Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 1001 posts

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#661

Post by briandear »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #526
bloomingkales wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me correct you, this will be election month at minimum. The NYT kind of brings this kind of heat on itself because it has shifted from being just the paper of record over to an institution to the current definition of progressivism. You can only really do this union kinda stuff against self-important institutions. Which developer is ever going to attempt this on Accenture? They are straight up and honest about th…

You are comically uninformed. If the NYT were even remotely progressive, they'd have been consistently flogging the living shit out of Donald Trump and his idiotic, dementia-driven behavior behind a podium for months now instead of pretending like we should accept it as normal while excoriating Harris for behaving like a mainstream political candidate.

Dementia driven? We can certainly disagree on policy objectives, but claiming Trump has dementia is absolute nonsense. Did you watch the Rogan interview? Regardless of one’s views on his politics, there is not even a remote hint of dementia.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#662

Post by briandear »

wholinator2 wrote: post #452
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull. It's smart. The one week where americans manage pull their head out of their ass is a good time to move.

I don't know, probably the lowest common denominator is paying more attention but most everyone i know is desperately trying to shove their heads anywhere that is quiet and calm. The fervor and anger with which all common media explodes during election month is unbearable.

Most of us aren’t paying attention to The NY Times. If they aren’t there, nobody will notice.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#663

Post by ppeetteerr »

jjcm wrote: post #609

For reference, here's a current job opening for NYT's tech org for a senior software developer: https://boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorktimes/jobs/4472655005 Salary is 140-155k USD. For reference, here's levels.fyi's breakdown of the New York city area: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/new-yor... Median total comp is 185k. It seems like their total comp for NYT is slightly above the mark based on r…

Thank you for surfacing this.

A senior role in NYC for 155K (plus bonus, which they do offer) is nothing when you factor in the cost of living.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#664

Post by taurath »

bko wrote: post #447
quandrum wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I want management to develop a system to determine who is low-performing, document when those workers don't meet the standards of performance, and reference those documents when they fire someone. It's just asking for due process.

This sounds good, but in my experience bad employees were known to everyone. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly why they were bad or toxic, but pretty much everyone agreed. If you gave them some benchmark they would need to hit (e.g. close tickets, be on call, etc), they would be able to do so. So creating a documentation trail is difficult, especially if its based on people saying they don't think he does good wor…

> To think that employers are just randomly firing people for no reason has never struck me as being even remotely true

Have you only ever worked with reasonable management? The problem with quick to hire quick to fire is that eventually you might be quick to fire. I suspect you have a much higher level of security than most people to have quality of coworkers as a top priority!

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#665

Post by warpeggio »

bongodongobob wrote: post #595
School-Cotton wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way do you think the current tech industry has turned into a shit show?

I think tech workers have gotten a little spoiled. At my company, we have about 35 people in our IT department. 3/4 are directors and managers and I honestly have no fucking idea what they do all day. 600 people on the IT staff at the NYT is insane, and I guarantee the majority of those jobs is "attend meetings every day to jerk each other off with 1 deliverable a week".

> 3/4 are directors and managers

this is a problem. Hiring and career paths are completely non-existent for tech people. Most will not get a cost of living increase, and the only way to actually increase their pay is to update their resume and spend months trying to find another position. I dont' know if you've noticed, but our job market blows right now.

They may have bought us off for a decade or so, giving us benefits that rivaled unionized positions. But over the last 20 years, that "bargain" has slowly eroded and now the unionized shops are the only ones getting benefits for the employees.

Capitalism being what it is, each company MUST pursue the lowest costs and highest margin. Without collective bargaining, a single worker has no power against the whims and desires of board members, to whom you are just a rounding error.

"If hard work were good for you, the rich would have it all to themselves."

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#666

Post by vineyardlabs »

mellosouls wrote: post #49

As much as I am a bolshy union member and supporter, this doesn't seem too bad on the surface, the article doesn't make clear what the issues with it are? Times management said in an email to workers on Sunday that it had offered a 2.5 percent annual wage increase, a minimum 5 percent pay increase for promotions and a $1,000 ratification bonus. It also said that the company would maintain its current in-office work r…

idk 2.5% yearly raise and 5% for promotions seems kind of meager to me. Seems like a yearly raise should both cover cost of living and throw in another percent or 2 to compensate for having another year of experience. I know a lot of people in a lot of professions don't get this but tech comp is what it is.

Then a promotion raise that constitute only 2 years of yearly base raises seems pretty lacking to me since a promotion generally comes with increased responsibilities and higher standards.

I've worked as a developer for companies outside of big tech who complain all day long about the fact that they can't compete with big tech on compensation while they hemorrhage engineers to big tech. I'm sure NYT does the same. No amount of moaning about this will change the fact that they are directly competing with these companies for talent.

I'm not anti-union at all and see them as necessary in certain types of jobs (I hope the Boeing Machinist's Union guts Boeing), but I have no interest in being a part of a union as a developer because it seems like collective bargaining just ends up locking everyone into the level of salary/career progression of the lowest common denominator.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#667

Post by ff317 »

feedforward wrote: post #528
stickfigure wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

When the wealth created by those who work at the New York Times is sent out in dividends to those who do no work or create wealth there, what is performance of these rentiers? You're arguing on the side of the rentiers and parasites who do not work, and lecturing about "low performance". It's the people doing the work's purview to discuss performance, not the parasites.

Why were those "rentiers and parasites" ever involved? Why wasn't the NYT (or any other Thing) just created by the workers without their involvement? The answer in practice is that they provided value by providing the necessary capital to build the thing, and they did so in return for a cut of the future wealth earned by the thing. It's arguable that the wealth inequality that set the initial conditions for this is out of hand, but given the starting conditions, how else do you make big things?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#668

Post by tqi »

miltonlost wrote: post #248
Manuel_D wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Boeing developers might be part of their engineers union. Tech companies tend not to unionize, because most developers don't see net gain to be had from unionizing. Most unions end up serving the interest of the union instead of the company, and enact things like seniority based pay and promotion. There's just too much incentive to cater towards interest of mediocre employees in a union model. Another big fac…

[flagged]

Dismissing any form of dissent as purely the result of propaganda is not a good way to bring people to your side.

> In what world should a UNION of the workers care about the COMPANY? Maybe if the workers in the union partly owned the company.

For one, a meaningful amount of tech worker compensation comes in the form of company stock. For another, I would argue that anyone who wants to stay in their job long term should care about the company and it's long term health.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#669

Post by TylerE »

itake wrote: post #488
legitster wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1: If a union strikes when it has too much leverage, there's a risk there as well at overplaying the hand. If the Times does just fine during the election, then the union helps make the case their members are overrated. If the Times crashes and burns during the election, they might make the value of the contract weaker. 2: In an election where trust and reliability of independent media are really being called into qu…

Does SWE striking even mean anything to a company? If factory workers don't show up, no products are made. If a SWE doesn't show up, the website is just fine (see elon buys twitter). SWE impact is measured in quarters or years, especially at a big company that doesn't have public deadlines for project delivery.

The busiest news day of the year is tomorrow. You don’t think NYTimes.com not being up to announce the winner isn’t a problem?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#670

Post by wesselbindt »

legitster wrote: post #323

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull

I couldn't disagree more. The point of a strike is to demonstrate the value of your labor by withholding it. Withholding your labor in a slow week would be counterproductive. Strikes (just like any effective form of protest) are supposed to be inconvenient, so in saying what you said, you're really just expressing you don't like strikes. Having this blow up in election week is a risk the Times knowingly took in not meeting their workers' needs sufficiently, and drawing out the negotiations as long as they have. The guild is doing the right thing.

Post reply on HN