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proletariat that are paid better than most
Unless one owns substantial assets and doesn’t need a day job and has enough $$$ to be idle rich should they choose so, they are proles plain and simple. Tech workers with no agency who get bossed around by some dumb PM, indebted lawyers who don’t have their own firm, indebted doctors who work at some PE owned hospital, consultants who can’t affored a home —-> all proles regardless of how much they think otherwise. Their livelihood is still at the mercy of others’ whims
The bourgeois is a very small % of the population with immense influence. A household in a high COL area with a dual income of 350k still paying off their first mortgage is not a part of that club
love how many boot lickers there are out there in this world lol
nobody, no matter how hard they wish, are bourgeoisie UNLESS they can afford to just.... stop working and do whatever the heck they want. Anyone that can do 'whatever they want, at any time' - are the wealthy, and therefore make too much money.
IT workers are higher paid proles for sure. dollar store bourgeoisie for sure. definitely not bourgeoisie.
Real bourgeoisie wouldn't be on glassdoor. Their time is 'far too valuable'. The reason why the bourgeoisie have maids, chefs, etc -- they outsourced that 'issue' to someone else to deal with.......
Marx and Engels used the term "Petite Bourgeoisie" to refer to the class between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, with examples being craftsmen, independent skilled laborers and small business owners. They theorized that, because they were not part of the dominant ruling class and unlikely to break into that ruling class, they would often rise to help maintain the control of the bourgeoisie for the sake of stability until they would be crushed back into the proletariat as technology advanced.
That's where we are: majority of tech workers do not struggle enough to want to see struggle or strife. Every year it's a little bit worse than the previous in terms of income relative to inflation, and there's plenty of money to be made automating away the need for us.
Yeah, many MANY tech workers are petit bourgeoisie. Typified by a continuous lust for improvement of economic position and the desire to hoard capital. Some are for sure proles though - it's more a function of why you work and what you do with your salary IMO.
It depends on whether that tech worker must sell their labour to not starve. If they can live off assets such as dividends/rent from land or properties without having to work, they are very much in the bourgeoisie because they live off of the labour of others. If they must sell their labour and would starve without it, they are a member of the proletariat.
Tech workers are the precarious class. Tech in the US is an industry full of uncertainty.
If I have to pick between your options, I'd say tech workers are a slightly higher paid proletariat. You have to own the means of production to be a bourgeoisie.
Neither, there’s absolutely no comparison.
We’re highly paid white collar workers who have the have the means and abilities of the the bourgeoisie. With the mindset of the proletariat.
There’s no getting ahead if you keep shooting yourself in the foot.
We also volunteer less, donate less and do less for others with our wealth.
We seriously need to do better. I dedicate around 200 a month to free journalism, artists, etc I like and I really feel it's not enough
There's another class in modern social theory called the professional-managerial class most white collar positions likely fit in. They are not necessarily "administrators" but sometimes are. They also have a sort of limited ownership of capital usually via 401k and sometimes other investments like a vacation rental home.
Yea because the relationship to capital is different; they completely live off rents and have access to most markets without barrier. For instance they can buy political power.
Petite bourgeoisie is the perfect term for tech workers. Not quite there but I would consider you guys the “noble” class of things. Like minor lords, nothing too serious
From my experience, I have been very proletariat. I have not gotten high paying jobs. My experience and work ethic have been ignored by managers every time. I have taken online courses and taken new issues then fixed them and written instructions. I would love to move up.
Yes I auto invest my dividends. In hindsight only a few stocks really made a big difference - buying Apple in 2007 - when the nano came out, and Nvidia in 2015 around when cuda came out. The other big holdings I gave are The Trade Desk and Microsoft (bought when Satya became CEO). It only takes a few of these wins to help overcome losses. Once you start making big profits you can reinvest in other ventures to diversify. I have some investments in fine art, private equity and farmland. However, stocks are still by far the most liquid and best returns I have. You do need to keep informed - I read Barron’s, WSJ and listen to Bloomberg. I also read NYT, but less so for investing. I tend to hold stocks if I believe my original investment thesis still holds. I started investing out of college in 2000, but I’d say only within the last few years did I start to feel more secure - yes, Nvidia’s crazy growth was a big factor. Accounting for splits, my cost basis is like 0.25 per share.
Lots of delusion in this thread. If you're working in tech as a salaried employee you are most definitely not a prole and are among some of the most highly paid skilled workers. RTO may be a pain in our side and the market might be tight but we're not scraping by making minimum wage in a factory with bad working conditions.
As someone else pointed out, Marx would call us petit bourgeois (not going to repeat what was discussed - scroll down).
A transition has occurred in my opinion and it has parallelled the evolution of IT. If one studies what happened in the late 60s through the late 70s when data processing, computers, its workers, and the inputs and outputs had a "mysterious" quality to their existence, one might argue tech workers were clearly part of the bourgeoisie. The data was held in ivory towers (mainframe computing systems) and held only to be distributed by highly bureaucratic and arduous processes and procedures with "programming" at its core. The working class may have been considered computer operators and keypunch operators or data entry clerks. The bourgeoisie consisted of programmers and systems analysts, and their manager. Fast forward to the age of databases, client/server systems and pure web development technologies, and one might see a similar paradigm. Data was now more readily accessible, some of the processes and tools were becoming more demystified and user-friendly, and the mystical quality of the tech workers started to diminish through the segregation and separation of tools and capabilities. Continuing on the same continuum through the internet and web development, now the tools through open source, vast libraries of tools, subroutines, APIs, etc, and now the bourgeoisie are closer to the actual business and tech workers are closer aligned to the hired help, even when well paid. The "computer guy" has become the equivalent of the maintenance man. Now, those who control the resources for establishing platforms and new paradigms for working (e.g. the proliferation of AI tools, cloud computing, social media, etc. and other leading edge technologies) are the real bourgeoise. Project managers, Technical managers, Data Scientists, Developers, etc. are the "hired help" of the 21st century not unlike the computer operators, programmers, and systems analysts of yesteryear. IMHO.
Bourgeoisie don’t need to rely on their labor for survival. They just live off the yield on their assets.
Many tech workers have 5M+ liquid assets. But they choose to live a high debt and high expense life (mortgage, luxuries, travel, private school for kids, etc). They could easily move to a low COL and live off yield and become bourgeoisie, but rather not.
Since 2003? The era of the tech bubble burst that proceeded a technical recession that took a decade plus for many companies to recover from? Going into 2008, which was a housing recession. Then into the pandemic that had a lot of tech companies hyper scaling and are now doing major layoffs to “right size?” Sure, there are some tech companies responsible for unprecedented growth where tenure and timing made some people quite a bit of money. But generalizing the entire industry…I don’t know about all that.
As far as moving to a lower COL, we saw that during the pandemic when companies went full remote. It increased housing prices in that area and those workers STILL need to work to support those mortgages.
I think the point is, the majority of tech workers are reliant on our jobs (even if OTE is higher than the US average.) Most tech workers aren’t independently wealthy where they can drop their job and be fine financially for the remainder of their days on earth. That’s the difference.
OK, put down the Marx book. You don't have full agency in any political or economic realm, not even if you're bourgeoisie.
Somewhere along the line, people forgot liberty and equality does not mean you always get to have it your way, do whatever you want, and have the same resources as everyone else.
I think putting back to office mandates in this context may be a touch hyperbolic. You're hired to work for a company. I like working from home, too, but in the end the free agency you have is to find another job where you can work from home, not expect them to allow you to choose home or office. That's their full agency.
BTW, the answer to your question is Tech Workers are Morlock.
There’s too wide a range to generalize tech workers.
We arn't communists, because we don't live in our mums basement thankfully.
If you aren't worried about 1) where your yacht is docked, and 2) what time the markets close, then you are proletariat. Simple.
Why is it even necessary to frame this question within the realm of communism?
The terms of the proletariat and bourgeoisie don’t belong to communism alone - they are terms to describe class roles - and yes, capitalism does have
class roles. You hear people use the term “elites” to describe members of our society. Sounds very bourgeoisie to me :).
No, if you work for a corporation and can be replaced by another developer at any time, then you’re just a high paid working stiff.
Are we still in the 19th century, or is this an anachronistic question?
True, but I try to inform my opinions by what I observe and how I see others behave. When I see the worlds richest man help get a US President elected, and who also owns several influential companies and is now in charge of controlling government spending, I see someone can pull the strings of society. At the same time, I also see the working rich, who are living but not necessarily in control of events around them or who are being influenced to adopt different behaviors.
Neither, because most of us are neither Russian nor Communist.
Seriously, the kinds of questions that show up in my inbox. Glassdoor bowls are the Quora of job boards.