It’s worth recognizing that the tension between labor and capital historical reality, not just a modern-day bad attitude. Workers and leadership don’t automatically share goals, especially when senior management incentives often prioritize reducing labor costs which they always do now (and no, this wasn't always universally so).

Most employees want to do good work, but pretending there’s no structural divergence in interests flattens decades of labor history and ignores the power dynamics baked into modern orgs. It’s not about being antagonistic, it’s about being clear-eyed where there are differences between the motivations of your org. leadership and your personal best interests. After a few levels remove from your position, you're just headcount with loaded cost.

Great comment.. It's of course more complex than I made it out to be, I was mostly reacting to the idea of "malicious compliance" at your place of employment and how at odds that is with my own personal morals and approach.

But 100% agreed that everyone should maintain a realistic expectation and understanding of their relationship with their employer, and that job security and employment guarantees are possibly at an all-time low in our industry.

I suppose that depends on your relationship with your employer. If your goals are highly aligned (e.g. lots of equity based compensation, some degree of stability and security, interest in your role, healthy management practices that value their workforce, etc.) then I agree, it’s in your own self interest to push back because it can effect you directly.

Meanwhile a lot of folks have very unhealthy to non-existent relationships with their employers. There may be some mixture where they may be temporary hired/viewed as highly disposable or transient in nature having very little to gain from the success of the business, they may be compensated regardless of success/failure, they may have toxic management who treat them terribly (condescendingly, constantly critical, rarely positive, etc.). Bad and non-existent relationships lead to this sort of behavior. In general we’re moving towards “non-existent” relationships with employers broadly speaking for the labor force.

The counter argument is often floated here “well why work there” and the fact is money is necessary to survive, the number of positions available hiring at any given point is finite, and many almost by definition won’t ever be the top performers in their field to the point they truly choose their employers and career paths with full autonomy. So lots of people end up in lots of places that are toxic or highly misaligned with their interests as a survival mechanism. As such, watching the toxic places shoot themselves in the foot can be some level of justice people find where generally unpleasant people finally get to see consequences of their actions and take some responsibility.

People will prop others up from their own consequences so long as there’s something in it for them. As you peel that away, at some point there’s a level of poetic justice to watch the situation burn. This is why I’m not convinced having completely transactional relationships with employers is a good thing. Even having self interest and stability in mind, certain levels of toxicity in business management can fester. At some point no amount of money is worth dealing with that and some form of correction is needed there. The only mechanism is to typically assure poor decision making and action is actually held accountable.

Another great comment, thanks! Like I said elsewhere I agree things are more complicated than I made them out to be in my short and narrow response.

I agree with all your points here, the broader context of one's working conditions really matter.

I do think there's a difference between sitting back and watching things go bad (vs struggling to compensate for other people's bad decisions) and actively contributing to the problems (the "malicious compliance" part)..

Letting things fail is sometimes the right choice to make, if you feel like you can't effect change otherwise.

Being the active reason that things fail, I don't think is ever the right choice.

On the other hand: why should you accept that your employer is trying to fire you but first wants you to train the machine that will replace you? For me this is the most "them vs us" it can be.

To be fair, "them" are actively working to replace "us" with AI.

Considering that there's daily employee protests against Microsoft now, probably a lot of Microsoft employees want to behave like that.

Do you sleep well at night just doing what you're told by people who don't really care about your well being?

I don't get that

There's a whole lot of assumptions in your statement/question there, don't you think?

Sorry, you are right. I was unnecessarily snarky

I read some of your other comments in this thread and I'm not sure what to make of your experience. If you've never felt mistreated or exploited in a 30 year career you are profoundly lucky to have avoided that sort of workplace

I've only been working in software for half as long, but I've never had a job that didn't feel unstable in some ways, so it seems impossible to me that you have avoided it for a career twice as long as mine

I have watched my current employer cut almost half of our employees in the past two years, with multiple rounds of layoffs

Now AI is in the picture and it feels inevitable that more layoffs will eventually come if they can figure out how to replace us with it

I do not sleep well knowing my employer would happily and immediately replace me with AI if they could

I'm sorry to hear that's been your experience.. If it helps, know that it's not like that everywhere..

I have certainly been lucky in my career, I've often acknowledged that. But I do believe luck favours the prepared, and I've worked hard for my accomplishments and to get the jobs I've had.

I'm totally with you on the uncertainty that AI is bringing. I don't think anyone can dispute that change is coming because of AI.

I do think some companies will get it right, but some will get it wrong, when it comes to how best to improve the business using those new tools.

I agree. It doesn’t help that once things start breaking down, the employer will ask the employees to fix the issue themselves, and thus they’ll have to deal with so much broken code that they’ll be miserable. It’ll become a spiral.

When the issues arise because of the tool being trained explicitly to respect/fire you, then that sounds like an apt and appropriate resulting level of job security.

>I'll never understand the antagonistic "us vs. them" mentality

Your manager understands it. Their manager understands it. Department heads understand it. The execs understand it. The shareholders understand it.

Who does it benefit for the laborers to refuse to understand it?

It's not like I hate my job. It's just being realistic that if a company could make more money by firing me, they would, and if you have good managers and leadership, they will make sure you understand this in a way that respects you as a human and a professional.

What you are describing is not "antagonistic" though..

> antagonism: actively expressed opposition or hostility

I agree with you that everyone should have a clear and realistic understanding of their relationship with their employer. And that is entirely possible in a professional and constructive manner.

But that's not the same thing as being actively hostile towards your place of work.

>I'll never understand the antagonistic "us vs. them" mentality people have with their employer's leadership

Interesting because "them" very much have an antagonistic mentality vs "us". "Them" would fire you in a fucking heartbeat to save a relatively small amount (10%). "Them" also want to aggressively pay you the least amount for which they can get you to do work for them, not what they "value" you at. "Us" depends on "them" for our livelihoods and the lives of people that depend on us, but "them" doesn't doesn't have any dependency on you that can't be swapped out rather quickly.

I am a capitalist, don't get me wrong, but it is a very one-sided relationship not even-footed or rooted in two-way respect. You describe "them" as "leadership" while "Them" describe you as a "human resource" roughly equivalent to the way toilet paper and plastics for widgets are described.

If you have found a place to work where people respect you as a person, you should really cherish that job, because most are not that way.

Yep maybe I've been lucky but in my 30-year career, I've worked at over a dozen companies (big and small), and I've always been well-treated and respected, and I've never felt the kind of dynamic you describe. But that isn't to say that I don't think it exists or happens. I'm sure it does.

It's everyone's personal choice to put their own lens on how they believe other people think - like your take on how "leadership" thinks of their employees.

I guess I choose to be more positive about it - having been in leadership positions myself, including having to oversee layoffs as part of an eventual company wind-down - but I readily acknowledge that my own biases come into this based on my personal career experiences.

Respect is something humans do. A large enough company is an entity in its own right, separate from the people that comprise it, and that entity is literally incapable of respecting you (more generally, it is incapable of empathy). One can be lucky enough to never end up in a position where it is felt personally, but make no mistake, it is there.

I'm lucky currently but have been unlucky in the past and very much understand where the person you are responding to is coming from. I think you've had an exceedingly long string of luck that is very rare if you've never had upper management that was misaligned with the long term goals of the employees and the company.

> but who actually wants to behave this way at their job?

Almost no one does but people get ground down and then do it to cope.

> I'll never understand the antagonistic "us vs. them" mentality people have with their employer's leadership,

When you see it as leadership having this mentality against the people that actually produce something of value you might.

You dont think its different somehow that the exact tech they are forcing all employees to use, is the same tech to reduce head count and pressure employees to work harder for less money?

Exactly this. I suspect that "us vs them" is sweet poison: it feels good in the moment ("Yeah, stick it to The Man!") but it long-term keeps you trapped in a victim mindset.

I mean their company (Microsoft) is literally asking them to train their replacement.

So I'm not quite sure why you would not see it as a "us vs. them" situation?