Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing • Hacker News Board

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#11

Post by geofft » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

A little bit of a tangent, but,

> Earlier this month, after five years of organizing, security officers for companies including Facebook, Google, and Genentech, many of whom were making between $12 and $14 an hour, ratified their first union contract. They won wage increases of up to $1.20 per hour, better health care, and, for the first time, paid holidays.

How is this rational? Do Facebook and Google believe they are facing no advanced persistent threats capable of bribing someone who lives in the Bay Area on $12/hour?

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#12

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:06 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #5

zdragnar wrote: post #2

There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. > The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ... On the one hand, this sou…

The following quote makes it clear: > “It became increasingly clear that their strategy was divide and conquer—flatter a handful of us in the hopes that we would go along with their plans, and not put up a fight when they fired half of our co-workers,” Westergard adds. But seriously, what were they thinking? How could they have been so blatant? > In mid-January, after most of the unit signed authorization cards to be…

That the firing of the whole staff was stupid and illegal was not in doubt, which is why I didn't really bother addressing it.

Rather, I wish the article had bothered to answer your question. I can hypothesize all day that they were in financial trouble and making rash decisions as a result, but the author didn't bother trying to find the truth, only present a narrative.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#13

Post by hyperpallium » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

When the means of production is concentrated, some kind of worker combination is a logical response.

But we're richer now, well-fed and well-entertained, so although the concentration is greater than ever (cf agrarian or industrial times), it's not as motivating.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#14

Post by jjoonathan » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #11

A little bit of a tangent, but, > Earlier this month, after five years of organizing, security officers for companies including Facebook, Google, and Genentech, many of whom were making between $12 and $14 an hour, ratified their first union contract. They won wage increases of up to $1.20 per hour, better health care, and, for the first time, paid holidays. How is this rational? Do Facebook and Google believe they a…

Why would they care? Companies never seem to be held accountable for being hacked.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#15

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #10

adrr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like very poor management and people skills. Also it's probably not a good idea to backstop a pre-product startup with bootcamp engineers regardless of gender. The foundation is set early on which is very costly to change. No wants to be changing data models and relationships when there are mission critical features that need to be done.

Is the implication that bootcamp engineers will come up with the wrong data models and relationships? I bet Hackbright teaches you more about SQL than my entire CS degree from MIT did. (I took a graduate-level database class for a few weeks before dropping it; apart from that, I can't remember anything else about databases in theory, let alone SQL and ORMs in practice.)

The origin of the education doesn't matter so much as the implied lack of real-world experience. I'd hazard a guess that a third of the engineers I've worked with had a CS degree, and in the world of web and mobile there aren't many places that matters.

On the other hand, bootcamps in particular teach you a basic grasp of the "in" technologies that will look good on a resume. Having a few on your team is often a good thing. Having too many, or having too pressing of a deadline to properly mentor them is a terrible thing for everyone involved.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#16

Post by mc32 » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:15 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #11

A little bit of a tangent, but, > Earlier this month, after five years of organizing, security officers for companies including Facebook, Google, and Genentech, many of whom were making between $12 and $14 an hour, ratified their first union contract. They won wage increases of up to $1.20 per hour, better health care, and, for the first time, paid holidays. How is this rational? Do Facebook and Google believe they a…

Those folks do physical security. Aside from access to buildings and stuff they have access to little else, plus they have supervisors and people at the company who supervise them, plus doing weird things will trigger alerts and stuff, so I don't think they can do a lot beside ignore alarms for an intruder who would not have access to digital assets. Plus, NDAs are pretty powerful tools.

I mean, if a guard lets you in, what are you gonna do, steal a laptop which is encrypted and requires 2FA? The only places which might have richer targets are research and prototyping facilities which I imagine have additional safeguards.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#17

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:15 AM UTC

2bitmachine wrote: post #6

zdragnar wrote: post #2

There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. > The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ... On the one hand, this sou…

>There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. This seemed pretty clear in the article? They tried to buy off senior male employees with extra stock options last minute. >Maybe that really is the story, but so many details were left out to focus on the narrative that we won't know without be…

My point was that, without knowing the management's perspective, it's entirely possible that gender was merely a coincidence of having senior males available, and hiring junior females either because they were the best available or the company wanted to look diverse. Perhaps they were flagging and needed to cut the junior developers so the senior developers could focus on getting back on track.

Either way, it's impossible to know, because without more details all we are left with is the agenda of an author who isn't interested in presenting the truth (or providing sufficient evidence to support it).

Edit: consider the following scenario: you have a team of male developerd; maybe they were friends when they pitched the idea for a product to you. After a few months, there's a big backlog, and they want to hire junior developers to train and take off some of the pressure. To embrace diversity, you hire a bunch of women who recently graduated from a boot camp to round out your all white male staff.

Fast forward a year. Everyone has become a tight knit team, but the pressure to deliver mounts. Instead of getting faster, they're all bogged down with refactors and endless pull request revisions of things that aren't working out. You are running out of money, so you decide to cut the junior developers, and try to bribe the senior devs with some of the cost savings to make up for all the extra hours they'll now be working. Uh oh! You're only firing the women! They all band together, oblivious to the fact that you literally won't be able to keep them all on.

I'm not saying this is what happened. What happened could have been pure sexism and anti-labor mentality. BUT pushing such an agenda without KNOWING that is the case here doesn't do anyone any favors.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#18

Post by briandear » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #11

A little bit of a tangent, but, > Earlier this month, after five years of organizing, security officers for companies including Facebook, Google, and Genentech, many of whom were making between $12 and $14 an hour, ratified their first union contract. They won wage increases of up to $1.20 per hour, better health care, and, for the first time, paid holidays. How is this rational? Do Facebook and Google believe they a…

What’s rational is that people are accepting positions at those pay rates. If you don’t want $12 per hour, go somewhere willing to pay more — even fast food pays more than that in the Bay Area. Entry level at Target pays over $15. They don’t need a union, they just need to quit and go work somewhere else. No shortages of jobs in the Bay Area— essentially everyone is hiring right now.

Why should the company be blamed when people keep lining up to work for the wages on offer?

Does anyone buying bananas at Safeway just randomly decide to pay more than the asking price? Of course not. It’s the same with companies.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#19

Post by briandear » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:17 AM UTC

fogetti wrote: post #8

> Despite their futuristic sheen, tech companies “actually operate like traditional industrialists and will go through old fashioned methods of suppressing workers,” he says. Spot on.

And workers can quit. There are jobs everywhere.

Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing

#20

Post by ma2rten » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 3:18 AM UTC

Tech companies used the same strategy in the 1970s, offering employees high salaries and sweet perks to make collective action less appetizing.

That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent unionization.

Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, many of whom graduated from Hackbright, an all women’s coding boot camp

I am generally skeptical about bootcamps. In my experience they typically only teach very specific skills, but don't teach fundamental concepts. That makes it hard to pick up new skills, which is required from software engineers. Is it possible that this is the reason Lanetix was planning on firing them?

EDIT: I took a look at the website of Hackbright. I'm very skeptical about this bootcamp. The bootcamps is 16k for 12 weeks. They seem to teach full-stack programming in 8 weeks (python, flask, postgres, html, css, javascript, jquery, git). That gives students about a half a week per technology.

The last four weeks seem to be reserved only for interview prep and computer science fundamentals that are needed for interviews.

Their website implies that the skills they teach will empower students to work at famous tech companies, e.g. "Companies that use Python include Google, Yelp and Dropbox to name a few. Mastering Python here will help you start thinking like an engineer. You can feel confident that you’ll walk out of the door ready to tackle any engineering role.".