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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#591

Post by skybrian »

zpallin wrote: post #376
calderarrow wrote: post #235

Coming from a public accounting background, I’ve seen a variety of businesses. Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without, which makes sense, as unions are neither inherently good nor bad. They are a tool which can change the power dynamic and incentive structure of workers and employers throughout an organization, but there is nothing inherent about having a union t…

> Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy. The only type of "well run, ethical companies" where unions are redundant are worker-owned cooperatives . Otherwise, an employer, regardless of how ethical they are, can never replicate the most critical aspect of unions: collective bargaining rights . Sure, an…

Collective bargaining is one way to do better for yourself but the other is to change jobs and negotiate for better pay and conditions as part of the hiring process.

This has other advantages too, like meeting new people and learning new things.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#592

Post by kerkeslager »

hello_moto wrote: post #523
kerkeslager wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the workers' perspective, why should we care exactly? That sounds like a you problem. If you aren't able to pay your workers, I'm not sure why you think you shouldn't just go out of business. People aren't obligated to work for substandard wages so you can get rich. I certainly think that there are a lot of ways in which the playing field needs to be evened between small and big companies, so that the playing fi…

I think businesses are able to pay their workers, just not absurd amount of money that FAANG pays their respective workers. We're talking about 85k vs 200k for junior engineers here and probably 150k vs 500k for senior engineers. Are you suggesting that small businesses should just die? > I certainly think that there are a lot of ways in which the playing field needs to be evened between small and big companies, so t…

> I think businesses are able to pay their workers, just not absurd amount of money that FAANG pays their respective workers.

If the lower amount is reasonable and people are willing to work for it, then there isn't a problem. But you said, "FAANG just shoot everybody expectation to the roof and non-FAANG is having hard time to compete in salary (sure, there are some exception but they are exceptions)." So it sounds like you think people aren't willing to work for the lower wage.

Given the numbers you're proposing, I think you may have a wrong impression about what engineers are being paid, both inside and outside of FAANG.

The salaries you're quoting might be true for the bay area, but that's because of the absurd cost of living there. Those numbers are certainly not accurate for the entire US or for the world. FAANG workers are paid that in the bay area, because that's what their skillsets are worth when you adjust for the bay area's cost of living. And if you make the decision to put your startup in the bay area, it's completely unreasonable of you to expect your highly-skilled workers to live in slums because you couldn't locate your business in a place where you can pay to support the cost of living. Maybe that means your startup fails, but that's on you: you're the one who came up with that crappy business plan, and it's not up to workers to prop up your crappy business plan by working for substandard wages.

> Are you suggesting that small businesses should just die?

Ugh. Don't ignore half of what I said. If a business can't pay their workers the business should die, yes. But there are a lot of small businesses that seem capable of paying their workers, so I'm not sure why you think this is an undue burden, and I'm certainly not saying that those small businesses should die.

Again, why do you think that workers should prop up your insolvent business by accepting substandard pay? Pay fair wages or GTFO.

Whatever unfairness you think exists in competition between small and large businesses, exists tenfold between employees and employers. If small businesses are underprivileged, crapping on workers who are even more underprivileged is not the solution to that problem.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#593

Post by carapace »

username90 wrote: post #560
carapace wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're all trotting out anecdotes... I knew a guy who came to work at Google and didn't get a laptop for two weeks. No unions were involved.

That is not the norm though, typically everyone gets their laptop together in a big room the first hours of orientation. You can even request a new laptop and get it within a couple of hours, so if the person didn't get a laptop their first day something must have gone very wrong somewhere...

Yeah, you're right. It was unusual.

Thinking about it, this anecdote isn't a great counter-example to systemic foolishness after all, d'oh!

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#594

Post by Seenso »

Bedon292 wrote: post #551
Seenso wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Not necessarily. I'd imagine that a union could negotiate its pay-scales any way it likes, which could take into acc…

While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150? I think people will have a hard time with that. I feel people will always want more money for performing better, or get incentivised to perform at the exact right level of that compensation and not more. I am curi…

> While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150?

I think that one key aspect of your comment is that you're taking about a 10x. Which can be generalized into a question: should a solution be rejected if it leaves a well-off minority less well-off than they are now, regardless of how much good it may do otherwise?

I, personally, think the answer to that general question is no. That answer may be hard to swallow if you're part of that well-off minority, but I don't think that changes the truth of the matter.

However, that doesn't mean that a union would or should force that guy to take a pay cut.

> I feel people will always want more money for performing better, or get incentivised to perform at the exact right level of that compensation and not more. I am curious what other people think on this.

I feel that people will always want more money regardless. I also feel that compensation is actually a poor motivator for performance. I think the real motivators for performance are internal factors (such as a desire to improve oneself, to avoid annoyance with badly made things, or to be challenged rather than bored).

Personally, I think once you make enough money, the extra compensation is more a form of recognition than anything else. Recognition doesn't have to be in the form of money, it's just that a souless corporation only cares about money, so money is the only way you can extract recognition from it.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#595

Post by ken »

whatshisface wrote: post #522
totaldude87 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the tech people/artists working on gaming industry , Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize". So far , the medium.com has been the "systematic problems reporting tool" for tech and that just generates the views and small changes.. In the past decade, i hate to see that the word "unionizing" in itself has become a bad word…

> Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize" Why wouldn't the same employees that are setting Uber's culture set the union culture? The union is a collective bargaining unit that acts on behalf of the workers, not the most moral and upstanding workers, or the most progressive workers, or the workers that represent you personally.

Sexist/racist people don’t show up to union meetings and volunteer for union committees to push sexist/racist policies.

It’s not like national politics where it’s a prestigious and high paying job, and corporations are throwing a ton of money behind candidates.

Also, unions are usually not employer-specific. No matter how many jerks you have at one company, they can’t overpower all the voting members at all the other companies.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#596

Post by hoorayimhelping »

eropple wrote: post #464
yibg wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective b…

> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech does not meaningfully or significantly adhere to any ethos of meritocracy; it is exactly as political as anything else. The part that really melts your brain is when you realize that the "meritocracy" myth is peddled so the people who don't realize they're bad at…

Sports is about the farthest thing from a meritocracy you can get. Only 25 NBA players in the history of the league have been below 5 foot 9 (175cm) [1]

Professional athletes are genetic freaks first and foremost - look at the dropoff from college football players to professional players. It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability. The absolute worst NFL team in history would decimate the best college team in history just because of the difference in size, speed, and strength of the people on the professional team.

The NFL uses the standing vertical jump as a test of athletic ability because it's one of the only tests that can't be trained. No matter how much stronger or more explosive you get, your standing vertical jump pretty much stays the same. And guess what, people who make it in the NFL are the ones with the highest standing vertical jump.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_Na...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#597

Post by duxup »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #587
duxup wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Athletic unions are generally there because the top leagues are monolithic, there aren't other places to go with similar compensation. It's sort of a different playing field.

Okay, so you have 2 options to make dollar money as an engineer: Google & Facebook. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon pay well, but 10-20% less for the same level. There's a handful of others that will pay about 20-40% less. The average startup is paying 40-70% less. And, sure, you'll always run into some startup that's paying one or two engineers a million dollars. Stephon Marbury made more money when he left the NBA to…

I don't think those options are the only ones and I think your numbers are dramatically far off for everything.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#598

Post by xkemp »

thu2111 wrote: post #563
ksr_throwaway wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's accurate, though the "Always Punch Nazis" controversy was just the tip of the iceberg. Employees were being treated like enemies by some in upper management. Edit: I've been rate limited by HN mods (thanks!), so not replying on this account anymore. All the best!

The article is ambiguous, but I guess those organising the union were taking the side of leaving the project up? Or is the union demanding total freedom of speech in the terms of service? I'm guessing not. Doesn't that bother you, at least a little bit? How can whether or not to leave up "always punch nazis" be the union's signature issue? Unions are meant to fight for the common man against the elites. alwayspunchna…

[flagged]

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#600

Post by eropple »

scarface74 wrote: post #567
eropple wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech does not meaningfully or significantly adhere to any ethos of meritocracy; it is exactly as political as anything else. The part that really melts your brain is when you realize that the "meritocracy" myth is peddled so the people who don't realize they're bad at…

So do all tech companies have legal monopoly where they share revenues and where you have to enter a draft to get a job? Sports leagues have nothing to do with how most companies operate.

Of course there's no monopoly. But tech companies are pretty happy to collude, both at an executive level (we've had court cases about this) and at the memetic "this is what we think about management" one, in order to work against workers' interests. We, too, are allowed to work together to combat this.

Wage suppression, limiting our ability to grow and expand into different areas, and controlling the ability to exert control over what the work we do is used for--these are reasons to unionize.

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