
The End of Employees - jseliger
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-employees-1486050443
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arcanus
Another sign the world is moving towards a cyberpunk future, with extremely
unevenly distributed outcomes.

Work in tech as a full time employee at a megacorp or well funded start up and
in many ways your value has never been higher. On the other hand some
companies are outsourcing entire IT departments.

The same thing has happened in law: attorneys salaries are bimodal, where top
law grads moving to corporate white shoe firms start with strong 6 figure
salaries and the rest at much lower levels of remuneration.

This bifurcation of society is certainly due to very real economic forces
(outsized success for firms addressing a global market), but it absolutely
cannot be socially stable in the long term.

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eli_gottlieb
Socially stable? Didn't a government just get elected that promises to pull
out of, well, _most_ international trade deals?

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dukeluke
What does that have to do with the post above?

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eli_gottlieb
I don't see how you can have global-facing firms without international laws to
facilitate things.

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Zelmor
I personally have no issues with this. Now, if you are in the family raising-
house purchasing lifestyle, I do understand the need for permanent work and
stability, and wish you the best in finding that field of work!

As for a subcontractor, however, I enjoy high mobility. The client sucks?
Stick to it until the next release cycle and work for another one the next
week. You like working remotely? Look for a full-time client that offers that,
or work for multiple who enjoys not having to pay rent for your ass in their
offices.

The trick is to find a company, or consortium, which actively seeks clients
and offer them services. This means they are constantly "recruiting" and
moving people in-between projects. You don't have to be an employee within
said company, you just have to be able to bill your hours to said
company/consortium. Having my own company allows me to seek clients within the
EU as well as overseas, if I wish to work those hours. It also allows me to
drive prices higher than average, since I provide the advantage of "disposable
workforce". That later part would be an issue, if I wasn't in connection with
such company groups I mentioned earlier.

Your mileage may vary. I have to put it forth that I have no desire for kids,
or owning my own house, so that removes a lot of stress and monetary
obligations. I understand this is not the norm, though I do not understand
why. We have it way better with my partner than couples with kids, and our
observations over the years enforced our hunch that people generally start
families because they have no idea where they want to go in life. So they try
new things, which is nice, but maybe they should start with raising vegetables
in their gardens, which is a daily, year-around responsibility. You gotta
water and check for weeds, invaders every day, no matter how tired you might
feel. If you give up two months in because the kale died due to overwatering
and you never checking resources online, or the brussel sprouts never started
budding because you never checked that in needs sulfur in the ground, well,
maybe raising kids ain't for you either.

~~~
DarkKomunalec
A society that does not produce enough offspring will go extinct and be
replaced by one that does.

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Zelmor
Don't worry, you'll long dead by then.

~~~
solatic
We will, but the government won't. And because the government needs to keep
tax income flowing, it will promote native procreation.

~~~
Arizhel
> We will, but the government won't. And because the government needs to keep
> tax income flowing, it will promote native procreation.

I disagree with this, and I cite reality as proof: what western governments
are actually successfully promoting native procreation? Governments might give
some lip-service to native procreation, but they sure don't do much, and as a
result, people aren't procreating. Look at Japan for instance: they're in NPG
now, so whatever half-hearted attempts the government is making aren't having
much of an effect. Even here in the US we'd be NPG if it weren't for
immigrants.

What exactly does the government do to promote native procreation anyway? Here
again in the US, I sure don't see much. I see 1) a child tax credit that
doesn't amount to much if you're not poor, and certainly doesn't come close to
making up for the cost of having a kid; 2) different tax treatment for married
couples, but while this gives you a small benefit if one partner doesn't work,
it ends up being a big penalty if both work. On the other hand, I see: 1)
government-run public schools which are an utter disaster, where you can
expect your kids to be tormented to the point of suicide; 2) government
enforcers arresting parents who let their kids play outside for "child
neglect"; 3) astronomical college tuition costs and a student-loan trap; 4)
fewer and fewer jobs, meaning you're more and more likely to have your kids
living with you well into adulthood and beyond and unable to take care of
themselves; 5) astronomical day-care costs so that one partner's entire income
is used just so they can leave the kid in day-care while they work; 6)
companies which penalize workers and their long-term careers for taking time
off for raising kids (which is why people work just to pay for day-care in
#5); 7) a horrible and expensive healthcare system where you'll get socked
with thousands or tens of thousands in medical bills just for having a single
kid, even with insurance; 8) a high possibility of divorce (probably
contributed to greatly by all these societal stressors I mentioned above),
which would leave one parent struggling to raise the kid(s) by themselves with
a single income.

All in all, having kids is a gigantic risk, an enormous expense, and the
government isn't helping much with it, and instead is making it much more
expensive and risky with its actions (e.g., by giving us a terrible and
expensive healthcare system).

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gumby
In theory the aircraft maintenance contractor can be better than in house
because they have a larger 'n' of aircraft to work on. I'm sure there are
innumerable business school papers on this subject.

In reality of course you have a dedicated group who have a different company's
name on the paycheck. And less interest on either company's success.

It's like the open plan office idea. Great in the academic literature, but
terrible in practice.

~~~
opo
>...It's like the open plan office idea. Great in the academic literature, but
terrible in practice.

The open floor plans are terrible in practice, but is there actually any
academic literature that says otherwise?

For example:

>...In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than
a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open
offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making
employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were
damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and
satisfaction.

[http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-
office-t...](http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap)

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woodandsteel
Interesting the article is almost all about the advantages for corporations,
and only a little about how it makes things worse for employees.

~~~
drewrv
Well, it isn't called the Main Street Journal!

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valuearb
Interesting that the article doesn't cover the biggest driver. Government
regulations and legal rulings have piled a huge amount of employee obligations
on employers over the last 50 years.

Contractors aren't necessarily cheaper, but the "more predictable costs" come
from fewer regs to follow.

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brianjking
Anyone have the full text of the article? Paywalled.

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xeromal
Ditto. Even with the google trick.

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pmiller2
Even incognito?

