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Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

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Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#151

Post by pteredactyl »

tomnipotent wrote: post #137
xnxn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been over this, Jeff. https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1172279395035308032 https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1172349293216186368

Pretty sure I just lost most of my faith in my fellow liberal techies after reading these responses. It's amazing how little substance their is to the responses, and how much outrage and throwing out of the word "privilege" there is. When did being outraged become a valid stance, without having to back it up with any reason position?

We lost God. Gained liberal democrat outrage.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#152

Post by cbanek »

download13 wrote: post #31
comex wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retaliating against someone for trying to unionize is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act, as well as New York state law (Kickstarter is headquartered in New York) – hence the need for a cover story.

Yeah, but for legal purposes it doesn't matter if "everyone knows" about the real reasons. The company gets to have it both ways. Send a message that unionization isn't tolerated, while saying in court that unionization had nothing to do with the firings.

You are so right and it's quite Machiavellian. Specifically, chapter 18 - "In what way princes should keep their word".

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#153

Post by cbanek »

paulddraper wrote: post #130
jaredklewis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, Jan didn’t threaten to fire them. She simply asserted that unionization would cause them they would lose their jobs because Dunder Mifflin would close down the branch if the workers unionized, as apparently had happened at another branch. So not advocating that we use The Office (a sitcom) as a reference for American labor law, but I think Jan’s statements might be permissible. As long as her reasoning is that…

That's a pretty fine line to draw: "Due to increased costs (read: unions), we're reducing/eliminating employment." "Due to decreased productivity (read: FMLA), we're reducing/eliminating employment." I guess it works. I don't really understand this stuff.

"You don't look like us" - Illegal.

"We don't think you fit in with our culture" - Legal.

I think this is why any crime where the intention is part of it is so hard to prove, like discrimination, hate crimes, etc.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#154

Post by DoreenMichele »

paulddraper wrote: post #130
jaredklewis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, Jan didn’t threaten to fire them. She simply asserted that unionization would cause them they would lose their jobs because Dunder Mifflin would close down the branch if the workers unionized, as apparently had happened at another branch. So not advocating that we use The Office (a sitcom) as a reference for American labor law, but I think Jan’s statements might be permissible. As long as her reasoning is that…

That's a pretty fine line to draw: "Due to increased costs (read: unions), we're reducing/eliminating employment." "Due to decreased productivity (read: FMLA), we're reducing/eliminating employment." I guess it works. I don't really understand this stuff.

As someone who worked in insurance, legal decisions seem to live and die by fine distinctions. The difference between a payable claim and an unpayable claim could be a single word.

As they say: The devil is in the details.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#155

Post by scarmig »

dehrmann wrote: post #145
SamReidHughes wrote: post #3

Well that is gangsta. It's an unlikely coincidence that these three people had poor performance with such timing that led to firing in the same week or two. You gotta space out the firings to give the cover story more plausibility.

Regarding Moore, > The company told staff that Moore had been on a performance improvement plan He'd apparently been at Kickstarter for six years. Being on a PIP after that long seems unusual. And Redwine, > But current and former employees with knowledge of the firing told me that management didn’t establish a “performance improvement plan” for Redwine, despite her being told she would have one. Not quite sure how t…

I've known several people at different companies who departed because of performance reasons.

Every one of them got a PIP. The PIP was pretty much always pro forma, but I've never heard of a company letting someone go without a PIP, unless there's active malfeasance involved.

Rookie move on Kickstarter's part, regardless. Even if Redwine had basically decided to stop working, it's probably less costly in reputational damage and legal risks to go through the usual process and give them a couple months pay. I'm pretty sure if Kickstarter had a relationship with a good union busting firm, they would have handled this in a much less damaging way.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#156

Post by cannonedhamster »

nickjj wrote: post #97
shakezula wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That type of inefficiency isn’t exclusive to unions, you realize that right? You realize that maybe there were other factors involved that caused the bridge to take that long? You realize that construction is often a very sequential process that can block other steps from being completed until the first is done? Every part of your comment is completely anecdotal and could be due to myriad other factors. > associate u…

> Sounds like 30+ years of anti-union propaganda working its charm. I dunno. I see it all over the place. Look at the US government. Most of the govt. run customer facing services are abysmal when it comes to efficiency (DMV, etc.). From my quick Googling the DMV is unionized. It doesn't end at the DMV either. I know some types of construction jobs are usually sequential but I don't understand how in any circumstance…

Yeah because Comcast, EA, Verizon, and there are numerous private today constructions crews that aren't unionized and they are all known for great service. Unions have zero impact on quality or speed of work. All unions do is create a group of individuals to balance the power that corporations have. If unions had any real power in the United States, then wages wouldn't have failed to rise with the rate of efficiency for the last 50 years. Since Reagan went union busting wages have barely increased for the average worker against inflation. You know who has been getting more money? The corporate owners who have devalued all the public stocks while keeping the private stock for themselves. We don't live in a republic in the US anymore, we live in an oligarchy.

You know the single most efficient medical insurance? Medicare. Government doesn't need to be a bureaucratic mess, but when half of government is literally platformed on making government fail to prove government is broken, it's not really difficult to see why we're in the mess we're in. All I want is us to pay down our deficit instead of kicking the can down the road.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#157

Post by kortilla »

jhall1468 wrote: post #42
pathseeker wrote: post #35

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 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".

Why would you form a union if you are happy with the arrangement with your employer?

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#158

Post by matchbok »

wernercd wrote: post #39
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 don't American's like unions? Unions are a layer of bureaucracy, red tape and an entity that cares more about the Union than anything else. Add to that, as a conservative and right leaning individual, the last thing I want is be forced to donate to left leaning organizations that go against my best interests. Color it for what you will... I think there are cases where Unions do important things. But most of tho…

Well, great. Exactly 0 people are "forced" to pay into a union they don't want to be a part of! If you don't want a union job the solution is simple: don't take that job.

But I guess the numerous benefits you enjoy today because of unions don't matter all.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#159

Post by double0jimb0 »

pteredactyl wrote: post #150
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 you describe is what I've heard summarizes the state of KS. Both sides are entrenched and talking past each other while the actual product and company continue to slide into the gutter. Seems to me both sides would rather plant their flags and signal allegiance to the outside world than come up with a real solution. Kickstarter is on its way out.

Very interesting theory. Virtue signaling instead of solution finding at the company level.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#160

Post by claudeganon »

claudeganon wrote: post #148
Ididntdothis wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes German unions work really well. I think part of it is that after WW2 the whole system was designed to be a market economy with social elements (“soziale Marktwirtschaft “).

And because the Nazis explicitly went after trade unions. Postwar, people understood that preserving democracy in the workplace was an equally important bulwark against the return of fascism. Nazism wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful and horrendous without its business allies (in both Germany and the US), which is why it was important to check their authoritarianism.

Weird to get downvoted for a historical truth. Trade unions had their assets seized and their leaders thrown in concentration camps. But here’s the reference anyway...

“The Trade Union Movement and the Redistribution of Power in Postwar Germany”

Clark Kerr The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 68, No. 4 (Nov., 1954), pp. 535-564

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1881876?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...

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