741–750 of 1001 posts
How soon everyone forgets. Google was caught red handed colluding with other companies to suppress employee wages in the past. This was still during their "Don't be evil." days, too.
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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. Employees pushing for change from the inside is probably the only thing that could ever make Google change, so this is absolutely a good thing. If you are an engineer at Google and can't get a job somewhere else, I don't know what to tell you. So…
Oh, the perils of having a 600k TC job and having to step down to a job only clearing 250k while you climb the ladder again. Oh those poor senior Google SWEs. That’s not being trapped. That’s being greedy. There’s nothing wrong with trying to preserve massive TCs with the WLB of Google but let’s not pretend there is actually any plight here.
The only entity that stands to lose from their greed is one of the largest monopolies in the world. Why do you feel they need to be protected from greed?
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>When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions Because everyone talking about unionization refuses to get into the nitty gritty of what I might gain, what I might lose, and the structural changes to the workplaces that are inherent with unionization. And if/when I/others start spitballing about what those might be we're treated like dolts uneducated on organized labor, and should just…
What do you think the software industry will be like 20 years from now? Do you think the cushy salaries and relative lack of gate keeping will stay around? I sure as hell don't. Unionize now, even if you earn a little less, while you have the most bargaining power, so that later you don't have to fight through pinkerton detectives just to get a seat at the table. There's a reason companies like Google suppress initia…
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It's not a huge stretch to imagine the following scenario play out though: 1. Tech workers unionize, negotiate with employer that any work > 40 hours / week get paid overtime. 2. The company now has two choices: A) Pay their employees more than their competitors for the same work. Or B) Don't authorize any overtime. 3. In scenario A, they're either running at (much) higher cost than their competitors, and thus a disa…
Maybe B) will lead to fewer poorly-run projects that lead to unnecessary overtime.
The only thing a union brings to the table in this situation is now I'm either explicitly forbidden from working more on a project even if I want to, or I have to hide what I'm doing and go all cloak-and-dagger about it, probably breaking some kind of labor laws in the process. All for 1% of my salary. Doesn't seem like a good trade for me?
When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions, seemingly based in stereotypes about what unions are for and who they serve. People often seem to think of unions as being purely blue-collar operations, and this just isn't true. For example, I've had people tell me that they don't support unions in tech because they'll be "paid less", or less competent engineers will be promoted faster.…
I think there's another purpose of the film industry unions that doesn't get mentioned much in these (tech industry) discussions. Specifically, that the film unions raise wages by limiting the number of people who enter the industry. It's simple supply and demand.
This works via the following mechanisms:
First, the film unions provide useful benefits (like reasonably-priced health insurance), so most professional actors want to be part of the union.
Second, union members are prohibited from working on non-union productions. Additionally, most well-known actors are union members. This gives a strong incentive for a production to be a union production.
Third, union productions are prohibited from hiring more than a token number of non-union actors (unless they pay a fine to the union). This gives a strong incentive for productions to only use union talent (which also gives actors another reason to want to be a union member).
So far so good. But how does one join the union? That's the catch-22: You must work for at least n days on a union production (n=1 for speaking roles, n=3 for extra roles) to be eligible to join SAG/AFTRA. But most union productions won't hire you unless you're a union member (see above).
I don't know whether something like that would work in the software industry, but it seems at least plausible to me that it could benefit everyone who is currently employed in tech (at the expense of future potential tech employees).
Linked from the article: https://tcf.org/content/report/members-only-unions-can-they-...
I think traditional unions have a lot of issues, but these "members only unions" seem like something that avoids those issues. If someone wants to voluntarily pay a group to help represent their interests, great! If the union no longer represents their interests, they can leave.
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What do you think the software industry will be like 20 years from now? Do you think the cushy salaries and relative lack of gate keeping will stay around? I sure as hell don't. Unionize now, even if you earn a little less, while you have the most bargaining power, so that later you don't have to fight through pinkerton detectives just to get a seat at the table. There's a reason companies like Google suppress initia…
By what mechanism will salaries fall? And thus by what mechanism will SWE unions keep salaries high, but gates open?
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Unions also fuck non-union members, which in turn creates a lot of economic deadweight and inefficiency.
No, that's just normal anti-union-FUD. A union doesn't have to imply that it controls everything, or that everyone has to be part of the union to work somewhere. A union could also just be a large entity that collectively bargain on behalf of the workers, and can do so better than they could separately. Often that involves stuff like better safety, pay, getting rid of bad stuff like non-competes etc. And where I'm fr…
Unions want to represent every worker, because it gives them more power. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is reality.
Some workers do not want to be a part of the union, but in states without right-to-work laws, they can be compelled to be part of the union.
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>tell me what the terms of the contract will be and I'll decide for myself. Nobody can tell you what the contract will be because the contract won't be drawn up until the union exists and has enough members to bargain. What you DO know is the current contract you have. You DO know that you have virtually no say in what is in that contract, "accept it or leave," is not having a say in that contract. You DO know that a…
Sounds like the cart before the horse. Tell me I'm signing up for something that I have no idea how it will turn out, and then present me with a take it or leave it contract months later. And I'm stuck.
On this group's homepage [1]: "We are BIPOC workers who fight against totalitarianism." I am not sure what this has to do with unionizing Google workers. Using obscure acronyms to arbitrarily focus on race and ethnicity (something frowned upon here in Europe at least) + the hyperbole of "fighting totalitarianism" doesn't give me great confidence that this is representing workers, as much as it is pushing the ideology…