this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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You’re making it seem like every company does this.
That’s false pretense.
I can surely sympathize with the idea of needing to find a job that can pay the bills, but saying that the only option is to buy into the slave masters, is just outright wrong
Not everyone has the luxury to be picky about where they work. For proper change to happen, we must reinvigorate communities and strengthen them by creating local, federated mutual aid networks that can support the community. This will allow people to take direct action without the fear of losing their next meal, home, job, healthcare, and/or support system.
I’m a big fan of UBI
But we're only going to get that after the direct action that requires federated mutual aid.
I think that the point is that if those practices are for most employment places in a domain (i.e. the bad practices need not be done by "most companies", just the largest ones) and people's main concern is having to eat, they don't generally have the time to look for the jobs where this shit doesn't happen and even if they do, they would be competing for a small number of jobs against everybody else also looking for those jobs.
Or putting things in another way, your idea that somebody can simply "only go for the good jobs" fails at two levels:
Your idea to "exclude from consideration companies that do this" only works for some people, not all people, and only those people who have enough savings or low enough money outflows to not have to concede defeat and take one of those not so great jobs because they're running out of money.
So the previous poster's comment of "we need to eat" neatly encapsulates in a simple sentence the reason why your idea won't work as a general practice or even as an individual practice for most people in the present day society and economy in most countries.
I understand and mostly agree with what you’re saying, but only under the notion you’re supposing.
That the majority of companies do this. That’s an assumption. We need data to accurately define whether or not it’s a wide spread problem.
I’m also highly confused but your first few sentences. You mince words by saying “for most employment domains” but then also say not most places but the largest companies
If the highest paying jobs are unavailable, and they are a small amount of other jobs which pay less (but not necessarily bad wages), there are still a majority of mediocre places and even underpaying places that exist.
I do not see value in encouraging the largest, best paying companiesjobs to continue to use these bad faith and misunderstood practices. You don’t encourage behavior you don’t want to see. You take mediocre salaries, and you hustle your way up into valued roles, ask for a fair wage, and if they say no, THEN you go to the large paying companies, and come back with the offer they made to you (perhaps with this fictional AI work around) and try again.
You should be paid fairly if you are truly valued. But sometimes you have to hack your way into that pay.
If you show these companies that, hey this AI thing works pretty good, do you think they’ll be happy at where it is or do you think they’ll continue to buy into “better” AIs more and more and make the problem more widespread?
You don’t fight fire with fire. You smother that shit or put it out with a firehose.
"Most companies" is not necessarilly the same as "most jobs" since some companies (i.e. large ones) offer many more jobs than others. What counts from how much jobseekers see this kind of practice is "most jobs" so you can have just some companies doing this but if they're the last ones, that means "most jobs" have this kind of thing. It was probably a needless distinction for me to make in that post.
I don't dispute the point that people who are in or seeking employment should not reward bad practices like that, I'm explaining what the previous poster meant: that in the present day economic conditions, most job seekers, whilst not not wanting to reward bad practices do not de facto have the choice to do so because they're under huge pressure to get a job, any job, as soon as possible.
Also your theory of hustling your way upinto valued roles is hilarious in light of my almost 3 decades out in the job place - since pretty much the 90s the main way to progress up the career ladder, requires that people change jobs - at least in expert areas, the average salaries of people that stick to one employer are much lower than the average salaries of people who switch jobs periodically because people negotiating a new job whilst still working in the old job, will only ever accept a better job - so their conditions will improve - whilst people in a job and not looking are seldom offered better conditions unless they at least start simulating that they're working for a better job. I mean, it's possible to progress without moving jobs especially early in one's career and under good management, it's just generally slower and harder than if just hopping jobs.
I don't even disagree that being choosy in what jobs you take is how people should behave is they can: I've actually successfully done that for all but one of my job transitions, but that's because I'm a (modesty on the side) well above average senior expert in a high demand area, hence I usually get a lot of offers if I put my CV out and since I'm well paid I have a large pile of savings to rely on during periods between jobs, and thus I can be choosy (and the only time I had to "take a shit job" was exactly early in my career, after the Year-2000 Crash, when after 6 months out of a job and running out of savings I had no other option, and 11 months later after searching for a new job from Day 1 there, I finally found a better job and moved).
Most people in this World aren't in such a position and casually suggesting that other people act as you suggest, shows a huge level of ignorance of the economic conditions of most people out there nowadays.
The kind of wording you use on this suggests you're in a position of reasonable properity and power in the market place as a job seeker in your area which while good for you is not representative of the median experience of job seekers out there, just like my own situation is not.
Giving like that "I'm alright Jack" "Everybody should do it just like I can now that I am were I am" suggestions to other people whilst ignoring that most are "Not alright" and not in the same position as you, is at best insensitive and ignorant, at worst insulting, which is probably why you're getting downvotes.
You’re absolutely right, I’m similarly in a high demand sector, (wonder if you can guess where, from my username) so my options are much more open.
I guess the conclusion I’m coming to is, maybe this fictional hack/tactic does work - just don’t spend too much time there if you can help it. Minimize how much you’re buying into these companies and don’t give them anything more than what they’re paying you to do.
My circumstances aren’t going to be the same as others, so all I can do is listen to their experiences and try to learn about other realities. Probably too deep in the comment thread now but definitely open to hearing others experiences in not-so-in-demand sectors.
Maybe that’s part of the problem - being in a field that is out of favor/demand? How do you provide value when that value isn’t needed at the moment?
Clearly it's not Infosec!!! ;)
Well, that's why a lot of people want to change things at a political level - the great "pure competition no safety net" neoliberal take on Society results in most of people, whose job is basically a commodity and who don't have a "unique value proposition", to be pretty close to slaves in this system because since they are human beings and naturally need food, water and shelter continously but are in an environment where the access to those is controlled by having unusual amounts of the very thing that people selling commoditized services cannot get enough of via their work - money - are squezed into a position where they de facto don't have any choices, nor do they even have the necessary space to invest in themselves to change into some other job where they might have a "unique value proposition".
This situation could be changed if people were guaranteed access to the basic essentials, for example via a Universal Basic Income, since even people doing commoditized work would then have the choice to refuse to "sell" their work if they found the "price" too low or the conditions too bad, which would push the market to improve the jobs offers for those (who are by far the majority if people) plus a lot of those could even chose to improve themselves or their skills, become inventors, or artists, or work in areas with high social value but low "price" because they felt rewarded by it in ways other than money.
In summary, I think there is no solution within the current paradygm since it makes this problem systemic and any viable solution requires changing at least some things in the paradygm, most noteably the part were the basic required essentials of human beings are used to, at the systemic level, force most people into a no-true-choice neo-slavery.
The changes we've seen to the paradym in the last decade or two are exactly in the opposite direction: the ever more expensive housing and even destruction of the social safety net are forcing even more people to accept bare-minimum near-slavery work just to survive.