this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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Work Reform

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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Prediction: first big company to offer 32-hour work week at no loss of pay, with choice of remote or hybrid, will hoover up all the Grade-A talent.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They'll never justify it to the shareholders. This is just unrealized value.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So a private company without shareholders will be the first, then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A company being private doesn't mean there's no shareholders, it just means the shares aren't publicly traded.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Correct. But being a private company without shareholders, as I said, means that there are no shareholders. :-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That just makes the owner the sole shareholder 🤷‍♂️ They might be among the hardest to convince.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 2 months ago (4 children)

My CEO is starting to get ideas. I work at a startup, and recently they have been floating 60-80 hour work weeks. So far it has been an idle threat and is really just their hail Mary play, but big players doing this shit is really worrying as far as normalizing it.

I'm more productive than ever, and the punishment seems to be piling on even more work in order to chase those short term profits.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago

Unionise your workplace and force your bosses to respect your time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I mean if they increase my pay by 50-100%, I'll "work" 60-80 hours. By which I mean continue to work 20 hours and pretend to work the rest of the time I say I'm working, while collecting the extra money.

By the time they figure it out I'll probably still come out ahead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

How many people are you?

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 months ago (1 children)

CEOs and executives would be the easiest to replace.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not to mention best bang bang for the buck.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] zipzoopaboop 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Woosh.

Don't worry, Luigi understood

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It wasn't a woosh! It was a bang bang bang up job!

[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ahh yes, another asshole who works maybe 10 hours per week wants the pleb to work around the clock to make him richer...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

You wouldn't get it. These geniuses have highly efficient brains that are working every waking hour.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Another great example of why engineers should not be in charge of people, nor people's wellbeing.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Who else is an example of this? This seems like something that comes commonly from the MBAs that cosplay as techies. And while Brin is one of the few tech leaders who actually has any claim to technical brilliance, he has now been in management far longer than he ever was in a technical role.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Generally the actual term used is technocrat.

People opposed to them would generally say they get focused on the end result and neglect the human aspect.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

This doesn't seem different than any other business dude exhorting his employees to do an extra grind for "the company mission" when it's really just for his ego and profits. Grind culture exists in law, finance, sales, etc. Anywhere that employees are not paid overtime for overworking (mostly, hourly plus commission jobs might have a low base rate and not care about the extra overtime expense).

Techies are particularly vulnerable to it as they're usually younger salaried employees who aren't as apt about demanding a personal upside if they're asked to sacrifice their personal lives for the company's benefit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Where did you hear that? Technocracy means rule by specialists and technical experts. For example, in a technocracy, career bureaucrats aren’t in charge of ecological policy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You can have a technocrat without a technocracy. There is no reason a technocrat cannot be a career burocrate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Is this guy called a technocrat because he actually wants his engineers to rule?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

this almost always an MBA, buzzword(you arnt working , if you are not busy)

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

That's quite sweeping.

People like Brin may be engineers - or have roots as engineers - but the heads of these tech companies are first and foremost entitled 1%-ers, who function as businessmen more than anything else.

The problem really is not that he's an engineer - the problem is that he's an asshole.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The Venn diagram of engineers and entitled equity-seeking assholes has been becoming more and more of a circle since the mid 90s (or earlier, I would have been too young to notice )

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

I really think you fail to understand how many engineers there are out there. Or how many disciplines of them there are. Let alone that many come across stand-offish in the fields of say, Civil Engineering because they are ultimately responsible for human life, yet people want to argue with them about "overbuilding" things.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Funny because I've worked on and off in Tech Startups since the 90s and what I've seen is the very opposite of your statement: post year 2000 Crash Tech has become more the Even Wilder Wild West Of Finance (i.e. no-rules hyperspeculative) and that has been reflected on how most of the Founders and Investors are people with backgrounds in areas heavy towards Sales practices (i.e. Finance, Marketing, actual Sales people and, more in general Grifters) and very few have backgrounds in actually making things.

The Techie with an Engineering background coming up with a new Technology or twist on Technology and making a successful company out of it that was common in Tech boom of the 90s has been replaced by money-men and those whose main skillset is to find and keep investors (so, those good in spinning a good tale, not making something that actually works).

If engineers have become more equity seeking, that's because of the truly insane amount of situations over the last decade or two of people working their asses of to make a company big expecting to win big via options they got and when the company does get big the founders and investors do some kind of financial swindling to make those options worthless and the more those founders and investors are grifters and similar, the more it happens.

People demand equity because the rules around it are a lot more tight than the rules around options which are a total joke and hence those who get options as motivation often end up with nothing when the company does make it big.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

i mean kinda generalist there? are you using any piece of hardware that has an engineer as a ceo? (e.g nvidia, amd qualcomm all have ex engineers as CEOs)

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago

eat the rich

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago

Sergey should fuck right off!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

Fucker needs a visit from Luigi.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Sergey should Google my balls

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I say work 60 hours a week to build an AI to replace the CEO.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

If elon is any example , being a ceo is a very low effort role, in that he's able to be the ceo of multiple companies, while playing video games all day and posting stupid tweets, and more recently, run a government department, all at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

They wouldn't need all 60 hours

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Another guy who hates his family so much that he'd rather spend 60 hours at work per week to stay away from them.

Classy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Oh no, he doesn't work, he just dictates what other people should work

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I guess I'm glad I'm not super rich. Seems like when you get super rich you become a complete idiot.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Says the guy a picture of himself could replace.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

My odds of outliving all of these assholes keep looking better and better, as they pursue their every sociopathuc impulse.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I wish him a happy brain aneurism.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Rokos basilisk lite

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

What a cunt

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The 40 hour workweek is WOKE!!! It came from that commie FDR's "NEW STEAL" and I hate the color green!!!!

Damn liberals forget that the company is FAMILY!! 60 hour weeks just means more time with the people who care the most bigly!!!

/s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I might be wrong, but he doesn't look like someone who's been leading by example and working 60 hours/week himself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That's kinda what happened in IT industry...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Just build one to replace him and call it good