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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

#351

Post by hoaw »

chrisseaton wrote: post #340
hoaw wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you have two employees. One is smarter than the other. That employee will work relatively hard and deliver constant results. The other will take a big chance and work everything they have for a year. Say the chance of them performing better than the smarter employee is 50%. So measured over one year they essentially perform as well, but over three years the smarter employee wins since the other employee can't kee…

You should be able to see all this as a manager and talk to your people about it. Why does a union need to get involved?

That is assuming there aren't also less smart managers who have short term interests of showing swift progress until the project collapses. Management will in best case take a long term interest in the company. They won't take a long term interest in employees. Certainly not employees who doesn't seem to be performing. That is what unions are for. To represent the employees concerns about the future.

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

#352

Post by noir_lord »

lrem wrote: post #331
Aunche wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google, while known for software engineering, employs also people in other professions: - salespeople, - tech support, - cooks, - childcare providers, - all kind of office support folk, - data entry, hmmm, technicians? - probably many more I can't think of. Not all of them can have it as nice as we do.

> Not all of them can have it as nice as we do.

As nice as we do right now for a subset.

You know who companies spend a lot of time and resources trying to replace (even when it doesn't make sense)...their highest paid employees (that aren't executives, they earn their money! /s).

We get away with what we do because the number of (competent) programmers has lagged the demand for programmers since I was a kid back in the 80's.

It won't last.

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

#353

Post by aquadrop »

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…

You need antitrust laws to work not unions, when SV companies had secret agreement.

And for 2 - there's app for that, but I don't think the statement is generally true.

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

#354

Post by scottlocklin »

hippich wrote: post #345
hoaw wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a particularly good idea to build something on survivorship bias. For everyone who got into computers and found a booming industry there were people who were into something else which didn't boom, or never got he chance to be into something in the first place. There are talented people who should but can't get into the tech job market, working lowly IT jobs or in other ways aren't doing so well. Undue regula…

I agree with that, where I got a life chance someone else probably did not get a pay raise or got fired. Now the question is what is fairer, can it be more than zero-sum game, and is there a set of regulations that will make everyone benefit.

Everyone benefits from a society with high labor costs. Except maybe short term looting interests of top tier capitalists. Even Henry Ford understood this.

High labor costs are why people want to live in the US in the first place; it sure ain't the food or the beautiful architecture.

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

#355

Post by Zombiethrowaway »

Aunche wrote: post #349
Itaxpica wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how people only ever use "entitled" to describe labor demanding better treatment from management, but never to describe management demanding that labor do more for less.

Every time an Googler has a minor complaint about something that is miles away from their area of expertise expertise, it blows up to the front page of Hacker News. That's what I find entitled. They can't accept that one of the largest companies in the world is not going to bend to the wills. This happened with the Damore memo or project Maven, so they feed misleading information to the media to get populist pressure…

>Every time [...] it blows up [... on] Hacker News.

Or only every time you hear about it?

Yes, employees are fighting for their wills. What's wrong with that? If you don't fight you don't get anything

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

#356

Post by billhathaway »

lrem wrote: post #331
Aunche wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google, while known for software engineering, employs also people in other professions: - salespeople, - tech support, - cooks, - childcare providers, - all kind of office support folk, - data entry, hmmm, technicians? - probably many more I can't think of. Not all of them can have it as nice as we do.

Almost all the cooks/childcare providers, office support, etc are contractors not employees. A significant amount of SWE and other technical roles are contractors as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/alphabet-google-employed-mor...

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

#357

Post by manifestsilence »

mbostleman wrote: post #327
manifestsilence wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counter perspective to this: what is a company? Is it not a group of people organized with a central purpose? So to discourage or ban other forms of organizing that may overlap this organization is actually the compromise of principles in this case. A union is just another group of people making an agreement together. The difference is, the company is organized by, and empowers, the person at the top. The union is…

Yes, a company is a group of people organized with a central purpose. However, companies are not allowed to coordinate with each other to fix pricing or availability or other terms. Nor are they allowed to take actions that shut non-coordinating companies out of the market. I may be wrong, but it is my understanding that unions do not have these constraints and, in fact, the reason they are even legal is due to statu…

What you say about unions having fewer constraints is interesting. I think it's important that both sides be made to play fair in such things, and the laws could use a review. I just think in principle unions are important in certain industries due to the structure of the industries themselves. Especially ones with a centralized nature, such as trains, electricity, cable TV, and fossil fuels. That unions are important in these areas is shown by them having a longer, stronger history of such.

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

#358

Post by iamdave »

mbrumlow wrote: post #343
fixermark wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a shareholder at Google, it is absolutely one's business whether the company is paying hush money to make personnel problems go away.

I don't think being a shareholder gives you such rights. Even so, the guy in question probably had more shares than you thus trumps your desire to be a busy body. Lets see you walk on the google campus and demand to see who has been reprimanded recently to some random manager. As you are dragged off the campus yelling "but but but I am a shareholder....." But beyond that it is more likely he had a exit plan under whi…

I don't think being a shareholder gives you such rights.

Doesn't the state of California actually allow vested shareholders to inspect certain financial records and other inspection rights? Wouldn't this include the records of finances marked for distribution from a legal settlement or otherwise?

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

#359

Post by firstplacelast »

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…

If those at Google are truly top-tier talent (which I think many are) and if they work in an industry and for a company that is all about disruption, why is this even a valid mentality?

"This thing sucks, so let's just do business as usual." If they are truly talented disruptors, their mentality would be "this thing sucks, we can make it better and bring it into the 21st century."

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

#360

Post by briandear »

scottlocklin wrote: post #354
hippich wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with that, where I got a life chance someone else probably did not get a pay raise or got fired. Now the question is what is fairer, can it be more than zero-sum game, and is there a set of regulations that will make everyone benefit.

Everyone benefits from a society with high labor costs. Except maybe short term looting interests of top tier capitalists. Even Henry Ford understood this. High labor costs are why people want to live in the US in the first place; it sure ain't the food or the beautiful architecture.

> Everyone benefits from a society with high labor costs.

False. China wouldn’t have grown to be such a powerful economy if their labor costs were high. The average Chinese is better off than they were 30 years ago.

As far as why people want to live in America? That one is easy: opportunity. Try to start a business in India. Now, try to start that same business in the US. That diff is why people want to be in America. A narrow example, but very illustrative. France has higher labor costs than the US as a percentage of revenues, but the US consulate in Gaungzhou had lines around the block for immigrant visas while the French consulate does not. Switzerland has higher labor costs than the US, but their consulate in Bogota is practically empty, while the US consulate is swamped. It isn’t the labor costs, it’s the opportunity.

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