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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#821

Post by erikpukinskis »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #369
jaredtn wrote: post #221

I would love to understand the dynamic better, so please correct me here or chime in. Tech is has one of the best combinations of (lucrative + meritocratic) I've seen. Fields that pay similarly or better (law, medicine, investment banking) require either significant time-consuming credentials or significant time investment as an underlying (like IB analyst). The interview process does require intensive preparation to…

seems "lucrative + meritocratic" if you aren't in a marginalized group. Age/gender/pay discrimination is a serious problem in tech that unionization can help solve (it's not a magic bullet, but it's a step in the right direction)

You don’t even have to be in a marginalized group (although that does entreat all kinds of bias).

In my experience tech companies largely make decisions based on clique behavior, not “merit”. Management identifies individuals they like personally, those people are given juicy projects and veto power in meetings.

The game is not “who is driving business metrics?” it’s “how can I package my ideas in a way that makes management feel comfortable?”

Maybe you can argue that’s a form of meritocracy (“excel at making management feel comfortable!”), but I don’t think that’s what most people think of when they think of merit.

I have sort of come around to it. Part of my job is to be kind and helpful to the people around me, including the bosses. So that’s how I judge myself. Hitting business goals is good in the long term, but on every timescale I am expected to engage on, nurturing relationships seems to matter more.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#822

Post by paxys »

herbstein wrote: post #820
chasd00 wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you want to unionize go ahead, i'm not though. I believe a lot of tech works would prefer not to be union and have to deal with all the BS plus dues. I can negotiate on my own pretty well so knock yourself out but i won't be signing up.

> I can negotiate on my own pretty well No, you can't. A union can collectively say "no programming will be done on behalf of the company if you don't give us what we want". You can't do that.

Well the union has no incentive to do that individually on your behalf.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#823

Post by 8note »

baron816 wrote: post #700
swang wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if apple, google, intel, adobe, pixar, lucasfilms all conspire to suppress your wages? great you can switch to another company that doesn't pay you your worth. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...

It’s already illegal for them to do that. The solution to collusion by firms is not collusion by workers.

what's the worst thing that happens to a big business by breaking the law? paying a small fine?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#824

Post by yibg »

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…

I agree that meritocracy is more a talking point than reality on the ground. I just mean, right now there is a disparity in income. Think of it as the income inequality that's common in many countries. In principle the tech world seems to agree this that setup; that some engineers should be paid significantly more than others.

In my previous experience with unions in North America, incomes tends to be compressed towards the middle. You get rid of the very low and very high income earners. Maybe this is just an implementation problem and isn't inherent to unions, but in practice here, it does seem to be common.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#825

Post by ken »

miscPerson wrote: post #610
ken wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Respectfully, plenty of misandrists and anti-White racists do show up to those meetings and join panels to push their discriminatory agenda. Why do you think we talk about the lack of women in STEM, but not the lack of men in HR, education, social work, psychology, etc? Because bigots set the agenda. Having sports programs for one sex has been ruled illegal under Title IX — but how many universities have special tuto…

Not in my experience (2 unions). Do you have any examples of unions where this has occurred? (Recently, not some event from the 1950's or 1960's -- racists and sexists were much more powerful in all forums back then.)

Your example is universities, and I've never heard of any university faculty being unionized. In fact, that's another great example of a system where policymakers have immense prestige and very high paying jobs. Tenure allows senior faculty to set crazy agendas of all sorts, good and bad. That's the main criticism of the tenure system! Having worked a few years in academia and a few years under a trade union, I can tell you the two could not be more different, in structure or operation. I'm not sure how a criticism of academia is relevant in a discussion of unions.

You ask "How many universities have special tutoring just for women?". I don't know. How many? I searched the 3 colleges I've attended in my life, and none of them do (or at least it's not easy to find online -- compared to all the "free tutoring for all" that I found). Are you suggesting that many do?

If you want to talk about illegal discrimination, give me facts, not vague innuendo and rhetorical leading questions. And let's not get distracted by unrelated systems.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#826

Post by yibg »

Seenso wrote: post #516
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…

> 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…

Of course if everyone gets higher pay (if we just look at pay) then that's a good thing. In your hypothetical of course I'd want 150k for everyone. Do we have data to show that this is the effect of unions in white collar jobs?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#827

Post by _jal »

TylerE wrote: post #651
kerkeslager wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, frankly, fsk free snacks. Pay me the money you were going to spend on snacks, and I'll choose whether to spend it on snacks or not. And since the money spent on free snacks was probably about $20/week, it won't be a significant consideration in any of my decisions. Bus service might be more significant in some places, but every place I've ever lived had that subsidized by the government, and long commutes are a…

They are buying more than the snacks. They are buying you time, since you never need to make office grocery runs to stock your desk. Might not be a huge deal, but elimination of chores really is a perk.

So close, but not quite right.

You get free snacks at the office for the same reason people sitting at slot machines get free drinks - because someone wants you to stay there.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#828

Post by nine_k »

Frost1x wrote: post #756
bobbytran wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very difficult to actually grow a company in a country like Sweden because of the regulations and taxes you are required to pay after a certain amount of employees.

Perhaps that's a good thing.

So goes the Sweden's GDP and tax base.

BTW Ikea is no more operating primarily from Sweden, partly because of these reasons.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#829

Post by yellowapple »

save_ferris wrote: post #492
carapace wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? I don't know if a union is the answer, but tech workers aren't immune to management hi-jinks: "Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees" https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...

It’s not just wage-fixing, tech companies wield an absurd amount of power in other aspects of people’s lives. I was once let go due for “performance” reasons that involved major company politics behind the scenes. I’d just gotten my annual review from my boss emailed to my work email about a week before my termination, which showed stellar performance across the board. When I looked into filing for unemployment, I di…

If this was in California, you absolutely could have filed for unemployment, even if you were unemployed for performance reasons. Worst that could've happened is that the unemployment office could've rejected the application. In this case, they likely would've called to interview you and get a statement on why you were terminated, in which case a verbal description would do the trick (mentioning that you had received an excellent performance review just the week before would've been enough for the interviewer).

Source: I've been fired (for "performance") once and laid off twice, for all of which I've applied for unemployment benefits (approved the first two times; rejected the third because I was a contractor and not eligible to be treated as employee-equivalent). I didn't have any written evidence for the "performance" one; I just told the interviewer that after I was terminated my former supervisor had to hire multiple people in my place (which was true).

Long story short: always file for unemployment, even if the chances of approval are slim. The worst they can do is say no.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#830

Post by jkingsbery »

gamblor956 wrote: post #792
jkingsbery wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not a fair comparison: we think of athletes as making large salaries, but beyond the stars, many who make the highest level professional league will make a league minimum salary over a relatively short career, as opposed to white collar workers who typically make 6 figure salaries over multiple decades. That sports leagues are actually very relevant. See for example from https://theundefeated.com/features…

Anyone who thinks that players' unions are suppressing athlete salaries doesn't remember how little athletes made before the unions negotiated higher scales. Even the best NFL athletes used to have day jobs. The 2014 minimum base salary for MLS players was just $48,500 (which increased to $7x,xxx in 2019 as a result of the union renegotiating pay scales). On average (median or mode), a professional soccer player will…

I agree that unions have done a lot; the point is that the evidence shows it to be a double edged sword. Following the link I posted, it explains how one effect of current collective bargaining agreements enables owners of sports teams to cap the percentage of the overall revenue going to players. For example, collective bargaining has given us free agency in baseball, which has been great; it's also given us a system in which players don't hit free agency until they've been playing for 5 or 6 years, at which point they're usually in their late 20's or early 30's, and have missed prime earning years on the free market (having to settle for whatever comes out of the arbitration process).

Some of the increase in pay is due to the union, and they should be applauded for that, but part of the increase in pay in all these leagues also is due in part to the increase in revenues from media deals

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