Comment by latexr
4 days ago
> But I guess that is the drawback for german job-security: each and all of them know they basically can't get laid off.
Help me understand what exactly is the drawback you’re mentioning. In your previous comment you were suggesting these people spend their own personal money and personal time on projects to benefit their work time. They (quite reasonably, it seems from the limited context) decided that no, they won’t dedicate life and resources from outside work to more work. Fortunately, it seems they have some job security (German, but probably some from the EU as well) which allows them to make whatever choice they believe is healthier to them, without fearing repercussions. What’s the drawback?
The obvious drawback is that according to his description, they aren't getting much done and neither are they producing quality work.
This would check out with the fact that there aren't many software products or platforms made in Germany, compared to say the US or China.
This raises questions about how sustainable this situation is and if it might further increase the gap in income of software engineers in the US compared to Germany.
Even the best benefits do arguably not make up for receiving $2500 net at the end of the month compared to $8k in the US.
And I get what you are saying about work life balance and so on, but if one cannot even be bothered to try a $20 AI subscription at home, there must be about zero passion for the craft.
> The obvious drawback is that according to his description, they aren't getting much done and neither are they producing quality work.
That’s not what the description says. Not being a rockstar does not mean being incompetent. They claimed (and let’s not forget this is one person’s account) the devwork of those people could be replaced with AI. Even assuming that is true, that does not mean their current work is bad or that they can’t improve, or that they don’t have other valuable skills.
The drawback you’re listing there, in addition to being dubious, seems to be exclusively for the owners of the company. What about the workers?
> This would check out with the fact that there aren't many software products or platforms made in Germany, compared to say the US or China.
Good. I don’t think the software products coming from the US and the culture of exploiting people for profit are a net positive for humanity. I’d rather not have those companies, so a system which prevents that from happening is working as it should.
> Even the best benefits do arguably not make up for receiving $2500 net at the end of the month compared to $8k in the US.
Happiness reports disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
You don‘t need to earn a lot of money when your basic needs are met. Like not worrying that a sudden illness will bankrupt you.
> And I get what you are saying about work life balance and so on, but if one cannot even be bothered to try a $20 AI subscription at home, there must be about zero passion for the craft.
Why must that be the way? Perhaps they instead believe they can and should improve in other ways, including understanding that you can’t learn without doing, and delegating your tasks to LLMs prevents you from doing so. Seems very strange to claim that the programmer who does not use AI is the one lacking passion for the craft.
>You don‘t need to earn a lot of money when your basic needs are met
But your basic needs are not going to be met if your country drifts into poverty.
You will not have access to the best cancer drugs for instance. You are going to watch your loved ones die from preventable causes while richer people survive.
Europe cannot afford to miss technology wave after technology wave using inequality in the US as an excuse. Poverty causes fear, suffering and conflict.
>The drawback you’re listing there, in addition to being dubious, seems to be exclusively for the owners of the company
I don't think staying at the top of your game (or getting there) is only for the benefit of employers. I understood the comment as advice from a senior colleague talking to juniors who were headed for disaster.
Caring about your own education, productivity and employability is not a gift to employers. On the contrary, it puts you in a better negotiating position vis-a-vis employers.
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I think you're being disingenuous. It was clear from the comment that the devs described as "quite junior" and unmotivated are not delivering.
The differences in our opinion seem to come from different beliefs about capitalism, environmental impact of data centers, and in general the usefulness of AI and how it should be applied.
No you misunderstood my comment. I suggested they spent their private money - 20€ a month for the lowest Max flatrate tier - because to me it is obvious that you absolutely need to develop the skill to work with AI. They only have the "pay-per-token" model on their work accounts and laptops, because that is what large corporations get - no flatrate. That leads them to not work with AI. Most of them just refuse to get that 20€/month subscription to experiment with it on their private laptops. I didn't say private time - company policy is no US cloud services for work related topics so they would have to install it on their private computers. They totally could work on toy projects during their time, as the team is in homeoffice a couple a days per week.
I mean the drawback is none as long as they have job security. Unless you realize you work for a public entity that is paid for by the tax payer.
Thank you for attempting to clarify, but it doesn’t seem to me like I misunderstood the first time. Seems you are indeed suggesting they spend their own personal money and hardware for a skill to be used on work time, and that they use their work time for personal projects to ultimately benefit that work time. It seems reasonable to me, and societally positive, that people have the freedom to choose to not do that.
I don’t see how working for a public entity is relevant. If anything, I sure hope (but I’m not deluding myself) the people who work for public entities work slowly, deliberately, and methodically. The last thing I want from public entities is a focus on “velocity” and merging code the authors don’t understand.
I used an immense amount of personal time and money to make me a better employee, it was called getting a degree from a university.
I still sometimes spend a bit of personal money and time to tinker with technology, sometimes on the basis that it'll probably be good to know some of this stuff. It's like being surprised a chef likes to experiment a bit in their kitchen at home.
Their point is with total job security there's no real drive to actually be good at your job and little incentive to improve. Just be good enough to not be labeled entirely incompetent and truly unfit for the job, not any better. Would you go to a doctor who hasn't bothered learning anything new about medicine for decades and still practices like it's the 1950s, or one which continually evolved their practice to stick with modern times? Would you want to go to a doctor who truly didn't care about being a halfway decent doctor? Would you prefer a policeman who truly didn't care about being a halfway decent policeman? Teachers who just don't care about being decent at teaching, only the bare minimum to not get fired?
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> and that they use their work time for personal projects to ultimately benefit that work time.
That is exactly what I am saying and I would advise them. If you are early 20s right now and a software dev, just waiting for your employer (a large, slow enterprise) to train you an AI seems like a career killer. The whole attitude of "I landed a job with job security, so I am not doing a thing more than I have to" is what drives germany into the ground...
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