She is gonna find out the hard way that charity only goes so far when her underlings start leaving for greener pastures.
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[quote=Freddie deBoer]Juicero deserved all of the attention it got and more — it was so pure, so impossibly telling about the pre-apocalyptic American wasteland. It was also just one of a whole constellation of companies that now operate under an ingenious model: take some banal product that has been sold forever at low margins, attach the disposable part to a proprietary system that pretends to improve it but really just locks pepole into a particular vendor, add a touch screen manufactured by Chinese tweens, call it “Smart,” and sell it to schlubby dads too indebted to buy a midlife crisis car and too unattractive to have an affair.[/quote]Those takes are hot.
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How much I hate working with those people. Heard today: “when I’m at a conference, y’know, don’t waste my time, show me some tech man - some groundbreaking tech! Doesn’t matter what it is, what it does - but I’ve got to see ground-breaking tech, or don’t waste my time!”
The future is bleaker than an antarctic winter.
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The thing about the “free market” is that it tends to squeeze margins. DRM is one of the best ways of ensuring that “Silicon Valley and Wall Street” can continue to take their inflated transaction costs.
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More precisely, competitive markets squeeze margins.
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Yes. A “free market”, laden with political subtext, is not necessarily a competitive one, and it would be good for me to remember that.
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I and most of my collegues, do work for larger corporations that are principly industrial companies, many are in the automobile industry or tied to it. It’s a double edged sword; it regular work but the pay is crap. I’ve heard of one or two that only pay their externals quarterly. If you’re new then it means sucking out 3 months of work without a dime coming in. In Germany, if you did happen to get paid but then the company files bankruptcy, the bankruptcy trustees can come and demand the money back if it was paid out within the time period that the company knew they weren’t solvent any more. It’s not that we love the perks, obviously but getting out of freelance work is harder here than getting out of debt. Every now and then you’ll meet up with other industry folks and over a beer will ask, " hey where’s John?" Ahh, he’s out. He got a ‘real job’ ." A hallowed hush falls over the crowd and then we scuffle home to check the job listings. We’re like gamblers, just this one last contract, just one more year. Next year will be the one. We won’t be doing freelance next year, you’ll see…
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This is the really disturbing bit. There are also a lot of ways in which it can get worse - including having this way of thinking normalized and spread, which is what seems to be happening. We’ll start seeing a widespread return to 19th century labor practices…
I think it happens at less than 40 hours a week (40 hours was an arbitrary number unrelated to sound labor practices, but just the idea that you spent a third of your life sleeping and the remaining time should be evenly divided between work and life). I’m amazed how many managers apparently are unaware of labor studies. This is particularly egregious in the game industry, which despite being software isn’t tech exactly but more tech-adjacent. You’d think that managers would figure things out just by dint of hearing all the stories from companies where the more crunch they added, the more they needed to fix the bugs… But maybe nobody notices because the baseline expectation of how many hours you work is so high. The idea that’s been sold to developers is that it’s a privilege and “fun” to work in the industry, so it was not unusual to spend 60 hours a week at work outside of crunch time “because you love it so much.” (I’ve read stories of people who “chose” to spend all their time at work - they cat-napped sitting in their office chairs and went home occasionally to get clean clothes.) I see this in tech industry, too, only they call it being “passionate” about one’s work, and it’s just as corrosive.
As a game designer I do too. (Hell, I’m not even all that crazy about the gameification of games.) People ask my advice sometimes about gameifying something, and more often than not, my advice is: Don’t. You sometimes have people actively undermining what’s good about their app to chase some idea about making it “sticky” or “compelling.” And of course the dynamics created by gameification are usually pretty dysfunctional, too.
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These ads are all over BART. I get angry every time I see them. “Yes, I’d much rather work for a pittance for the rest of my life.”
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It’s serfdom! They’re serfing the net!
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The very first post by @gracchus and this by our spirited friend here reminded me strongly of academic culture:
You guys triggered me. And badly.
I hold a PhD. I’m quite used to never be truly off work, and I worked my arse off at peak times to get my phd, but got lost on twitter, BoingBoing and even istheshit when my frustration with my under-achievements got the better of me.
I’m also not immune to defining myself as a “Doer”, whatever that actually might be. I definitely define myself through my work, and being a scientist. However, I tried to do my analyses properly and thoroughly, and didn’t have much luck publishing them. So I am too old and don’t have enough publications to continue a career in academia.
I thought I could maybe get a job outside academia.
All I got so far is an internship. Six months contract. Option to get a full position if more projects are aquired. I get less than half the money someone in this job might get usually. I had to find a room, since commuting 6h a day is out of the question. I work a 42h week, but do it in four instead of five days, because I still want to have some time with my partner. I thus work more than 10.5h/d, plus local commuting. I think I am putting the other interns under a whole lot of pressure, since I am the first to arrive and the last to leave.
I can do this for six months. The terrible truth is that this is probably the only way to start a path outside of academia. But it fucking feels like the same thing minus the pressure for publication, but plus the pressure of the customer. And without the satisfaction of calling myself a scientist, a self-identification which helped me survive the horrors of phd’ing.
I fear that I will never get a grip on my life. I’m not developing towards being a better, nor healthier person. I also fear that my financial situation will continue to be precarious.
I better buy some slick new smart toothbrush. To soothe my nerves and to fill the void in my soul.
I wish I had the entrepreneurial spirit to start my own new economy company and find a venture capitalist to invest in me. I would still exploit myself, and others. But at least I could support my family.
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Sorry to have triggered you. Spending a little time when you can on self-care is important in these situations. It can be something as simple as the NYT 7-minute workout, a slightly healthier diet, meditation, etc. That kind of thing will get you more increasing returns than the MeBrush 7.32 ever will. I wish you well.
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First off, you are a scientist. Full stop.
Second, the idea of getting a grip is often as difficult as getting a grip in the first place.
Lastly, financial precariousness will never, ever go away. Ever. Don’t define your happiness around it.
Lastly lastly, dont ever let bullies control what you think or do.
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As someone that has lived paycheck to paycheck for the better part of 20 years and is no longer in that situation i can say that the feeling of being behind never truly goes away. Though i do spend less time worrying about it compared to before, and when i splurge on myself i get intense guilt and i have to force myself to enjoy my free time and the hard earned money i have. It takes time but definitely don’t define happiness with security, define it with enjoying all the small things, the free time you have, having good experiences, trips, etc.
The bit i’ve personally really struggled with is the impostor syndrome. I constantly feel like i don’t belong where i work at and i try to work hard to push past my insecurities :[
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Don’t be sorry, it might turn out cathartic.
Just FTR, telling my story had a purpose: to show that academic culture might be at the bottom of the tech BS.
I lived through that. It’s extremely common to define yourself by being so fucking committed that you not only answer emails at 3am, but also be sure to tell people that you had to because this manuscript needed to be submitted first.
Despite dropout fame, most silicon valley-like start-ups are run by academics who felt that academia was for slackers.
Which, btw, is an attitude towards academia in every branch of job market. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do an internship, but have a proper job, I presume…
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btw, you know i am a middle aged techie who dropped out of university, right? music major, i literally–not figuratively–slept at school. 
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Definitely… Usually some young, unmarried person… grist for the mill.
I’m not defining my happiness through the money I earn, but I have to tell you that being able to pay my own health insurance again is a pretty big deal. And I would be quite glad to be able to pay the rent for me and my partner if we would have to drop put off work for at least three months.
That’s not happiness. That’s a bit of financial security.
Regarding the scientist’s selfdefinition, I probably don’t match the scientific criteria any longer. We could ask for a peer review, but the EiC usually is the bully you mentioned, and Rev1 by default is.
i had a week and a half lapse in health insurance recently. take a wild guess what happened in the short time frame
all i have to say is that you are a good person, and you earned your title.
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