
Mutiny at the big five is part of the future of work - awinter-py
https://abe-winter.github.io/2018/08/30/mutiny.html
======
harimau777
The idea of corporate employment as citizenship is interesting and straight
out of cyberpunk. There's an exchange in Gibson's "Count Zero" where Angie
(daughter of a corp engineer) asks Turner (freelance mercenary) something
along the lines of "Isn't it scary to live without a corporation taking care
of you?"

I think you could make a case that corporations already take on some of the
economic roles traditionally associated with governments, but they don't seem
to have taken on the legal protection roles yet. However, I could see a future
where the perks of employment include access to corporate retained lawyers. Or
maybe corporations will hire lawyer secretaries to allow their employees to
cut through government bureaucracy (e.g. to contest credit rating inaccuracies
on an employee's behalf).

Another possibility would be the corporations and the cities associated with
them sort of work together to act like city states. It definitely seems like
the laws of San Francisco/California are informed by their association with
tech and provide extra protections for the people living there (or at least
the people living there who are employed by tech companies).

~~~
kevinstubbs
There were many times, at least during the time of colonial empires where
companies would run entire towns, regions, and countries. Sometimes they
provided just law and order like in British American colonies, but usually
they coerced pre-existing political structures and violently exploited the
local populations for natural resources. The people unfortunate enough to have
natural resources whose land was accessible to colonizers were either
exploited or destroyed the desired resources [0] before the colonizer's
ambitions could consume them too.

I think I would prefer that corporations - whose interests are by nature not
aligned with peoples - do not run the place, as it were.

[Edit: Sorry I keep making so many additions!]

[0]: "In 1620, the state of Banten, on the island of Java, cut down its pepper
trees in the hope that this would induce the Dutch to leave it in Peace. When
a Dutch merchant visited Maguindanao, in the southern Phillippines, in 1686,
he was told, "Nutmeg and cloves can be grown here, just as in Malaku. They are
not there now because the old Raja had all of them ruined before his death. He
was afraid the Dutch Company would come to fight with them about it."" \- Page
245 of _Why Nations Fail_ by Daron Acermoglu, James Robinson

~~~
Chinjut
The British East India Company being perhaps the largest, most "successful"
(in an imperialistic sense, not a moral one) example of this.

------
mav3r1ck
>Remember the KPMG anthem that leaked circa 2000?

Actually, no I don't, never heard of this until now, but it is beyond
hilariously bad, assuming this [0] was the real version. It gets better, KPMG
tried to claim that another website cannot link to them with their permission
[1], now _that_ is hilarious.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCvKXgp-
Awo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCvKXgp-Awo) [1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2001/dec/09/theobserver...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2001/dec/09/theobserver.observerbusiness14)

~~~
dtech
Oh my god, I did not know that Poe's law applied to corporate marketing now. I
could not distinguish this from a parody song like Weird Al Yankovic's -
"Mission Statement" [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4)

~~~
shoo
meanwhile:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I)

~~~
ak39
LOL. Thank you very much for this!

It takes satire to make us see how far we have come thinking the way we do.

Well done.

------
imgabe
> As gig work expands, salaried employment status may take on a coveted and
> special status like citizenship in Rome or the Greek city-states

Ugh, seems more like serfdom under a feudal lord. Gain protection in exchange
for pledging fealty and giving up most of what you produce.

~~~
esrauch
The point of the article is that the salaried people get to contribute a voice
to the ethical decisions being made, including how does the company act in the
rest of the world.

That is kind of the opposite of living under a feudal Lord: the nonsalaried
employees are in that bucket (noncitizen residents in the ancient Greek
analogy).

~~~
erikpukinskis
How is it opposite?

Serfs had a voice too, and just like in a corporation, the lord had no legal
obligation to listen. Similar to a corporation, that serf could just be
ejected because the lord felt like it.

~~~
esrauch
The serf metaphor is that you get protected by the Lord's army and are
subservient to him.

The Greek citizen model is that you have a voice in government, but you still
can be kicked out or have your vote stripped.

------
bitshepherd
I was almost there with you until the bit about the gig economy. This reads
more like an advert for Upwork.

People giving up leverage with labor just gives 'them' the upper hand. Why
it's so hard for tech workers to band together over something as common as
income is the problem, regardless of the disparity.

Teachers in my area are striking over much less money than tech workers
fritter away on a daily basis. Sometimes it's worth standing outside with
signs and waving at people passing.

~~~
gaius
A traditional union with collectively-bargained pay grades and seniority
probably wouldn’t work in hi-tech but an even more traditional mediaeval style
guild could work very well indeed.

~~~
rpvnwnkl
Right: the guild certifies members are of a certain skill level, helping the
members better negotiate for pay, time-off and other work terms.

Pay has not been an issue, but overwork has been, and so has the interview
process. A union/guild backing could help with this.

~~~
repolfx
How would a guild ascertain skill level except by doing relatively tough
interviews?

~~~
smolder
The same ways that schools measure, through testing.

~~~
repolfx
And what is an interview if not a test? Or are you advocating written exams
only - I don't see why this would be better than a well designed interview
process.

~~~
rpvnwnkl
You don’t have to do it over and over for each job you apply for?

It also takes some onus off the hiring team to ascertain the technical
abilities of prospective hires. “Just get me a guild member!” Now you can
interview on other qualities...

------
chx
> G9 who walked out of air gap

If you are as confused as I am as to what this means,
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/google-
en...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/google-engineers-
refused-to-build-security-tool-to-win-military-contracts)

~~~
itronitron
the cynic in me believes this is just an engineered PR stunt by Google

~~~
gaius
The perception that Google is an American company serving American national
interests as opposed to a fluffy post-nation collective can only harm them
over the long term.

------
shove
Change-from-within is a lovely fairy tale.

There are maybe a few dozen engineers with enough outsized talent to get away
with challenging the status quo. Anyone else will be fired and replaced by a
ready and willing throng of recent grads eager to put a dent in their student
loans.

~~~
vehementi
I feel like you're just cynically making this up. Are you talking from
experience here? Most big tech companies have massive amounts of open head
count -- you should probably sell them the location of all of these eager
recent grads that they can hire who are just as competent as whoever you
imagine they'd be replacing. These companies will want to hire them all, this
morning, without firing anyone. You could be rich!

~~~
erikpukinskis
Your logic doesn’t follow.

GP didn’t say these grads were sitting around waiting to get hired.

They just said those are the people who will do your job after you’re fired
for not being a team player/trying to upset the status quo.

The recent grads will be hired either way. The point is they vastly outnumber
the people who will even make a legitimate attempt to change a corporate
culture.

It’s replacemwnt as in, when you get out of the ocean, you will be “replaced”
by salt water.

------
TheRealDunkirk
"This means giving some people on the engineering team exact information about
what the system will be used for."

Yeah, well, remember there were at least a couple people who went around
installing fiber replicators for AT&T to tap the entire internet for the NSA,
and they managed to keep that a secret for a LONG time.

~~~
icebraining
Not really, it only lasted three years (started in '03, and was exposed by
Mark Klein in '06). And more generally, that communications were being spied
upon by the NSA was public information for a long time. I first learned about
it in a Spanish tech magazine back in 2000 or so (the great HackxCrack), but
by then it was old news.

------
zabana
This article is very well written. It's a very interesting perspective that I
find spot on. The cyberpunk dystopia is becoming more and more real. Also (on
a side note), if anybody can link me (and other readers) to similar articles,
I'd very much appreciate it.

~~~
abcd_f
The article is hard to understand for anyone not immersed in the
politics/events of the SV. For example:

> _At google: air gap, maven, dragonfly. At microsoft, ICE detention. At
> amazon, rekognition._

I have no idea what this is in reference to. A better introduction even if
very brief would've gone a long way.

~~~
zabana
> I have no idea what this is in reference to. A better introduction even if
> very brief would've gone a long way.

True, this portion also went a bit over my head but nothing a quick google
search cannot fix :) (I was really speaking in broad terms)

------
mg794613
Oh what a time we live in where 'standing up for your basic rights' equals to
'mutiny'

~~~
thyrsus
Was it not ever thus? Until the 20th century, it was common for navies to have
little regard for the "basic rights" of their crew. See: etymology of
"shanghaied". And I don't know why I say "until the 20th century":
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-
thaila...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thailand-
fishing-sea-slaves-pets.html)

------
gaius
_consumers when given the option to pick any two of ‘cheap’, ‘high quality’,
‘ethically produced’, have made the obvious choice._

My observation is the consumers pick only one of those.

------
TheRealDunkirk
"But (1) they were never internally transparent about anything sensitive, and
(2) it’s naive to think 10 thousand people can keep a secret."

Maybe this is an opportunity for the C-levels of the very companies
responsible for the modern surveillance economy to have a tiny taste of the
crap sandwich that is having every detail of your life out in other people's
hands, to exploit for their exclusive benefit, at odds with your own
interests?

------
Animats
This is just grumbling. Not even organizing a union.

------
buboard
Someone needs to remind this person that the arab spring ended up as a tragedy
that only bolstered the idea that there will never be any change. The best
mutiny against the big five would be to leave them.

------
neokantian
In terms of recurring income (retainers) or access to "upsides", corporate
employment does not do any better than the gig economy. You can charge
$250/hour for a gig, but I doubt that corporations would agree to pay that out
as a monthly salary. You can get 25% of the shares and therefore the profits
in a startup but good luck trying to get any share in the profits of a
corporation.

Furthermore, in the gig economy you don't get a payslip. You invoice. That
allows you to extensively use jurisdiction shopping to minimize tax bills. In
Europe, that can spare you from handing over 70% of your revenue to the tax
collector. Good luck trying to do that in corporate employment.

------
aquamo
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

I had to look that up.

------
jondubois
I have a theory that as corporations get bigger, they become more like
dysfunctional communist governments.

~~~
gerbilly
Think of it this way, large parts of our economy are under central planning
because of the power of large corporations.

For example Walmart, when they chose which company to buy lawnmowers from for
example, they get to decide which lawnmower makers survive and which don't.

By picking one winner and putting in a huge order at a huge discount, they can
undercut every other manufacturer, effectively putting them out of business.

I don't know about you, but I don't remember the election where I got to vote
for who is in charge of Walmart, so it's very autocratic.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
Cartel or monopoly is the general trend of the day. I believe that laissez
faire economics leads toward cartel/monopoly rather than persistent
decentralization, it's kind of chaos theory in action with strange attractors
or local minima/maxima.

Unless the fundamentals of the system are decentralized: farming/farmland,
fisheries, mining, and other commodities.

------
throwawayperson
Thank you for you tip.

------
erikb
Honestly, I work in a huge company (number three in comparison worldwide, >90k
employees world-wide), and it feels like Socialism. We eat lunch together in a
canteen. Everything we do and buy is shared ownership. There's false
propaganda from the top down, and you can live a happy life as long you accept
the size of your share of the cake and don't criticize people above you.

This is not meant as criticism, I actually like the lifestyle. Especially
since in such a big corps there are actually resources available compared to
end-times socialist countries. But if you live here in this company your whole
life it is questionable why we should call ourselves capitalists.

~~~
wffurr
That's the thing. You're not a capitalist, the owners are. They have the
capital and set the working conditions for you, the worker.

What makes that entire setup capitalist is that it's privately funded and
owned, as opposed to being subject to democratic control.

~~~
philipov
The difference between Corporate Socialism and Democratic Socialism is the
flavor of koolaid being served at the propaganda canteen. (hint: large
concentrated power centers don't remain democratically controlled)

~~~
wffurr
One party states (and to a lesser extend the American party primaries) are not
terribly democratic.

Diffuse power spread amongst many small power centers resists central control.

~~~
philipov
If the primaries aren't democratic, even a democratic choice between two
undemocraticly-nominated candidates does not lead to democratic outcomes. We
need to destroy the political machines that are running our elections.

------
ur-whale
>Salaried status at multinationals is the new citizenship

This is pushing the analogy too far and destroys credibility for the article.

~~~
matt4077
Hence “analogy”

