I think part of the reason that IT people are treated like badly is that Indians bring a culture with them into the workforce that gives a little too much respect for authority. And so corporate execs are used to being able to push around programmers and not get a response to it. And so they indeed do fire you for stupid reasons because they think you won’t call them out on it, because they think you’ll behave like an Indian. It’s kind of like a small town school where the jocks are able to fondle the girls and no one cares. That’s how programmers are treated, and the scapegoat is Indians.
I’m a big believer that in life there are haves and have nots. My parents were haves but I’m a have not.
I truly believe that these sort of events – things that totally wreck
the economy – are the best thing that can happen to have nots, because
the haves realize they aren’t so special after all. They just got
lucky. In fact by technical skill, I should be near the top.
Baby Boomers and big
corporations both have a trait in common – and that is that they believe
in cashing in all the chips, going for broke, totally fucking over the
average working class person, instead of going for some moderate
advantage but giving the average person just enough to keep them happy.
In other words they’re both stupid and arrogant. I blame arrogance for every lost job I’ve had.
Baby boomers and corporations try to check mate in 10 moves instead of trying to go for a strategy that is going to likely win the game but won’t come off as a huge slam dunk. if they had any brains at all, they would try to keep people employed and happy.
Many corporate ceos are like monetary drug addicts. In addition, they’re told they need to maximize the profits for their shareholders. If you give them money without condition (the analogy being a food stamp – that’s conditional), they will still fire workers while they don’t need the workers. And they’ll probably play favorites with who they fire and who they keep.
My major beef with American corporations, other than the fact they lobby for wars, destroy the environment and exploit the third world, is that they are like a reality tv show rather than objective and fair. It’s like a bunch of drama queens decide who gets voted off, instead of a cold look at performance. They’ll swear to the grave that it’s not like that but that’s how it is.
The classic quote about GWB is that the American people would rather someone be strong and wrong than wobbly but correct.
And I see that a lot in corporate America. Some big shot tough guy comes in and demands other people get fired and gets his way. And the guy turns out to be a flaming idiot, making scapegoats out of people who have background issues but are good day to day working employees.
This is not directed to my current employer.
If employers
stopped trying to dig so much into peoples’ backgrounds, it would be a
win for workers, because a person who is being mistreated could say
they’re going to find a new job and the threat would be credible.
But with our overactive tech and HR society, that’s a conspiracy against workers.
What Harvey Weinstein did was possible because of people who think others can’t go anywhere else. we need to change that. Workers need to have options. Even people who are politically active and involved in politics.
Technology has been used to create a collusion agreement to look for reasons to prevent people from making the lateral moves they need to both be paid and treated correctly. It has to stop. The Unabomber predicted this dead on, that Technology would be abused instead of used.
Just like Andrew Yang’s thing is automation and Bernie’s thing is the trickle up economics, my “thing” is going to be thought policing. We’re seeing a rising trend of employers looking to prove how righteous they are by policing the private opinions of employees.
California and New York have laws to deal with thought policing. California defends “legal, off the job activities” from termination re employment. New York defends “political ideology.” Pennsylvania, and then USA, should have both of these laws with me playing a role in the movement.
Your jurisdiction to monitor employees should end at the office, except in cases of illegality, direct slander to the brand name or use of poor language that is directly done in the name of the brand name (for instance using the n word and then having it reflect back on the brand).