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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#121

Post by karatestomp »

echelon wrote: post #3

I really don't understand this. A career in software is one of the most pampered and lucrative ones I can think of. Due to the shortage of software engineers, we can go anywhere and get a job instantly. The only downside I can think of is ageism, but then again, I have colleagues in their 50s and 60s where I work. But I suppose this isn't universal. (I'm in Atlanta and we have a lot of older workers. Age doesn't seem…

Well, for one thing, the good times won't last forever. Now's the time to prepare for the bad—it's much harder to organize when you're weak.

For another, despite our compensation we're still much weaker at the bargaining table, individually, than our employers. See how casually so many of them reject applicants just to make sure "false positives" don't get through the hiring pipeline. I'm not saying they shouldn't do that—it's not my point—but it's definitely a sign of who's setting the terms of these interactions, and where the power is. And it'd be incredibly unusual if that weren't the case, as the overwhelming norm is for employers to have a huge advantage in labor negotiations versus individual workers, even if circumstances are currently such that those workers are paid a lot of money.

And then, software development and related jobs are not all at FAANG, or even close to that. Many of those working in software aren't negotiating, individually, from a position even a little better than a "normal" office worker. Probably most, in fact. There's a whole world of software developers out there beyond SV, Seattle, and New York—the average state of a worker in our industry, even just in the US, is probably much closer to the norm outside those places than in them.

It's also a proven avenue for putting a stop to all sorts of abuses that exist due to the uneven power of workers and employers, not just direct compensation. Lots of non-California workers in tech are under badly disadvantageous employment agreements, but without working collectively, either through unions or government, against them, they're so common that resisting them carries high individual risk and a low chance of benefiting anyone else who's in an even worse position to resist them. That flexibility to work or create our own businesses you bring up? Yeah, that could be assured for non-California, non-public-figure-rockstar developers, too, through union negotiations.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#122

Post by commandlinefan »

kirstenbirgit wrote: post #15

What's the benefit of being in a union for highly specialized tech workers that are very in demand?

> very in demand

Who, exactly, is highly in demand? There was a post on here last week from somebody who had gone on, I think, 40+ in-person interviews and hadn’t gotten a single offer. It’s well established that experience actually works against you in this profession; you can end up being too old long before you hit retirement age. Influential hiring authority Aline Lerner argues that people with Master’s degrees should be rejected in favor of those with just Bachelor’s degrees; education can work against you, too. There’s an unprecedented market for 30-year-old developers with specific education and experience; if you’re anybody else, you would have been better off getting a business degree. To paraphrase Bane, “Do you feel in demand”?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#123

Post by claudiawerner »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #83
kleer001 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming all of the risk is useful. I've never seen a multi-millionaire, let alone a billionaire actually take the cost of failure on personally. Risk externalization is the theme of the era.

I think you may be misunderstanding - "risk" here is a financial thing, not a personal risk of being tossed on the street. If someone is worth $10 billion and will lose $2 billion if their company fails, that's still a lot of risk being covered, even though it won't really change their life to only have $8 billion.

Doesn't that mean that all the employees taken on a much greater personal risk? Personal risk seems to have higher stakes than financial risk - so it's unclear why financial risk is so prized. When you lose $2 billion because your company fails, workers are thrown out onto the streets. What makes the $2 billion risk more valuable than peoples' livelihoods?

I'd rather be a multi-billionaire who loses $2 billion than a mid-level worker who loses their job (and for a proper comparison you'd have to aggregate all the trouble caused by all the job losses the closing of the company has caused), especially in a country with a smaller social safety net. That alone tells me enough about the value of this "risk" supposedly so greatly undertaken by the owners to entitle them to perpetual gains on it.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#124

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

dv_dt wrote: post #46
exabrial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody at kickstarter is living a wretched existence.

Do they have to live a wretched existence? Exactly how wretched does it have to be to allow them the ability to organize. Or perhaps they are justified to want a better share of the value created at kickstarter by their labor.

The quote at the top of the comment chain is about living a wretched existence. Don't get me wrong, it's totally fine to form a union on the principle of "we're doing okay but we want more stuff", businesspeople are allowed to try and get richer with no higher principle in mind. But it's dishonest to pretend that it inherits some kind of inherent moral weight from the traditional labor movement.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#125

Post by azinman2 »

jdkee wrote: post #100
_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

Millions of people across the U.S. benefit from collective bargaining, such as increased wages, health benefits and retirement security, yet one anecdotal off-topic post gets upvoted.

Probably because it resonates as a real problem despite the upsides.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#126

Post by lewilewilewi »

tqi wrote: post #84
paxys wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top earning actors and athletes in the country all have strong union representation, but for some reason it's software engineers who think "nah we are too well paid".

Professional athletes in the US need unions because the leagues are granted a legal monopoly. AFAIK most European soccer professionals (where there is more options and competition between leagues) do not have player unions / Collective Bargaining Agreements.

You mean like the PFA [1] who are the oldest professional sportsmans union in the world?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Footballers'_Asso...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#127

Post by wellthisisgreat »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #89
_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

You Do know that there's more than 1 way to set up a union, right? There are such things as professional unions (think old European guilds) that also enforce competency and much more.

somehow I seriously doubt the people from that article will add any competency laws or requirements to the workers to their union at all.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#128

Post by mempko »

umvi wrote: post #105
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just formed a company back in December. Super easy to set up an LLC, C or S Corp. But I wanted it to be a worker co-op like Mondragon. And there's no real guidance or help. Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. And trying to do it right from the ground up is high impossible. As a obligatory comment: are there any other in the HN-sphere that focuses on worker cooperative…

> Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. Democracy is a horribly inefficient system of government. Its only redeeming quality is that it seems effective at (so far) deterring tyranny and abuse of power. However, like I said, it's horribly inefficient. Changes that are easy to make under a dictatorship can be extremely hard to make under a democracy. Not exactly a quality y…

Democracy is also a system that produces BETTER decisions. Sure tyranny can make decisions "efficiently" but that's not that great when those decisions are terrible.

Democracy: Fewer macro, more micro, better decisions

Command-Control: More macro, fewer micro, terrible decisions.

EDIT: Another way to think of democracy is "distributed decision making" vs command-control which is "centralized decision making". When I talk about democracy, I mean distributed decision making.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#129

Post by Joeri »

zchrykng wrote: post #42

Is Kickstarter in a right-to-work state? Because if not, 46 people are forcing 37 to support a union that they might not agree with, which is distasteful in the extreme.

Why does it work that way in the U.S.? In my country everyone can freely join a union, all union employees can go on strike if the union allows it, and they’re not allowed to prevent others from working. At no point to my knowledge do all workers in a company have to decide to unionize. Why the collective decision?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#130

Post by dudul »

exabrial wrote: post #8

They'd be wise to learn from history: There are many people willing do your job for cheaper, most of them in other countries working for smaller wages.

I think that on the contrary, History has proven over the past few decades that wide outsourcing doesn't work. Companies tried it in the 90's and it was a disaster. This is why software devs in the US can command a salary of $100k+
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