Where and how do you work? The economics and culture of employment.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Where and how do you work? The economics and culture of employment.

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

I'm a software engineer for Google in Munich, working on Google Account Settings. I also worked at HQ in Mountain View (on Google Photos), and before that at Amazon in Seattle (Kindle Android), which was my first post-college job. I've had a bunch of random jobs prior to that, the only one that's really notable though was interning at Goldman Sachs (I was only vaguely aware of who they were before applying) in NYC in the summer of 2010, around the time the SEC was investigating them and the post-recession financial legislation was being worked on. It was kind of funny going to the theater next door to the office and watching The Other Guys (especially the credits).

If you have a reasonably recent Android version (I think L and up?), you can probably see what I work on by going to Settings > Google > Google Account. If the interface that pops up at that point looks not-poo poo, that's the new version we launched earlier in the summer.

Working at Google is, as far as salaryman-type jobs go, pretty amazing. You still have to dehumanize yourself and face to bureaucracy to a certain extent, but the pay is excellent (amazing, by most non-programmers' standards), there's free food and gym, work hours and conditions are flexible, the company makes it easy to transfer between projects/teams/positions (even to another country), basically everyone there is really smart and nice, the culture is generally very socially progressive/accepting, even many internal software tools have consumer-level polish or something close to it, the 401k plan is incredibly good, there's generous parental leave by US standards, the company is usually very supportive about buying the right equipment that people need, and the internal culture is unusually open and accepting of criticism by corporate standards (e.g. there's an internal social network, built with company resources, where it's common to mock executive decisions), etc. It's hard for me now to imagine going somewhere else to code, except maybe Facebook or a handful of larger startups with similar benefits.

Ytlaya posted:

I don't think there's really any reason not to have all businesses be required to be run in, at least, a representational democratic manner (i.e. employees can either elect or vote to remove managers). While it's not hard to come up with potential problems with this, I think they're greatly overshadowed by the plethora of problems with the current undemocratic way most workplaces are run.

This level of work representation is at least politically infeasible, but works councils in Germany have apparently been highly effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council#Germany

quote:

Works councils in Germany have a long history, with their origins in the early 1920s in the post World War I Weimar Republic, established by the Betriebsverfassungsgesetz or Works Council Act. Initially, unions were very skeptical of works councils, seeing them as a way for management to negotiate with employees without employing collective bargaining, but eventually they developed clearly defined responsibilities with works councils not allowed to organize strikes or enforce a wage increase. In recent years with a decline in union membership, works councils have come to be seen as a way for unions to recruit members, specifically by having works councils campaign for people to join them.

In Germany, they serve two functions. The first is called co-determination, through which works councils elect members of the board of directors of German companies. The second is called participation, and means that works councils must be consulted about specific issues and have the right to make proposals to management. One of the most impressive achievements of the councils is producing incredibly harmonious relations between management and workers, leading to a situation with strong unions and an incredibly low strike rate. This also allows for a lot of coordination between the firm and the workers, resulting in, for example, the ability of many German firms to dramatically scale back the hours of each worker without large scale layoffs during the 2008 financial crisis, and then slowly scaling back up as the recovery took effect. This was all assisted by the Kurzarbeit, a fund that helps workers who have had their hours reduced.

Works councils in Germany have been correlated with a number of positive effects. They promote higher wages, even more than collective bargaining (although situations with both will promote wages the highest), they make firms more productive (although the degree to which they increase productivity can be hard to measure). and they don�t inhibit investment or innovation. Works councils have also been shown to help women, East German, and foreign workers at a higher rate compared to West German men. However, they are correlated lower profitability, likely since they tend to bring higher wages, and there may not be as much benefit in smaller companies as there is in larger ones.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Aug 27, 2018

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 16:05

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 09:53

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

roomforthetuna posted:

In my experience small companies (sample size 3) are significantly more totalitarian and employee-screwing than large companies (sample size 1 and a half). I think there's a certain stigma against large companies these days that means they have to pay a bit more competitively than their small competitors to get equivalent quality of workers, and they're almost certainly more concerned about potential legal action if they try to screw employees (whereas small companies can eg. just dissolve and leave the last two months of paychecks unpaid - didn't happen to me but has happened to friends. I got "oh we can give you a big raise in a year" which I took as a sign to quit immediately; the company dissolved ~8 months later.)

Yes, on average large companies pay more than smaller ones: https://www.ivyexec.com/executive-insights/2015/do-big-companies-pay-more-than-small

quote:

The average pay per employee for very small business with 20 employees or less was $36,912, according to the research. For small firms with 20 to 99 employees, it was $40,417. At medium-sized firms it was $44,916. And at large companies it was $52,554.

I feel like large companies will probably be better behaved on average because to a certain extent they had to be at least semi-competent for a lengthy period of time to get big in the first place, and they've probably gone through a bunch of cycles of "someone did some bullshit -> make policy to hopefully prevent said bullshit", plus they suffer from reputational risk a lot more which will make them behave in 'safer' ways.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

But as a disciple of Marx I have vowed never to join the private sector because I cannot stand the idea of being exploited for profit, and having a part of my labor stolen from me.

See, this is interesting to me. My perspective is, yes being "exploited" isn't exactly great, but I'll take a higher-paying job where some of my productivity gets "stolen" by my employer, over a lower-paying one where I keep everything. Because the tangible outcome of the former is superior. The attitude of, "yes I get less money this way, but at least I keep everything I make" to me feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 18:45

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Wow, this is a very conveniently timed article on works councils/worker board representation in America that came out today: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-27/why-u-s-corporate-boards-don-t-include-workers

According to this article, the councils were fairly popular up until 1935/1937 (law passed and subsequently Supreme Court ruling), when they became illegal in the US. I thought they didn't exist just because, y'know, capital having more power than labor and whatnot.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 21:26

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Ytlaya posted:

Edit: Put another way, you're creating a false dichotomy that assumes good pay is mutually exclusive with better worker representation, as well as ignoring the fact that good pay is not characteristic of our economic system for most people.

You misunderstand. In that comment I was just talking about individual decisions given the economic context we currently live in, not what would be preferable for society. It was more of a philosophical question: is it better to not be exploited for the fruits of your labor, even when being exploited would mean actually getting more "fruits"?

# ¿ Aug 28, 2018 12:31

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

WampaLord posted:

"I'm fine with being exploited!" says highest paid goon in the thread.

Way to miss the point. poo poo, if anything if I had a lower income that'd make me even more desperate to eke out more money.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2018 16:53

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 09:53

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

WampaLord posted:

"If I had less money, I would just make more money!"

It's actually, "If I had less money, I would be more interested in making more money", but I guess reading comprehension ain't your strong suit.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2018 17:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Where and how do you work? The economics and culture of employment.