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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Until the 1980s, big companies in America tended to take a paternalistic attitude toward their workforce. Many corporate CEOs took pride in taking care of everyone who worked at their corporate campuses. Business leaders loved to tell stories about someone working their way up from the mailroom to a C-suite office.
But this began to change in the 1980s. Wall Street investors demanded that companies focus more on maximizing returns for shareholders. An emerging corporate orthodoxy held that a company should focus on its "core competence"—the one or two functions that truly sets it apart from other companies—while contracting out other functions to third parties.
Often, companies found they could save money this way. Big companies often pay above the market rate for routine services like cleaning offices, answering phones, staffing a cafeteria, or working on an assembly line. Putting these services out for competitive bid helped the companies get these functions completed at rock-bottom rates, while avoiding the hassle of managing employees. It also saved them from having to pay the same generous benefits they offered to higher-skilled employees.
Of course, the very things that made the new arrangement attractive for big companies made it lousy for the affected workers. Not only were companies trying to spend less money on these services, but now there were companies in the middle taking a cut. Once a job got contracted out, it was much less likely to become a first step up the corporate ladder. It's hard to work your way up from the mailroom if the mailroom is run by a separate contracting firm.
[...] The existence of such a two-tier workplace is especially ironic in Silicon Valley, a region that takes pride in its egalitarian ethos. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a remarkably candid assessment of the situation in 2012, in a statement quoted by author Chrystia Freeland.
"Many tech companies solved this problem by having the lowest-paid workers not actually be employees. They’re contracted out," Schmidt said. "We can treat them differently, because we don’t really hire them. The person who’s cleaning the bathroom is not exactly the same sort of person. Which I find sort of offensive, but it is the way it’s done."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2020, @11:24PM
If you spent less time watching reality TV, you could have become a CEO and retired by now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2020, @11:36PM (7 children)
Why is this 'news' ??
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2020, @11:48PM (5 children)
No, I think this is something different. Isn't gig economy like Uber where an individual contracts directly with the customer, while Uber mediates the transaction (and takes a fee)?
This is contracted labor, the best/worst example I know is a local R&D company, several hundred employees and fairly large buildings with other high-tech tenants. Some of the work onsite is classified. Through the 1970s they always had their own security force and regular visitors (I was one) would get to know the guards--made for a very secure place because the guards had time to worry about anyone they didn't recognize as a regular. Labor relations were generally good and the turnover in the guard staff was minimal.
New owners of the company in the late 1980s switched to a rent-a-cop security service. All of a sudden the morale of the whole place changed. Security staff was always changing (because the service didn't pay well or have good benefits). Because of the rapid turnover, the guards were checking everyone all the time, very annoying--could never get to know any of them. For a brief period one of the rent-a-guards was an ex-military guy who (a few years later) was convicted for domestic terrorist bombing!
Company changed hands back to local/management ownership sometime in the 2000s and they quickly went back to employing guards as regular employees. And morale is back up across the whole place (I still have business there every month or two).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:02AM (4 children)
"No, I think this is something different."
Nope, just the same shit that has existed in Hollywood for decades.
Movie producers don't hire workers, they contract it all out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:49AM
Dude, you really need to stop making posts about things I don't care about. Have some consideration for once! /s cause it probably has to have it
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:54AM (2 children)
> Movie producers don't hire workers, they contract it all out.
But that makes sense to me -- the movie crew comes together for some months (or maybe a year or so) until the movie is done, then splits up. No permanence in the crew because the project is over. Same for the actors, they audition and if they get the role they are employed for the duration of the project (and may also share in revenue, depending on their contract terms).
I have no idea, but maybe in the distant past, studios had a regular crew that was made of employees? If so then the studio management would have to always be ready to make the next movie (or else the company would be paying the crew to be idle).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:13AM (1 child)
You are right. Back in Hollywood's "Golden Age", the studios would crank out the movies. If you were an actress or a stage hand, you never stopped working.
Things are more "blockbuster" driven these days: much larger bets placed on much fewer movies. In the Golden Age, the more frequent release cycle worked because people didn't have televisions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:34PM
My wife is friends with a couple who are both professional set designers. The husband has worked on blockbuster movies (if you saw the scene in I Am Legend where Will Smith is hunting in a forested section of Midtown NYC, that's his handiwork), but has mainly been employed by the TV series Gossip Girl for the past decade. The TV shows seem to have a more regular crew that produces each episode.
He has often remarked how grateful he is for the steady work of the TV show, because it's hard to raise a family on the random gigs that are blockbusters--you have to hustle all the time to line up your next job while you're still on the current job.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:23AM
This has literally nothing to do with the gig economy. The gig economy is a person to person service system where a third party arranges the meeting and takes a cut. This a business to business system.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2020, @11:56PM (45 children)
I put my money into various index funds (SPY, QQQ, SPYD, XLRE, among others) and let it grow. Greater corporate profits may equal less pay but it also equals more dividends and capital gains for me.
Also qualified dividends are taxed at a lower rate (along with long term capital gains) while ordinary income is taxed at a higher rate. So less pay + more dividends and capital gain appreciation = less of my income gets taxed at a higher rate and more of it gets taxed at a lower rate.
Can't beat the system then join it. For those that don't want to invest their money and just want to go out and immediately spend it on stuff they don't need like most people out there it's no wonder they end up broke.
The fact is many people are broke because they like to go waste their paycheck the moment they make their money. They go gamble. They spend it on booze and get drunk. They go out to clubs. Etc... Income is inversely related to the number of children you have. Children are expensive. Poor people have too many children they can't support and they expect the system to support their children (I know this is going to get modded troll). Wealthy people that know how to save and invest their money know how much it costs to have children and they have the self control to not have more children then they are willing to pay for.
It's not my fault most people choose not to manage their money wisely. It's their choice. You have a choice. You can save and invest or you can waste your money on things you don't need and end up in debt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:03AM (1 child)
err ... to not have more children than they are willing to pay for *
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:27AM
Ah, your spelling is not your greatest failing.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:32AM (22 children)
At the time I write this, parent post is marked Troll, but a more accurate tag would be "Butthurt Mods".
What he is saying is 100% truth. You can complain about the system, or you can learn to work the system. It really is up to you.
I really second the advice to invest what you can in the equivalent of an S&P 500 index fund (or SPYDR). It averages about 10% return historically. This means that every 10 years, you DOUBLE your money. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Don't player hate; player participate.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:11AM (6 children)
Which works out great of you've got extra cash to invest. Until recently you had to have thousands of dollars in order to invest in that fashion, which most of these workers wouldn't. Between account minimums and the minimums on various mutual funds, poor people couldn't get into the markets at all. Which is just as well as they didn't have funds they could afford to lose.
Even now though, if there's a recession at the wrong time, you can have done the right things and still be eating dog food as you work until you die.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:33AM (5 children)
IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that if you don't have any money left over at the end of the month you can't save or invest any. I don't think you're educating anyone with that "insight." I and the original poster offered a better place to put any savings you have than where they usually go: sitting in a fucking checking account yielding nothing point nothing. Downmarkets are not a problem at all if you use stocks for what they are for: long term savings.
There are a lot of whiners on this board that seem to have a stunted financial literacy. Let me reiterate again though: step ZERO is making enough money and or keeping your expenses low enough so that you HAVE money to save or invest. It may not be possible to do this all the time, but for example, buying a new car, top of the line trim, can prevent you from ever having that extra money. I saw the office cleaning lady step out to a brand new top trim SUV. Brand new! Like they say on the local Spanish FM station, no credit, bad credit, no tax ID, no problem! It's not a coincidence that the ad that ran just before that one was for a voodoo shaman to fix your problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @06:27AM (4 children)
You gotta have money to make money. How is that advise helping anyone?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:31PM (3 children)
Because you don't have to be fucking royalty. The equivalent of 8 months doing without cable tv is enough to get you on the right track for saving for your future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @04:16PM (2 children)
That assumes that you've got TV or that it's not just bundled into the rent. Some people do have fat that they could trim from their budget to save and invest, but an increasing number of people don't as the rents go up and wages remain stagnant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:08PM (1 child)
I'd love to hear that bootstrappers logic when the savers are wiped out by vehicle maintenance, medical debt, or any other unplanned major expense. They're trying to prop up the pyramid scheme of modern capitalism by blaming the poor people for being paid shit. Just ridiculous and shows the lack of basic math skills these idiots have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:44PM
Indeed, the billions of wealth that some people have had to come from somewhere. That somewhere is the money that workers aren't being paid. Saving anything and investing it will help, but not over the course of even a few generations. And only if a market correction doesn't wipe it out.
Not using credit cards helps a lot, but only if you've got the money to be able to avoid them in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:32AM (10 children)
SP500 index shares are great for diversification, but IMO they are dangerously overweight on tech and the asset bubble there. Though if you are in it for the long term (>10 years), it's probably negligible.
I would recommend target year funds, they will automatically keep an appropriate balance between stock and bonds depending on the time window until you would like to use the money.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:41AM (9 children)
i'm going to disagree with your recommendation on target funds. You'll make more money if you leave it 100% in S&P stocks and only start switching towards "safer "investments like bonds or money markets when you get to within several years of your retirement date. The only reason for target funds to exist is to make money management completely automatic for the investor who knows nothing at all. Target funds pretty much guarantee lower yields than the strategy I mentioned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:46AM (1 child)
You are entitled to your opinion, but none of the strategies guarantee higher or lower yields.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @11:30AM
Long term analysis of historical performance for different asset classes has given figures for returns that have been fairly consistent over a century. I invest using that information.
It you are overly conservative, the only thing you are GUARANTEEING is low returns. I did that for a while and eventually saw it was a mistake. After wars, the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Great Recession of 2008, stocks recovered and delivered handsomely.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:06PM (6 children)
Works great unless there's a 10-20 year period of no stock returns. You're just showing your youth with that advice. Spread it around all the asset classes - stocks, bonds, house - and you will do better than most... However, if "most" becomes "all except very few" then watch out!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 03 2020, @07:45PM (3 children)
Also, how cute, he thinks the stock market ISN'T gambling!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:12PM (2 children)
Even cuter: you, who thinks anything in life can be certain.
Setting foot outside your door, seeking and keeping employment, it's ALL a gamble. Study the odds and bet based on that. That's the most certainty you will ever have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:33PM (1 child)
?
On one hand actual gambling, on the other simple uncertainties of living. Mental gymnastics from free market morons, we need a new olympic category.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:39PM
Stay poor then dumbass.
Keep complaining about it.
People offer advice, but it's wasted on you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:17PM (1 child)
I'm hardly young. The past 70 years have been fine, though, for stocks.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:47PM
The past two days, not so much!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:29AM (3 children)
It's marked troll because it's just a modern toned down version of "Let them eat cake".
On a related note, it's funny how the same people that think nothing of not knowing how to repair their car's engine, fix their furnace, rewire the house, etc don't hesitate to call the mechanic, electrician, HVAC tech, etc idiots because they don't understand investing and finance.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:21PM (2 children)
Nobody knows how to repair their cars engine anymore. I don't think even the manufacturers know. Some problems can easily be fixed if you know how. Some problems can easily be fixed if you have the right (proprietary) tools. But there seem to be lots of problems that nobody knows how to fix.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:48PM
This is why people offering financial advice for profit or selling financial products should be fiduciaries. They should be legally required to give advice and seek products that they believe are going to be in the best interest of the customer. They may still screw up, leaving the customer losing money, but at least it would be the exception rather than a byproduct of trying to make the most money possible off suckers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:23AM
The problem is: in order to do so you have to illegally modify or replace computer systems responsible for engine emissions, vehicle traction control/anti-lock/brakes, drive by wire systems, etc. All of these things should be using off the shelf hardware, but instead each is a slightly different proprietary blob that can't be replaced, updated, or otherwise debugged to make it safer.
As a result cars have followed computers and cell phones into the disposable device territory, even though with changes in regulations they could be kept running indefinitely by adequately qualified personnel or do it at home types. Very little of it is rocket science but thanks to complications in the name of 'government required minimum safety' the home mechanic can no longer do almost anything without violating state laws on operating their vehicle, the independent mechanic can only replace parts, not adjust or fix underlying problems. And the dealers, well they will gouge you for repairs while telling you why next year's model is better, even when it isn't.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:59AM (8 children)
"many people are broke because they like to go waste their paycheck the moment they make their money. "
or the only gig they can get is a contract one, and they can't bootstrap themselves because every dime from their shitty pay is going to Silicon Valley rent and paying back tuition
forced upon them because they couldn't get a job at all w/o a degree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:17AM (7 children)
I hear this excuse a lot. Here's a suggestion: don't live in fucking Silicon Valley. There are plenty of good-paying jobs in less expensive cities. Take off the blinders.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:09PM (2 children)
But then who will deliver my Cheetos and 64Gb RAM stick within 1hr at 3am?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday March 03 2020, @04:11PM (1 child)
I'll give you a hint, it starts with Y and ends with U. Might have a hard time finding a 64GB RAM stick at that time of day though. Unless Walmart actually stocks RAM and has 64GB sticks.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:13PM
I think we need to use slower airplanes, Freeman is having a hard time tracking them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @04:19PM (3 children)
Not really, not in the numbers necessary to lift everybody out of poverty that's willing to do the work. And that assumes that you can afford to move in the first place. For many folks in areas with no jobs, they don't even have that option as they need the moving expenses, the first and last month rent, to find a job and an affordable apartment.
Not necessarily a given for those that aren't well off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:36PM (2 children)
The only thing you truly need to move is the clothes on your back and a place you can crash with a temp job of some sort ideally lined up (but not completely necessary if you have some pocket money) until you get a better job.
I have seen and helped people do it--but they tended to motivated people, not defeatist whiners who wanted some magic fairy (govt) to solve their problems. Life is tough, and you have to be tougher. Or just accept your sorry lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:51PM (1 child)
That's only because apologists like you that make excuses for the businesses that don't pay employees sufficiently. That wouldn't even come up if we had real welfare.
Again, even if you do that, you assume that there are jobs in the quantity needed. What about parents or the disabled?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @11:23PM
One parent (the Dad) can leave for greener pastures and bring over the family after he gets established.
Disabled -- you've got me there. That one is harder and you're probably on disability anyway for support.
Note that this will probably require favors from other people. If you are truly friendless, I suggest contacting a local church to see if they can help.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:00AM
From one bootstrappy lizard person to another, don't you ever worry why it is our wonderful theories like libertarianism and anarcho-syndacalism don't work for the humans?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:34AM (9 children)
I also believe in "fuck you, I got mine". I don't care what your excuse is. Car accident, work accident, family sickness, it doesn't matter. If you don't have money then you don't work hard enough and you don't love God. It's really all your fault. I'm okay and God bless America.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:06AM (7 children)
That's not what's being said. No one is arguing that the system shouldn't help those with legitimate reasons for their problems. If someone legitimately has a disability I don't mind them getting disability. If they get a work related injury workers comp is a good thing.
But at the same time I see it all the time. What excuse do the poor people have for having so many children they can't afford to have while the wealthy don't have so many children? Are you suggesting that they all have a legitimate excuse?
I see it all the time. Poor people that just want to go out and drink and party but they can't afford to fix their car. What's their excuse for getting drunk all the time? There is no excuse. If they stopped going out and partying all the time and drinking and gambling they can take that money they spend on all that stuff and put it to better use. What they spend their money on is their decision but at the end of the day if they choose to live such a lifestyle and it backfires I don't want them complaining that they want the system to bail them out.
I have a regular job with regular pay. I don't make that much money. Sometimes I work a lot of overtime too. But I have a decent amount of money invested and saved. I don't drink or smoke, I don't party, I have no children (I get punished for that because I get taxed more), etc... and my investments have grown quite a bit over the years. It was my decision to save and invest while I see so many people around me going out and partying and whatnot.
I'm college educated, besides English I speak two other languages pretty well, but I never really got a high paying job that requires an education for some reason. My job requires little education. But I grow my money. and yeah I do manage my trading accounts from time to time. I scale some of my funds out of SPY and QQQ when the market goes up a lot and when it crashes I scale back in (I don't really day trade though). but I see that many people don't invest. They go out and party. Consequently, in many situations, their circumstances are a consequence of their own decisions. Not my fault and if they make bad decisions they shouldn't expect the system to fix things for them. If they have a legitimate excuse for their situation then I have no problems with the system helping them at all.
Heck, many people that make a lot more money than me have a lot less money than me because they spend it all really quickly. They want a fancy life style. What happens when they lose their job and have to get an ordinary job and have no money because they never invested. My biggest regret is not investing my money younger.
What I'm saying is harsh. It gets marked as flaimbait, troll, etc... but it's 100% the truth. and most people don't want to accept it. and I know it doesn't really apply to most people here, because most people here are college educated. They have decent paying jobs. They may drink and party sometimes but they're not drunks. They understand math and know the value of compound interest. They probably invest. The people in your circles may be well off as well. So it's hard for you to understand that many people the problems many people have are a consequence of their own decisions since many people here may not really be around a lot of people that make poor decisions.
and there are many things wrong with the system. I would prefer a system that rehabilitates vs one that just tries to make it harder for criminals and ex drug users to recover and get jobs. I don't necessarily agree with the system I'm just saying that I play the system. As someone else pointed out don't player hate, player participate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:14AM (1 child)
errr .... I meant to say
So it's hard for you to understand the problems many people have are a consequence of their own decisions *
People that make good decisions project those good decisions onto others. They assume that most people make good decisions and that their problems are a consequence of circumstances. There are legitimate situations where that's true. In those situations I have zero problems with the system helping those people out. But the reality is that in many situations that's not true.
and yes, there are many problems with the system. The system is gamed. That does need to be fixed. That doesn't change the fact that many people are in their situation because of the decisions they make.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:28PM
Everyone makes bad decisions when they come into a new environment. Every single person.
That said, some learn faster than others...but guess what, different people learn at different speeds in different situations, and learning rapidly in one situation doesn't guarantee that you'll do the same in another. Which is why I tend to be extremely conservative in the original meaning of the term. And if you think in stereotypes, there are LOTS of situations in which you'll make extremely stupid decisions. The benefit is that you'll make them rapidly, which is good if you *must* make a decision rapidly, and stupid otherwise.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:39AM (2 children)
It's not the "fuck you, got mine" attitude that makes you an insufferable prick. It's the way you need to harp on your uninteresting life story to make you feel better about your situation. Your situation doesn't make me envious, is makes me sick. If you actually pulled yourself up to your position through effort and wits why did you stop there, why are you satified? You haven't even reached the point where you could stop working. Are you so bitter about people wasting money on alcohol just because despite your comfortable life you can't afford all the excess you'd want and therefore decide to abstain entirely from it?
Survivor bias notwistanding, I'd rather read the bio of a millionnaire rather than the one of some bitter schmuck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:39PM
For sure, your head is so far up the ass when someone is giving you good actionable advice, a millionaire is something you will never be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @09:06PM
I can afford a lot of things but I choose to invest my money instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:17PM (1 child)
The magic of compound interest seems to me to depend entirely on an increasing population. As long as it keeps going up, there will be asset inflation. Fortunately for us it is projected to increase during our lifetimes. Also unfortuntely. Everything is busier and more expensive and... just more shit basically. High priced and more shit. For those who fail to get on the ladder, this equates to shit and more shit.
We're going to have to deal with that sooner or later - I gots mine won't win elections without massive voter suppression, fake news and reality show smoke+mirrors. Oh wait....
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:45PM
No, it's more complex than just "increasing population". But the system *is* rigged to provide maximal benefit to those who control it, and the minimum required to get them to participate to those with the least power.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:31PM
Good point. Now, fuck you, give me yours.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by CheesyMoo on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:00AM (2 children)
I am a contract worker for an institution owned by an international company that is further owned by a larger internationaler company.
Their entire business model seems to be making their current offerings more "efficient". That is, not improving services or offering newer services, just "stream-lining" the humans that shovel the shit and never questioning the fundamental service.
Basically it means that people that get paid more than you figure out how to get more work out of you and pay you less. Rinse and repeat for every layer of middle managers ...
Now this isn't exactly news, and I only shared my experience because I am sitting here collecting a paycheck from this company simultaneously wishing that I could actually improve it or just watch it burn to the ground.
It may be best to encourage you children to take their lemonade stands a bit more seriously.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:11AM (1 child)
I had this same epiphany back in 2001.
I saw two kinds of companies in the Bay Area. Products, and services.
Product-oriented companies made products - IE, Sun Microsystems, HP, SGI, IBM, etc - but they also offered services (technical support contracts and onsite consulting engineers, for instance). When things were good, Sun Microsystems outsourced almost all of its onsite service calls to third party companies. They all did.
Service-oriented companies mostly prospered by doing the onsite services for the product-oriented companies. They did not actually have a product, and were dependent upon the other kind of company for their entire business model.
For example, Linuxcare. They were a services company. They had no products - they just handled support for other companies. They employed 'way more salespeople than they did anything else. When things got tight, the contracts dried up, and so did Linuxcare - overnight, they went from 200+ to ~20 employees, and 90% of the survivors were managers, and executives. The company had no IP. Too bad.
When things got tight, the companies with products - hardware and software - sat on their inventory and brought their service contracts back inhouse, leaving the service-oriented vendors high and dry.
When things got tight at the service-oriented dot-coms, they laid off all the engineers who had done all the actual work, but they kept all the salespeople and middle management. If one was an engineer and was so fortunate as to survive a few such layoffs one found oneself the lone engineer in a so-called "technical support" company, with everyone else being management ... and, if one was at all sharp, one gradually realized that one was the sole breadwinner of the entire fucking corporation, and that one was carrying a dozen or more people who were all being paid more than one was, on one's shoulders.
It was then that I had my epiphany. These people needed me more than I needed them. They were helpless without me or someone like me. I was NOT helpless without them. I had skills, and adaptability, and was quick to learn new things. These are still valuable, in any marketplace. They just needed repackaging.
If you're going to build your own product, you don't want to share ownership. If you ever do an IPO you will quickly discover that 10% of your company is nothing. You will gain a grudging respect for successful dot-com entrepreneurs.
If you are going to build your own service bureau, you WILL need partners. Or a nest egg. Or both. You'll need someone to answer the phone, talk to customers, and make appointments. You'll need someone else, to make sales calls and drum up your next gig while your head is buried in a server diagnosing a boot problem. You cannot do that alone - trust me. You will gain a grudging respect for salespeople - good salespeople - as a necessary evil.
Services are an incredibly lush source of after-market continuing income but they can not replace actually having a product - something tangible, a widget of some sort. Services follow products. Products do not follow services.
So when the individual before me says, 'lemonade stand', what he means is not just, 'own a business', but 'develop a product'.
I'd one-up it and say, 'develop some intellectual property'. Then you can keep it and develop it - or sell it, take some time off, then try again. Or put on the back shelf and wait for the world to mature enough to recognize your genius.
Don't depend upon someone else to employ you. Give some serious thought to products or services you can provide to your neighbors and your community. Look for something techno that needs to be done, that nobody's doing, and consider developing a weekend business. 3D printer repair, for instance. Internet-connected backyard chicken coops. See? That wasn't so hard.
Food for thought.
~childo
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:54AM
Why does the service company need to survive a market shift? A company is just like a service, it's not "something tangible".
I think it's long past the point where it's wise to see a corpo as a monument built by the founder or a benefit to the public. It's just a phenomenon, both causing and caused by the economy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:09AM (7 children)
"Until the 1980s, big companies in America tended to take a paternalistic attitude toward their workforce."
And assholes like Welsh helped drive the 'fuck staff' attitudes we have today.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:26AM (6 children)
Well, let's not lay it *all* at the feet of MBAs.
The truth is that the fattest times for American workers were during the post WW2 years, when half the world had been bombed into oblivion, leaving the US untouched. It's easy to be generous with pay when you have limited competition. As the years dragged on, countries rebuilt and new foreign suppliers came online. Globalization in the 1990s took that into overdrive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:03AM
Because the military industrial complex never completely wound down from the war.
It was fat city until the tech recession of 1969-70 when Congress started cutting back spending
and the space program wound down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:55AM (4 children)
A contributing factor is real estate prices go up, which then increases costs in that area (rent, wages etc). And thus the same level of worker is less competitive than a worker where costs are lower.
At the high end it's worth paying extra for the top level workers. But for mediocre workers, you might as well go for the cheapest. And the US workers are far from top nowadays.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday March 03 2020, @08:51AM (3 children)
Of course, those films left out the part about the Japanese workers being provided with a home by their employer and getting 8 weeks paid vacation. Also the part where if an employee's performance is inadequate it is considered to be the manager's fault and that termination of an employee is/was treated as the manager's shameful failure.
Nothing new, pay peanuts, get monkeys. If you want employees to care, you have to pay them enough to care.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:38PM (2 children)
Japanese never take vacation, though they technically get lots. The only time people take off is for a couple of days in the middle of Golden Week, when the entire rest of the country takes off also so everyone spends those days waiting in endless lines for absolutely everything.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:12PM
Doesn't matter anyway, those Japanese factory workers were soon mostly outcompeted by automation or cheaper Chinese workers, who are probably being replaced by bots and Vietnamese workers.
For all that hard work Japan isn't doing well in terms of GDP/capita compared to Australia, NZ or one of the less crap European countries. Japan isn't even doing better than France and I strongly doubt the French work as many hours as the Japanese. But makes for a nice place to visit as a tourist I guess (except for the recent virus thing).
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 03 2020, @07:17PM
These days things are somewhat different in Japan than when American management wanted their workers to fetishize the hard work part and be ignorant of the high compensation, vacation, and job security part.
And of course, the American management remained impervious to the point that they too might have to work hard and take responsibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:25AM
Someone has been watching too much "Silicon Valley"
It's actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocapitalism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:54AM (4 children)
Hands up anyone that has met someone that cares about doing their job properly - despite obstacles that management put in their place? A shop steward that polishes the windows to a high shine because they take pride in their work? A teacher who buys some extra supplies on their own dime because the budget didn't quite stretch? An engineer that stays on after everyone else goes home to optimise a particularly difficult problem. Or a customer-facing worker taking an extra five minutes to let a customer rant until they they calm down enough to explain what they actually need?
We have all seen these kind of people. Certainly not all workers - but they are not rare either - the kind of people that care about actually getting the job done properly, as well as collecting a paycheck.
I wonder if this coming generation of workers; those who started work in the post-Uber era; will know anything of this pride in their work?
Society has always lent heavily on the kind of people that would go the extra mile - the kind of people that fill in the cracks that would otherwise go unfilled. To make matters worse, they have always worked quietly and oftentimes actively avoided detection to the point that those giving the orders get the impression that they are completely in control of the entire operation.
What happens in an era when people are punished for taking an extra moment to do what they know is right? Do that enough times, and make it clear you will only be paid for what you are told to do - hurry up or be fired - and even the most dedicated people will bow to the economic necessity and social expectation to do exactly what they are told and not one jot more
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:03AM
63% of workers neither love nor hate their job. 24% would love to go postal. 13 % love their work, enough that they put up with all the shit that goes on around them. Unfortunately, a lot of those 13%ers get ground into the ground and mistreated so much that they either become part of the 24% or go lettuce picking. (Bonus points if you get the "lettuce picking" reference).
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:05AM
> What happens in an era when people are punished for taking an extra moment to do what they know is right?
While off topic, I can't help but say that this is as good a reason as any to not buy from Amazon (and probably others as well). If you get the wrong thing or damaged goods (poor packing), don't blame it on the warehouse worker, they were only trying to keep up with the demanded pace.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:25PM
> What happens in an era when people are punished for taking an extra moment to do what they know is right?
I haven't seen this but I have seen the equivalent - people are rewarded for dumping their problems and freeloading off others who are doing the work. The job of management should be to take note of what's really happening on the shop floor. However these days we all write our own work assessments and submit 20 page self-prepared packets. Those who stick their finger in everyone's pie and claim it as their on their self-assessment win.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:55PM
I've met several teacher who dipped into their inadequate pay to buy supplies. My wife had a close friend who bought toilet paper for use by her class, because the school didn't provide any....or at least not dependably.
For that matter, I cared about my job the entire time I was employed, and my wife cared about hers.
Note that none of us cared about the entity that provided the job, but about the purpose of the job, and the people we were helping. (In my case it was usually a lot more indirect than it was for the teachers, but I did make some software for internal use. And I did it to benefit the people who would use it, not the company.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by srobert on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:34AM
"Until the 1980s, big companies in America tended to take a paternalistic attitude toward their workforce. Many corporate CEOs took pride in taking care of everyone who worked at their corporate campuses."
Big companies in America seldom had much genuine concern for employees. Before the 1980's the unions were much more prevalent. It was the unions that got the workers decent wages, benefits and working conditions. Union contracts typically had clauses that prevented outsourcing. Of course after conceding to the union's demands, the CEO's would brag about how generous they had been to their workers. But most workers knew better. Had it been up to most CEO's, the workers would have paid the company for the privilege of working there.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:54AM
...but its not that hard to figure out.
At one point, the boss felt they needed to be good to their neighbors as they'd see them locally. In small groups, you can't treat each other terribly. The boss couldn't do it without the workers and vice versa.
We have dehumanized almost every part of work. Spend most of your adult life at work? Don't talk politics or anything else personal on company time! You have a bad week or bad month? There are 12 more exactly like you right behind you and they aren't expecting a raise next month. Get fired? Who feels bad then? The company paid insurance to cover you for 2 - 6 months, so fuck you.
Every contracting company I have ever worked for or been apart of has never stood up for me, nor cared what happened to me. They suck as much cash out of you as possible. They rip you off on what they call "benefits." There is no soul in most of these places. For many companies this is the only way in the door, contract-to-hire. Half the people that were fired and re-hired as contractors. It seems clear to me that these have been huge tools for these companies to skirt our laws and compassion.
It would be great to live in a world where people were treated equally in these companies. There were times like that. There are places like that. It is possible. But for now, for the most part, we have chosen to take every single bit of emotion out of the equation. It doesn't need to be this way, but between lawsuits on the back-end and compassion on the front end it is way cheaper.