Google wanted a leftist culture, there you have a cultist culture. May this serve as a word of warning to fangless executives all around the country.
A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
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Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't look to SAG as a good example. The format of that industry is very different from most "typical" jobs, specifically tech work. I would also suggest looking at the the recent SAG healthcare fiasco.
So it's not a good example for benefits, but a good example for problems?
I think it's the exact opposite problem the tech industry has.
The film industry has way more talent supply than the employment demands, which naturally suppresses pay. The guilds/unions are a way to increase scarcity to maintain pay and ease hiring.
The tech industry has much less talent supply and much much much more employment demand. Tech might be better modeled after high skilled trade unions (which have a labor shortage) than the comparatively lower skilled film/auto/factory unions (which have a labor surplus).
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon anti-union video: https://youtu.be/AQeGBHxIyHw
Wow, what the fuck! “We’re not anti union, but we are not neutral either”
Obviously biased, but I tend to agree. My experience with unions is not with them as a partner to the company and advocate of shared success. My experience is them as parasites that hurt the business and the customer, and may (may!) help employees. Out of the dozen or so cases I’m familiar with, only my brother in law loves the union and he does not work like most devs I know; he goes job site to job site for short to medium engagements.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that leaving equates to collective bargaining is false, and even if it had a ring of truth it would be ineffectual at FAANG companies. Leaving changes nothing, it just accelerates the bad behaviour because the obstacle to the bad behaviour removed itself. A single person, even a team of engineers, leaving a FAANG company will have near-zero impact on the behaviour, functioning or profitability of that compan…
> Leaving changes nothing Leaving improves conditions for the worker and that’s the biggest thing for me, the worker.
The biggest thing for me, also the worker, is being able to negotiate against abuse in an industry that Eg. Uses h1b to abuse employees on the regular. These employees cant leave.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Employees can ask for better, but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. There are very few perils of leaving Google - a top tier company in an industry t…
> but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. Google made something like 300,000 in profit per employee in 2019. There are regular complaints about benefits and pay multipliers being cut back. Why shouldn't workers seek to capture as much of their labor as possible? People don't seem to complain when businesses do that.
They absolutely should. And companies/management have a fiduciary duty to give them as little as possible. This is the competition that gives rise to capitalist efficiencies.
The concern from people like myself is that another word for a union is a cartel. When companies form cartels and engage in anti-competitive behavior, we penalize them severely (in theory at least...but that's another issue). Yet when labor colludes, we simply call it a union.
Tech is especially interesting because the usual claims of "workers have less power individually" (which is always true in all industries) is really really not a great argument in tech. The labor market in tech is so unbelievably competitive, and the average worker has leverage that is only seen in the upper echelons of other industries.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. You're saying this like it's a bad thing. Why shouldn't employees expect, and get, better working conditions? > engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better" How is individuals leaving "coll…
Employees can ask for better, but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. There are very few perils of leaving Google - a top tier company in an industry t…
This is for the contractors also.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#217Honest question: are there good examples of unionized companies that continue to innovate post unionization? Unionization seems at the surface like the end stage of disruptor where stakeholders begin jockeying for slices of a pie that now grows linearly.
Is this the beginning of the end of Google?
What, they run out of money?
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#218Honest question: are there good examples of unionized companies that continue to innovate post unionization? Unionization seems at the surface like the end stage of disruptor where stakeholders begin jockeying for slices of a pie that now grows linearly.
Is this the beginning of the end of Google?
Haven't we been hearing about the beginning to the end for years now?
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#219Honest question: are there good examples of unionized companies that continue to innovate post unionization? Unionization seems at the surface like the end stage of disruptor where stakeholders begin jockeying for slices of a pie that now grows linearly.
Naver (the dominant search engine in South Korea) seems innovative to me. They successfully launched e-commerce project in 2018, which became #1 in 2019 beating the incumbent (which is owned by eBay). It's as if Google launched Amazon competitor and won within a year.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh they do something, they help destroy a company’s ability to compete. Take a look at unionization of the auto industry in Detroit back in the 70s and 80s which basically killed our lead in the industry and gave it to Japan and Korean companies on a platter.
Those Japanese and Korean companies were also unionized. Mighty strange how did they compete, right?
It is as if you can’t compare the two very different societies. I think it is better to keep US union talk focused on US unions.