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Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

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Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#41

Post by SamReidHughes »

djrogers wrote: post #25

Not a big fan of this headline - it's inflammatory and incomplete. This is one (unproven and completely unsubstantiated) accusation from one side of the story, made in a handful of tweets. Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this: https://twitter.com/kickstarter/status/1172230162588536833 The problem with this type of link on HN is that it's not a 'story' - there's no investigative reporting - heck there's…

What a dysrationalist comment. I'm the last person anybody would call pro-union and I think this has all the smell of union busting.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#42

Post by jhall1468 »

pathseeker wrote: post #35
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

>What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons Pretty good. The type of person looking to form a union in software dev where there isn't one is usually someone very unhappy at the company which as a very high correlation with not performing well (at least in the eyes of their manager).

[Citation needed]

I think you are crossing a sea of assumptions to get to "pretty good".

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#43

Post by jacquesm »

bsamuels wrote: post #37
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

I could definitely a envision a theoretical situation where three poorly performing employees decide to unionize to protect themselves, then eventually get fired for poor performance. Is that what happened? I don't know, but I'm not going to trust two tweets from two parties whose interests are against one another.

Ok, fair enough. Then maybe do a google on this and read some more, see if stuff over and beyond the 'two tweets' is going to sway you that this is retaliation pure and simple.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#44

Post by gtfratteus »

unions23143 wrote: post #9

Aren't Kickstarter salaries quite high already? https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Kickstarter-Salaries-E49199...

Yes, it's likely that the kind of people unhappy with cushy jobs like this are just perpetually sour. It's not surprising they were fired; they are probably a constant drag on company morale.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#45

Post by markbnj »

baron816 wrote: post #18

Why are American companies so afraid of their employees unionizing? Because American unions have a history of creating an adversarial relationship between managers and employees. They’re self serving and have a zero sum game outlook where they try to grab as much as they can from a company. The unions were a major contributor towards the collapse of the American auto industry. European unions differ in that they are…

Why would you expect them not to be? It's a big power shift no matter how you stand on it philosophically. They're probably not reacting much differently from any other entity in history that has had a certain amount of power, and has been forced by some entity with even more heft to give a chunk of it up.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#46

Post by shantly »

pathseeker wrote: post #35
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

>What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons Pretty good. The type of person looking to form a union in software dev where there isn't one is usually someone very unhappy at the company which as a very high correlation with not performing well (at least in the eyes of their manager).

Really? I'd never dream of trying something like that except from a position of strength.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#47

Post by jacquesm »

markbnj wrote: post #40
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

I don't know. Are you saying the odds can be calculated? Presumably it's not impossible, and so it's fair to object to the post on the grounds that it's one-sided and doesn't fairly expose other viewpoints on what happened.

'what are the chances' is a statement of incredulity indicating that the chances are likely to be on the low side which means the writer believes that something else is afoot.

The odds can't be calculated but I see no need for that, on a company the size of Kickstarter the chances of the three people who just happen to be busy trying to get a union organized after many years of otherwise uneventful employment are nil.

In theory pigs can fly, in practice, if you see a pig flying it is usually good practice to check which airborne vehicle they were tossed out of.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#48

Post by jacquesm »

Deimorz wrote: post #32

Slate published an article about this on Thursday that has a lot more information and background: https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/kickstarter-turmoil-uni... Was submitted to HN here, but didn't get much attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20962696

Much better link, suggest replacing mine with this article.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#49

Post by markbnj »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
markbnj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Are you saying the odds can be calculated? Presumably it's not impossible, and so it's fair to object to the post on the grounds that it's one-sided and doesn't fairly expose other viewpoints on what happened.

'what are the chances' is a statement of incredulity indicating that the chances are likely to be on the low side which means the writer believes that something else is afoot. The odds can't be calculated but I see no need for that, on a company the size of Kickstarter the chances of the three people who just happen to be busy trying to get a union organized after many years of otherwise uneventful employment are nil…

I know of no theory predicting porcine aeronautics :). In any case, the point is that it is not impossible that what you consider very unlikely is exactly what happened. So we wait for all the information before making judgements.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#50

Post by Deimorz »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
Deimorz wrote: post #32

Slate published an article about this on Thursday that has a lot more information and background: https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/kickstarter-turmoil-uni... Was submitted to HN here, but didn't get much attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20962696

Much better link, suggest replacing mine with this article.

The tweets are a good follow-up too, since the article only said that sources had told them that Taylor Moore had been fired, so it's good to see his confirmation and additional info from him personally as well.
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