Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 07:40:53 +0200
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Proletariatization of the "professional" fields...


On 1 Feb 2002 at 15:37, commie00 wrote:

> > Well, it can, but speaking as a computer engineer, I
> > know that within the rank of engineers, there are
> > aspiration of breaking off and starting your own
> > company (especially during the BOOM)...
> 
> i don't know if this is effectively any different than many people
> dreaming of and working to starting their own business of some sort
> (nearly everyone i've ever worked with, esp. in factories and
> warehouses, have been working on this... or at least dreaming of it).

There are a lot of similarities, but I think there is also an important 
difference, in that IT workers are told they have the possibility to 
REALLY strike it rich, become millionaires, etc. 

I recall an article on venture capital in one of the IEEE journals last 
year, where an engineer wrote about his experience of venture 
capital in very forthright terms. He described how VC firms moved 
in and seized control (and the intellectual assets) of firms he had 
worked for, meanwhile extracting lots of unrewarded labour from 
the workers involved. His solution, however, was that since some 
engineers *did* strike it rich, engineers should pool their money 
and use it to replace VC.

The assumption underlying the article was that engineers are 
somehow a different breed of person - innovators, as opposed to 
the (non-innovative) users - and that if they looked to each other, a 
virtuous cycle of profit and innovation would ensue. 

Post-dot com boom, I'm not sure what's going to happen to 
engineering ideology, but the kind of 'engineers populism' which 
I've described above is a powerful force in leading IT workers 
down blind alleys, and separating them from other people's 
concerns and any broader sense of class struggle.

Peter


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