> They have figured out that they are never going to get payed the true value of their work,and that is almost the definition of being an employee.
A little bit too cynical for my taste. You make it sound as if companies serve no purpose other than extracting value from the employee to the company. Your work value inside the company is higher than the value of the work per se; the order that the firm institutes has a value for society, minimizing information, decision and transaction costs. That is why firms exist, and not only markets; a gig economy in which everyone is free to sell their work is worse. You could even argue that the power relations that the firm embodies for you end up also appearing in a market, without the securities of a job relationship (see Uber drivers and the like).
You can get the 1950s average unit of work out of a person, and maybe get 100 gidgets made in a day.
Or you can figure out how to optimize the assembly line and reduce pee breaks and get the most out of those things you have to pay to employ.
So now in the 2000s, you make 5000 widgets a day, employ fewer people and have identified more places where you can reduce costs to improve shareholder value.
All the fancy lunches at the googleplex and so on, they’re a way to differentiate and keep expensive workers at work.
If a firm found a way to keep high end workers for cheap, then they should do that because that’s their job - to optimize and get the benefits of those optimization’s to shareholders.
You have to make your boss happy. In some cases this may be done by an outstanding performance. In most cases it is done by being a good talker, walking overtime, look busy, give him a blow job under the table, whatever. But it is rarely connected with your real job performance. And again, how to measure performance? Performance for the company or performance for your superior?
It's a power relationship all the way down: companies use their power to fuck employees as much as they can,some succeeding ,sometimes not, while competition does the same for companies.
And the end goal? Some shareholders more happy than others, and some random economic statistic, that's not really related to quality of life.
Sure. But you (think average person, not specifically a valley programmer) probably can't generate as much value on your own as inside the firm, so in part they take the value that they put on the table.
A little bit too cynical for my taste. You make it sound as if companies serve no purpose other than extracting value from the employee to the company. Your work value inside the company is higher than the value of the work per se; the order that the firm institutes has a value for society, minimizing information, decision and transaction costs. That is why firms exist, and not only markets; a gig economy in which everyone is free to sell their work is worse. You could even argue that the power relations that the firm embodies for you end up also appearing in a market, without the securities of a job relationship (see Uber drivers and the like).
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm
Also, job security is not perfect, but it sure does exist.