Comment by honkycat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by honkycat | Hacker News Reader

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> but a global labor pool that typically works way harder than we do for much less money.

I'm getting really sick of this cliche. People in the US work their asses off, I've seen developers working long hours at literally every one of my jobs.

Also, time in seat != productivity, and actually time in seat can be extremely harmful to your productivity. We have the research, we have proven this.

Having someone perform "hard work" because:

- They are too incompetent to complete their tasks while also taking care of their health

- They are too economically terrorized to have any power in how much they work

is not a good thing and I am doubtful that it will produce good results.

The Enlightenment was a time of liberalism and leisure, and it was a great leap forward in technology. Hard times do not make strong people, it creates corruption and desperate living.

If "working hard" is such a virtue, why is Japan's economy constantly in the shitter despite their reputation for working long hours?

I think you're preaching to the choir here. I'm not defending workaholism, just pointing out that commoditized code makes wage-work development a race to the bottom. Working hard isn't a "virtue", it's just something that business owners can amplify in an effort to pit workers against each other, especially for online software that doesn't require geographic proximity. Imagine the same long hours but at 10% the current wages.

Manufacturing has gone through the whole outsourcing-to-reshoring rollercoaster, and that's only just starting to touch coding. Give it 10-20 years and it'll be much worse for American devs as domestic competition increases and the rest of the world catches up, all while the advertising bubble bursts and climate refugeeism increases.

I'm not glorifying back-breaking labor, I'm worrying about our future.

Japan is a perfect case in point... that's the kind of society I'd like to avoid, feudalism with perfunctory "pick your favorite lord" days. But as wealth increasingly concentrates in fewer and fewer hands and democracy crumbles, I think that sort of dystopia is unavoidable. Japan got to that point even with deeply entrenched racism and xenophobia, where labor immigration isn't a big part of their workforce... and they still developed those problems. In a society like ours, where capital is free to hire work from basically anyone and anywhere, it's going to be even more amplified.

Bad time to have kids.

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