Temp Troops of High-Tech 476
A submitter sends in this story about
temp work in Silicon Valley, from the point of view of the temp. Compare almost the same story written from the point of view of Amazon.com's management.
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Temp Troops of High-Tech
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Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.
Another side (Score:3, Insightful)
high tech also means low tech (Score:5, Insightful)
And the high-tech (?) printers and so also in the end need packaging, sending, assembling. You can automate some parts, but...
When you read a story like this, it just keeps reminding me of early 20th century conditions that made socialists movements all too understandable... Some people just don't seem to care. Or not to be allowed to care by some system...
Reinout
The world economy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's face it, paying minimum wage to people is cheaper than automating a production line (and of course, they can argue that they are providing valuable jobs).
It's heavy handed and unethical (IHMO) but companies (with a _few_ limited exceptions) are only interested in the bottom line.
I've done the temping thing for a while, and there was certainly variety (like I'd be in a different job every week), but you are also treated as little more than 'an extra body'. They can get another one easily enough, so they can get you to work, trample on you, and if you go replace you in a day.
(Much happier now I'm working full time doing 'skilled' rather than manual labour. Least this way I get a month's notice before being told to walk)
That's Life (Score:0, Insightful)
As bad as that is... (Score:4, Insightful)
A picture of everyday business in America (Score:5, Insightful)
But at the same time, this story happens in thousands of businesses around the country, every day of the year. The pay is low, the work is tedious, and the management oppressive and degrading. Where I work now, the fulfillment center is the major part of our company... supply-chain services, as it is being touted nowadays. It's the 'new economy' that was made so much around the start of 2000... but it's still the same old labor-intensive machine. So, IMHO, there's really little news to see here, for those of us who have worked outside the cubicle.
And temp agencies? Don't even get me started...
Temping. (Score:3, Insightful)
On the up side, at least I'm not bitter.
--saint
Is government really obsolete? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the most common sentiments on slashdot is how backwards governments are and how technology makes them obsolete.
But you see something like this-- maybe things like workplace safety standards are still important...
With all the libertarian sentiment here on
No Respect (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading an article like this does nothing but make me feel quite weak and ill. Thinking that people in a country like the USA are treated like nothing more then a pair of hands really really bothers me.
I read sooo many articles written by these company CEO's or whatever, telling the reader how they are now customer focused and how great they are doing, but the honest truth is they treat their employees as if they aren't human.
Companies need to learn that it's their work force that makes them what they are. I'm sure they believe they are being effictive by getting rid of "bad" workers who complain and want better standards, but have they ever really just taken a step back and wondered how much BETTER production would be if they were to treat their workers with respect and give them the security they need and desire?!?
Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Underpaid? Well, get another job with your obviously menial skill set making more than $8/hour. What's that? You can't? Well, see, if we paid everyone 9 bucks an hour, we'd have to let one person go for every 8 we give the raise to. Also, why pay 9/hour when there's people lining up to work for 8?
Essential? No, your job function is essential. You are not.
Third world jobs in your backyard (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The world economy. (Score:5, Insightful)
On unemployment it says that it is a necessary condition for a capitalist system, as long as it doesn't get too high - it is upto the individual to find employment and change their status. Capitalism is economic individualism.
Should society look after the people or should the people look after themselves? I think, as in all things, balance is required.
Been There (Score:5, Insightful)
All I can say to people that are trying to live on temp work is, get to school! Somehow, anyhow. I don't care if it's tech school for one semester. Even that little bit of knowledge can help. Also, learn English. Learn how to speak it so that even slow midwestern people like me can understand you. I know it's challenging to the extreme, but my ancestors came here and had to do the same thing. BTW, I'm *not* trying to flame or be prejudiced here, I'm simply trying to state facts. Please read and judge accordingly.
First impression (Score:4, Insightful)
Raj talks about people. He cites a lot of names, feelings, relationships. It's constructed around what people are feeling about a situation, the actions that they are seeing and their reactions;
And Amazon's Management talks about numbers. It quotes lots of statistics, managers, and 'market condition'. It's constructed around what people are analysing about a situation, the actions that they are taking and the reactions.
It's classical from a literature perspective. And IMHO, I prefer much more Raj's point of view.
But maybe I am a misplaced human on a capitalist society
Re:No Respect (Score:2, Insightful)
this is the hypocrisy of the consumer.
Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No. (Score:3, Insightful)
So by that logic, it would be okay to fire a person if they couldn't keep up with a 20-hour working day?
You're confusing overworked with underpaid. "Overworked" means "having more work than you can be reasonably expected to complete in the time available". It has nothing to do with how much you're paid, or whether you're paid hourly or not.
Cheers,
Tim
The alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the alternative? Pay them $20 and hour and let them come and go as they please, or stop the line whenever they want to chat about their weekend? How willing are you to pay $500 for a printer that currently costs $125?
If this story was about HP automating the box line and putting some number of temp workers out on the street, or moving the work to Mexico where the labor costs are even lower, would that be better?
Temp work exists for a reason. I have done temp work myself. My view of it was work I could get at the drop of a hat, and quit the same way. If you need to work for 3 weeks, are you going to take a job somewhere knowing full well you're only going to be there 3 weeks? Yes, there are perma-temps, and there are inarguably strong financial incentives on the part of the company to staff in that manner, but the cold, hard reality is that this is the kind of migrant labor these workers chose. Granted, they probably didn't have a whole lot of options to choose from, but it's not like some recruiter painted a rosy picture of temp-Nirvana to these people. They made a fully-informed decision to accept the work, and given the angst shown over being laid-off, seemed to appreciate that they had work at all.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead, I'm going to work with the premise that you've lived a very comfortable life(using world-wide living standards) and you simply don't know how it feels to do an automaton job.
Not only that, I'm going to work on the premise that you're young, which means that you still see the responsibility that companies have towards their employees.
However, there is one mistake I am going to call you down on. You're obliviously maelevolent attitude to people who have been screwed by their company will in the end hurt you and those around you who could really use your support when the big boys bend everyone else over the table.
Don't think this could happen to you? Think your intelligence and oh-so-sophisticated view of the business world will carry you over troubled waters? One word, little man. Enron.
Jeezus friggin' Christ, you'd think most of the posters here are anti-social jackasses, if you just read their posts.
There's always a trade-off... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, there's a trade-off between good working conditions and having work at all. In Europe, the population chose to have better working conditions, by voting for left-of-center governments. In the US, the population chose to decrease the power of unions and have more jobs, by continually voting for right-of-center governments.
Re:high tech also means low tech (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're just as free to horribly fail in life as you are to be wildly sucessful in it.
Thats what freedom is. Nobody will be there to help you up if you fall on your face. You're free to bang your head on the wall for the rest of your life. Your free to work your ass of to find a better wall. But you don't have to. I don't have to help you find a better wall. Nobody does.
One way to make the most of a bad situation (Score:3, Insightful)
I temped in Chicago for one year during the tech boom period, and had no trouble interviewing for system support and programming work, and eventually landed one. The cool thing about this method was that I would just jot the info down while in the break room and call the next day.
While employers are looking for education / experience, they are also very well aware that some guru with ten years of background might not contribute that much more than "the temp fellow that has a decent resume, everyone seems to like, and seems to know how to brew coffee instead of leaving it for the next person to do." Or at least that is the angle I would take if I was not the guru. I just always thought of the temp work as rent payers and a good way to scope out companies I might like to work for.
I wonder if temping at an HP corporate office would have yielded a different tale?
Re:Workers already have the power! (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone that is willing to make a change and make his/herself able to do a job can and will.
It doesn't take brains/spunk/determination to move somewhere with the same pay and lower cost of living. It doesn't take much to get a decent paying job.
People seem to think they are entitled to something more than doing work. Manual labor is what makes industry work, just as you can't win a war without some grunts on the ground, you can't operate a company without some people filling boxes. When I was in College I would have killed for that job and 8 bucks an hour. Because, like I said in another post, I grew up doing farm work. I never thought I was entitled to anything.
The man isn't keeping these people down, the people are keeping the people down.
Re:The alternative (Score:2, Insightful)
I know that at my old job, the health plan accounted for 53% of the budget in a organization of 540 people.
With the narrow margins that companies like HP operate at, it could break the company.
As for despotics tactics, what's despotic about not giving a temp benefits? I don't see full-time employment or health care listed in the Constitution, Magna Carta or the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
I've worked for companies like this (Score:3, Insightful)
I was a temp worker, and was only given part time work so that they didn't have to pay me any benifits. I had to work 3 part time jobs and was also an officer in the Army National Guard in order to make just enough to support my family.
A union worker decided that he would cuss me out for no reason and I told him to fuck off. He ran off and lied about the incident and got me fired, the little coward.
After working for a year in shit jobs I finally got a break laying network cabling and doing help desk and support and I never looked back. I am currently a self taught programmer and make a great salary.
But even then I got laid off my Disney after working for them for just a few months, when they began downsizing go.com.
I lost my job while the executives got paid about $50,000,000 in bonuses and stock options. _My_ stock options. So even at a professional level you can be screwed over.
Of course I got 2 job offers in less than a week, during the height of the recession, so no big deal. But it was depressing to get laid off. And in my book being laid off without ever intending to hire you back is just fired.
The most important thing to remember is that the fuedal system was _not_ slavery. Sure, the serf had responsibilites to the lord and had to work hard, but the lord also had responsibilities back to the serf. The lord had to provide for the workers like you would your prize animals. And the church kept a strict eye on the behavior of the lords to ensure that they maintained law and order in the area.
The lord just couldn't arbitrarily throw someone off the land, because there was no replacement workers, even a lazy drunken lout was better than no lout at all. A lord that kept abusing his people would have to answer to the church and might even be excomunicated and exiled himself.
When capitalism replaced fuedalism the CEO became the fuedal lord, but the CEO no longer has any responsiblity to the workers and has to answer to nobody for their treatment of the workers. The unions formed in response to long hours of labor with little pay and the constant threat of being fired. The same reason that these people in the story have to face everyday.
I used to be against unions, because I had been brainwashed by the propaganda that unions were causing the US to be less competitive. But then I looked into the matter and found out that union shops are every bit as competitive as non union shops and that dollar for dollar they produce as many goods as non union shops. Mainly because in union shops you had long periods of employment that allow people to get good at their jobs.
The reason that companies go with lower paid inexperienced workers is because even though it is more expensive in the long run for the company, it allows the executives to make a lot more money for themselves individually, in the short run.
Ford paid his workers enough money to buy a model-T. I doubt that most of the workers in these third world countries could buy a pair of sneakers or jeans at full price. I doubt that the workers at the company in the story could have afforded to buy one of the printers that they were packing up. Sad really.
If we don't support the right for everyone to have a living wage that lets people get ahead, who will buy the things that we are making in the future. and if noone buys the things that we are making, how long do you expect to keep your job?
I think that it is time for high tech workers to form a union and protect our rights. We should also make sure that the workers in foreign subsidiaries of the companies that we work for get paid the same as we do. The the US will have someone to sell our stuff to overseas and we can reduce our huge foreign debt that we have every year.
/. readers naive about work (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm 34 years old. I've worked in the IT industry for some time. I've also been a
/. posters believe people have a choice, you don't like working there, go elsewhere. Where I ask? All corporations work under the same rules of employment, the lowest end I can assure you. Those very very few companies that do give their employees human consideration will be bought by Micro$oft soon.
/. posters think the standard IT contract is perfectly natural. Well, a contract that gives you bad benefits, no pension, no security, seniority, etc. is not a good contract. Just because you're making 6 thousand more than your friends are doesn't mean you'll have a job tomorrow.
/. posters believe that roaming from company to company is a normal and good career move. This drives me crazy... can you people not do the math?
/. posters should consider the big picture. Workers need to come together to assure a healthy industry and future for the technology. You think Bill Gates will do that? Larry? Steve? No, they won't. Industry is created by the workers, the engineers, the scientists, not the bean counters and marketing sharks.
/. posters seem to have not noticed that all thier IT jobs generally originate with departments or companies that are, in effect, a chunk of some greater hydra like corporation. To make thier quarter earning fit, they would fire you and burn down the building you work in. It's called downsizing.
"Fuck the doomed". R. Nixen
Re:Been There (Score:1, Insightful)
I fail to see how anyone expects to live the "American Dream" in America while denying that you need good communication skills to do so.
Re:Been There (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but if I cannot understand what you are saying, on most jobs it doesn't matter if you are clever. I cannot tell if you understood the instructions, you'll have trouble telling me about problems that arise, and how are you going to communicate with fellow employees or the public? For office jobs (most of the good jobs), communication is critical. For sales and other public-contact jobs, many large American companies do hire people whose English is unintelligible to me, but there is considerable risk of losing customers who get asked "do you want flies with that", or note that United Airline's employees in Korea speak much better English than their employees in San Francisco.
For lousy jobs, speaking English matters less, but there are not so many of those jobs as there used to be. When my Dad ran a cherry farm, the best pickers tended to be migrant families with very little English -- just hand them the buckets and ladder and point to their row of trees. But this job has been done by machine for 30 years now. Or if I was hiring a ditchdigger, I could pick up the shovel and _show_ you what to do. But I can rent a trenching machine that does the work of several men for less than hiring one, so that job is pretty much gone, unless you can demonstrate that you can run the machine or work together with the machine operator. (And if the whole crew speaks Spanish, that's fine as long as one man speaks English too. Since he's the one I can explain the job to, he'll be the foreman and paid more...)
Re:The world economy. (Score:2, Insightful)
* They're automating the factories, driving workers out of their jobs!
* They're employing workers to do menial repetitive tasks better left to machines!
In the case where owner and worker are the same person, automation is a boon and market economics work great. If you can automate a job that you previously did manually, it frees you to do other work, or to enjoy liesure time. Because you own the fruits of your labour, anything you can do to improve your efficiency benefits you directly.
Unfortunately, over time, productive assets have been privatized, sold, and amalgamated by an ever-decreasing number of individuals. Everyone else is left with nothing, and so they must sell their labour to those who own the productive assets.
While automation for the labourer who owns their own productive assets means either less work or higher productivity, for the worker with no productive assets, it means more work for less pay, as similarly unendowed individuals engage in cuthroat competition with one another for ever-decreasing employment opportunities, and wages fall appropriately. It leads to people working harder, longer, and more efficiently, but actually earning less.
A futuristic Star Trek world where machines do everything and everyone enjoys the benefits is predicated on everyone sharing in the benefits of automation. In a society where only the few who own productive assets benefit, everyone else is eventually doomed to poverty and ruin as their only means of earning a living is replaced by automation.
That doesn't mean that capitalism has to fail to provide for the masses, but the overwhelming tendency of capitalism is to concentrate rather than distribute wealth, and the overwhelming tendency of technology is, personal computers excepted, to reduce rather than increase the need for labour. Together, they make a pretty dangerous poison.
Re:Why capitalism isn't evil,and unions sometimes (Score:3, Insightful)
Create employment law that protects the worker, the industry, and the community? Just a thought...
Business practices will always aim for the bottom line in a capitalist economy. In the past, we had created law to protect workers after we learned that companies will exploit people even onto death. What has happened to those laws in the past 20 years? Things changed...
"Greed is all right, by the way . . . I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." Ivan F. Boesky, U.S. financier. Commencement Address, 18 May 1986, School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley. Boesky's words were later picked up in Oliver Stone's film, Wall Street (1987), spoken by Gordon Gecko. Boesky himself was later convicted of conspiring to file false documents with the federal government, involving insider trading violations, and agreed to pay $100 million in fines and illicit profits.
Re:Another side (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm Floored... (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO, there is always a time to say "enough". It's just different for everyone, and they must have the balls to do it.
For Temp agencies, they must be able to turn away that business, and that money, when their temps are being treated badly. This is a very hard thing to do when your Parent company is demanding sales numbers be met.
For the workers, they must be able to sacrifice the easy job (as in easy to get and quit) and put long days and nights into education to qualify for higher paying and permanent work. This is also hard, when you can't feed your kids.
Finally, the Company must be able to lower profits and raise expenses by hiring high quality, permanent employees at or above market rate. Again...not easy to do, especially when profit are low.
Every agency, company and worker has done this at some time in my career. My agency has walked from business and paid for it, sometimes for years. But we did it knowing that we would come out ahead in the end (there is a reason my agency is NOT the one in this article) but in the meantime, things are harder, not easier.
Until one of the three parties in this plant says enough...it will be an embarrasment for all.
That's why we need unions (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true if both sides have an equal need to reach an agreement and both sides are equally informed about the value of the work. And of course there would need to be equal negotiating skill.
Obviously someone who desparately needs a job is in a worse individual bargaining position than a company that has 500 employees doing the same work and wants to hire 1 more. While negotiating, the individual can walk away if wages or conditions aren't good enough, but the consequences are great -- possible eviction, children without healthcare, etc. But if the company refuses the individual's final offer, then the company is understaffed by less than 1%. That might mildly affect the morale and profitability of the company, but it obviously wouldn't be desparate. And the fact is, the one with the most ability to walk away from a bad offer is in a powerful position.
As for knowledge, it is difficult for an individual to learn the true value of their labor. While it is possible, most people aren't aware of what they are worth. And if you undervalue yourself, you are in a worse bargaining position. Imagine buying a used car, thinking the car is worth $5000 more than the salesman knows it's really worth - you will clearly pay more than you might have with more accurate information, just as if you knew the value and the salesman undervalued it by $1000 you'd end up with a bargain. And if a lot of people looking for a similar position undervalue themselves or are desparate, then suddenly your value goes down, even if you have accurate knowledge and are not desparate.
And, of course, negotiation is a skill -- if you've only negotiated three or four times for a salary, you won't be as skilled as someone that has done it a dozen times, or someone whose job it is to be a good negotiator.
This all adds up to most people being in a situation where it is not an agreement between equals. And this lowers the value of all of our labor, since we are only as valuable as someone that might be used to replace us.
So, that leads to the question -- how can we best increase our value, so that we are on an equal footing when reaching an agreement with an employer, or even tip the scale in our favor? For one, we need to ensure that the employer is more desparate than we are -- if refusing an agreement might put us on the street, then it would be best if the employer would risk going out of business if they refuse. We need to make sure that not only do we as individuals know what we are worth, but we need to make sure that all others that do similar work know their value. And we need to make sure that others have the skills needed to stand up for themselves. And to tip things even more in our favor, we need to lessen the risk of standing up for ourselves -- if one person stands up, the employer risks little by getting rid of them, but if we stand up together for issues we have in common, we have less risk and the employer has more.
Now, when I say we need unions, I mean it is in our best interests to organize together as I described above. We certainly don't need corrupt union officials or unions that spend our money on even more corrupt politicians.
But there are a lot of other options -- you can form an independent union, and make it as democratic and decentralized as you like, or you can find an existing union to your liking (there is a broad range both within and outside the AFL-CIO).
Personally, I recommend the IWW [iww.org] -- a union long known for being the most democratic and least bureaucratic of unions, with a constitution that forbids any entanglement with political parties.
Re:high tech also means low tech (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:high tech also means low tech (Score:1, Insightful)
hrmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
If your goal is to switch places with "ana" in the article and yell at some other sop, then go get a degree in management, work hard, and maybe one day you will get to hold the whip.
If your goal is to improve the lot of people in general, then address the systematic incentives in our economy for these sweatshops. Atleast minimize them. Maybe change the playing field so that these types of parasitic business models are punished.
Why parastic? Well, these temp workers are not going to be buying a lot of printers. The idea of the worker who can afford his own model-T is sustainable. Having a horde of disposable temps who make stuff that only a shrinking middle class can buy is parasitic.
What are the incentives for these sweatshops?
the above hidden cost is not paid.
The big 5 accounting firms have successfully lobbied the SEC to not require reforms in reporting compensation packages. This allows management to pay themselves more, because this pay is hidden from shareholders. This (along with LBOs and management sitting on each others' boards) is a big source in shifting money from supervised to supervisory employees (total labor costs have remained constant). This can be addressed with accounting reforms.
The laws on the books protecting the rights of workers to communicate and organized are not enforced. Scared, disorganized employees are then confronted with organized management which is confident it can break the laws with impunity.
make the true owners (hp in this case) legally responsible for how their employees are treated. Let defacto employees == legal employees. Again, this is a shell game which we let the big boys play to avoid responsibility and bad p.r.
the article contains an example of clearly an illegal firing. This was done for political purposes and without cause. The employee can no go to unemployment and uncle sam foots the bill. Companies who want this kind of "flexibility" should then pay for it by paying much higher unemployment insurance. Companies who don't engage in these practices will have lower costs.
Not paying someone's paycheck is illegal. How about some enforcement on that.
Immigration reform. If you come here you can work for anyone. Companies who decide to use the INS as their personal manpower recruiter should then pay some of the INS's budget, no? While those who don't shouldn't pay this cost.
openness. No secret meetings, no policies of "we can't tell you if a list exists, and if it does, wether your name is on it." Documents relating to your employment should be accessible to you. More inspectors, more news coverage. HP, Amazon, IBM, know the power of goodwill in the marketplace.
There's nothing wrong or shameful with washing dishes, carrying boxes, loading packages, or seasonal employment. It's possible to treat these employees well, have everything above board, and enforce their rights. Many countries manage to do it, and it's more a matter of political power and organization which prevents it happening here. Remember, there is nothing inherently more indispensible or rare in another kind of seasonal work: the business consultant. But the latter has powerful (non-"market") institutions which protect his interests: academia, networks of friends, cultural prestige, congressional lobbyists. These interests tweak the business climate to support him.
Just think:
You want to shut down a plant, but can cover your ass if some fancy name consultant recommends it. Guaranteed income for Anderson Consulting!
Or
A ceo (say for Cisco) gets stock options. If the business goes up, he gets 700 million, if it goes down he pays..nothing. The utility function doesn't dip below the x-axis. That's called, in economics, a "moral hazard".
These examples are due to institutional policies which benefit these two groups. Nothing at all to do with working hard, free markets, or improving yourself. Everything to do with culture, the legal system, accounting rules, and business practices. In short -- power. And there are ways for dishwashers and assembly workers to be powerful, too. Not artificial ways, but natural ones, since everyone needs/wants dishwashers and loaders. Poeple have to be forced into hiring lawyers and consultants. Simple power of the vote, of organizing, of information can be enough to make the life of the seasonal worker much better.
Gloves (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hrmm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Only too true. Check out what the people trying to survive IBM [ibmemployee.com] have to say. IBM's PR is so, so good these days. Good on the OSS front, good in the market, good in little local human affairs sorts of ways (unless you're from Burlington, VT). Finally, miraculously, there's a union forming (CWA, which makes sense).
IBM was the last major tech company to begin major layoffs, and that's because IBM had the balls to wait it out long enough to seem that much stronger than the rest. Big Blue. A wonderful strategic move... especially now, with attention focussed elsewhere. Now it quietly lets thousands go, and no one - except those thousands - seems to notice. These people are treated badly, and they were "IBMers".
IBM propped up its "revenue" by upping the projected interest on its pension fund to 10% (from 5% a year earlier) and simultaneously locked away a large portion of money that would have gone to retirees. This single move, alone, gave IBM enough extra "revenue" - though it's all fantasy - to pull reasonable profit in quarters when everyone else crashed hard.
Do some research and find out how much Lou Gerstner took home last year... and will take home throughout his retirement. Carly is *poor*.
The only reason I haven't signed on with the union already is this: I'm a temp. I've been temping at IBM for 2.5 years now. I will not be hired, though I am repeatedly carrot-led ("but no guarantees"). I am indispensable to the point that I worry about my job - because if I had the authority to rework internal systems, my job would not exist. My reassurance is that management is completely inert|incompetent. Did I mention that I am a Manpower worker? I am. The union does not seem to notice temps, and until they do, I think they're missing the point.... in the same way IBM's extremely well-compensated executives do.
I cannot leave my job, as if I do, I absolutely will have to move. There's no way I could afford my rent. Manpower reps have actually laughed at people coming into the local office looking for "something, anything." There's nothing, outside a few specialized industries.
...And no, I do not work the assembly line. I work in a position where I am constantly berated with how I helped land that last $NN million deal. I get to hear people discussing their bonuses in the bathroom. These people make more than doctors, and they're fucking morons.
It's all very rewarding.
Ah, fuck it. What's the worst that can happen if I don't post anonymously? :-D
Re:"Contractor" is not synonymous with "Employee". (Score:2, Insightful)
Be a Suck-Ass Temp (Score:1, Insightful)
What's worse, is that this cycle will continue as long as there are english-speaking people to lead and workers willing to take it up the ying-yang. If you're a temp worker, I urge you to really consider the how much effort you put into your work; infact, I urge you not to work hard at all. Feel free to screw things up!
Hey, as lomg as "Temping" works, management will keep using them and tens-of-millions will be stuck with deadend jobs.
Help yourself and others - be a suck-ass temp. It's the only way management will consider hiring fuul-time employees. And anyways, what can they do to you? They don't give reference and they don't give benefits - you have nothing to lose and everything to gain and there is always another suck-ass temp job to be had until something permanent comes along.
Re:The alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
You are quite optimistic. People whose profits are based on scarcity will not welcome abundance. If we draw a lesson from the RIAA/MPAA/Napster situation, the technologies you mention will be killed in their infancy, or shackled with restrictions to avoid competing with any existing industry. Worse, I think that nanotech and AI will be the basis of the most airtight tyranny the world has ever seen. AI solves the problem behind 1984 - who watches all the telescreens?
When the internet was gaining momentum, many people believed that the existing powers would foolishly stand by while the net made them irrelevant. The last few years have shown how wrong that view was. Having noticed the internet and the threat it represents, the establishment has reacted with a massive counterattack, including the DMCA and perhaps SSSCA. (And I think asymmetrical and capped broadband are part of that counterattack).
It's possible that the time has passed when technological change could change society. The entrenched powers are too aware of the process of technological development, and too heavily involved in controlling that development, to allow themselves to be unhorsed by a new threat. They will see the new threats on the horizon before the ordinary people do.