[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Have you ever worked in a non-capitalist cod...
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Ask HN: Have you ever worked in a non-capitalist coding collective?
How was it?
Like an anarchist coding coop, or a democratic tech workplace, or
anything like that? I'm really curious about this. I recently
worked with https://cng.ngo/ (their online presence is atrocious,
ironically, I found out about them through local friends) for a
month creating radio infrastructure for Poqomchi language speakers
in Guatemala, and it was amazing. I'm really curious what other
peoples' experiences have been.
Author : jesushax
Score : 41 points
Date : 2022-06-12 17:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Similarly interested in experience with profit sharing contract
| work
| throw93232 wrote:
| My father worked for socialist country in 1980ties. They were
| still using punch cards, 8" floppy was just being introduced.
|
| Basically 20 years technologically behind West on 1/20th salary.
| SMAAART wrote:
| I understand the concept of "coding collective", but what would
| be the characteristics of a "non-capitalist" company/whatever?
|
| How would they survive and pay their workers?
| lapinot wrote:
| > How would they [non-capitalists] survive and pay their
| workers?
|
| You realize that this comment is the same level as saying "but
| how do ecologists find their food?". They do it just like you
| do. money != capitalism.
|
| > what would be the characteristics of a [..]?
|
| A given practical and delimited goal (explicitely not the
| capitalistic "accumulate until death"). (probably the weakest
| and most widely accepted characteristic of such things to the
| extent that it has even been coopted by some ideologically
| capitalistic entities)
|
| You ought to read
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
| midislack wrote:
| Does such a thing even exist? What's the business model? Trust
| fundies?
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| Plenty of tech co-ops and employee-owned companies exist.
| There's a decent list here (https://github.com/hng/tech-coops),
| but it's not exhaustive.
| midislack wrote:
| Employee-owned companies and co-ops are still highly
| capitalist though.
| nimih wrote:
| The OP is probably understanding "capitalist" in the sense
| of Marxist economics, wherein surplus value generated by
| laborers is extracted by investors. In that sense, co-ops,
| where the workers themselves maintain complete democratic
| control of what happens to the entirety of the fruits of
| their labor, are very much in contrast to a capitalist
| business. Whether you think that is a meaningful/useful
| distinction probably depends on how seriously you take the
| tradition of Marxist economics in the first place, but
| given the context of the conversation, those seem like
| pretty reasonable examples.
| up_o wrote:
| bless you
| giaour wrote:
| This probably isn't what you had in mind, but I found working for
| USDS (on projects for Medicare and CDC, mostly) fulfilling and
| sometimes exhilarating. Maybe what clicked with you about the CNG
| org you mentioned was its mission focus and lack of profit
| motive? B-Corps and government agencies are not collectives or
| co-ops, but you do get to work on problems that will never be
| profitable to solve.
| aynawn wrote:
| Cng sounds cool. "Code Not Guns" is probably inspired by "Food
| Not Bombs" which coincidentally I heard of only fairly recently.
|
| You can also checkout all the "Code For America" organizations
| for local nonprofit government coding projects. I don't know if
| it will fit your anarchist philosophy but it would certainly help
| to have more volunteers to help connect citizens to their local
| US governments.
| xandre_maxwell wrote:
| I did technical work for an anarchist collective in NYC during
| Occupy. Also a fantastic experience, although lots of people who
| weren't part of the group were very hostile about me being in it,
| so that sucked.
|
| I wonder if there are any coops out there that are making good
| money organizing with horizontal structures like this. I don't
| think a lot of people even try it, but it's pretty cool.
| ree-san wrote:
| What kind of work did you do and how did you get involved? I'm
| curious how stuff gets organized in an anarchist coding
| collective too (sounds like I'm making a joke, but I'm not!)
| unwiredben wrote:
| Here in Austin, Texas, there's a cooperatively-owned software
| development and design business called Vulk Coop. They've hosted
| a series of meetups and happy hours for people to talk about the
| co-op model and how it relates. However, it's not anti-
| capitalistic, just worked-owned. Details at https://vulk.coop/
| and https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives/
| jmartin2683 wrote:
| 5 years in the Chinese army. Wasn't fun.
|
| For real though, what does that even mean?
| pasabagi wrote:
| OP is just talking about a co-op work situation, which can be
| anything between the PLA (late 20's), the PLA (1966), the PLA
| (1968), and the PLA (2022), only with less guns, and better
| food.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| How do they acquire said food, as non-capitalists? I'm also
| curious to know more. Do they farm in between coding
| sessions?
| pasabagi wrote:
| PLA (1920's): good relations with local farmers.
|
| PLA (1965): good meat on local farmers.
|
| PLA (1968): good thoughts about Mao.
|
| PLA (2022): good takeout, with chinese characteristics.
|
| So depending on the commune, imagine a point between the
| four tactics.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I have not, but I know about Igalia [0]. They operate as a co-op
| and they work on open source software exclusively AFAIK.
|
| [0] https://www.igalia.com/about/
| twosdai wrote:
| I haven't but I did spend some time when I was younger trying to
| think of an incentive structure that would potentially appeal to
| some people.
|
| It was fairly half-baked but the general idea was to get a group
| of people together in the same physical location and work
| together like a commune to provide for each others basic needs,
| (food, water, shelter, clothing etc...) this is really no
| different than most other communes in the world.
|
| The difference being that these would be considered chores. The
| main form of work which would need to be done that would actually
| bring in resources would be some form of technical software work,
| where everyone in the group is expected to create/contribute to
| software projects. These projects and work could and should be
| sold for money, however the group itself is not a profit driven
| organization, any proceeds just go back into increasing the total
| wealth of the group.
|
| I realized a bit later that this is really an Non-for profit
| organization with a few extra steps and caveats.
|
| But the basic idea being:
|
| - Group provides basic needs for you to code
|
| - Resources from the coding work done is reinvested into the
| group.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I've been in some nonprofits and in a university. They had good
| and bad points like anything else. They were different from
| working in industry. Also was in a corporate research lab for a
| while. That was also different than being in a place that
| actually worked on products. I got something out of it on each
| occasion, but it depends on what you're looking for at any given
| point in your life.
| pornel wrote:
| Yes, I've coded for free open-source projects.
| woodruffw wrote:
| They don't seem to mention it on their site, but Galois[1] is an
| employee-owned cooperative with an internal governance structure
| that reflects that mutual ownership. I don't work for them, but
| I've worked _with_ them for the last four years and it 's been
| great.
|
| [1]: https://galois.com/
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