This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/16/amazon-jassy-tells-employees-to-return-to-office-five-days-a-week.html
Amazon's corporate moto has always been "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further." so it is of no surprise that they are the first of FAANG to reinstate the office policy. I don't think that they chase any productivity gains because most white collars are as useless and unproductive in the office as they are as useless and unproductive at home. And all this extra workforce on premise will probably cost them more since they are not saving as much on office space and so on.
So couple of explanations - those are soft layoffs - some of the high value people will leave, but probably the majority of the people will be the one with somewhat unrealistic opinion of their own worth. And it is not as if the tech and tech adjacent industry are not filled with primadonnas.
The other one is - middle managers try to show the plebs who exactly is running the show. The tech company is no longer in weaker bargaining position - so it is payback time bitches. It has been more than two decades since tech workers had to negotiate from position of weakness and I think it will be quite the rude awaking for some. I guess the other FAANGs will move soon in the same direction.
As a bonus - I think that offices will move until the economy is tight to be a bit more apolitical space since managers dislike crybuillies even if they share ideology.
I think you underestimate the degree to which plenty of people completely stop working when "working from home". You might think they were low productivity before but now they're producing practically nothing.
I'm under the assumption that we will move towards a situation where pretty much all jobs for which it isn't trivial to measure productivity for, isn't commission based or where the the organisation is sufficiently small that people share ownership, will move back to almost 100% office.
This means all larger companies, governmental agencies, etc. When it isn't it will often be with a tacit understanding that the job is in fact part time.
It's really pathetic how little progress the tech industry has apparently made towards measuring and incentivizing actual productivity, that some of the foremost employers still feel like they need to chain people to a desk and hope that they'll get something done that way. This is despite having approximately the most naturally conscientious workforce in the world.
Remote work aside, there is so much on the table for the employer that's able to keep the 10x software engineers and fire everyone else that it's mind-boggling how few companies have even tried to pull it off. I'm not sure if it's ideological commitment to egalitarianism, principal / agent problems where middle management pursues empire building instead of efficiency, or just genuinely that difficult of a problem to solve.
One aspect of "empire building" is that size of your empire correlates with your position in the company hierarchy, and your position correlates with your compensation.
I generally believe in more in free markets than in planned economies, and consequently I am capitalism-pilled on of the Western corporate organization structure. It looks much too much like a Sovjetized planned economy. Like in a planned economy, management upwards from middle level in the hierarchy is seldom compensated for their management and leadership skills. They are compensated because of their advantageous position in the food chain: if the leadership has a vision, they can't make it happen without giving orders through middle strata. The feedback back up ... comes through the middle strata. The productive units and teams of the organization have learned to communicate and align their work with the distant cousin units ... through the middle strata in the hierarchy. In any large enough white-collar company, the cost of management-level failures are diffuse and difficult to blame on anyone in particular. Individual contributor level productivity failures can be pinpointed on the individual and their manager. When whole organization no longer meets the targets? Much more difficult to prove who was in charge of the failure. Stock owners may complain, but don't know enough of the day-to-day operations to demand informed precise corrective actions.
Your theory makes sense a priori but I don't understand why we don't see firms that are run internally like a free market dominating the supposedly inefficient command-based firms which we actually see.
Couldn’t you say Wall Street kind of works like this? Bonuses are allocated to different desks based on their P&L and are usually a larger % of comp than salaries are for more senior employees. Also professional services like consulting, law, accounting etc. are typically “eat what you kill” at the partner level at least and directly measure employee productivity through billable hours
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link