Congratulations! You’ve Been Fired

[eridani]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/opinion/sunday/congratulations-youve-been-fired.html?_r=0

I am old enough to remember the 1980s and early ’90s, when technology executives were obsessed with retaining talent. “Our most important asset walks out the door every night,” was the cliché of the day. No longer.

Treating workers as if they are widgets to be used up and discarded is a central part of the revised relationship between employers and employees that techies proclaim is an innovation as important as chips and software. The model originated in Silicon Valley, but it’s spreading. Old-guard companies are hiring “growth hackers” and building “incubators,” too. They see Silicon Valley as a model of enlightenment and forward thinking, even though this “new” way of working is actually the oldest game in the world: the exploitation of labor by capital.

HubSpot was founded in 2006 in Cambridge, Mass., and went public in 2014. It’s one of those slick, fast-growing start-ups that are so much in the news these days, with the beanbag chairs and unlimited vacation — a corporate utopia where there is no need for work-life balance because work is life and life is work. Imagine a frat house mixed with a kindergarten mixed with Scientology, and you have an idea of what it’s like.

I joined the company in 2013 after spending 25 years in journalism and getting laid off from a top position at Newsweek. I thought working at a start-up would be great. The perks! The cool offices!

It turned out I’d joined a digital sweatshop, where people were packed into huge rooms, side by side, at long tables. Instead of hunching over sewing machines, they stared into laptops or barked into headsets, selling software.

[Califonz]

1. Sounds like a call center job I once had briefly

selling maintenance agreements for dishwashers and refrigerators for a department store. Awful.

[truedelphi]

2. The academic "footnote" to this personal experience is this

Nifty book by George R Tyler, "What Went Wrong."

He describes America's descent from the peak of its Golden Years, of 1946 to 1974 or so, to this day and age.

He also contrasts the American workers experience with that of the European workers' experience.

Most of us have no idea that since 1985, wages for Danish people have increased some 245%, while the Australians' experience is a 64% increase. Germany has had a 194% increase in wages for the employees, while the Netherland workers wage increase is a scant two percent less than Germany's.

And France is at 154%.

While in the USA, workers have noticed (or perhaps have not noticed?) an increase of less than one half of one percent!

[klook]

5. Thanks - the Tyler book sounds worthwhile

I like this final paragraph from the description on Goodreads:

What Went Wrong is a fact-based analysis of how America got on the wrong track and what we can do to return our nation to greatness. It is the most optimistic book about economics you will ever read.

The Kirkus review is a little more pointed:

Blame it all on Ronald Reagan—every damn bit of misery and immiseration that has befallen the middle and lower classes in the past three decades. That’s the thunder-stealing takeaway of former Treasury Department assistant secretary and World Bank executive Tyler’s book.

The author charts how a period of unprecedented growth, prosperity and widespread wealth-sharing was derailed under the Reagan administration and continues to careen off the track all these years later. So profound were the changes wrought by privatization and the looting of the public sector that Tyler calls the entire period after 1980 the “Reagan Era”—and he does not mean it as a compliment.

Thanks for the tip.

[classykaren]

6. I agree and how do we change that except thru Unions?

[truedelphi]

7. Uh Unions?

What the heck good are unions? Please bear me out.

You can have all the Textile Workers Unions, all the printer unions, all the customer service/white collar unions in the world, but once the Big Corporate Types have moved the jobs over to third world nations, what the heck will a union do for the worker? Other than to explain the unemployment or severance package, etc. (The unemployment benefit is going to run out in less than 101 weeks, maximum.)

We now have people servicing student loans, supposed for Navient, the Sallie Mae corporation, over in Bangladesh or somewhere.

How can a student pay off a debt when the very jobs that have to do with servicing that debt are overseas? And to make things worse, if the student loan debtee is trying to figure out the legal in's and out's of which method of repayment would work best for them, and the person they talk to doesn't hardly understand English, then what?

[klook]

4. Terri Gross interviewed this guy recently

Worth a listen: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444908/fresh-air

April 5 - A 'Misadventure In The Start-Up Bubble'

Fortunately for me, the nightmare scenarios he describes in the NY Times piece differ from my experience in tech jobs. But I've never worked for a startup or a telemarketing operation.

This new digital sweatshop model sounds horrifying, and it is a stark reminder of why in today's world of work you should never put too much trust in your employer.

[truedelphi]

8. Will try to listen to the interview.

I know I worked some of these telemarketing jobs back in the Eighties.

The pay was not great but they gave me a springboard from which to go on. Had I been a bit smarter and wiser, coming into contact with some serious heavy duty folks at the top of the first Silicon Valley computer revolution, I would be a very rich person right now.

One nice thing about "back then" is that "Corporate Culture" did not make you speak a new jargon or pretend that dealing with Corporate executives would be the greatest thing ever. All that was required was that we showed up for our shift and dealt with the customers appropriately.