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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#101

Post by legohead »

tiffanyh wrote: post #49

> A company like Mapbox hadn’t ever unionized before, so it seemed like an exciting experiment Call me crazy, but taking such a drastic move as unionizing shouldn’t be trivialized into just being an “experiment”. EDIT: why the downvotes? Why not simply reply with your thoughts so that we can have a thoughtful discourse.

I was on a union bargaining team once. Made me hate my job, hate management, and hate unions. I was fine being in the union before that. Once you try bargaining and see what people really think of each other, it sucks. I wont join a union again.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#102

Post by skybrian »

joecot wrote: post #41
mikl wrote: post #17

> Over the next few years, Mapbox tried to find success in a variety of industries: journalism, social media, travel, ect. We never hit numbers that were big enough for our investors. In the process, we abandoned our focus on Open Source and Open data. Then, as is the case with many mapping companies, Mapbox shifted focus to the auto industry. My fear of loss of control fully materialized at this point. I’m a lifelon…

Once a company takes VC funding or a buyout, or makes an IPO, any ethical promise they've ever made is null and void. Later when choices are made outside of their control, they wash their hands and say it's not their fault. But the founders break those promises at the time they take that money, when they willingly gave up their control. And the point of VC funding is always a buyout later, where all founder control w…

You're making a big assumption that making the world better isn't about helping paying customers.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#103

Post by hutch120 »

Like many others no doubt, I invested heavily into the mapbox-gl-js library (pre 2.0). I was able to build amazing value on top of that library including a routing voice navigation app for an aged care facility that is used to this day 24/7/365. It was a very sad day when they changed their licencing model to lock in vendors and I had to walk away from that investment of my time and effort. Luckily I had also worked and contributed to OpenLayers and Leaflet, so with significant effort was able to move my clients to those platforms.

I guess we now have some more insight into why this occurred.

> "In order to use most Services, you must register for or authenticate into a Mapbox account. When you use our application program interfaces (APIs), including our SDK Registry/Downloads API, each request to an API must include one of your account's unique API keys."

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#104

Post by skybrian »

tiffanyh wrote: post #75
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s not drastic for a company to have lawyers” is probably the point that was being made. It’s not drastic for a company to have lawyers; it shouldn’t be drastic for a union—or in this case, a union organizing effort—to have lawyers as well.

If you feel like you have lawyer-up just to go to work, that’s probably a signal you shouldn’t be working there.

It depends what you mean by "lawyer up." Having a lawyer look at any contracts you sign isn't a bad idea.

(Not that I've done it.)

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#105

Post by astrange »

whimsicalism wrote: post #96
roguecoder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your hypothesis is that VCs put their class interests ahead of making money to such an extent that it is impossible to exercise our legal rights without putting the companies we work for in their political crosshairs? You may be right. It still seems like the easiest solution is for all the startups to unionize so they don't have any choice: they can either invest in unionized startups or they can stop being VCs.

> So your hypothesis is that VCs put their class interests ahead of making money It's much simpler than this and it is about making money. Whether unions impact the ultimate success (in terms of ability to build) of a company or not, they certainly shift the share of money that is going towards labor as opposed to owners who want a profit. This lowers the expected return of company equity which means people will be w…

That’s mostly the US corporate union system (which of course you’d be using as a US company).

European approaches like sectoral bargaining and codetermination don’t have these problems; a single company isn’t disadvantaged vs its competitors and the employees on the board are motivated to grow the company. Europe doesn’t have VCs and the culture doesn’t support failure like Silicon Valley, but that’s for different reasons.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#106

Post by jjmorrison »

Thinking that organizing a union to change the direction of the company is an exciting experiment is really irresponsible. All the paycheck everyone at the company is getting needs to come from somewhere. You do not have the right to bet everyone's paycheck on an exciting experiment.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#107

Post by whimsicalism »

astrange wrote: post #105
whimsicalism wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your hypothesis is that VCs put their class interests ahead of making money It's much simpler than this and it is about making money. Whether unions impact the ultimate success (in terms of ability to build) of a company or not, they certainly shift the share of money that is going towards labor as opposed to owners who want a profit. This lowers the expected return of company equity which means people will be w…

That’s mostly the US corporate union system (which of course you’d be using as a US company). European approaches like sectoral bargaining and codetermination don’t have these problems; a single company isn’t disadvantaged vs its competitors and the employees on the board are motivated to grow the company. Europe doesn’t have VCs and the culture doesn’t support failure like Silicon Valley, but that’s for different re…

> Europe doesn’t have VCs and the culture doesn’t support failure like Silicon Valley, but that’s for different reasons.

No, it is the same effect I am describing but inter-national as opposed to inter-firm. Capital allocation is transnational.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#108

Post by astrange »

> Then, as is the case with many mapping companies, Mapbox shifted focus to the auto industry. My fear of loss of control fully materialized at this point. I’m a lifelong bicycle commuter, and I think cars are unequivocally bad. They ruin cities, contribute to environmental decline (even electric cars!) and kill people.

All these things are correct except for the ruin cities part - that’s a US city planning problem.

Japan, everyone’s favorite high public transit country with a lot of demand for maps, has a higher car ownership % than the US. They just discourage using them for personal trips and commutes via small roads, toll highways, expensive parking etc.

But once you’re a family or want to go somewhere low density and take some luggage, it’s hard to beat them.

What it looks like to me is this guy wanted to work at a geospatial PBC but didn’t know such a thing existed.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#109

Post by siraben »

astrange wrote: post #108

> Then, as is the case with many mapping companies, Mapbox shifted focus to the auto industry. My fear of loss of control fully materialized at this point. I’m a lifelong bicycle commuter, and I think cars are unequivocally bad. They ruin cities, contribute to environmental decline (even electric cars!) and kill people. All these things are correct except for the ruin cities part - that’s a US city planning problem.…

> Japan, everyone’s favorite high public transit country with a lot of demand for maps, has a higher car ownership % than the US. They just discourage using them for personal trips and commutes via small roads, toll highways, expensive parking etc.

Do you have a reference for this? From a precursory search it seems the US has a much higher car ownership rate.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#110

Post by eldavido »

woevdbz wrote: post #69
afandian wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surely not that bleak (at least, not everywhere). And it doesn't have to be remotely about 'politics'. My old employer made the leap to employee-owned and they seem to be going from strength to strength. https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust

Right, that works until you need more funding (unless you can raise from employees, but that also has consequences and limits). I'm guessing that Mapbox is angling for an acquisition or more funding at some point.

The other thing it does (giving employees more power) is make it harder for companies to change course. Most people hate change and will fight it as hard as they can, seeing all layoffs as "bad" and "evil".

Germany's auto industry is a great example of a highly unionized industry. Pay is good. But also, it's very hard for Germany to enact anti-oil and gas policies (carbon reduction / pro-environment) because it hurts auto workers. It should also give anyone really pro-union pause to consider why Germany didn't produce Tesla. They had every advantage imaginable including a well-trained workforce, existing manufacturing infrastructure, the deepest capital markets in Europe, and existing distribution relationships. And yet, the Americans beat them to it. Why, you ask? Because workers don't want to retrain or change what they've been doing for 50+ years. There's too much inertia, too much complacency, too much "this is how we've always done things".

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