Comment by nineplay
1 year ago
> It's almost like capitalism isn't actually good and you shouldn't want to live in the US
Strong words from a FAANG employee. Does he think there's another economic system which would give him the same extraordinary compensation package?
agree. i can tell it was a bad day for the author and it sucks. but it's irritating to sit there and blame the exact system and company that gave him the exceptional job and pay in the first place.
everyone who works in FAANG, if you are drawing an enormous salary and bonus, compared to the average guy, i hope you realize the how fortunate you are. i hope you are putting away, saving, investing, at least 1/3 or 1/2 of it. when and if this happens after a few years, unlike the average guy, you can simply choose to retire or take some time off and travel rather than the normal option of loosing your home and being completely ruined.
some of us are on work visas, so "take some time off" would also mean "wind up your current life and leave the country"
while i'm sympathetic, it still means you had a great deal going. if/when it ends you shouldn't get pissed off you got the opportunity in the first place - a visa isn't permanent.
to be clear - what i was reacting to was the author's idea that he should reject capitalism and/or start a trade union, after having been a very, very, lucky player of the capitalism game indeed. it pisses me off when people making N multiples of 6 figure incomes start forgetting how lucky they are and how much they personally benefited from that exact system. a laid off googler's worst day is many, many times better than the average guys daily life. in this country, let alone somewhere else.
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>"wind up your current life and leave the country"
Isn't that what so many people do in their own country in order to come to the US on a work visa to begin with?
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People who work at Google are indeed very fortunate. We are paid large sums of money. I feel like I've found a pot of gold and give significant portions of my income away to the less fortunate directly because I feel that so much of my pay is based on luck.
However, Google employees only capture a fraction of Google's profits. Google made twenty five billion dollars in profit in Q1. Annualized that is 100b. Google has 180,000 employees. That is 555,555 in profit per employee. If Google was really existing in service of its employees rather than its investors, as it would be in a socialist system, then I'd expect my pay to rise dramatically.
>If Google was really existing in service of its employees rather than its investors
But then it wouldn't make that kind of profit.
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No, you'd have to take all the profit of all the companies in the country and divide that by the number of citizens. That would be true socialism. Like a kibbutz in Israel. IMO it is as much utopia as 100% free market capitalism. Almost everywhere you have something in between, including in the US.
> If Google was really existing in service of its employees rather than its investors, as it would be in a socialist system
What socialist system is that where a company is run from the benefit of its employees?
The context is sparse, but it looks like Google laid off the Python team based in the US. The poster was not in US, so maybe that's why they're not laid off.
The quote you mentioned was a sarcastic comment on the US-specific layoffs, presumably.
The poster lives in NL so not sure what to make of these statements.
The name may be Dutch but are you sure he lives there? Apparently (according to one of his own comments) the new team is located in Munich.
One of the posts has
> as do I, in .nl
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Ad hominem with just a tinge of that sweet sweet latent homophobia? Why?
And that hypo... what exactly is the fear bringing all this on so viscerally... is a long defunct soviet union still the starring Freddy of folk's dreams?
Disclaimer: I grew up in the USSR, it stank big ups. I live in the USA, it also stinks big ups. Sometimes for similar and sometimes for different reasons. Let's hope Fukuyama was wrong and we'll eventually come up with something better.
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