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Comment by skinnymuch | Hacker News Reader

This sounds..not good. You know how I know how much of a cog some one is? How much they are being paid.

Putting a bow on top of work that pays peanuts is worse in my opinion than being honest. Your tactics appear to try to manipulate underpaid or lowly paid cogs into not believing they are what the company and managers truly see them as - just that.

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I think the name is clever and a bit cute, though perhaps easy to misinterpret. But on point of principle:

No matter what someone is paid (or whether they are paid at all), they are a person, with hopes, dreams, feelings, and dignity.

I know you probably already believe that, but it's worth stating anyway.

Our society does tend to treat people like cogs, but that is a problem with our society.

Words influence how we feel about others. We should use words that affirm the dignity of others, then work to make that a reality. Just because most people treat other people like cogs doesn't mean that we should throw in the towel and accept it; much less start doing it ourselves.

I agree that putting a bow on nastiness is messed up, but the root problem is the jerks. If we stop even thinking in terms of people having dignity, the jerks have won one more step. We should spread kindness and dignity wherever we can, and try to get people to name things that imply dignity.

I agree there is a major problem of people with less pay being treated poorly. It seems respect is only given to the high paid, but that is messed up when you stop to think about it. Our real worth isn't determined by our financial status. What if we lose the financial status? Would our friends desert us, our rights be removed, and we end up forgotten?

I for one want to work against the world becoming more like that.

I don’t want “respect” or whatever other ways things are being framed if I’m being paid a low wage. I always found it insulting when done. When I was treated more like a cog in line with my pay, I don’t remember having any specific consistent resentment or annoyance.

This is my own personal life anecdote.

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It also isn’t just pay. Being all cute and “nice” and “respectful” but on top of low pay, not being flexible with something like taking half a day off or coming in late or leaving early because of life stuff, shows how the company and higher ups truly feel about you.

Most of the time lower wages correlates with the loss of the above flexibility. There are major exceptions like when the job is interchangeable and you can swap shifts with others.

At that point. The company knows you’re a cog. Treats you as a cog, but sometimes spins things as if you’re a person that matters to them.

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Edit: I do agree jerks suck. I guess I see putting a bow on stuff as jerk material as it is generally done with cogs.

True I agree with that. It can feel like a cynical slap if they cover up your low status and try to make you feel good about it. I try to coach and mentor my employees and see what they value. I totally recognize that isn't common in management.

Def depends on the job too. I was referring to jobs that paid under $20 an hour in 2021 dollars.

Even though I haven’t begun turning my life around until I passed my 20s. Still, my next job will be as a developer. In that case, a lot of the issues won’t be the same. Even though I’ll be a “lowly web dev cog”, I’ll hopefully be paid decently enough, and be either remote or in the high flying New York area, or some other major metro area.

It is a lot easier to swallow a lot of the issues if my salary is above the median and mean average and on pace to be six figures in a few years.

I think I’d like you as a manager, haha. If it is fine, could you email me at the address in my profile? Assuming you manage tech employees, I’d like to ask about a thing or two. No pressure.

You can call people "sanitation engineers", "sandwich artists", or whatever (these are real titles by the way) and for as long as you treat them as replaceable, interchangeable, and cheap, they will be cogs.

Also are "production worker", "factory worker", "shipping clerk", or "driver" any better or worse than "human lambda"?

I was a "Dish Machine Operator" for a few months, and it actually did make me feel cooler than being a "Dishwasher".

"Human Lambda" being the name of the company, perhaps the workers are "Lambda Operators".

Horses for courses; my favorite job title ever was as a "3602 Clerk." Such an anonymous title for such a crazy job.

My office took the DISC [0] personality profile and it revealed that there are some people who love compliments, just love them. Even if they aren’t genuine, they like hearing “You’re a rock star, I’m so grateful you’re here today” even if the person is completely unable to evaluate rockstar vs. non-rockstar. Even if they say it every day to everyone.

And there are people who hate compliments.

So it’s funny how within an org there are cogs (and non-cogs) who hate that they aren’t recognized and then there’s cogs who hate when they are recognized.

Not sure the distribution in the population but it seems like the default mode is to shower complements that mean nothing other than the complimenter has some process for complimenting people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment

Haha this is a point I didn’t bring up but loosely in my opinion lends credence to why obfuscating cogs as cogs is morally wrong.

The opposing view on here appears to be if you can compliment the cogs who enjoy that and keep them happy that way, things are better. This view is self serving and for the benefit of the higher ups. Not the cog.

Thanks for this though. Interesting to think about. I’ve added your comment and the link to my DEVONthink wiki on status quo :)

I’ve been a cog before and had hippie managers and asshole managers. Honestly, I prefer the occasional whip from the asshole than the constant stream of bullshit from hippies trying to tell me every day how my data entry was “awesome.” The weird thing is sometimes I think they convinced themself that our cog work was awesome.

If I’m a commodity, I’d rather be straight about it and have a shared reality since businesses will actually treat me like a commodity when it’s important.

Yes I responded very similarly in a nearby comment. Haven’t had such divergent managers. But have had asshole and normal enough ones. I know I didn’t like it when they thought my work was “awesome”. It would be miserable if they ended up actually believing that.

Your last sentence is key. Worded better than I have been able to word it throughout this entire thread

At that level, abstract logic becomes more important. Is it better to think of a flower in a field as part of a larger ecosystem, or characterize your company as a machine composed of cogs?

Characterizing the company and cogs as flowers as part of a larger ecosystem sounds and feels better. However if the treatment is the same as the cogs. Or worse with the platitudes, then it’s better for the company and higher ups. Worse for the flowers or cogs.

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