The workers also just care about profits. Nobody is working for free. Everyone needs to pay their bills. Saying they don’t is pretentious.
Comment on Why are so many leaders in tech evil?
Asafum@feddit.nl 2 months ago
“I thought the tech industry was supposed to be filled with these brilliant genius people who are really good for the world…”
They are but as usual it’s the WORKERS who are the good brilliant people, not the ownership class and 3 letter executive dirt bags. They’re the same in EVERY industry. Owner/CEO ONLY cares about profit profit profit, fuck everyone and everything else.
Workers, they’re a mixed bag as there are so many different people, but in the tech space they’re generally intelligent “good” people.
doodledup@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Technically workers do not care about profits, they care about wages. The average worker doesn’t benefit from profit because they represent a fixed expense. The work they produce is worth more than their salary which is how a company produces profit. As long as a company breaks even and the salary is enough to meet one’s needs a worker does just fine. However a worker’s job could easily be axed in the name of profit because they are what is being profited off of, not the entitled beneficiary of the business as a whole.
Profit it just the take home winnings of the investors or owners of the business and the few jobs at the top where compensation is based off of profit percentage or lavish bonuses for making the targets.
Asafum@feddit.nl 2 months ago
So many people don’t understand that profit comes after all expenses which includes labor. :/
doodledup@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What I mean is that the company and the worker have the same interests in some way. Everyone wants to make money to pay the bills. Companies are no charities and your work isn’t either. If you dislike your relationship with the company, you can just resign that relationship any time. But one thing will never change: the worker will only do the work required from him and the company will only pay the wage required from them. There is nothing evil about that. It’s human nature for the past 20.000 years.
Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If your wages are hourly or salary then they might be raised dependent on either a “performance” bonus which works as an incentive or by a fixed yearly raise but neither is tied to profit. It’s technically just engineering the workforce to give more output by dangling a carrot. The size of the carrot distribution is factored into the labor cost - it is distinctly not profit, it is operating budget which deducts from profit because it is counted as an expense.
Here is the thing about profit - it comes from saving money on labor, resource or overhead. Sometimes it’s a neutral or good thing when the profit comes from a source like a clever innovation that solves a problem or by fulfilling a highly desireable market demand… But a lot of the time that isn’t the case. Those profits can come from collaboration with competitors to pay labor less, finding cheaper materials that shunt the costs onto other people outside the business by means of pollution or utilizing exploitable workforces with less health or legal protections, outsourcing.
Yes people are motivated by money but why do people want money? In the case of your average worker the demands are quite small. Money equals security - a non toxic and comfortable place to sleep, food on the table, assured care for health when sick or old and creature comforts to create fulfilling free time. Profit oftentimes incentivizes removing these things from other people in service to an investor class. Creating protections against this is often the prerogative of government because government depends on the wealth of it’s people to perpetuate itself so it’s incentive is to protect the majority of people whom hold them accountable on the whole from becoming exploited into poverty, sickness and death because those things can be profitable. One can say “that’s just the way it is” only so long as once a large enough group of people see no value or security in living life they generally start banding together to become violent.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Idk, given how many evil mobile games and dark patterns there are, there are plenty of “bad” people, or at least people who won’t push back against bad decisions from management.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Nobody is going to “push back” against the people who control their food, shelter, and other basic human needs.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Yup, it’s very much like the prisoner’s dilemma. If everyone in tech refused to do this nonsense, we wouldn’t have dark patterns and whatnot and stakeholders would find another way. But if enough people are willing to do this nonsense, the “good” people end up worse off.