this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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And it's intentional. Lay off the workers. Implement AI Slop. Slop does sloppy work. Hire back workers as Temps or Contractors. No benefits. Lower pay.
Like all of Capitalism. It's a fucking scam. A conjob. A new innovation in fucking over workers. (Ironically the only "innovation" ever directly produced by Capitalism)
I remember when everyone was saying that companies would need programmers and that every kid should learn programming. Now I realize that companies were promoting that idea so they're be a surplus of programmers competing with each other and companies could underpay and swap out workers quickly.
Yeah obviously. Whenever a company says "we can't get enough X workers" they implicitly mean "at the price we want to pay".
But that doesn't mean they were wrong. Programming is still an amazingly well paying and low stress career. Being replaced by AI is a little worrying, but I think by the time AI is good enough to really replace programmers, it will also be able to replace most white collar jobs - HR, finance, etc. - and society will have bigger problems.
I would not market an industry well know for burnouts as "low stress" though.
The games programming industry is high stress, but apart from that it isn't. I don't think it's known for burnouts any more than any other industry.
Whoever your project manager is, I hope you have thanked them today. You're clearly working with some of the least shitty ones.
exactly, "reserve army of labour" is a tale as old as capitalism.
Just that the IT industry has run a very effective propaganda campaign for it
Since when are contractors lower pay? Companies waste fortunes on them.
They dont usually have benefits (eg: health insurance) or time off
Even accounting for that (at least in countries with national healthcare), they're definitely more expensive than regular employees.
Employees are a liability on the balance sheet whereas contractors are just lumped into a project cost.
Healthcare is only a fraction of fringe costs — employer payroll tax, unemployment insurance, facilities and admin…
You're right, but I think the main reason companies like it is because it's easier to get rid of contractors than full-time employees.
That's because the agency gets half for basically doing nothing
I don't think you do capitalism justice. It also fucks over social structures, the environment, democracy.