it's a large human behavior question for me, the notion of work, value, economy, efficiency .. all muddied in there

- i used to work on small jobs younger, as a nerd, i could use software better than legacy employees, during the 3 months, i found their tools were scriptable so I did just that. I made 10x more with 2x less mental effort (I just "copilot" my script before it commits actual changes) all that for min wage. and i was happy like a puppy, being free to race as far as i want it to be, designing the script to fit exactly the needs of an operator.

  (side note, legacy employees were pissed because my throughput increase the rate of things they had to do, i didn't foresee that and when i offered to help them so they don't have to work more, they were just pissed at me)

- later i became a legit software engineer, i'm now paid a lot all things considered, to talk to the manager of legacy employees like the above, to produce some mediocre web app that will never match employees need because of all the middle layers and cost-pressure, which also means i'm tired because i'm not free to improve things and i have to obey the customer ...

so for 6x more money you get a lot less (if you deliver, sometimes projects get canned before shipping)

▲ martin-t 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I had a broadly similar transition in feeling about my work.

It's not about how much I get paid. It's about realizing how much of the value I produce goes to me and how much goes to the owner class.

At least I never worked in a big corporation and I always had the ability to do work that directly benefited people using my code. But I still saw too much of the "I built this company" self-congratulatory BS from people who just shuffled money while doing 0 actual work.

I don't think ownership is theft, I just think it's distributed wrongly - to people who have money instead of to people who do work. See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826823

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agumonkey 15 hours ago | parent [-]

even though my above message wasn't much about the corporate leeches, i did experience the fun of being my own boss in a way during covid doing mini gigs directly with people

there's a blend of "i'm my own man": i get the money and handle the responsibility on my own and it's thrilling feeling

i don't dimiss the layers of HR managing legal and financial duties in a company and thus taking a cut, but there's a kind of pleasure to also do your own business for a while

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martin-t 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> i don't dimiss the layers of HR managing legal and financial duties in a company and thus taking a cut

I don't wanna dismiss them either but (along with management):

- It's not positive-sum work. It doesn't produce positive value for society, it's just necessary work which needs to be done as a side effect of actual positive-sum work being done.

- The pyramid should be inverted. Managers, layers, accountants, etc. should be assistants. The people doing the actual work should (collectively) decide to hire them when they think it would make them more productive or be otherwise beneficial to them. Not the other way around.

	▲	agumonkey 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		it's an interesting question as of why the management layer has always been seen as more important than the builders, crafters, designers below