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Tech Workers' Values

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Tech Workers' Values

#101

Post by lazyasciiart »

xienze wrote: post #44
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10

We believe that employees should come together and clearly define the values and policies they'd like to see their companies uphold. A tech union isn't the perfect metaphor for this, but it's not far off. If it's going to do anything but be window dressing then it needs to have the teeth of union - so just call it what it is. I've argued for a while that tech workers need a union, but the chorus on HN and other place…

> If it's going to do anything but be window dressing then it needs to have the teeth of union - so just call it what it is. This sounds like it's going to have exactly zero to do with what a labor union would normally be concerned with -- pay, working conditions, etc. Instead, I have a strong suspicion this is going to be some sort of enumeration of the progressive ideals that all tech workers "should" be concerned…

> Namely, LGBT stuff, female and minority representation, immigrant's rights, etc.

offering parental leave is an excellent example of the kind of thing a union would negotiate, and is also pretty well related to how attractive a company is to women (who are more likely to have childcare responsibilities). Rules against firing someone for being gay or a different religion are a great example of something a union would negotiate, and are definitely going to help increase minority and LGBT representation. Why do you see 'working conditions' as unrelated to these topics?

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#102

Post by ThrustVectoring »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #7
adrianratnapala wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers like money too. And demand it from their employers. If you are not doing that, you should.

Yes. I don't understand the people who say "I'd rather work in a company with a good working environment" as if you have to work for peanuts to have a good job. If you are convinced to work for a low salary in the name of "culture" your employer is laughing all the way to the bank.

And you're laughing all the way to having an excellent life.

Like, this is the market behaving appropriately. If companies can get better talent at better prices by providing better working environments, well, we're effectively buying nicer work environments. Whether it's worth the cost or not is a separate issue, and really depends on the price. Personally, I've priced working in SF instead of Mountain View at roughly $20k/year when evaluating job offers.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#103

Post by jerf »

coldtea wrote: post #95
jerf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech community, or the portion of the tech community that is Silicon Valley Liberal? (Bear in mind that even if you feel inclined to write off non-liberals, there is a such thing as a non-Silicon Valley liberal.) I can't help but feel this organization is going to have a built in equivocation fallacy where whenever it is suitable they'll claim to be a "tech worker union" but whenever it comes time to decide what…

> The tech community, or the portion of the tech community that is Silicon Valley Liberal? When they write "For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all our lives. As members of the community, ..." they obviously mean the tech community. And they ARE members of the tech community (regardless of if they are also members of a subset, like SV-liberal tech community or anything similar).

And if they were setting out to be a union in the conventional sense, that would be fine. But as a weird undefined vaguely amorphous "We're a union that's going to do political things", it matters whether the Silicon Valley liberals are going to be making all the decisions.

I said this on another thing that got lost on /new recently, but either form a PAC or form a union, but don't try to do both.

I very much expect this to be structurally non-viable. Once the union has to make positive decisions about what to push for even the apparent political unity in Silicon Valley will be revealed to be less strong than it seems when you're merely looking at the fact that "I don't know anyone who voted for Trump", let alone what happens if you try to extend it out of Silicon Valley. (And if this is supposed to be unionesque, you'll have to almost immediately as plenty of SV companies have major non-SV offices.) There are unions that were politically active, but they always combined it with a very strong message to their members that their primary task was watching out for their members. Starting right out of the gate with "Our first priority is political activism" means that you can pretty much guarantee the leadership will end up detached from the membership in a small number of years. Something may emerge from that process, but it won't be a group of people that has anything like a quorum of the "tech community"... it'll just be a PAC.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#104

Post by geofft »

iamacynic wrote: post #19
leggomylibro wrote: post #3

Give us creative freedom and ownership of our IP. When you claim all of our thoughts on and off the clock, you encourage us to avoid creatively-fulfilling ventures, burn out, and leave for greener pastures.

> Give us creative freedom and ownership of our IP. you can't be serious. why would a company even exist if all the work it paid for would be owned by someone else? i mean sure, you can live in that world, it's just nobody would pay for anything to happen.

The company exists to sell a product or provide a service, not to own intellectual property. Sometimes the most effective means is to own the IP, but it's a means, not an end. Very few companies tend to market IP directly.

For instance, in a sufficiently broad view, 99% of AWS is other people's IP - the PC platform, hardware virtualization, Xen, Linux and userspace tools, Perl, etc. etc. And they seem to be doing a fine job commercializing it. They could build their own computing architecture, write their own hypervisor, design their own OS, etc., but that would probably be a less profitable approach. There's an existence proof in Microsoft's Azure and IBM's z/whatever-they're-calling-it-these-days, which are significantly less popular.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#105

Post by erikpukinskis »

throwaway71958 wrote: post #94
erikpukinskis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will happen. The limiting factor is we need to get the friction for forking an existing co-op down close to zero. Unfortunately most people who work for a co-op still think of it as proprietary ("this is my co-op, and we don't have any openings right now. If you want yours you have to start your own"). Intellectual resistance from co-opers isn't the main bottleneck though. Management infrastructure needs to be all…

>> It will happen. As someone who was born and raised in the Soviet Union and spent the last 20 years in the US, I hope to dear god this doesn't ever happen. I don't know where else I'd have to emigrate if it does. To Mars maybe? What you're describing is essentially "collective enterprise" or "kolkhoz", where nominally you own a share in a venture, but in practice you don't own shit, and as a result you don't consid…

You were flagged, but I don't see any rule violations so I vouched for you. I share many of your same fears. But your argument is a slippery slope argument, so I can't really argue against it. Maybe you're right, and the worker-owned Pizza co-op down the street from me will slide into Stalinist authoritarianism. We'll see. I think the fact that it is voluntary and you are at will to choose an ownership-based enterprise instead is a key difference from the Soviet Union.

I'll also point out that the vast majority of U.S. employees don't have ownership stakes and they still show up to work and work hard. Many people (retirees, the rich, other do-gooders) even work hard for organizations and don't get paid.

I appreciate your recounting of history though, and share your concern. The biggest fear I have is that decentralization of operations will make it easier for exploitation of workers on a small scale in secret. I also do share your fear that my understanding of how much resources will be needed is off because I grew up in a country where those resources were presumed.

But these fears are not enough to stop my work. Capitalism has led to my neighbors in the Bay Area being regularly shot, and that's a real problem I am dealing with today. So my concern over those shootings is greater than my concern about the theoretical future ones you are cautioning against.

You're wrong to assume that us naive Americans have no idea what it's like to see your friends and neighbors be shot for political reasons.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#106

Post by lazyasciiart »

intrasight wrote: post #76
sidlls wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this industry is far from being like the other engineering disciplines. It should be like them, but it is still far too immature to be put at that level.

For starters, we are not licensed. And I suspect that a non-citizen couldn't get an engineering license.

What? Of course non-citizens can get an engineering license. It can be trickier if your education is from outside the US, but citizenship is not an issue.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#107

Post by sidlls »

intrasight wrote: post #76
sidlls wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this industry is far from being like the other engineering disciplines. It should be like them, but it is still far too immature to be put at that level.

For starters, we are not licensed. And I suspect that a non-citizen couldn't get an engineering license.

Licensing would require settling on actually understanding that software development is an engineering activity and not an extended CS 401/501 project. The industry isn't even mature enough to consider licensing either.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#108

Post by matt4077 »

xienze wrote: post #92
badloginagain wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what that would really accomplish, though. All companies already publicly advertise the 'moral' beliefs you mentioned, yet continue hiring white male whiteboard challenge mavericks.

No, not all companies. Many still follow the age-old wisdom of staying out of the social commentary business. I think the goal of this endeavor is to change that by convincing the tech workers to create a culture of doing so where it didn't exist before.

The only age-old wisdom I remember from my great-grandfather is "never trust the British, and kill every French on sight".

Regarding this issue, I'll stop demanding that corporations act morally above and beyond what the law requires when they seize to influence those laws.

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#109

Post by Danihan »

csneeky wrote: post #60

Tech workers are as disparate and varied as non-tech workers... There is a hierarchy and I think it is unlikely we will see common ground emerge. Survival of the fittest and the best will still win the day. Just like the labor unions of the industrial era, efforts like this are doomed to be spikes of ideology rife with the same contradictions of those it proposes to keep in check. Some tech workers run multimillion d…

Exactly. This post is founded on so many bad assumptions..

We'd also like to discuss how tech companies can heal the divide in our country.

Why _shouldn't_ there be divides in our country? Which divide is being referred to? Religious? Political? Net worth? Productivity? Persuasion?

Why assume differences need "healed?" Why this constant, desperate push for homogeneity?

Why can't people simply be different, and have conflicting opinions and worldviews? Why can't these disagreements, alongside of passionate debate, be lauded and encouraged instead of shamed?

Why can't people simply not like one another sometimes, without needing "healed"?

Re: Tech Workers' Values

#110

Post by geofft »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #24

The same forces that have killed unions in the US will kill this. As long as labor can be shipped to areas of the world with a lower quality of life, they will do so. Lower level tech positions like tech support have already been shipped overseas, and once countries like India and China develop the infrastructure to take higher level tech jobs, they will go there too. If we want to protect our workers, our labor laws…

1. "Overseas" is a curious definition. Linux was written in Finland, after all. Would blocking US workers from aiding Finnish technology have been productive?

2. Can it be stopped? If US companies refuse to work with Indian or Chinese employees, what is preventing India or China from out-competing the US company in the international market? If the US places tariffs on technology products and services from other countries, what is preventing those other countries from outpacing our standard of living?

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