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Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

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Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#221

Post by rmdashrfstar »

zimpenfish wrote: post #113
malvosenior wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You succeed at programming by spending countless hours on your own with a computer. Your career is a direct result of your own hard work and passion. From that perspective, organized labor seems like an unnecessary dependency. Programming is a form of extreme independence many will be hard fought to give away. Developers (some) aren't super-conservative, they're libertarian.

> Your career is a direct result of your own hard work and passion. If your code isn't using your own libraries compiled by your own compiler hosted on your own OS running on your self-built machine using a CPU you designed, no, it isn't. Sure, your own hard work and passion goes a long way but you rely heavily on the works of others and the privilege of being able to use them.

This is an unproductive reductionist gatekeeping response to a genuine description of the effort and toiling many have gone through to reach their position.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#223

Post by jammygit »

AlexandrB wrote: post #205
getpost wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started out anti-labor due to my own experience in a minimum wage job. I was forced to join the union and pay union dues, yet I still received only the minimum wage, so being a union member resulted in a sub-minimum wage! Another objection I had to unions is, they tend to promote an "us vs them" mentality, when instead, everyone should be working together. The destruction of the middle class shows that the balance…

> Another objection I had to unions is, they tend to promote an "us vs them" mentality, when instead, everyone should be working together. You're aware that several major US tech companies were colluding to keep employee wages lower than they otherwise would be[1], right? Once a company's size exceeds Dunbar's number[2] (and often long before then), it's de-facto us vs. them from the executives' point of view. [1] ht…

It was as though it was the employers who unionized against the employees in that case...

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#224

Post by wutbrodo »

calibas wrote: post #200
typon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers, maybe ones on HN especially, are super conservative and anti-labour for some reason. I don't know the history of Silicon Valley enough to figure out exactly why

I think it's simply because many people here dream of some day becoming the next Gates, Bezos, or Elon and they don't really empathize with the thousands and thousands of people whose hard work actually creates that ridiculous amount of wealth.

I'm not sure that's true; the 1%/10% dichotomy gets abused a lot, but there are some salient differences; most of my professional circles in their 20s are making up to half a million dollars in their 20s at a large tech co. Whether you consider it myopic or not, it's easy to see why they (and those aspiring to be them) would consider a labor movement to be against their interests. And it certainly represents a much larger (and more reasonable) group than those asusming that they're going to make billions from founding a startup.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#225

Post by vips7L »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #210
matthewmacleod wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can just look at the surface and see it as a natural consequence of a relatively easy, high-income, unregulated profession, with high demand for workers. Many of the benefits of collective bargaining aren't applicable to people who are relatively easily able to switch jobs or work as a consultant. That then tends to lead to… complacency, I guess? I would expect that relatively few people in that field hav…

I can think of a mountain of things that programmers could collectively bargain for that would benefit everyone. I'd like for bargaining to happen about parental leave, what "unlimited vacation" actually means, what "on-call" duties really entail, compensation for overtime, and whether or not engineers can be reasonably forced to perform illegal or unethical behavior (data collection, dark pattern designs).

You are not forced to do any of those things. You are able to find a new employer whenever you want.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#226

Post by jammygit »

mmsimanga wrote: post #130
josephv wrote: post #79

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get. I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior. It's disturbing to see these same anti-organizatio…

I am not against unions but having spent a career trying to get business to tell me what exactly they want I tend not to put too much faith in large organisations. I feel the administrative overhead of getting all us programmers to agree on specific principles as part of a union is literally going to be impossible. Try putting some developers using electron, PHP, Java and Postgresql in a room and see if you can get p…

Maybe some famous people will pen something like the 'Agile Manifesto' for unionized knowledge work, and it will slowly catch on. It could happen (though it would be risky for anyone who isn't self-employed to be an authors)

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#227

Post by DannyBee »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120
DannyBee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically fact free. First, you have the timing wrong. " In filings in May 2017 " IE before a PR and HR crisis or whatever you want to call it. Second, it was solicited, as they were written as a legal response to a legal claim. Third, claiming that expresses a policy preference is silly. Do you believe that criminal defense attorneys express a policy preference that say, murder is okay? If you go and read th…

> you have the timing wrong. " In filings in May 2017 Conceded. Pardon me--cannot edit the original comment. > it was solicited, as they were written as a legal response to a legal claim Do we know these filings were in response to a legal claim? It could have been in response to something more frivolous. (I am having trouble finding the filing.) > Do you believe that criminal defense attorneys express a policy prefe…

"Do we know these filings were in response to a legal claim? It could have been in response to something more frivolous. (I am having trouble finding the filing.)"

Yes, it is in front of proceeding at the NLRB that they have to exhaust before they can file in court.

"Two, when criminal defense attorneys defend a murder suspect, they don't advocate overturning murder statute. There is a wide berth between arguing against the facts and circumstances of a case and arguing for overturning a law."

Oh come now. Every single lawyer worth his salt is going to argue the law should be overturned when it doesn't favor their client. I'm very surprised you are trying to claim otherwise. Even in criminal proceedings there is almost always a "this statute is unconstitutional on its face" argument thrown in, even when that statute is something like "protect children from being run over by cars". This is similarly true in the civil proceedings of the kind we are talking about - just about every regulatory action has arguments about the propriety of existing case law or statutes.

"Three, I've been in senior roles at companies in regulatory deliberations and litigation. Each time, company counsel briefed senior management on the arguments they were preparing. More than once, someone asked if an argument was essential. Once, it was. (It was maintained.) Another time, it wasn't. Concerned about a client relationship getting caught in the cross-fire, the argument was dropped and the case amended."

FWIW: I have been in multiple large companies in that role (for 8+ years), and nobody would ever brief senior management on a claim like this one. It's way too low level.

"When you give a shit about a constituency, you don't argue for overturning their rights."

I'm glad this is all very black and white to you and that you can easily reduce complex situations to quips and feel like it does it justice. I wish i could feel that way. It would actually make life a lot easier.

There are no right answers in these situations, only shitty tradeoffs.

(It's not even as simple as:

Don't make argument, allow/pay out frivolous claim which hurts current constituents.

vs

Make argument, destroy constituent rights )

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#228

Post by h0undawg1 »

mtgx wrote: post #75

No wonder they obliterated "Don't be evil" from the workers' code of conduct. This, yet again, reinforces the idea that people with good values are no longer welcome to work for Google anymore. But some, the same people who LOVE to point out that "Don't be evil" is still forgotten somewhere in the last line of the workers' conduct, will likely remain skeptical that Google is becoming more evil by the month.

What was evil about this?

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#229

Post by pessimizer »

typon wrote: post #90
josephv wrote: post #79

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get. I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior. It's disturbing to see these same anti-organizatio…

Programmers, maybe ones on HN especially, are super conservative and anti-labour for some reason. I don't know the history of Silicon Valley enough to figure out exactly why

Programming historically involved access to expensive equipment and intellectual property, and involved pretty heavy math education. Once the industry professionalized (meaning here that the professional was expected to provide his own qualifications rather than being trained), the previous workforce of largely women was replaced by people drawn from privileged classes. Those people ultimately became management, established a culture, and replicated that culture by hiring people who came from the same backgrounds; so the effect lasted long after programming became far more accessible (although still requiring large amounts of leisure time.)

Those groups of people from a non-indigenous, non-minority, never-enslaved, non-female background have always been conservative, consisting largely of 1) white men, and 2) immigrant professionals (generally drawn from more privileged groups in their country of origin and statistically more conservative than the average for their country of origin.)

These same demographics, no matter what profession they're in, are conservative. Their world has generally treated them well, and changes in their world are dangerous for them. If the world were to change for the better (for them), they imagine themselves, or somebody who looks like them, making those changes.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#230

Post by asdff »

mehrdadn wrote: post #17
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. I think it shows precisely what's going on in every MegaCorp in the US: Woke Capitalism. Everything is calculated to maximize profit, including campaigning, branding, and marketing to say that you're NOT all about profit. In this case, both the saying of soothing things to the people who are complaining, AND lobbying the government to make those complaints less effective in the future are in line with…

What could a company like Google do to convince you that this isn't the case, if it truly isn't the way you imagine for that company? Because it sounds like there isn't anything.

Not retaliating at workers. Not being in the business of more efficient murder. Not paying smart people a lot of money to ensure as little profit possible goes towards public use.
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