Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 473 posts

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

#301

Post by freedomben »

rchaud wrote: post #265
freedomben wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Great question. Of course unions in software aren't really a widespread thing, so speculating at what they would look like is fraught with all the problems of speculation, but this is what I think of:

Currently at work, I'm more of a "devops" guy but I get into things all over the stack sometimes too. In previous places I've been a "backend" guy that occasionally got into the frontend, etc. I view this as the optimal arrangement: blurry lines of responsibility (so people aren't pigeon-holed), but you can still develop depth and expertise in an area of specialty.

In a world of unions, if it were analogous to my past experience, there could be a "front end" union, a "back end" union, a "dev ops/operations" union, etc. These unions would then draw up lines, much like the "driver" and "mechanic" unions did in my past. Need to change a line of javascript? Talk to a "front end" guy. Tweak a deploy script? Not if the union agreement forbids it.

Those seem like ludicrous thoughts based on where we are now. But I'm sure at one time the idea that a driver can't effect any repairs to the truck, no matter how small, probably seemed ludicrous as well. Yet here we are.

I know I probably sound very anti-union, but to clarify my position, I'm only anti-forced unions. So long as I can opt out of the union if and when I please, I have no qualms. Sadly that is not the case in many places in the United States.

P.S. If I could edit and re-word this line, I would. I think the language is unclear and unnecessarily harsh:

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

I would change that to: "Thinking of unions as all upside with no downside (or vice versa) is an argument from ideology, not one from experience."

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

#302

Post by fixermark »

vips7L wrote: post #225
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Although vips7L is getting downvoted into the gutter, their response is exactly the attitude I observe permeating Silicon Valley that can help explain the lack of interest in collective bargaining.

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

#303

Post by dominotw »

hoaw wrote: post #287
dominotw wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee 100% that if there is a ever a union for IT workers. First ask would be, Ban H1B

No one could really say what the absolute position of a union would be in that question. Unions are membership organizations that work in the interest of current, and to some extent future, members. The rest is politics. A union would have incentive for foreigners to e.g. come to the US, so the US get a larger slice of the market. On the other hand they don't have an interest in those workers e.g. having lesser right…

Do you have an example of such pro immigration labor union?

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

#304

Post by fixermark »

jancsika wrote: post #211
rconti wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. And due to the high demand of our skills, we're able to effectively negotiate salaries and comp in a way that at least lets us think we're doing better than average (see: salary transparency, or lack thereof). Plus, we're not a group generally known to like more layers of bureaucracy.

> And due to the high demand of our skills, we're able to effectively negotiate salaries and comp in a way that at least lets us think we're doing better than average (see: salary transparency, or lack thereof). So even with a history of Silicon Valley playing tricks to suppress what developers get paid[1], the typical HN reader is humdrum about salary because it's "better than average?" I have a hard time believing…

> So even with a history of Silicon Valley playing tricks to suppress what developers get paid[1], the typical HN reader is humdrum about salary because it's "better than average?" I have a hard time believing that.

Yes, because the "pay suppression's" effect was to knock people making six-figure salaries down to six-figure salaries, on average. It actually had very little observable negative effect.

(Note that if you go back to the original lawsuits, they were regarding gentlemen's agreements around headhunting. Given that SV's default attitude is "individuals are responsible for themselves," an agreement against headhunting isn't interesting---if an employee is dissatisfied, they know where the competition is and who to talk to about changing companies. If anything, there's a weak positive to an anti-headhunting agreement for employees at the companies in question: it was one fewer recruiter squads pumping spam into an employee's inbox).

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

#305

Post by fixermark »

Dangeranger wrote: post #191
idontpost wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You may want to think back just 25 years to the early to mid-nineties when developers where considered “code monkeys” who couldn’t think past their current module and needed “business analysts” to write requirements for them. It wasn’t slavery by any stretch, but working in programming was akin to working in “IT” and thought of as a department full of weird nerds who cost the company money.

Correct, but perhaps unions didn't arise from that because the model failed---that era of Silicon Valley died in the dot-com bust.

The second generation of dot-coms that succeeded centered developers as domain experts and essential to company survival (broadly-speaking; there is certainly variance).

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

#306

Post by bunnycorn »

wasdfff wrote: post #158
bmj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder at what point working for Google will lose its shine, and their hiring pace will drop off.

People make a living building missiles payed for with public money that blow up schoolbusses across the world just to put their own children in a better school district. When people get a decent paycheck no one thinks about how much that dollar cost.

If you think your country commits such acts of war crimes, then you should flee your country today.

If you are not building the missiles, you are paying taxes that go to buy those missiles to blow up school buses.

As an Electrical Engineer, I would be glad to help my country or the allies of my country to build missiles to help in the war effort.

If we don't help, we will end up with barbarians blowing up our neighbourhood.

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

#307

Post by fixermark »

Apocryphon wrote: post #192
idontpost wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tell it to the workers in the video game industry.

Videogames, in particular, should be a fascinating case study in lack of unionization.

I assume it's because there's always another batch of fresh-out-of-college young people willing to throw their bodies onto that grindstone that we haven't yet seen successful unionization in that space?

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

#308

Post by hippich »

scottlocklin wrote: post #297
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 Classic retcon argument, which sums up why we can't have nice things any more. Don't unionize it might hurt foreigners or minorities! Almost as good as Hillary Clinton's observation that breaking up the big banks won't end sexism or racism. So like ... why b…

Not talking about some abstract ideas. Me personally, as a foreigner, with an unrelated degree, with low language skills, shaky immigration status, flexibility to pick where to give up something to get a job benefited tremendously.

To put it another way - being able to allow being exploited allowed me to secure a better future. Without this ability, I would unlikely to have a life as good as I have it now.

Today I am in the position where labor union, some mandatory certification, would be a benefit to me. But I do remember where I started and would hate the idea of having barriers to get into this job. But my kids, or grandkids, if they will be in IT, probably forget these hurdles and will happily vote for regulation/laborisation/certification/etc.

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

#309

Post by gcb0 »

Aunche wrote: post #116
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…

The difference is that software engineers, especially those at Google, have high social mobility and are well educated. I think that unions are inefficient, but I'm sympathetic towards or even support most of them because those workers don't have a better option. Googlers just come off as entitled. They should be intelligent enough to acknowledge when they're making clickbaity populist arguments that misrepresent com…

let me try to help you fill the data you assumed with concrete examples.

search H1b applications for google and other companies. you will see google hires with 60-100k salaries.

being stuck for 10yrs on the lowest end of our category pay is very far from "high social mobility"

Post reply on HN