IWW history of May Day is on the front page of HN and tech workers in the comments are thinking through the conditions required for solidarity news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4385... archive.iww.org/history/libr... - ThreadSky

davidcrespo.bsky.social • 7 days ago

IWW history of May Day is on the front page of HN and tech workers in the comments are thinking through the conditions required for solidarity
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856798#
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/misc/origins_of_mayday/

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davidcrespo.bsky.social•7 days ago

workers themselves doing lots of analysis from different angles about why solidarity seems so hard for software engineers

- psychological: long-conditioned preference for working (seemingly) alone
- high pay + reservations about flatter pay structures
- not miserable enough to want change

davidcrespo.bsky.social•7 days ago

my personal take: the obvious points are all true, but they need to be unified by looking at the quasi-managerial role even line engineers occupy against the rest of the organization. high pay needs to be read together with autonomy and indirect control over other workers' work through software

davidcrespo.bsky.social•7 days ago

the autonomy of software engineers is bound up with the autonomy of software itself: you set it in motion and it keeps going — this is what allows it to be such an important mechanism of both control and responsibility laundering

a very good book on responsibility laundering:

davidcrespo.bsky.social•7 days ago

another great book that informs my thinking on this is Ensmenger's The Computer Boys Take Over, about the formation of software engineering as its own discipline and how it came to have the organization role that it does
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262517966/the-computer-boys-take-over/

canardttng.bsky.social•7 days ago

Thank you for posting these references Many shibboleths soaking the industry

davidcrespo.bsky.social•7 days ago

a concrete lens on this: many desk workers have their work structured by forms and spreadsheets. the spreadsheets even have programs (formulas) embedded in them

what is the difference between a spreadsheet and a Software Application? who controls it and who can change it?

davidcrespo.bsky.social•7 days ago

this is a deal that management makes with engineers and it highly relevant to national politics right now!

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