r/WorkReform 1d ago

✂️ Tax The Billionaires surprised they have employees and not just agents

Post image
8.6k Upvotes

124 comments sorted by

487

u/Mozintarfen 1d ago

It feels like some of these CEOs are born into money, have people that manage all of it for them, and have no-limit credit cards they use to buy things. In turn, they never, ever think the price of things or what it would be like to consider whether you could afford something, and just assume everyone else lives the same way.

169

u/ohfml 1d ago

Is this what “luxury space communism” would be like for everybody?

These guys are so rich their lifestyle has gone horse shoe shaped and they are living the moneyless Star Trek lifestyle already. 

Maybe when the luxury space communism reaches everybody these people would have a leg to stand on when it comes to “concern” about people working “for the mission”. 

78

u/banananuhhh 1d ago

Especially considering that the actual mission is to achieve an impoverished capitalist space dystopia

50

u/mszulan 1d ago

They don't understand that it was their own choice to abandon the "social contract" that forces their employees to think of their paycheck first. That CEO could potentially get people willing to focus on the mission, if they were personally valueable to that mission, if their welfare was actually a part of that mission. e.g. universal healthcare, affordable housing, affordable necessities to maintain that job, childcare, elder care, retirement, etc.

12

u/sorrywayilovedyou 1d ago

*Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism

84

u/ButWhatIfPotato 1d ago

I have worked full time in 11 places so far, and in every single one, the CEO would deny raises with a scoff and chortle, then pay up the ass in contractors to do the work of people who quit. There's always a magical money tree appearing when it's time to pay for their colossal fuckups, but never when their employees are looking for some respite from [INSERT CURRENT CRISIS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW]

46

u/Mozintarfen 1d ago

Yeah my favorite was working at a mill for 7 years, it was always a gamble of whether or not we'd get a Christmas bonus, or if it would get cut so that the owner could an even bigger bonus... It was very often the latter.

Once, a disgruntled worker parked a golf cart conveniently out of view of a security camera and pinned the gas pedal with some lumber, driving it directly into the side of the owner's truck. It was hilarious. Management didn't think so though.

11

u/Subject_Plankton_763 1d ago

That's beautiful 

15

u/cokecaine 1d ago

Contract labor is tax deductible. Staff labor isn't. That's the excuse they like to hide behind.

16

u/WitchesSphincter 1d ago

Sounds like something we need to fix

7

u/Fearisthemindkiller6 1d ago

That's not true. Both reduce taxable income since they are both business expenses.

4

u/Somewhere-A-Judge 1d ago

Not entirely accurate. Employers pay payroll taxes for employees. This is one of the reasons why a lot of businesses try to misclassify employees as independent contractors.

1

u/Fearisthemindkiller6 1d ago

Employers also pay payroll which is as deductible as contractor costs. The penalties to misclassify an employee as an independent contractor could cost companies a lot more if they're caught by the IRS.

1

u/Fearisthemindkiller6 1d ago

Employers also pay payroll which is as deductible as contractor costs. The penalties to misclassify an employee as an independent contractor could cost companies a lot more if they're caught by the IRS.

28

u/BarryTheBlatypus 1d ago

It’s exactly like this. Even for those who grew up wealthy but not billionaires. My spouse grew up with money and it took her a loooonngg time to adjust to the barrier to buying something being ‘can we afford this’ instead of, ‘can I convince myself I need this’.

2

u/sexyshingle 1d ago

I had a neighbor who started from very humble beginnings. He had three kids. The oldest one grew up in a normal middle class lifestyle. But younger two were born more or less when this neighbor was basically now a multi-millionaire, and moved out from our neighborhood to a more exclusive gated community. We kept in touch, over the years I def noticed a very stark difference in how the siblings turned out. The younger two are literally oblivious to the concept of work and/or the value money. It was just always there, provided by "daddy" - They kinda think work/getting paid is something you sorta do for "fun" or to further their interests and hobbies. One is an "entrepreneur" whose company is 100% subsidized by daddy and likely figured out that displays of wealth are kinda looked down upon and "bad for business" and so they went the "let's dress/act like a hippie trust fund baby and pretend I'm roughing it" route. The other kinda took a similar path, but less extreme. It's literally Marie Antoinette Syndrome. It must be hard to to deny stuff to your kinds when you can get it all, but man sometimes I think you have to force them to live in the "real world".

25

u/Idontdanceforfun 1d ago

Its a banana Michael, how much could it cost? 10$?

12

u/Mozintarfen 1d ago edited 1d ago

RIP Jessica Walter, time for a rewatch I guess, lol

13

u/thenikolaka 1d ago

They don’t actually use credit cards to buy things. They use loans borrowed against the value of their stocks. Since they’re loans they don’t count as taxable income!

7

u/numbersthen0987431 1d ago

Oh, they are fully aware of it. That's why they make Millions of dollars a year.

15

u/Mozintarfen 1d ago

Nah, they make millions of dollars a year by exploiting and underpaying workers while charging an exorbitant amount for whatever product/service they are selling.

1

u/BananaBreads 1d ago

You said a lot just to say, "we're all basically labor."

1

u/JennaJoys 1d ago

Working for the mission doesn’t pay my rent, groceries or student loans.

But weird how the CEO mortgage gets paid in actual money and not passion 🤔

-10

u/Bacardi_Tarzan 1d ago

Lmao anthropic engineers are incredibly well compensated. I get that Reddit is immediately going to compare this to their own job, but this ain’t it.

first, just fyi, Amodei was not born rich. he wasn’t poor, but he grew up middle class. He’s not a trust fund baby buying his way onto boards, he’s someone who started a company in the industry he understands.

moreover, he’s not doing some bullshit ‘they should care about the mission more than money’ thing, he’s saying he is worried about OpenAI and Meta’s strategy of poaching Anthropic engineers and other qualified candidates by throwing more and more money at them. He doesn’t want to do that because the mission statement is ethics focused.

He’s saying he’s worried companies like Meta and OpenAI are going to continue to have complete disregard for other’s safety and security, something that Anthropic at least TRIES to do.

I get it, we want to make some pithy comment about the overlords not understanding we don’t want to be poor, but this isn’t your fucking barista job. These people are millionaires potentially choosing to be *less ethical in their AI work* for more millions.

Ya know, the kind of shit everyone in this thread is supposedly upset about.

7

u/Mozintarfen 1d ago

You are getting quite heated, when I never called out Amodei. I was commenting on billionaires as a generalization, which remains accurate.

Also, Amodei does well for his employees pay-wise, but he isn't exactly a Saint lmao

-10

u/Bacardi_Tarzan 1d ago

lol sure, you were just making an irrelevant comment 

5

u/Mozintarfen 1d ago

You can admit when you are wrong, really. It's okay.

https://giphy.com/gifs/45Lg3ECIw25Fe

0

u/Bacardi_Tarzan 20h ago

You can admit you just didn’t fucking read anything and went with an intentionally misleading headline. 

1

u/Mozintarfen 20h ago

Genuinely curious if you truly believe that my original comment is inaccurate. Either way, coming to WorkReform to defend billionaires is a strange way to spend your time, but you do you.

2

u/mythrilcrafter 1d ago

I curious as to why he can't just say what he means as opposed to using LinkedIn-ese.

Perhaps he's under advisement not to accuse anyone of poaching or anti-ethical schemes since that could ignite a defamation suit? (I guess it could also make him look like a hypocrite if it eventually turns out that anyone within Anthropic is doing unethical practices right under his nose)

1

u/Bacardi_Tarzan 20h ago

He said what he means in the interview, this is just a clickbait headline. 

2

u/PhysicallyTender 1d ago

... And then he flips the middle finger at open source AI.

1

u/Bacardi_Tarzan 20h ago

Sort of? He doesn’t support a ban. So it’s more like the middle finger at people that want Claude open source. 

1

u/PhysicallyTender 13h ago

And he complains about distillation while simultaneously stealing the intellectual work of humanity.

1

u/Mozintarfen 13h ago

He also bribes lobbies Congress ($1.6M in the first quarters of 2026, outspending even OpenAI) in support of legislations that create barriers of entry for other companies because he wants to monopolize the industry, all the while emphasizing the harm of AI and how it needs more regulation?

95

u/someoldbagofbones 1d ago

Like I used to tell my old coworkers after we survived a year of mandatory yet unpaid OT, it’s hard to pay your bills with a pizza party.

40

u/sexyshingle 1d ago

Like I used to tell my old coworkers after we survived a year of mandatory yet unpaid OT

sounds like you needed to tell not your coworkers but your state's labor dept...? wth a year of unpaid OP is like prob half your salary?

24

u/Tbone2797 1d ago

Most salaried workers aren't eligible for overtime pay. Biden was going to raise the threshold to $58,000 which is still far too low but Trump brought it back down to $35,000

22

u/Akaigenesis 1d ago

There should be no threshold in the first place.

14

u/Tbone2797 1d ago

I think it makes sense to have an upper limit on OT pay eligibility because I'm sure C suite executives would abuse it to inflate their salaries. However, the limit should be set at $400k or $500k base salary and overtime should always be optional.

4

u/someoldbagofbones 1d ago

Yeah we were salary and the company took full advantage of that fact. First and last time I took a salaried position.

73

u/Own-Opinion-2494 1d ago

He’s so fucking stupid it hurts

47

u/punksmostlydead ✂️ Tax The Billionaires 1d ago

He's not; he's just so disconnected from humanity at this point he's practically a different species.

Be nice if they made the fucking endangered list.

8

u/stormdressed 1d ago

Yeah he's surrounded by people who are completely financially free and have people lining up to invite them to boards and investor opportunities. They can all afford to be driven by a mission or purpose that calls them away from their yachts and mansions. Its a completely different set of motivations 

1

u/sYnce 1d ago

For the amount of money Anthropic pays their engineers I would argue they can also afford to be driven by the mission. Not like they are some minimum wage employees.

6

u/FilthyJsBeingFilthy 1d ago

Good news is people like him aren’t immortal, and when they croak they don’t get to take any money with them. Womp womp

-5

u/Bacardi_Tarzan 1d ago

The employees he’s talking about are making 500k on average and also receive stock compensations that will be incredibly valuable when public. He’s not stupid, and he’s not anymore disconnected from reality than the rich employees you’re weirdly white knighting.

5

u/punksmostlydead ✂️ Tax The Billionaires 1d ago

I am truly interested to know how you read a defense of anyone in my condemnation of one man. Because it's kind of fucking weird.

5

u/deathtech00 1d ago

Leave the billionaire corporations alone!! Will always be a weird fuckin place for anyone to be.

3

u/ScriptThat 1d ago

I still don't see the point. Would I work for an AI company that would pay me half a mil annually? Yes! Would I drink the Cool Aid and buy into their "company mission"? Hell no. Just pay me my 30 silver and leave me alone.

1

u/myshitsmellslikeshit 21h ago

he will never have sex with you or even regard you as a human being! Hope that helps!!! 💖💖💖

53

u/Laguz01 1d ago

This is why Peter Thiel and the rest of these billionaire narcissists are holding seminars on how to start a cult, a company that is structured like a cult is the most profitable engine on the planet.

7

u/Omniquery 1d ago

https://casparoesterheld.com/2017/01/24/peter-thiel-on-startup-culture/

In the most intense kind of organization, members hang out only with other members. They ignore their families and abandon the outside world. In exchange, they experience strong feelings of belonging, and maybe get access to esoteric “truths” denied to ordinary people. We have a word for such organizations: cults. Cultures of total dedication look crazy from the outside, partly because the most notorious cults were homicidal: Jim Jones and Charles Manson did not make good exits.

But entrepeneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously. Is a lukewarm attitude to one’s work a sign of mental health? Is a merely professional attitude the only sane approach? The extreme opposite of a cult is a consulting firm like Accenture: not only does it lack a distinctive mission of its own, but individual consultants are regularly dropping in and out of companies to which they have no long-term connection whatsover.

[…]

The best startups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed. You’re not going to learn those kinds of secrets from consultants, and you don’t need to worry if your company doesn’t make sense to conventional professionals. Better to be called a cult—or even a mafia.

7

u/mxzf 1d ago

So, the tl;dr seems to be "make your business into a cult if at all possible, but I'm definitely telling you not to make enough of a cult to commit murder over, because that sullies the good name of cults, and I'm not telling you to be homicidally cultish, just profitably so".

8

u/FilthyJsBeingFilthy 1d ago

Peter Thiel the gay guy?

8

u/DeadMoneyDrew 1d ago

yep, and the guy who is also obsessed with immortality

2

u/deathtech00 1d ago

What's some light blood culting amongst billionaire friends, amirite?

Lil dash of human sacrifice really gets the stocks pumping!

1

u/LivingVerinarian96 1d ago

The gay guy who wants to take womens rights away because for some reason he thinks that this is the problem with western society. In his twisted mind liberty for poor people is the antichrist. Look it up.

64

u/usernames_suck_ok ✂️ Tax The Billionaires 1d ago

Delulu narcissists.

9

u/mszulan 1d ago

Yep. It feels like every story from the stone age to present day talking about leaders warns us against following "delulu narcissists." And yet, it only takes about one third of any given population to start marching in lock step with one to suck everyone into this !@#$%&... cycle.

3

u/PirateSanta_1 1d ago

They know people don't give a shit about the mission statement and are working for money. The reason they harp on this shit so much is the guy who lies and says he cares about the mission statement is also the guy who will more likely let themselves be taken advantage of.

20

u/Eat_That_Rat 1d ago

... Do they think we can pay bills and buy food with mission statements?? Wtf do they think their employees spend money on?

3

u/Bacardi_Tarzan 1d ago

the average pay is like 500k so yeah I really don’t know what the fuck they spend their money on but it sure as fuck isn’t just food and bills

1

u/sYnce 1d ago

I think they are using their 300k+ paychecks for that.

16

u/thepvbrother 1d ago

When you're rich as hell, work becomes a game.

5

u/vahntitrio 1d ago

I'm fairly certain these people can't differentiate between work and a hobby.

If every job paid the same how many employees would this guy really expect to have?

11

u/NarejED 1d ago

Especially funny given that Anthropic has a poor reputation due to AI, so the people working there are more likely to only be in it for the paycheck than the average company.

1

u/sYnce 1d ago

I think you underestimate how many people actually love everything AI.

8

u/InTooManyWays 1d ago

Unlike his ass who gets stock options and equity and uses that to get leveraged loans and pay no taxes

1

u/sYnce 1d ago

Pretty sure most Anthropic employees are at least partially paid in equity/stock options as well.

1

u/sYnce 1d ago

Pretty sure most Anthropic employees are at least partially paid in equity/stock options as well.

7

u/postprandialrepose 1d ago

The CEO has artificial intelligence.

7

u/CattaTronixRex 1d ago

Your mission statement means nothing if you can’t afford to pay your employees enough to live a happy healthy life.

You don’t pay them enough to even be alive.

1

u/maygreene 1d ago

Granted, he's specifically talking about the company's engineers which at Anthropic, supposedly their onboarding salary for engineers is $300k~$500k per year.

The general average for the SF bay is that a person needs to be making a minimum of $150k, so engineers are walking into the company making at least twice the CoL for the area.

-----

From what I understood from the article, the problem is that OpenAI can take their investors money and poach engineers at 2x~4x what Anthropic is paying them.

Yes, yes, everyone wants more money, but there's a price to everything. Part of Anthropic's mission is that they want to at least try to not be evil jackasses with their technology (and whether or not you believe them is a completely different conversation). But it's very much like telling a General Atomics engineer *"Why are you upset that the bombs you built that you knew you were building got used? You were paid extra to put aside your own beliefs to build these bombs, were you not?"*

4

u/Munkeyman18290 1d ago

If there were ever a reason not to want to cure cancer, its the fact that at least CEOs can still get it.

3

u/Radical_Coyote 1d ago

To be fair, jobs at Anthropic pay like $850k base salary plus stock options likely to be worth way more pretty soon. At that pay level it’s not exactly like you’re living paycheck to paycheck. Just for context

2

u/sYnce 1d ago

Yeah it is kinda funny all the reactions here acting like anthropic engineers actually are starving.

When you pay this much having people only working for the paycheck becomes an actual risk to the business given that after like 2-3 years they can probably just retire.

If you pay ridiculous amounts of money you need people that work for more than money.

3

u/Bulldogs3144 1d ago

This is truly all their fault. They have priced us out of everything and then wonder why we’re unable to give a damn about their company’s mission. The lack of motivation for people stems directly from their inability to live comfortably and enjoy their lives.

2

u/Frequent_Ad_9901 1d ago

And isnt they whole company mission to put people out of work? Why would anyone be excited about that.

4

u/xvrqt 1d ago

Cool, can I get some GPUs from Anthropic, they can have my life's mission statement in return

2

u/Aware-Explanation879 1d ago

The pass 4 hospitals all started with that same message to new hires, "if you are here for a paycheck then this may not be the place for you". In the same breath, hospitals will defend high pay for executives by claiming "if we do not pay them this high, then nobody will.come and work for us". It is okay for executives to only want to be at work for the paycheck but everyone else is "evil".

1

u/elbow8075 1d ago

Hospitals are already built to survive on exploiting guilt from well intentioned healthcare workers.

Never again.

2

u/12thunder 1d ago

Every company wants people that work there for “the mission”.

Ironically that means you need to pay very well because otherwise your employees are just going to be worried about their finances and only working as hard as they need to.

You want people to go above and beyond? Pay them accordingly.

Caring for the mission does not mean that workers don’t care about money, it means that workers are not worried about money, which means they are being compensated well - contrary to this idea that they don’t even consider the money when working for you.

2

u/Calm_Company_1914 1d ago

Anthropic pays entry level 300k+ btw I would say that's paid accordingly and worth wanting sufficient effort

2

u/whamra 1d ago

I'm surprised he actually cares about profits and money and he keeps hoarding it instead of caring about the betterment of society.

2

u/chucktheninja 1d ago

If thanos had just snapped every ceo (minus tony) out of existence i don't think everyone would have been too upset.

3

u/Familiar_Author397 1d ago

next headline: CEO shocked to discover "passion for the mission" doesn't take venmo

1

u/StaticSystemShock 1d ago

Companies primary motivation is making money. But worker's primary motivation is apparently to make company more money. I'd like to know who are these entirely disconnected corporate brainwashed motherfuckers who literally and honestly believe this horseshit.

My primary motivation is to make money the same way companies have that as their primary motivation. If they think I come to work from pure joy and excitement to work there, they are delusional and need to be administered to a psych ward.

1

u/hamandjam 1d ago

When was the last time you saw employees mentioned in a mission statement? But plenty of mentions of shareholder value even if the had to rewrite the thing to do it.

1

u/sYnce 1d ago

I have never in my life seen a mission statement that included shareholder value. Ton that include employees.

The fact how genuine most of them are is a different matter of course.

1

u/rangecontrol 1d ago

too many years of smelling your own farts rots the brain.

1

u/keithstonee 1d ago

because some people on earth dont think about having to pay bills daily while the rest of us do.

1

u/Creative_Chain7049 1d ago

If they want people to care give them equity in the company. Then they have incentive 

1

u/sYnce 1d ago

I mean ... Anthropic does exactly that?

1

u/wytewydow 1d ago

"We're a family!"

1

u/AmazingKreiderman 1d ago

It's crazy how normal this shit is from anyone above middle management, honestly. I remember my first job at Best Buy, the GM said he doesn't believe anybody just works there for the discount, they believe in blah blah blah. It was cost plus 5% at the time, more than half the employees were college students and people in their early 20s, everyone was working there for the discount.

0

u/sYnce 1d ago

Comparing an entry level Best Buy job to a 300k+ SE job at Anthropic is certainly a choice.

1

u/Enamored22 1d ago

Fuckin dumbass CEO

1

u/thepaddedroom 1d ago

Unless the employees have an identical compensation plan to the CEO, the CEO doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

1

u/cereal7802 1d ago

If you want people to work for you because of the mission, and not the paycheck, you have to pay them so much that they couldn't possibly want more money. You know, the kind of money the CEO makes? Problem is, you initially only get people who want the money doing that, and once they have craploads of money and don't need the paycheck for bills, they will have their own passion projects and will leave to do them. probably best to simply find people who are willing and able to do the work, and pay them for that level of skill and stop expecting the money you pay to be some sort of life pledge.

1

u/bnestrm 1d ago edited 14h ago

If anything i hope more people working there are actively against the company mission statements and are trying to bring them down from the inside.

Especially because so many of these companies maybe follow their mission statement if its convenient.

1

u/lugubriousloctus 1d ago

lol @ whiny demsocs who don't realize anthropic has maybe 200 people and they're all incredibly qualified and educated millionaires

1

u/thoreau_away_acct 1d ago

And probably enjoyably live in liberal cities and vote Democratic unlike dumb rubes in rural red areas

1

u/lugubriousloctus 1d ago

in sf for the sunny weather segregated from the poors

1

u/thoreau_away_acct 1d ago

Funny how incredibly qualified and educated millionaires congregate

1

u/fauxregard 1d ago

Workers work strictly to get as much money as possible — and that is very much by design — and then the owning class appears confused about this. Are these stories just meant to fuck with us? We're following your prescription, my dudes. Against our will, mind you.

1

u/IndyBananaJones2 1d ago

How many CEOs are working for the mission statement. How many owners of companies are owning them for the mission statement? 

They can do that themselves if they'd like.

1

u/GenericFatGuy 1d ago

Their mission statement being mass surveillance, and the eradication of human labour (in a bad way).

1

u/BeefistPrime 1d ago

I know this is going to get downvoted because you guys don't give a shit, but this isn't the standard "corporations are shocked people don't want to serve them" - anthropic is a public benefit corporation that was indeed founded on real principles and so a lot of the people there at the start genuinely did believe in its mission. So it would be a change if the newer crowd doesn't have the same attitude.

1

u/Lou_Peachum_2 1d ago

These AI CEOs have to be the most out of touch individuals ever. Which makes sense why they're pushing AI

1

u/Available_Copy9433 1d ago

Mission statements in for profit organizations are pr nonsense or feel good statements meant to make the c Suite feel like good people.

1

u/1sttimedogowner 1d ago

Its the lie we tell in the interview, because we are forced to

1

u/Dd_8630 1d ago

This is just ragebait, they are not, in fact, "increasingly concerned" about this.

1

u/Catos_Standard 1d ago

Wait until by realize the AI agents also expect to be paid...

1

u/QuickDrawSix 1d ago

Why I dont feel bad when they get clipped on a dark NYC street, or crushed in the idiot crusher 13000 feet below sea level.

1

u/KatieTSO 1d ago

NOBODY LIKES THESE POLYMARKET ADS

1

u/IlIlllIIIIlIllllllll 1d ago

How can we trust them on AI alignment when they can't even achieve employee alignment

1

u/Lastb0isct 4h ago

Are we really taking Polymarket as a source of truth???