"Guard Labor."

[elfs]

Guard labor is the term economists use to describe the amount of private security found in a given economic polity-- a city, state, or country. The premise of guard labor is that it is labor that does not accomplish anything: it is usually performed by low-wage staff, adds nothing beneficial to the market (creates no opportunities for additional work, innovation or invention), and the extent of it in a market is correlated to and indicative of the income and capital inequalities among market players: countries with very low Gini coefficients (that is, countries where there is relatively low income inequality, where CEO pay is generally within an order of magnitude of median pay for a corporation) also have low guard labor costs, whereas countries with high Gini coefficients also show the very wealthy burning a lot of capital to guard their capital.

I was reminded of this, this morning, because so many "web developer" positions now mention internal security duties as part of the role. This shows the level of mistrust between an employer and the employees that bothers me. It's guard labor being done by highly skilled and well-paid staff. And it contributes very little to the well-being of the company; that it's a major concern at all shows that the employees are very dissatisfied with the "labor disciplining" effect of the recent recession, and the employers, rather than risk their profit margins, are deploying internal security to manage the small acts of rebellion that come with that dissatisfaction.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Huh. Devs, doing security? *headscratch* I don't know too many of'em that are actually good at security. A lot of'em get around permissions issues with chmod 777... *shudder*... I know *you're* smarter than that, but then you're even more six-sigma than your average dev.

If you don't trust your systemscritters with the keys to the kingdom, you need new systemscritters. And if you can't *get* good systemscritters, perhaps you need to re-evaluate your workplace conditions.

But of course, under the modern home-run-driven corporate business model, the shareholders (or the victor charlies) are the customer, and both your consumers and your employees get the shaft.

Hint: Small ball, not home runs, wins championships. And DRM'ing employees is just like DRM'ing your produce. I don't think I need to 'splain that one further to this audience.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I remember the first tech job where I heard "Everyone is responsible for taking out the garbage in the office." I knew that was going to be a sign of things to come, but other then the normal "If you spot a fellow employee stealing or breaching security, report them!" you get as a loyal employee, I haven't heard of anything like this before.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

What in the world would a company's web developer have to do with internal security? Or is it just some way of saying that all the employees spy upon one another?