economic class. they see themselves as part of the petit bourgeoisie even though they must labor for their sustenance. partially this has to do with high wages but it's also because for a while there's been a ton of cheap capital available for people to go start businesses if they do the right dog and pony show for the right people, which they've thoroughly confused with actual claim to the means of production. they're wrong and they'll learn just how wrong they've been over this decade. I think that process has already started for younger devs who don't have quite the easy trip into the industry and to cushy high-paying jobs, lacking all protection from abusive work schedules and the legalized wage theft that entails.
or maybe another way to look at this -- the difference between the labor aristocracy and the petit bourgeoisie amounts to little when the former can become the latter with apparent ease. and those conditions have proliferated for most of the last two decades due to really low interest rates driving extraordinarily-concentrated capital to seek wildly more speculative ventures in search of profits, allowing easy access to capital for a small segment of workers in the industry. the success of some individuals, though far fewer than people realize, in crossing the class divide, from labor to ownership, is universalized by the hegemonic liberal ideology -- you see this both in the form of "learn to code" as a panacea for poverty and in the wildly reactionary bent of this segment of labor. when that capital dries up -- and it will as interest rates rise to combat inflation from the pandemic -- these workers, who have failed to protect themselves through any kind of collective action to date, will find their wages collapsing, as the siphon turns to them in search of a prop for collapsing profits.
economic class. they see themselves as part of the petit bourgeoisie even though they must labor for their sustenance. partially this has to do with high wages but it's also because for a while there's been a ton of cheap capital available for people to go start businesses if they do the right dog and pony show for the right people, which they've thoroughly confused with actual claim to the means of production. they're wrong and they'll learn just how wrong they've been over this decade. I think that process has already started for younger devs who don't have quite the easy trip into the industry and to cushy high-paying jobs, lacking all protection from abusive work schedules and the legalized wage theft that entails.
or maybe another way to look at this -- the difference between the labor aristocracy and the petit bourgeoisie amounts to little when the former can become the latter with apparent ease. and those conditions have proliferated for most of the last two decades due to really low interest rates driving extraordinarily-concentrated capital to seek wildly more speculative ventures in search of profits, allowing easy access to capital for a small segment of workers in the industry. the success of some individuals, though far fewer than people realize, in crossing the class divide, from labor to ownership, is universalized by the hegemonic liberal ideology -- you see this both in the form of "learn to code" as a panacea for poverty and in the wildly reactionary bent of this segment of labor. when that capital dries up -- and it will as interest rates rise to combat inflation from the pandemic -- these workers, who have failed to protect themselves through any kind of collective action to date, will find their wages collapsing, as the siphon turns to them in search of a prop for collapsing profits.