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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#911

Post by Negitivefrags »

gpm wrote: post #834
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…

Free snacks has to be one of tech companies most profitable endeavors. They've got a bunch of workers who cost them on the order of 1 to 4 dollars per minute. If they can spend a dollar on a snack to get 2 minutes more work out of them, they are making a killing. Snacks aren't part of your salary for being an employee of your company, they're your company trying to make as efficient use of your work time as possible.…

You act like there is some shadowy cabal running cost benefit analysis of every decision for some evil purpose.

Maybe the free snacks are there because it’s nice to have free snacks and the boss enjoys them? Does there really need to be a more sinister reason?

I mean, I know at our company that I wanted to have drink fridges with a huge amount of interesting beverages because I enjoy drinking a different drink every day. It wasn’t me trying to improve employee performance.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#912

Post by Apocryphon »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #911
gpm wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free snacks has to be one of tech companies most profitable endeavors. They've got a bunch of workers who cost them on the order of 1 to 4 dollars per minute. If they can spend a dollar on a snack to get 2 minutes more work out of them, they are making a killing. Snacks aren't part of your salary for being an employee of your company, they're your company trying to make as efficient use of your work time as possible.…

You act like there is some shadowy cabal running cost benefit analysis of every decision for some evil purpose. Maybe the free snacks are there because it’s nice to have free snacks and the boss enjoys them? Does there really need to be a more sinister reason? I mean, I know at our company that I wanted to have drink fridges with a huge amount of interesting beverages because I enjoy drinking a different drink every…

There is at least a little bit of a dark side to seemingly frivolous perks like snacks, foosball tables, and beer on tap- by spending relative pennies for "luxuries", management is able to paper over diminished investment elsewhere, that employees could otherwise benefit from. Or to hide work cultures that aren't as great as they look upon their first visit. Shiny distractions.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#913

Post by lexs »

HeroOfAges wrote: post #356
lexs wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kickstarters product is not software though, it's a platform, so support and community management probably does play a fairly substantial role.

Hmm... If I worked as customer support at Tesla, I would not expect to be compensated, or frankly valued the same as say an electrical engineer at Tesla. And really, isn't community management just another word for customer support?

I never said they should be compensated the same but saying they are not needed or should not be valued seems plain wrong to me.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#914

Post by apexalpha »

preinheimer wrote: post #394
apexalpha wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a cartoonishly simple respresentation of what a union can do. Why would one have no incentive to excel? Our union creates entire promotion matrixes for excelling employees. Comparing it to a prison... Are you a worker or a shill for corporate?

I worked (years ago) for the UFCW as a worker at a grocery store. All of the union that was exposed to me as a part timer was: - hours go out by seniority - raises happen at set intervals regardless of quality of work - that guy selling pot out of the backroom will be protected until they catch him stealing a rotisserie chicken - 0.x% of my paycheck goes to the union. - I got paid less, and received raises less often…

Okay so my comment was a bit rude, but it from reading this thread it seems many US citizens are so entrenched in an anti Union stance they can't even think of what could be.

In my country the unions negotiate a framework for pay rise based on performance management. They make sure people working (night) shifts have enough time off, can't be rotated at will by management and get compensation.

People who are forced to leave due to downsizing get a proper retraining budget first and are transitioned to other jobs in or outside the company.

It just seems every time Unions are brought up here on HN someone says "my train was late once so all trains are bad form of transportation". But this is too simple, and it doesn't account for the fact that highly skilled IT people can easily negotiate good wages but that low skilled people can't, and they need unions the most.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#916

Post by OJFord »

Apocryphon wrote: post #871
OJFord wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could seriously do with more RAM, but I don't need a $4k computer. In fact, since I have a MacBook but would be more than happy with a (Linux) ThinkPad, it might not even cost more. My point is, we don't need 'hardware investment' for the sake of it. If places started doing that I'd rather BYO device, and pocket the difference between what I need and what they budget for.

On the last point, Apple seems to be betting otherwise with its exorbitant prices for top spec Mac Pro configurations.

I don't think the bet is that software engineers need those, unless they have a lot of some kind of macOS-specific rendering to do or something.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#917

Post by alexgmcm »

MPSimmons wrote: post #861
yumraj wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? 1. Fight ageism (every 20 year old today will grow up someday) 2. Fight open office layout (my opinion, may not be shared by everyone) 3. Fight for equal pay, discriminations of various sorts 4. Fight for reasonable share in success and against the massive differential between CxO and others' pay 5. Resist outsourcing where it makes sense ....... the list goes on ....

> 2. Fight open office layout (my opinion, may not be shared by everyone) This is, I believe, the biggest strike against unions. If the unions decide you don't get open offices, then that decision binds everyone, whether they wanted an open office or not. You just have to hope that the many tradeoffs you make are worth the things you get in return.

This is, I believe, the biggest strike against management. If the management decide you get open offices, then that decision binds everyone, whether they wanted an open office or not.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#918

Post by Mvandenbergh »

papreclip wrote: post #453
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most Americans mostly have experience with blue collar unions, often ones that represent relatively unskilled labour. Consider though that even in the US, there are plenty of unions (or things which are effectively unions) which represent highly differentiated and skilled professions. Notably, directors, actors, and writers in American film and television are unionised. That does not mean that everyone is pai…

AMA and ABA are protectionist and "America-first", though. The tech unionization movement is full of people who favor open borders and the like

Tech is probably more like the film industry than law though, isn't it?

Focused on global markets rather than focused on capturing as much as possible from the lucrative American market.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#919

Post by bo0tzz »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #880
fzeroracer wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a father that worked as a fisherman for a small company which was not union. He ended up dying because the owners didn't properly inspect the boat and it capsized because of a fatal flaw in the design, killing everyone on board. Using your same argument, we should abolish all corporations, correct? Since a poorly ran corporation can quite literally kill people due to negligence. I find it honestly absurd that p…

Corporations don't pretend to be on the workers' side; unions do.

Corporations absolutely do pretend to be on the workers' side.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#920

Post by password1 »

ksr_throwaway wrote: post #476

For those who are curious this union drive was really started by extreme incompetence from upper management. The former CEO hired ineffective status-seekers (including the current CEO) into many positions of power which created a super toxic environment. Accountability for internal problems has been extremely low. The "Always Punch Nazis" controversy was just the straw that broke the camel's back. People in the bay a…

But didn't the same management also decided to make the company a PBC instead of becoming billionaires by going public? That always felt to me like a signal that the management believed the mission too.
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