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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

#381
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…

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.

Adam Smith discusses this asymmetry in Wealth of Nations. He basically says both business owners and labor try to organize, but business owners tend to win because it's easier for them to make it illegal for labor to organize.

Edit: This is the passage I was thinking of

"We rarely hear ... of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines ... that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate.... Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen, who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine, of their own accord, to raise the price of their labour.... But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters, upon these occasions, are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which ... generally end in nothing but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders."

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Everyone benefits from a society with high labor costs." False.

> [...]

> The average Chinese is better off than they were 30 years ago.

You were trying to highlight how China has become a much more powerful economy - but you forgot some crucial steps there. As recently as 20 years ago "Made in China" was printed on every cheap thing in America and the populace of China was no better for it, the economy was entirely geared toward export and there was very little international purchasing power available. In the past two decades wages and internal consumption have shot up in China and this has allowed the ascent of the economy, all of the Chinese ports in Africa and Asia and infrastructure investment is being driven by internally generated wealth - that economic power isn't derived from American pocket books.

An export focused economy is very vulnerable to international pressures and it's quite hard for nations or regions in this state to actually fund internal education and business development, it's much more likely that every spare inch of profit margin is held hostage by the importer's majority status and extracted from the county.

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

#383
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…

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.

> 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.

“Entitled” is a term used by elites to describe their lessers seeking to be above their rightful station. It's only ever used to punch down.

Other terms are used for the already powerful seeking to retain power including some that reflect the speaker's perception that it is unjust power involved, but “entitled” just isn't generally used in that direction.

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

#384

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.

Management can "demand" whatever they want, and employees can refuse whatever they want. It's how supply and demand works, and how free markets work. The problems happen when the government interferes in this process. For example, recently Washington State removed the exemption mentally disabled workers have from minimum wage laws. This was hailed as a victory for justice and fairness. The result is those workers can…

Well yeah. Not being able to make ends meet while working is more morally justifyable than not being to make ends meet while unemployed, I guess.

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

#386

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.

Management can "demand" whatever they want, and employees can refuse whatever they want. It's how supply and demand works, and how free markets work. The problems happen when the government interferes in this process. For example, recently Washington State removed the exemption mentally disabled workers have from minimum wage laws. This was hailed as a victory for justice and fairness. The result is those workers can…

"free" markets aren't necessarily "ideal" markets. See concepts like: leverage, cost externalization, etc. The "free" market argument is so tired.

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

#387
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#388
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a difficult time understanding this world view. A worker choosing on their own to work extra to get ahead is called sacrifice, and is one of the things that differentiates people who do enough to get a paycheck and people who get noticed and promoted. Coming up with a way to say someone who outworks you is somehow the bad guy because they make you look bad is exactly the kind of mentality that makes me want no…

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…

For a while MSFT had a labour review that ranked employees, this would elevate high performers and cull out any people on the bottom of the pile - this is a terrible thing.

When you go to work for a company you are producing something and being paid money to do it, generally what you are reimbursed with is well below the value of what you're producing as a developer - your labour is building a product that needs to be marketed, it needs customer support, it needs a lot of things. There is a classical economic ideal that the market will quickly settle into an equilibrium where your labour will be about equivalent to your whole contribution to the revenue of the company - but that's a classicist economic view, more modern takes on the economy agree that a stagnant economy will settle into such a state but that innovation will constantly fight that effect and widen the profit margin, the end result is that most of the companies we techies work in should not be viewed as a zero sum game. Any money that is being reinvested into the company is part of the fruit of your labour and employees shouldn't be motivated internally or by management to see their salaries as a highly constrained resource that they need to compete against fellow employees for to earn.

This is a super unhealthy state for a company to be in for morale and for growth.

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

#389

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.

There's a difference between "entitled" and "self-entitled"; so many people abuse the word.

> There's a difference between "entitled" and "self-entitled"

The former is a superset of the latter and the former term is often used for the latter, as here, where the specific subset being referenced is clear from context.

> so many people abuse the word.

Not particularly; natural language is just subject to more contextual nuance in meaning than most computer code.

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

#390
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Only one data point but this [1] suggests otherwise. It invalidates the idea that the median is in the [1]: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=GOOGLE+INC&job=SOFTWARE+EN...

Google sponsors its H1B employees for green cards. If the goal was to lock in the workforce to pay them less, they wouldn't be doing that.

Most actual H1B abuse happens in companies like Tata and Infosys, that are structured around it.

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