Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#291

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #237

braingenious wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that right-to-work is also a libertarian concept? In the context of the United States, right-to-work employers are under less government scrutiny as they don’t have to interact with e.g. the NLRB. If so, unions and the very opposite of unions are “libertarian concepts” and we’ve reached a point where we’re just talking about how words are meaningless and are entirely off-topic.

> Would you say that right-to-work is also a libertarian concept? This isn't a common term where I'm from, so I am admittedly not intimately familiar with it, but as I understand its meaning, as defined by Wikipedia, it removes some degree of freedom of association. So, no, it is in stark contrast to libertarianism.

In what way does it reduce freedom of association? In a right-to-work state, I am free to associate with employer X without a corresponding requirement to fund a union that I might not care to associate with.

That combination seems to increase (or at least leave unchanged) my freedom of association. (Others who do wish to associate with that union are still free to do so, of course.)

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#292

Post by 0x457 » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

ianbutler wrote: post #59

Clent wrote: post #19

Intentional or not, worker power has been crushed by these layoffs.

Really? It's like not even 10% of the swe workforce. If this crushes you, you had no power to begin with. It's more like a reminder of that fact. It's all BS though, stocks are back to 2019 levels, one of the highest periods ever, in a field where there's still not enough bodies for all the jobs. I'm pretty sure that leverage hasn't changed. Fundamentally however, the success of this role will not last. It's just a m…

It doesn't need to be a large chunk. It generates headlines like "XXk laid-off in big name tech company that is has plenty of cash" That creates the idea of job-insecurity in others.

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#293

Post by dehrmann » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #282

bushbaba wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment doesn’t show laid off employees who aren’t yet collecting unemployment benefits. These tech workers got at least 60 days of severance thanks to the warn act.

> Unemployment doesn’t show laid off employees who aren’t yet collecting unemployment benefits. That is not true. The fact that they are receiving severance does not change their classification as unemployed. The unemployment rate, which is calculated using a standard approach across the country, is completely unrelated to unemployment benefits, which are handled at the state level with a high degree of variation. In…

They're often kept on as employees to satisfy the WARN act. This isn't actually severance, and they're not actually unemployed at that point.

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#294

Post by efitz » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

The article didn’t do a very good job providing evidence to make the case for its premise that big tech is trying to keep employees afraid.

Overall I think the article itself was a poorly written screed that just threw in lots of anecdotes and assertions but didn’t really have any meat to it.

For example, what do climate change etc have to do with unionization? Unions are supposed to be vehicles for worker protections, not ESG.

Also, the simple answer is, that shareholders, particularly large influential institutional shareholders, are demanding unreasonable and unsustainable quarterly growth from tech esp as the rest of the economy is sliding into recession. The short term shortsighted way to do that is to cut ongoing costs, and employees are the biggest cost in that bucket at tech companies. No need for a conspiracy when everything is pretty transparent already.

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#295

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

bbor wrote: post #224

theptip wrote: post #104

I just don’t buy it. To be clear this is claiming that the CEOs are sitting behind a desk stroking a cat, thinking “now I will crush the labor movement and make all my workers feel less secure”. This is just not a problem that Pichai is facing. Occam’s Razor points to the very simple, non-conspiratorial answer that it really is just stock-price driven (ie market-driven) thinking (one could say “lack of actual strateg…

I think you’re applying a “conspiratorial” vibe that isn’t necessary - employers are naturally incentivized to keep employees insecure and underpaid (relative to what they’d be paid if they organized, at least). It sounds like you’re knowledgeable on these topics, so I’d be surprised if you disagreed with any of these assertions: 1. Big tech would be willing to burn billions of dollars to crush any chance of tech uni…

Employers are incentivised to retain the employment of their staff, which given the existence of other companies, means they're strongly incentivised NOT to have their employees "insecure".

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#296

Post by flavius29663 » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

bbor wrote: post #199

throwaway23597 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is online advertising not useful? It's directly greasing the gears of the economy, matching up potential customers with businesses in a reasonably intelligent way. Yeah, sure, it's not saving the world from climate change or something, but it's clearly facilitating economic activity, and also helps keep a number of very useful products free. Seems pretty useful to our society to me.

Don’t you think a catalog would do a better job of matching up consumers to products? Given our environmental situation, is it really ethical to “convince” people that they need some new thing that they previously didn’t know about or want? Re: keeping stuff free, that’s still pretty convincing and it’s mostly what keeps me going as I work on the great google ad machine. It seems like a massive social good for sites…

"ethical" is very hard to prove or disprove. For example, is it ethical for me to pay 400USD for a camera, since there is a 350 alternative that I didn't even know existed?

A complete and fair catalog is very hard (if not impossible ) to implement. But even if you did, that would NOT be enough. You might not know you "need" a good mattress unless an ad would sell it to you. Btw, if you think a global catalog would solve all these issues why not build it yourself? It can't be that hard... There are probably only a few billion products on earth, with a few variants each. Why not just do it?

Speaking of "ethical", there are many concept in the modern world that can be seen as "un-ethical", but at the same time they make the world run much better than the medieval (or communist) world they replace: interest, inflation, income taxes to name a few.

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#297

Post by theptip » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

bbor wrote: post #224

theptip wrote: post #104

I just don’t buy it. To be clear this is claiming that the CEOs are sitting behind a desk stroking a cat, thinking “now I will crush the labor movement and make all my workers feel less secure”. This is just not a problem that Pichai is facing. Occam’s Razor points to the very simple, non-conspiratorial answer that it really is just stock-price driven (ie market-driven) thinking (one could say “lack of actual strateg…

I think you’re applying a “conspiratorial” vibe that isn’t necessary - employers are naturally incentivized to keep employees insecure and underpaid (relative to what they’d be paid if they organized, at least). It sounds like you’re knowledgeable on these topics, so I’d be surprised if you disagreed with any of these assertions: 1. Big tech would be willing to burn billions of dollars to crush any chance of tech uni…

It's not me that's applying the conspiratorial vibe, it's the OP, and that's what I'm complaining about:

> “Controlling labor costs via periodic layoffs is like breathing for Silicon Valley: cyclical, necessary for life"... The layoffs, Harris says, have “very little to do with long- or even medium-term strategy except as it pertains to cultivating an insecure workforce.”

This article is explicitly claiming that the layoffs are not about stock price, they are about an intentional cultivation of insecurity in the workforce and an attempt to crush unions.

I'm aware of the no-poach collusion case, but I'm a bit unclear on exactly how much that impacted wages; do you have any go-to sources supporting your claim 4. that this case had a big impact? A quick search gives https://angel.co/blog/software-engineer-salary for example that doesn't show any appreciable impact in 2011 when the class-action suit was filed. (There is a massive jump in 2020 when everyone started hiring like crazy in the Covid bull market.)

I'm not claiming this factor has zero weight in the causal model, but the OP is saying something like "this is mono-causal; it's not stock prices, it's an anti-union/anti-labor conspiracy". If pressed to guesstimate I'd say the anti-union factors can't be more than 10% of the explanation, and I'd be surprised if it's even that high.

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#298

Post by gingerrr » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:45 PM UTC

braingenious wrote: post #255

randomdata wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you say that right-to-work is also a libertarian concept? This isn't a common term where I'm from, so I am admittedly not intimately familiar with it, but as I understand its meaning, as defined by Wikipedia, it removes some degree of freedom of association. So, no, it is in stark contrast to libertarianism.

A lot of libertarian managers in the US would disagree with that. From a manager’s perspective the ability to fire anyone at any time is them exercising freedom of association. “Libertarian” has a specific connotation in the US, certainly when we’re discussing employment within the US.

Not to derail, but I think you're conflating "right to work" with "at-will employment" here - you're describing at-will, where the employee/employer relationship can be severed by either party at any time for any reason.

"Right to work" is a union-busting concept: regardless of collective bargaining agreements an individual has the right to their employment, whether or not they pay dues to a union.

Just wanted to correct a common mistake I see made often in these discussions.

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#299

Post by MuffinFlavored » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

AlwaysRock wrote: post #175

Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago, a bunch of improvisers who preformed at the popular i.o theater put together a list of demands which basically asked for a bunch of changes to make the lives of performers better. They were not going to perform until those changes were made. The owner didnt respond for a few days and then said, "Hey! Heard you. Great valid concerns. But I'm actually shutting the th…

> but as the individual

or in your case (and many other cases), even a collective group of individuals still had little to no bargaining power

Re: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

#300

Post by dasil003 » Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #252

monero-xmr wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is insanely hard to build a business, and I speak as someone who has built businesses in both tech and franchising (which should theoretically be much more straightforwards). At the primordial stage, before there are reliable revenues, you must have everyone marching to the same drum. If you can’t do what I say, please GTFO because you are actively harming what is already hanging on by a thread. If I can’t fire ba…

You don't have the right to build a business. You have the right to try , of course, but it's not like there's some natural law that you should be able to succeed. So appeals to "it's hanging on by a thread!" don't really do much for me; maybe the viability of your business relies on an imbalance of power vs. your employees, in which case I'd really rather the thread be cut. Your comment about firing people is kinda…

You're missing the point. It's not about entitlement or rights. The point the GP is making is that in a true startup situation, either everyone rows in the same direction, or the business fails and everyone loses their job. This is a very different situation from an established large-scale business. You might say: "doesn't matter, worker rights are worker rights, and it's on the entrepreneur to make sure he can meet the legal obligations". That's fine if you feel that way, but you'll get a startup ecosystem more like France than the US though.