I don’t need to know exact companies, no need to unnecessarily expose yourself or anything, but as we are a workers rights instance of Lemmy, I safely assume we are all proletarians. I for example work at a unionized grocery and I work outside. I have many complaints but I try my best to work as little as possible while getting my paycheck. Customers are usually fine but occasionally just dumb af to the point where it’s annoying(I have millions of stories) managers are very kind, only ones who were dicks left(unfortunately they probably got promoted if I remember correctly) and my coworkers are eh. Some are great to confide in and joke with, while others are rude or annoying, some are very nice but have garbage politics (libertarians who don’t understand their benefits from being in a union/don’t care enough about the differences to advocate for it). I plan on becoming a firefighter, not only for the pay, job security and union benefits, but it’s also an essential job that doesn’t exist just to create capital (no judgement to those who work in corporate environments, I’ve never done it and can’t judge it). I like my job overall but Goddamn the weather. Edit: Kinda cool to see so many people who are in tech.
I can't even really describe my current responsibilities succinctly. I'm basically trying to automate and integrate business processes. Some of that is centered around ERP, some web apps (off the shelf and custom), and a bit of the usual Microsoft
officespyware suite. It's super interesting and I like solving these types of problems to help people work on what people should actually be using their brains for (ie not menial repetitive stuff). Yet it's very frustrating since the everyone else (workers, management, owners) basically doesn't "believe" in digitalization nor industry best practices.I really want to start a union drive, but due to some, let's say familial connections within the company, I've been more or less convinced that it's in my personal interests not to be the spark in this case.
I have friends who work in Fintech, at least one of whom considers themselves socialist. It's been hard for me to reserve judgement of them considering a choice to work in a sector which I view to be on par with CIA etc in terms of producing bad social outcomes, with the presumption that they also understand the role of finance in capitalism.
Comrade, I come only with curiosity, no judgement, and honestly, I ask the following question only to better understand some people I know IRL; Would you be willing to describe your ideological relationship to your industry and your job? How do you reconcile the contradiction of directly developing the economic base of capitalism while presumably being a communist?
Thank you, and I understand if you choose not to respond.
Would you be willing to describe your ideological relationship to your industry and your job?
Completely mercenary. I started working there before I was class conscious, and pretty much the only thing keeping me from changing jobs sooner is because I'm also doing a masters degree on the side and I don't want an unexpected change in workload to completely drown me.
How do you reconcile the contradiction of directly developing the economic base of capitalism while presumably being a communist?
By using up as much as my employer's resources for as little work as possible. If I play my cards right, I can work six hours or even less when eight hours is expected without management knowing or caring. It's not quite as absurd as those "day in the life of a tech worker" videos that were popular not long ago, but there is a kernel of truth in them. On a slow day, I might even sneak in work on something that isn't for my employer.
I think its also easier for me to justify because most of the stuff I've worked on there never reached production because upper management shit canned it several months into development.
Finally, I think the software my employer sells is more useless societally than outright harmful. It's wealth management software used by porkies and their financial advisors. Still not great, but at least it's not making drones better at killing or doing spooky behavior manipulation shit for a big tech company.
I cant really give too much detail into what my job actually involves but the simple version is I'm a tech writer for a pharmaceutical company but the kind of writing I do isn't super transferable to a lot of other areas, even within the pharma industry. Which had made job hunting a removed. I am kind of out in a rural area so remote working really opened me up to a lot of new possibilities and way better pay ranges compared to local. Now that remote work is dwindling though all those possibilities are crumbling away and I can't find shit local. I don't want to have to move for a job. It fucking sucks. All because some rich fucks need to boost their investments into corporate real estate by forcing people back into offices.
I do software development, mostly working with full stack web apps.
Postal workers are usually based and very present in the unions. It seems to be one of the few jobs in which people are still actively class conscious.
I can't have a job. I'm a programmer, and I had no problems working when a friend and me had a startup that did not earn any money. But then, when we were getting paid for work (for another company), I couldn't take it and quit after a week. I can't handle the having to work a certain amount of hours per week, when there is no work. What should I do, just sit there? Never, that's useless. Also the thing to work on was clearly useless. Everything I could get paid for is useless websites for useless companies.
We live in a capitalistic society. I'm a programmer myself, and the way I see it, if we can game the system as workers, we should. The bosses do it. The investors do it. Why shouldn't we?
