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Comment by josephschmoe | Hacker News Reader

Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish work? I'm soooo sorry for eliminating work no one wants to do.

Unemployment isn't an engineer or an MBA's fault. It's the fault of shareholders, executives and congressmen: they're the ones hoarding the money at the top. I guarantee you, if the money went to the engineers, we'd have 98% employment right now and the jobs would be a whole lot more interesting than retail. Heck, we'd have to start using graphical user interfaces for stores because we wouldn't be able to find enough people to work retail!

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Service jobs aren't inherently crummy. What makes it crummy are the software systems that let managers schedule people on variable, on-demand schedules, and policies that micro-manage bathroom breaks and the like. There's an entire industry focused on getting additional tenths of a percent out of service workers.

Papa John's founder said it'd cost something like $0.50 extra per pizza to offer his employees health insurance. I'm not even talking about a luxury like health insurance. What would it cost to let employees take a few extra sick days or be able to plan on when they'll work or the occasional unplanned bathroom break? http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1djlt0/pregnant_tmobil...

>"What makes it crummy are the software systems that let managers schedule people on variable, on-demand schedules, and policies that micro-manage bathroom breaks and the like. There's an entire industry focused on getting additional tenths of a percent out of service workers."

The problem that you see here could also be characterized as a lack of demand for the labor services of the employees. Perhaps we should attempt to find more, new productive activities for low-skill workers.

> Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish work?

Unless your software is giving those people something better to do you're lying to yourself if you think you've made things better for them. As miserable as these jobs are, they're still better than no job at all.

Of course, I'm not saying it's your responsibility to solve that problem. When you automate someone's job away, the person who benefits is the employer, not the (ex-) employee.

The customer is the most likely to benefit, which is why they often choose to shop at stores which are highly automated and optimized. The employers are often automating or optimizing to compete with alternatives, and these companies often see the gains competed away. Managers may benefit, though they often face issues similar to the employees.

Unemployment wasn't what was at issue. It was the structuring of particular jobs in ways that are particularly unpleasant for those who remain simply because it lets you cut one more job.

This isn't the fault of all MBAs or all engineers, but it's quite arguably the fault of the particular engineers who built the tools to manage that way and certainly the particular MBAs who chose to deploy those tools in a way that makes people miserable.

You know, I'd never blame anyone for looking out for number one. I just think its sad that one of the easiest things to do as either an engineer or an MBA is figure out how to put people put of work. Much easier than finding a way to put someone to work. I just lament the system is structured that way.

Eh... to my mind it partly depends on the degree they benefit and the degree of harm they inflict (taking into account a bunch of things, including the chance of someone else doing the same thing instead of them). But I agree that the balance of blame should be reserved for the system when it is structured in a way that encourages poor behavior and leads to poor results,

I don't understand this comment at all. I don't even know where to start.

I have one possible suggestion; http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fractal_wrongness

Probably more relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll-lia-FEIY

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