Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil • Hacker News Board

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#61

Post by fzeroracer » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

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.

Shouldn't you be applying Occam's razor here? Attempting to make a conspiracy out of an attempt to unionize seems like a rather poor argument.

In this case, the employees coming out with this knowledge have everything to lose because they could easily be blacklisted from further jobs. Kickstarter has no reason to not deny their accusations and has everything to gain from it.

If someone is risking a their livelihood to say something like that, then perhaps we should take what they're saying with a larger grain of truth. Otherwise we'd be saying that whistleblowers and the PR arm of a company have exactly the same weight.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#62

Post by CPLX » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

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…

> unproven and completely unsubstantiated

Very little in this world is proven, but this is certainly substantiated.

First off, an on the record first person accusation from an involved party is by itself compelling evidence, secondly, the story has in fact been supported by credible journalistic outlets with multiple sources.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#63

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #51

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'?

Maybe if I was having unrelated problems at my job, me personally, I might consider trying to start a Union so as to make my employer terrified of firing me. I’m saying thus not theoretically, but a buddy just the other day was joking-not-joking about doing that at his job. So who knows?

I think your buddy joking-not-joking about it is slightly different than someone who has worked somewhere for 8 years straight claiming that is exactly what happened to him and two other co-workers. Keep in mind that they are killing their chances of being employed by any other union-shy workplace which is 'most of tech'. So there is significant downside to this. Also note that he refused to sign an NDA that would have prohibited him to talk about it and which would have put money in his pocket, so there is some evidence that this person - by his own claims - is rather principled.

And then there is that other article linked in this thread which provides a ton more circumstantial evidence.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#64

Post by fzeroracer » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #55

This article was posted to HN yesterday or maybe the day before: https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/kickstarter-turmoil-uni... It looks like unionization wasn't the only point of contention. In particular, a segment of Kickstarter's workforce conflicted with company leadership over an "Always Punch Nazis" comic book kickstarter project apparently made in reference to violence against Richard Spencer. Employees pres…

Alternately, doesn't this mean Kickstarter censored satirical content due to a far-right hit piece?

Shouldn't people be decrying censorship at every turn? Because that's exactly what happened in this case when leadership decided to veto the decision and take it down.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#65

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #49

jacquesm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

> So we wait for all the information before making judgements.

There is absolutely zero chance that 'all the information' will ever come out. The people directly affected will have nothing to lose, the remainder will be afraid for their jobs and will not talk or will only talk off the record. The company will claim it was nothing of the sort. And yet, magically, no union will ever be formed.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#66

Post by deogeo » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #60

deogeo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring for the moment the non-salary benefits of a union: Look at it this way - aren't corporate profits quite high already? Yet they still merge and consolidate and cut costs and try to increase them further. Why should labor not do the same? Also, this seems like a reasonable question (with source for the claim!), that no doubt many others would share. I don't think the downvotes are warranted.

>Look at it this way - aren't corporate profits quite high already? Are they? What do you consider high?

Compared to labor, they are: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

But that's besides the point - regardless of how high their profits are, they try to increase them further. Unlike labor, they're not asked to justify this by showing that their board members and shareholders live in poverty.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#67

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

rolltiide wrote: post #58

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 that 3 of the 435 fired Uber engineers had considered the concept of unionizing as its a general topic now? With that perspective I think its highly probable of such firings happening in a short time span

Did any of them step forward with those claims?

Are the numbers here 'Kickstarter fired 435 people and 3 of them claimed they were trying to unionize'?

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#68

Post by manfredo » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

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…

I don't think the perspectives on unionization in tech are representative of the perspectives of unionization in other industries. Unionization's primary purpose is to increase the price of labor (in the form of wages, or in the form of increased benefits) by constricting supply. The going rate for job Y is $X, but if everyone that does job Y goes on strike and demands $X + $N then they can get higher wages. In tech, though, the demand for labor is already considerably higher than the supply. In my experience, tech unions are not concerned with traditional union topics (working hours, safety, etc.) but instead fall into two camps:

* People that see the use of H1Bs as suppressing wages for American tech workers. This camp is often broadly against immigration in general, and is more closely aligned with the right. You won't encounter many of these in the Bay Area, but they do exist and are more prevalent in other parts of the country.

* People who want to make tech companies even more progressive, often wanting more aggressive diversity representation OKRs and abolishing interviews. Some good ideas are present here (like ending forced arbitration) but this camp is often adverse to meritocracy which runs contrary to the ethics of many, if not most, tech workers.

Really, software development and tech are fantastic jobs that pay well and have effectively zero risk of injury. Hours can be difficult in specific segments (e.g. Game Dev) but compensation as a function of work life balance is far better than the overwhelming majority of other industries.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#69

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #56

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? I don't know. What are the chances? Did anyone verify their stories?

Yes, somebody did. But of course nobody will come out with their name attached that still has a job to lose.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#70

Post by nickjj » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 8:46 PM UTC

I know close to nothing about unions or the KS story but I am from the US and myself along with almost everyone I know tend to associate unions with extreme wasting of resources. This is coming at it from a spectator's point of view (ie. not a union worker / not a unionized business owner).

For example, I've witnessed an overpass taking over 2 years to finish (it was blocked off / limited access / under construction the whole time) which involved fixing about 30 feet of road from a unionized crew. Every time workers were on the site it looked really inefficient. Over a dozen people there, but half of them were standing around on their phones, etc.. I've seen countless examples of this over my life time living in the US.

If I were a company I would be terrified that such inefficiencies are protected by a union. Personally I wouldn't fire anyone due to trying to organize one but can someone more knowledgeable in this area explain how a unionized workforce benefits both employees and the business hiring them?