On the flip side I appreciate all the free expensive alcohol I get.
My mask is nearly sheer at this point and I've started wearing more goth clothing to work because fuck it.
Thankfully I'm tight lipped at work and my social media accounts are either private or deserted wastelands. So far everyone is pretending to have a live and let live mentality about their coworkers, but I have a feeling the moment career progression actually looks possible again that people will be snitching left and right.
I am an immigrant who sends money home, and pretty old, so cant choose between tech jobs much. I keep little money and basically try to make life of my extended family a little bit more bearable. I send some money to PCRF and such, but that's it.
I absolutely despise 90% of my software engineering colleagues who are either reactionary or infuriatingly idiotic libs.
I am happy I just got off a project for one of the biggest commodity traders in the world and if you think dystopian shows presenting rich capitalists as toxic, despicable scumbag psychos are exaggerated...think again. It's worse than most people imagine.
They are extremely toxic people and they intentionally hire people that have this toxic masculinity crap going on, because "they are traders" and "they are tough men".
They got this libertarian competition going on between departments which is incredibly toxic environment to work in.
Taking vacation (which is required by law there) is considered a show of weakness which will hurt your career, while "grind" is the ideal.
This resulted in our project manager breaking down and crying in the middle of one meeting, our team lead having a mental breakdown and just go missing for 2 months, shouting matches, name calling in the middle of open offices etc.
They make a huge amounts of money and literally give us (underpaid externals) unironical advice to buy ourselves yachts for birthday. We are talking here like $160k + over $200k in bonuses per year...for rookies.
They showed me their Christmas Party video, which is forbidden to share outside of the company. It's like a Hollywood produced ultra-kitschy and expensive party, where the hosts in tuxedos wear animal masks like in the "Squid Game". I am not kidding. The decadence is just off the charts.
Any normal person would absolutely be radicalized by just looking at that party, however, to my dismay, some of my colleagues seem to have been drawn to that despicable show of wealth and superiority.
Otherwise, they would make fun of me for being "politically correct" (I am not really), complain about "cancel-culture", LGBTQ+ people etc.
They also regularly make fun of climate activists. I tried to find a single redeemable person in there and I failed miserably. There's no fixing this, just Minecrafting.
There was a book about these companies called "The world for sale", written by some libs (I think), who admit these companies are terrible, but "necessary" for capitalism to work, and therefore OK. The author called them "The last swashbucklers of capitalism" in what it seems to be even admiration.
I am amused how both these "tough traders" and clueless lib authors of that book seem to be even scared by the Chinese state-employed traders, because they don't care about profit as much as they care about making Chinese productive capacity run without issues. They literally can't process a non-profit motive.
The author of the book talks about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Uod2pE37Y
I think that's about far as I would go explaining that...
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I never wear the techbro mask. Everyone at work thinks I'm grouchy and pessimistic cos i won't entertain their stupid ideas about crypto and AI. Being pragmatic about programming is bad actually gotta theory craft about efficient tree burning for problems that don't exist
I’m reserve army of labor. Didn’t major in
STEMso all the businesses in the country think I’m a worthless village idiot and write me off. So since I never got an internship because of picky employers, now I can’t get an entry level job because I never did 5 years of work for free. If I ever get the luxury of an actual adult job masking will be hell, I cannot stand those fart-sniffers to the point where I have developed an admittedly irrational technophobia.Suppressing the urge to strip naked and run through the halls shouting "Everything we do is fake!" is getting harder with every passing day and it's mainly the fault of this web site.
I work these events.
the richer you are, the better the free shit you get. paradoxically....
hey fellow computer toucher, don't feel pressured to get drunk to be a team player
What cool things have you done at the computer touching factory lately? Obviously don't doxx yourself!
Honestly I managed to convince some suits that an ethical and compliance issue was important enough to get them to shove resources into it so that was cool. It's good when your technology is following the law instead of pretending like a consumer protection law doesn't matter to you. I managed to convince them hard enough that they were thanking me for keeping the company ahead of possible legal issues. So that's kinda cool.
How's your computer touching life going
Hell yeah, those are the small day to day wins i love
My thing is always accessibility, I do user facing client development and I'm a constant pain in the ass when design gives us some unreasonably inaccessible stuff
My thing is always accessibility, I do user facing client development and I’m a constant pain in the ass when design gives us some unreasonably inaccessible stuff
This brings back memories of an abomination of a design I had to implement that had 3 scrollable regions whose edges were really close to eachother. None of the regions had scroll bars either. Fortunately, the project got cancelled before it could see the light of day.
If you touch the computer for long enough, the computer will also touch you.
Tech workers are still workers and I lend you my energy, comrade.
Tech workers who bootlick for billionaires are class traitors, that said.
isn't all work being a class traitor?
capitalism won't pay you to overthrow it, comrade.
Tech bro tipsy for me is being crossfaded as fuck and leaving early so I can play my 20 year old video games.
Open bar is a nice perk tho lol.
We do what we do to survive. It sucks, never stop trying to change it.I try to do as little evil as I can at work and I try to use my ill gotten gains to do as much good and genuine community building as I can. It's not perfect but I don't work for defense or banking or insurance or anything totally fucking awful and I help a lot of comrades do a lot of real genuine good so I sleep okay most nights. I just wish that real important skills were more valued and also that I was brave enough to reduce my quality of life to do more good. It's a seemingly impossible choice.
In short absolutely fuck capitalism
Thanks comrade. Same to you. We all do what we can. I don't do enough but I'm trying and that's all we can do. If we all genuinely try to build community and make the world better we will. Together
just remember there are literal communist millionaires in NYC.
they're the ones who should be feeling guilty, not us.
NGL, I fucking wish that was true. What I’d give for another Engels.
I don't know their names but i've been told.
hopefully its whoever is filling all these mutual aid requests.
I am going to one of these next week and i am gunna drink so much free booze. I should probably call in sick already
for many years they've known that I "hate liberals", but lately they seem to have sensed that I'm not right wing either 😕
I've mentioned queer communities and use "partner" for my partner instead of something more specific
I remember taking offense to being called a liberal at my last job. I didn't say the quiet part out loud, but that was the biggest tell I think.
A couple of my co workers are comrades. Today one was saying they were glad they were not a manager because they care about labor issues lol so that was cool
My boss is a member of a different industry's union and participated in their (admittedly milquetoast) strike a few months ago.
I'm still really cagey and both my coworkers and different flavoured chuds. The Christian one appreciates my knowledge of comparative religion, since everyone else seems to be a "rationalist" that actively avoids knowing anything about religion.
since everyone else seems to be a "rationalist" that actively avoids knowing anything about religion
They don't need religion; they got pseudosecular religion at home.
The pseudosecular religion at home:
At least one is an unbelievably hard core nationalist. He worships the F35 and is considering becoming a cop or a navy stooge. He's also the most belligerent >.>
Boot-bros are the worst kind of techbros. I've known a few in college that went on to work directly for the military-industrial complex, and they were giddy about doing imperialism. One of them even directly compared himself to Doogie Howser from the Starship Troopers movie.
A team mate of mine at the computer touching factory is a Proudhonist.
