Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/24/california-ideology-2-0.html
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It’s funny how so many of these iconoclastic tech company owners and CEOs suddenly find themselves ideologically aligned with the Walton family the second they realize that they might be able to pocket 5-10% less (of obscene profits) every year if they actually had to stop the douchiest of their business and labor practices.
And, of course, how it would probably drive a couple of them right out of business (looking at you, Zuck) if they had to actually treat people’s data with even the most cursory of security practices.
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Sometimes when I see this behavior/attitude it’s a fairly visible outgrowth of childhood trauma.
If you were the unpopular kid the popular ones literally took turns beating up every day after school, you are likely to have some psychological issues, that can manifest as schadefreude directed at more physical workers, or as a contempt for anyone who cannot overcome systemic opposition in public spaces.
Don’t know how to fix it, and it doesn’t explain every situation, but I see it fairly often.
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Silicon Valley generally has “labor” Democrats and “business” Democrats. The former are allied with unions including public-sector unions, SEIU, etc. The latter are pretty much anti-union although they might be progressive on other issues. For example: San Jose’s former mayor, who, rather than negotiating with the union, sponsored a ballot measure that cut police pensions, which over time resulted in several hundred officers leaving the force. (His successor has done a partial rollback of this). Khanna is a little hard to pigeonhole, though. He campaigned as a business-friendly Democrat in 2016, but he has some labor endorsements for the 2018 race.
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I read someone recently who said that they suspected there might be a weird (but possibly positive) effect if the cleaners were invited to the office party. After all, they work for the company, so why should they be excluded?
(It was a follow-on from a discussion about inequality in the UK which noted that the world war led to a huge fall in inequality because the rich officers were forced into close proximity with the generally poorer enlisted men and discovered that they were (a) people and (b) not rich.)
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Police unions aren’t a regular union and make a particularly poor example.
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“I am always at pains to point out to tech workers that they aren’t more important than the janitors who clean the toilets at their offices – their company could no more survive a terminal cholera outbreak than it could a mass exodus of engineers. But because of the shortage of skilled tech workers, they have more power.”
Maybe the janitors are not less important to their mothers and loved ones but they certainly are less important to the success of the company. Saying that they are the same shows a very kind perspective but one that is wholly devoid of understanding of how a company operates. It is like saying that the security guy at the gate is just as important as the lead engineer because if he does not shoot the guy driving the truck bomb then everybody dies. Yes, a cholera outbreak would suck for the company but that analogy is naive at best and deceptive at worst.
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“Yeah, I’m going to buy from that company. Their products are terrible, but I hear that the toilets are really clean.”
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I treat all the cleaners the same as I treat the CEO and it’s kind of like being Superman - I get weird powers and vulnerabilities. Like, I can get better service if I request it, and I find out about things outside the experience of my nominal social class, but if there’s a crisis outside normal contingencies the cleaners are likely to run to my office for help. “The roof is collapsing in the south bathroom and none of my bosses are here!” and “there’s a disabled man trapped in a locked toilet stall!” for example.
EDIT: I clearly forgot why I was replying to you while I was typing :). The IT department where I work often invites the cleaners to share when food is brought in for whatever reason. Basically anyone present in the area gets fed.
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So, socialism for industry, and libertarianism for the workers?
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Wait a sec though… Remember, Goodwill Hunting demonstrated that janitors can also be secret math geniuses.
Seriously though, the original statement is total hyperbole, but the sentiment that blue-collar work deserves more respect is an reasonable one… Plenty of tech workers act like they’re the gods’ gifts to humanity, even though under other circumstances of birth they could easily be cleaning toilets.
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Yep - one of the best-kept open secrets in business: a lot of the time you’re better off making friends with the people “below” or lateral to you than you are trying to suck up to the executives. The execs don’t care because everyone does it, but the masses of people out there that would appreciate you being nice to them… Well, not to be all manipulative about it, but a lot of 'em will bend over backwards for you if you take 5 minutes for them when nobody else will.
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Just last week I was explaining to the young founder of a tech startup that as the company grows he should listen to all of his employees, including the janitor, because new knowledge that’s directly or indirectly applicable to the company’s mission can come from the most superficially unlikely places.
When a callow techbro who’s read too much Ayn Rand makes a snide comment about the people who keep his workplace clean and safe I will always (and have far too many times) give him a metaphorical slap upside the head.
Also, if you want to get a handle on how functional or dysfunctional a company is you’ll do just as well to talk to the custodians and security guards as you will to hire some freshly minted MBA out of McKinsey. I learned that one from John Hughes a long time age:
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I try to be nice to everyone I interact with on both sides of the food chain. “The toes you step on today might be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow” to use an old adage.
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That’s the explanation I use when people ask why, but really it’s because my mother conditioned me properly as a child.
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“I am always at pains to point out to tech workers that they aren’t more important than the janitors who clean the toilets at their offices – their company could no more survive a terminal cholera outbreak than it could a mass exodus of engineers.“
For any number of reasons (including, among other things, massive public investment in water and sewage infrastructure), a mass cholera outbreak at the Googleplex isn’t going to happen if they fire all the janitors.
If they fire all the engineers, there’s no more Google.
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Educate us then, how does a company operate, and how would it operate without janitors? I guess everyone could do their own cleaning, but having lived in many communal arrangements I would anticipate this being a major source of conflict, not to mention a big time sink. I have seen both working and living environments become completely toxic just over disputes over cleaning responsibilities.
Janitors aren’t important individually because they can be easily replaced. Capitalism teaches us to value things and people only based on what they cost to replace - basically equating scarcity with importance. But the work janitors do, the function they serve in the larger productive machine, is obviously important.
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To Hell with all the politics - Rho Khanna’s TEETH, man! Does everyone who votes for him get to use his dentist?
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“Manners are free.”
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At my company we are invited.
We don’t go. We have our own deal.
