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Comment by osipov | Hacker News Reader

I find it fascinating that if you were to make an equivalent statement about the political realm, you'd be immediately branded a conspiracy theorist on HN. But when it comes down to labor management relations I guess HN is happy to upvote conspiracy theories.

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It's not a conspiracy theory, just common sense. Start talking loudly at your job about starting a side business, being frugal and retiring early or even that the market for your skillset is great at the offers are flooding - and note how the management reacts. Hint: they don't want the workers to know there are viable alternatives to working at $JOB, because it makes their (mgmt) life harder.

At my FAANG company where I work, my side business is not discouraged at all. As long as I don’t complete with them, they don’t care one bit.

The trouble with common sense is that is it so wicked subjective. So when we debate stuff, we at least try to have a pretense of objectivity.

> just common sense

Clearly not, as many people disagree with you.

> they don't want the workers to know there are viable alternatives to working at $JOB, because it makes their (mgmt) life harder.

Every decent tech professional is fully aware that they have the option of leaving. Management don't want you encouraging people to leave, sure.

> Start talking loudly at your job about starting a side business, being frugal and retiring early

Where I work, we have a Slack channel dedicated to this kind of talk, and most managers are in it. It’s been just fine.

IMO it's fine while it's just ideas. In my experience it changes when you actually leave etc.

Bad managers think this way. Granted, there are a lot of bad managers. Making someone want to be a better person helps you, even if you lose them. You will lose good people anyway.

It's absolutely a conspiracy theory.

The 5 day work week has a historical basis and it has nothing to do with 'keeping you from a side job', nor do most managers concern themselves with these kinds of issues whatsoever - other than leaking company IP or working for a competitor etc. - but those are knowledge worker issues that having nothing to do with most jobs.

The conspiracy theory doesn't even make sense considering the vast majority of jobs are things like: 'truck driver' 'school teacher' 'nurse' 'construction worker' 'accountant' 'retail banker' etc..

Unrelated groups of people acting in self interest without being upfront about it isn't a conspiracy. It's human nature.

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