lx3459683

Having been one of those #1 employees in the past, I didn't feel short changed. It was an arrangement that was beneficial for both myself and the employer. I don't know how many of us there are. But there are people who will take being on call 24/7 in exchange for full autonomy and not having to justify coming and leaving at random hours or taking leave without notice when the opportunity is there.

I had the employer pay for some of my vacations during downtime, I progressed along my career path much faster than normal employees, I was paid more than normal employees. It was a good gig.

At least in a startup environment, the bus factor risk isn't even on the same order of magnitude as much more tangible stuff like the client walking away. Doubling your labor costs to mitigate a risk that doesn't make the top 3 is just bad business. Sometimes it's not even an option.

You make a deal with your #1s that they will get the fun projects, the paid vacations when the current crisis is over, the completely flexible hours and full autonomy. Anything they want within reason, as long as shit gets done.

It's not for everyone, but I can see where GP is coming from.

You two are talking about completely different things.

There's no 'on call' for the kind of projects that parent is talking about. There's a small handful of guys who get shit done and maybe a second ring development team around them.

For some people, the truly exciting work is the work where none of this stuff has been proceduralized. It's not feasible to train or do knowledge transfer between two shifts for these projects.

In most of the world it is decided. The decision is click-wrap 'contracts' are unenforceable. Starting with the fact that they don't meet the definition of a contract.

> I knew a person who wanted to quit, their boss said "no, you can't quit", and they stayed on for several more months

[...]

> I feel like the it's "me vs them" attitude I see so much on HN leads to worse outcomes

I think your anecdote there proves otherwise. That person was asked to act against their own interest and did it out of feebleness. They didn't gain anything in return, it was not a equitable exchange where e.g the boss paid out an additional bonus for the employee continuing to stay against their wish.

In a capitalist society, it is always workers vs employers. Do not mistake Japan's social cohesion for some kind of workplace utopia. It is one of the worst countries on earth in terms of work life balance - which is currently destroying their entire society as childbirth rates plummet. This is not hyperbole. By 2030 years ~85% of the population will be elderly people.

If you want an average outcome, follow the average path. Having kids or getting married or staying in the same place all their life does not make people any happier. God knows I've seen plenty of people who were bitter about any combination of those choices.

If you want to actually live your life as a conscious being, stop looking at what other people are doing and decide what you want. It's scary and it's not for everyone.

For anyone wondering where IRC users have migrated these days, the answer is Discord.

There are several programming-themed servers with thousands of concurrent users, and many more high population servers for other interest groups.

I'll take your word for it. From the pictures I've seen the vertical distance between the screen and the windshield looked big enough to block most of your view of the road when looking at the screen. Unlike a Toyota where the display is vertically positioned the same as any other dashboard.

There's an entire generation of traffic safety cameras that detect people looking down away from the road and it looks to me like they'd be tripped by a model 3 driver just reading their speed...

This comment hits the nail on the head:

> As a long-ago ex-Googler I find it amusing to watch employees name-drop where they work, always with some underlying subtext implying authority [...] Parent comment doesn't simply imply this but explicitly uses it as the basis for calling OP out. It's amusing because the namedrop is always accompanied by some claim they felt they couldn't support solely through a sound argument.

> So basically the code base and politics of any large (successful) company.

How does that invalidate anything of what he said or vindicate Tesla exactly? Do you believe that because some large companies are shitty places to work that everyone should just accept it as the status quo and shut the fuck up about it? Why are you expecting a single employee to try to 'change things' and why do you think that him speaking up about the issues is not an attempt to do just that?

I don't get your attitude at all.