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Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

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Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#191

Post by _jal »

poof131 wrote: post #181
_jal wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a huge, public company. Any ideals that survived going public will slowly be ground out by repeated exposure to management consultants from McKinsey and the hordes of MBAs attracted to the smell of ibanker excitement. You can't go public, or become part of a public firm, and not become more like the rest of the big players.

The rampant cynicism regarding corporations is increasingly unhelpful. We’ve had forty years of hands off antitrust regulation and enforcement. We’ve had a bifurcating justice system that doesn’t hold white collar criminals accountable. It hasn’t always been this way and doesn’t have to stay this way. For those interested in the challenges we’re facing with monopolies and individuals trying to effect change, I recomm…

I love Matt. But tell me I'm wrong.

Any proposed solution is going to have to explain how to change the very strong financial incentives that lead to people doing the same things over and over.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#192

Post by throwaway2048 »

user_7832 wrote: post #48
mandmandam wrote: post #14

> Google fired the workers in 2019 after they organized against the company’s contracts with immigration detention agencies. Wooow. That was at the height of ICE being shown as deeply corrupt and racist child abusers. (They still are, but it hasn't been used as a stick to beat Biden with because 'reasons'). >the NLRB issued a federal complaint against Google for illegally firing and surveilling the four software engi…

>> Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.” > So, she knew how uncool/illegal that looks. Schwifty. Guess who's currently the "Director of Integrity" at Google. I sure hope it's someone with integrity who would never want their actions hidden.

I'm sure shes very interested in keeping up the appearence of Google's Integrity

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#193

Post by BitwiseFool »

klyrs wrote: post #62
Wiseacre wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing privilege, although it's a bit of a tainted word now.

That word, whatever its meaning, is triggering to a lot of people here.

Ideally we would parse words according to their definitions but the vernacular and it's connotations are impossible to ignore. "Privilege" is a trendy word that gets thrown around haphazardly in arguments, especially in a condescending manner. In my anecdotal experience, the p-word is most often invoked as an explanation for why a critic of [x] doesn't see the merit of [x] because they simply can't understand due to their background.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#194

Post by pogorniy »

Jiro wrote: post #141
kingkawn wrote: post #76

A union is a business association among people who market, sell, and deliver the labor of a single individual. To repress these associations of business results in inefficiencies that obscure the true product of the market.

Attempting to convince employees of something is not repression.

Deception

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#195

Post by nix0n »

reaperducer wrote: post #122
Cederfjard wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were those expectations based on real observations, or did Google just get lucky with PR from the jump?

Contrary to the shoe-pounding HN rhetoric, there are good companies and bad companies. Which one is often a function of the people running it at the highest levels. Very often companies are founded by good people with good intents, who end up leaving for one reason or another, and are taken over by people with a different set of values. I don't know enough about the internal workings of Google to say that's the case…

> there are good companies and bad companies

Are there any large companies, that stayed good?

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#196

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ravenstine wrote: post #119
mhoad wrote: post #3

Seems to have worked amazingly well based on all the times I recall reading the comments of stories posted here involving unions.

Others here seem to be speculating that it has to do with the number of business owners here, but I don't think that paints the entire picture. I'm a single guy who's a senior software engineer with no one depending on him, and I've never had difficulty finding a job (quite the contrary), hence the benefit of being unionized doesn't outweigh the negatives. If an employer mistreats me, then I leave. It's that simple.…

> I don't think Google would be concerned about unionization if they were as terrific as is often claimed.

This doesn't follow.

In general, unions are bad for companies. That isn't the same thing as saying that they're good for employees. If they do nothing useful and increase overhead, they're bad for both.

Unions also have structural incentives to impose things like seniority rules, because existing employees have a vote in the union and future employees don't, so they vote for things that benefit one at the expense of the other. But that can interfere with the company's ability to attract new talent, which is bad for everybody.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#197

Post by kixiQu »

yupper32 wrote: post #138

A lot of people seem confused why a lot of tech people aren't pushing for unions. For me it's simple: Tech has brought me from near poverty to pretty darn wealthy. Why mess with that? Could a union help increase wages even more? Maybe. Are we being paid too little compared to our output? Maybe. But at the same time I'm being paid more than I could have possibly imagined before I entered the field.

If I were in a union, I don't need them to negotiate on pay at all -- I'd want them to negotiate for better transparency about the ways that people get managed out / fired, because at the company where I work, that's all very The Pit And The Pendulum, hanging over your head even if you're doing good work. I'd want them to set some boundaries around oncall shifts, because unfairness or imbalance in those practices is handled entirely through watching for attrition. I'd want them to approximate some portion of the protections that the employees in Europe that I work with have, because clearly that's not so unreasonable that the company would fold, and it's led to some really unfair situations being shoved on non EU teams. I find this kind of thing tiresome to have to get political about and my interests are simple enough to have someone else represent them.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#198

Post by swongel »

jjmorrison wrote: post #186

Google employees unionizing is super hypocritical. If you disagree with the big evil monopoly, then leave and give up the crazy salary. Can't have it both ways. As long as all the smart people stay there, they'll keep being the big evil monopoly. Best case is more placating and pretending.

These damn employees, what are they thinking that they could better their employment and lives. They're a bunch of hypocrites for wanting a better piece of the cake of the billion dollar extremely profitable company they built. Won't someone please think of the poor shareholders? /s

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#199

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dls2016 wrote: post #107
n8cpdx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us have seen the exorbitant damage bad unions can cause, for example ILWU destroying Portland, OR’s container shipping industry in a bid to steal two jobs from another union. https://www.universalcargo.com/jury-hits-ilwu-with-93m-verdi... (less industry-oriented source: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/11/29/longshore-union-faces-... ) See also: public sector unions.

Unions are comprised of large groups of people, and are subject to make the same kinds of "self-serving" mistakes as any other large group of people (like corporations and governments and universities and churches and...). Which is entirely the point! Why should we trust a large monopoly like Google to have workers' best interests at heart when there's no counter-balancing force with the same power (be it a union, or…

> Why should we trust a large monopoly like Google to have workers' best interests at heart when there's no counter-balancing force with the same power (be it a union, or trust-busting arm of the federal government)?

The answer is that we shouldn't, but the latter solution is much better than the former.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#200

Post by hindsightbias »

Fordec wrote: post #67
BuckRogers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You nailed something that I've noticed. Highly competent and intelligent people tend to lean libertarian in my experience. It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. Simply a roll of the dice. Competent, capable, hardworking people often fail to see the bigger picture, and dismiss others that aren't like them. If you…

From my experience, I find this is true only in the very core of core tech hubs that you can count on one hand. And also with a bias towards finance, adtech, crypto, fintech and other industries that rely on extracting wealth than creating it. Core R&D, hardware, B2B services, networking companies, etc. and then also the factor of geographic places that aren't considered "sexy" in the HN crowd revert to the mean for…

Before FAANG was really a thing, I worked in/with/around blue collar folks. Ron Paul types were not that uncommon. Vocal pro-union folks who voted for Reagan and embraced Milton Friedman even after their jobs got shipped somewhere else. As their benefits and health collapsed as they aged, any change to healthcare became Hillarycare and the root of communism.

At universities though, the libertarians had actually read The Road to Serfdom and could debate with you. Today’s libertarianism is google search deep, just another veneer over tha antipathies of our time.

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