81–90 of 109 posts
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Physical access is always the single most important aspect of your security stance. There is almost no technical safeguard that will stop someone with physical access and time.
I don't think big companies allow employees to have the crown jewels on their co issued devices. They would have to remote into something even they don't have physical security access into.
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Personal anecdata: every company I've worked at would have been worse off (and worse to work at) if the developers had been unionized. I've also avoided working anywhere that thinks you can only be professional if you're wearing a button down shirt and / or a tie, so I don't doubt that some places might benefit. Edit: to be clear, I've never advocated for a union, and I doubt I ever will so long as I am fortunate eno…
Can you elaborate on what would’ve been worse if the devs had unionized?
Introducing collective bargaining would only have created an artificial distance between individuals.
One company stands out as a good example. Great benefits, sub par pay. They actively solicited feedback on a regular basis, and at one point gave out near universal raises when they introduced pay bands. They also realized that limited vacation but unlimited sick time was being abused by a minority, and changed to a PTO system that was far more fair to the majority of employees.
He'll, one of them had paid "overtime" even though we were salaried (havent had to work more than 40 at any of the others).
In short, we got everything we needed, and it has been fair. Some employees individually bargained for more time off, or for work from home time, or higher pay. Some were put on performance plans and improved, some were let go (and some not nearly soon enough).
IMHO, collectively bargaining contracts at any of those places would have been less successful at making everyone happy.
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Genuine question: Do other high-skilled professions have unions (like marketeers, scientists, lawyers, doctors, electrical engineers, ...)?
Engineers, Lawyers and Doctors have professional associations rather than unions. Arguably, this is what software engineer should have. The American Medical Association (AMA) is extraordinarily influential. Edit: one could argue the difference between a professional association and a union is a matter of degrees. A professional association certainly seems an easier sell. Possibly a professional association with aspec…
If you want a professional association like engineers, lawyers or doctors, it needs to have a clear public benefit. Benefiting software developers is not enough. That is one of the important differences between a professional association and a union.
Disclosure: I am a licenced professional engineer (software).
A little bit of a tangent, but, > Earlier this month, after five years of organizing, security officers for companies including Facebook, Google, and Genentech, many of whom were making between $12 and $14 an hour, ratified their first union contract. They won wage increases of up to $1.20 per hour, better health care, and, for the first time, paid holidays. How is this rational? Do Facebook and Google believe they a…
Those folks do physical security. Aside from access to buildings and stuff they have access to little else, plus they have supervisors and people at the company who supervise them, plus doing weird things will trigger alerts and stuff, so I don't think they can do a lot beside ignore alarms for an intruder who would not have access to digital assets. Plus, NDAs are pretty powerful tools. I mean, if a guard lets you i…
And unless you're in some government building or a Wall St bank, hard drive encryption is rare.
Get me past the security guard anywhere else on the east coast? And I'll get you anything you need past that.
A little bit of a tangent, but, > Earlier this month, after five years of organizing, security officers for companies including Facebook, Google, and Genentech, many of whom were making between $12 and $14 an hour, ratified their first union contract. They won wage increases of up to $1.20 per hour, better health care, and, for the first time, paid holidays. How is this rational? Do Facebook and Google believe they a…
What’s rational is that people are accepting positions at those pay rates. If you don’t want $12 per hour, go somewhere willing to pay more — even fast food pays more than that in the Bay Area. Entry level at Target pays over $15. They don’t need a union, they just need to quit and go work somewhere else. No shortages of jobs in the Bay Area— essentially everyone is hiring right now. Why should the company be blamed…
Just because a vulnerable person allows you to take advantage of them, doesn't make it ok.
If you can see that your employees are struggling to survive (and on $15/hr in Silicon Valley, you can about guarantee that they are) it would be in your best interest to give them a raise. But most of all, it's the human thing to do.
We don't have to live in a world where everyone is angling to squeeze every last drop from everyone else.
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And workers can quit. There are jobs everywhere.
and workers can also form unions if they want to. Why do you want to limit their freedoms?
I dislike when governments get involved and starts forcing employees to join unions.
But if you want to unionize, you have that right. If the companies don't want to play ball, they can fire you and waste time and money trying to hire an all new workforce.
> Despite their futuristic sheen, tech companies “actually operate like traditional industrialists and will go through old fashioned methods of suppressing workers,” he says. Spot on.
And workers can quit. There are jobs everywhere.
Tech companies used the same strategy in the 1970s, offering employees high salaries and sweet perks to make collective action less appetizing. That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent unionization. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, many of whom graduated from Hackbright,…
> That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent unionization. The inverse is exactly that, though. Higher wages give certain skilled individuals enough personal comfort to the point that they don't feel they need to stick their neck out for some group of randos. Sure, that $125k job with a small sack of RSUs looks p…
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> They would have to remote into something even they don't have physical security access into. Which they do from their... "co issued devices". And in the days of keys over passwords being standard practice (but 2FA not yet), pwning a worker's device can be very useful even if all the real targets are on remote servers.
I'd be surprised if any of the big tech cos have not deployed U2F.