartest man I know didn’t cash in and get out.
I’m talking all non-C level here, just technologists/individual contributors. At most they might be project or tech leads, but they’re still not executives. I don’t know the executive C-level advancement track so I can’t speak to it. Maybe the folks you know were the ones Doctorow was talking about. If the smartest man you know didn’t know to trade up or cash out, then maybe he was one that was in it for “vocational awe”. Do you have any knowledge as to why he didn’t trade up or cash out?
I think the key was the income was so high, even surpassing PhDs who have been slaving at their fields for decades, and only ended up in academia. It
Blame the “corporate buzzword”
“The web” “The cloud” “Blockchain” “AI”
Get non-technical management out of technology and you’ll see a 180° change
Full-stack and DevOps were enshittification events in my book.
Devops for sure. (“Why have IT people when we can just make developers do it?” Fucking brilliant ☹️)
But why full stack? If you can develop a feature in a vertical slice across all layers that’s the kind of person you want to have on your team.
But why full stack?
Because there’s so many of them, with more and more keep piling up fresh out of the coding bootcamp. Most of them don’t even know what to do with life, know a bit of everything, but they’re never good with anything really, so they are considered like worker ants. Not sure how it is in other parts of the world, but in Asian job market they’re a dime a dozen.
To me, a full stack developer is a few years short of architect. If you understand the full stack and all components and how they interact, then I want you on my team.
But I guess that term gets abused and thrown around a lot.
Full stack cause most developers are shitty database architects. I’ve seen so many problems at this bedrock level.
Devops for sure. (“Why have IT people when we can just make developers do it?” Fucking brilliant ☹️)
I’m not sure if you’re tracking Enterprise IT trends these days, but its evolving yet again with “Why have Devops people when we can just make the USERS do it?”
Suffice to say, those of us that know how to clean up messes (or realistically become Shadow IT) will have gainful employment for the foreseeable future.
How will they make users do it?
Today for example our dev ops is in charge of deploying a new release of our service on our servers. We wouldn’t give customers that type of access.
If your users are external to the org then this probably doesn’t apply. However, if your users are internal, you give them a repo of their own and grant them access to publish to the pipeline.
That’s interesting. I assume there is still some review and approval process this has to go through? So it basically means you are on call constantly for unscheduled deployments?
Its not in place yet. I’m seeing it take shape. I don’t see how it can be successful on its own and will either lead to user teams adding their own Shadow IT or the skeleton IT Operations group balloon into a giant Shared Services outfit.
However, I thought I’d mention it as its the same mindset that lead to Devops, which was just a business reaction to finding a way to hire and maintain fewer IT roles. Its interesting to see the IT roles being pushed directly onto the users now.
I would say the only silver lining here is that the exploitation of labor puts these giants in a precarious position where all of their critical work is being done by unhappy, extrinsically motivated people who are often only still there because they’re relatively immobile (i.e., they aren’t good enough at their job to find another one easily) or they were kept on because their salary is lower and they’re less experienced. It makes these massively complicated technology ecosystems extremely brittle, which is why software has been shit across the board for the past decade or so. It’s possible there will be a pendulum swing if and when quality becomes an attainable and marketable feature again.
