How aware are you of the wages your non-tech co-workers get? About their contracts and the insecurities they have to live with? How much do you know about the real world jobs connected to your company?
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Today I was at an event about working conditions in Berlin start-ups. If you are a programmer like me, or in a job that has similar privileges, you should ask you and your company a lot of questions. Bit of a thread ->
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Maybe workers in logistics, your office facility management, your cleaning personal, the construction workers building and fixing your office, the catering delivering your organic food?
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How often do you think about what economic pressure does to your colleagues in terms of speaking out loud? Are you aware of the absurdity the „flat hierarchies“ that include a factor of 10-20 when it comes to wages?
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Are you aware that all the nice perks your office has might cover up the fact that work sucks for your co-workers? That those might even be designed to do exactly that?
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Did you ever ask yourself why you’re asked what salary you’d expect in every job interview, but no one from management wants you to talk about salary after that? You have to be aware that there is an imbalance. But are you aware how bad it might be?
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YOU have the power to weigh in. I’m not a fan of the whole programmer genius narrative, but what is true: we as programmers are in high demand. So we should use that power not only to our own advantage, but see our responsibility to help those who are not as privileged.
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We can weigh in. We can support our colleagues efforts to unionize and take part. We can demand secure contracts for our co-workers. We can say no to business models that can only work by circumventing laws.
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The whole story about changing the world shouldn’t include exploiting fellow humans on the flip side. Also we should be aware of the social capital that gets exploited. The cleaning workers in your offices are not unlikely to be paid quite a bit more than some of your coworkers.
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I don’t want to pit one job against the other, i just want to make everyone aware that our industry exploits that fact. Asks for too long work hours for too little pay. Ask yourself some of these questions. Start talking openly about this. See what you might be able to change.
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Thanks for this advice, never really thought about it. I am starting a new job in April and will keep this in mind
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Thank you. It might not take much in some situations to do something or speak up, but that might do a lot for another person.
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