Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by rchaud » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

idontpost wrote: post #177

simion314 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is different then the acting though? Actors have unions that protect their rights but don't affect their salaries AFAIK (maybe they were abused so much that the history if fresh for them still?)

The difference is that actors were treated like shit first. Even the stars. Just look at what they did to Judy Garland, not to mention everyone else on Wizard of Oz. That hasn't happened yet to developers.

Remember this story from not too long ago about getting rid of older workers at IBM?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16648000

Here's a choice quote:

"But, the new documents added, employees had to waive the right to take their age cases to court. Instead, they had to pursue them through private arbitration. What’s more, they had to keep them confidential and pursue them alone. They couldn’t join with other workers to make a case."

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

#262

Post by mbrumlow » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #234

MattyRad wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relations with Google are definitely starting to sour, here are a few recent examples: - IE switches to Chromium engine, Chrome has full clearance to dominate the web. - Questionable actions toward ad-blocking (seen only just yesterday). - Colluding with China to create a blatantly dishonest search engine. - Questionable products (Google Fi, Pixel phone, Google Home, etc, are share their own controversies) - Search r…

A somewhat recent news about Google’s silence on sexual harassment by men at senior levels while paying them big exit packages a few years ago. Logging people in to Chrome automatically and then backing out after heavy backlash. Google tracking Android users’ location and using it even when they have turned it off. Then there’s also an older one — Google’s bypassing of Safari’s privacy protection through default bloc…

By men youean man. And isolated events with individual employees who arguably had alot of power -- given he founded Android -- is a non issue in this argument.

Google or any company has no responsibility or should be required to publicly shame employees who misbehave. And it really is non of your or my business that any of that happened.

The rest of your conserns seem valid though.

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

#263

Post by MattyRad » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #241

MattyRad wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relations with Google are definitely starting to sour, here are a few recent examples: - IE switches to Chromium engine, Chrome has full clearance to dominate the web. - Questionable actions toward ad-blocking (seen only just yesterday). - Colluding with China to create a blatantly dishonest search engine. - Questionable products (Google Fi, Pixel phone, Google Home, etc, are share their own controversies) - Search r…

Search results quality is decreasing (which is just my personal speculation, DDG is usually retrieves less polluted results). My experience is that DDG results are terrible. I try it periodically and never lasts more than a day. Has that changed?

I should clarify, google is rife with visual noise, especially for simple queries. As an example, try googling "how to clean rain gutters" in both search engines. You'll need to scroll half down the page, past "Suggested Clip", past "People also ask", past "Videos", to finally arrive at the 1st search result. DDG also shows videos, but doesn't require scrolling.

EDIT: I forgot about ads because I use an ad blocker! If you don't use an ad-blocker, you'll also have to scroll past a large section of ads.

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

#264

Post by jupp0r » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

Zeklandia wrote: post #255

chrisseaton wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people. Unions fight to support newcomers? Common union tactics such as closed shops and seniority-based pay agreements are deliberately and severely hostile to newcomers. > overperforming workers Only a union supporter could argue that a worker can 'overperform'! Tell them to stop doing so well they're making everyone else look bad!

Overperformance is when a worker overexerts themselves, by working themselves harder or for longer. Overperformance is a problem because it exerts pressure on the other workers to do the same, leading to a runaway effect of increasing expectation for results while workers are left exhausting their bodies and their time, and often their own personal resources, trying to meet that expectation in order to not be fired o…

Are you implying that performance is proportional to hours worked? Research shows that this is not the case for most people and that returns past a certain work/life balance ratio are marginal or negative.

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

#265

Post by rchaud » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #170

zozbot123 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The other side of the coin is that collective bargaining itself makes switching to a different employer or working as a consultant a lot more difficult than if the sector wasn't unionized. Sure, some people will have trouble doing these things anyway, especially at the low…

Thank you. As someone who worked in a union before switching jobs, it is not all rainbows and unicorns like so many people try to present it. In one shop I worked in, I was a truck driver delivering fuel to airplanes. If my truck broke down in any way , even something as stupid as the key got jammed, if I pulled out my leatherman and pulled it free, I could be fired for violating union agreements. Even most of the me…

> Acting like unions are this amazing shining solution with no downsides is pure ignorance.

People are talking about the benefits of unionization in a specific industry in response to the near-automatic narrative that unions are bad.

You gave an example of an absurd regulation in a completely different industry. How does that tie into what collective bargaining in software dev would look like?

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

#266

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #175

pdpi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use an equally contrived example of my own — there's plenty of jurisdictions where arguing something along the lines of "look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it" will get you off the hook on rape charges. Would you still argue that an attorney who makes that argument is merely "advancing the most effective defense of their clients"? Or would you find that conduct reprehensible both for the attorney, and…

> To use an equally contrived example of my own — there's plenty of jurisdictions where arguing something along the lines of "look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it" will get you off the hook on rape charges. Rape is an unusually problematic situation because consensual sex and unconsensual sex produce a lot of the same physical evidence, and it's possible for someone to consent but after the fact have re…

It is not about "making a proposal to make sure these tradoffs don't exist".

Instead it is about morally judging someone for making a morally reprehensible argument.

If there is some country in the world where black people don't have equal rights, and a company uses this as a legal defense for it's behavior, then I am going to judge the company as being full of horrible horrible human beings.

One does not get a free pass for your behavior, just because it is legal. Onr instead should get judged for the horrible person that one is.

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

#267

Post by yters » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #257

chrisseaton wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people. Unions fight to support newcomers? Common union tactics such as closed shops and seniority-based pay agreements are deliberately and severely hostile to newcomers. > overperforming workers Only a union supporter could argue that a worker can 'overperform'! Tell them to stop doing so well they're making everyone else look bad!

Why couldn’t a union created by presumably innovative, disruptive tech workers, invent a better mechanism than seniority-based pay? All of this anti-union rhetoric imagines that unions are inherently stuck in the 19th century and lack imagination.

There's always human nature to wreck a good idea.

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

#268

Post by rchaud » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

getpost wrote: post #155

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 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.

Look up prior posts here about salary negotiation for developers. You'll find that most of the advice and the resulting comments are in the "fuck you, pay me" vein.

When doing day to day work, you and your employer are on the same team. When it comes to negotiating the conditions and compensation for that work, you are 100% on different teams.

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

#269

Post by darawk » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

jackpirate wrote: post #212

hippich wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because all these ideas (regulation, minimum wage, laborisation, etc) protect existing workers and harms lower skilled or newcomers, foreigners, minorities, etc. Many computer professionals still remember how nice it was to be able to get an edge by giving up something (undercut competitors to get the first crucial project in the portfolio, not being judged by your credentials, etc) My prediction - time will pass and…

Because all these ideas (regulation, minimum wage, laborisation, etc) protect existing workers and harms lower skilled or newcomers, foreigners, minorities, etc. I don't understand your point at all. Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people. The standard argument against unions (esp. in the tech sector) is that they harm high-skilled overperforming workers by capping the maximum benefits they can receiv…

> I don't understand your point at all. Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people

They really don't. Unions fight to protect the pay and job security of their existing members. They do not generally try to make it easy to join the profession.

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

#270

Post by rconti » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 7:11 PM UTC

biesnecker wrote: post #157

rconti wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being pro-employee does not necessarily mean being pro-union.

Technically no, but practically it does, so long as massive corporations exist. I think you can argue that with smaller scale business you can work to better employee conditions without collective action, but given the power and resources that a corporation can bring to bear it's hard to imagine effective bettering of employee conditions without collective action.

Most of us have no way of evaluating that. I don't WANT to be in a union, from what I know of them, but I've never worked in one, so I can't say. There's no control group.

My wife has worked the same job in and out of unions. She didn't want a union, it was a drawback for her. Her union job seems okay. Some things are better, some are worse. They've got some absolutely asinine policies that everyone hates that don't change and haven't changed for a decade or more despite the union "power".

Also, her job requires a masters, soon to be a Ph.D, and still pays less than most of tech (though it pays very well).

And of course because PART of the industry is unionized, it is impossible to say to what extent non-union jobs are free-riding on the "benefits" of a union.