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United Wizards of the Coast

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Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#101

Post by SubjectToChange »

perrohunter wrote: post #44

I think there are some professions where Unions make sense, like for Pilots and Teachers, as a 30 years of experience teacher can be replaced with a 2 years of experience teacher, so we need unions to protect the experienced Teacher or Pilot, but when it comes to what MTG Arena does, I dont see much value on the union existing, perhaps someone can provide some valuable insight

>stable and/or well compensated, high status job. Not exploited/abused much.

Oh, they definitely deserve a union.

>unstable and poorly paid, low status job. Abused and exploited often.

Hmm… their job doesn’t really seem “cool enough” to have a union. They should just take it and shut up. I mean, they’re losers after all.

I’m sort of joking but it’s interesting how so many people “gatekeep” unions when people in unglamorous lines of work need unions more than almost anyone else.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#102

Post by drob518 »

margalabargala wrote: post #68
drob518 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most employment agreements for tech companies have a clause that says that the employer owns everything you do while you’re working for them. And if you’re on salary, as opposed to working by the hour, there really is no “free time.” In practice no company is going to go after you for anything that is non-competitive, and doubly so if it’s also open source work. But yea, if you’re inventing competitive products in yo…

Most? No. Many, sure. > have a clause that says that the employer owns everything you do while you’re working for them Good companies will have a clause that says the employer owns everything you do in the relevant field of the company while working for them, explicitly naming that field. If you work for a logistics company, you would be able to write your own video editor without any worry. If you work for a not-shi…

I’ve worked at 12 companies in Silicon Valley and they all had variations of such language, whether huge Fortune 50 corporations or 4-person startups with the ink still wet on their incorporation filing. Yes, the better ones have a clause that restricts the claim to competitive work, but not all do. Smaller companies will be more flexible with you, particularly if you’re a key hire. At larger companies, it’s typically take it or leave it. HR has forms that must be signed and they sure aren’t going to involve the legal department for you. And to be clear, nobody is going to come after you for a completely orthogonal work product. There’s no point because they can’t monetize whatever orthogonal thing you created and it would cost them lawyers fees for no return. But I have seen companies try to enforce those contracts before. I have not ever seen one go to court. They typically settle before they get that far, but rumors were that IP was given to the company. The employee left in any case and redid the work outside.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#103

Post by zulux »

I hate unions, but I've noticed they only form when there's some sort of abuse. Treat employees well, and this isn't a problem.

Also, flip the hierarchy: a business that puts employees first and profits for owners last can often have a shit ton of profits for owners. Executing isn't easy and requires wisdom and work - but that's why owners are paid the big bucks.

If owners can't hack it... Then it's a skill issue. Get gud.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#104

Post by margalabargala »

mjr00 wrote: post #84
margalabargala wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's really only companies that don't care about being shitty that do this. It's a callous lack of regard for employees that leads to the situation you describe, though you're right that it's not uncommon. Any halfway decent company will restrict in the contract to IP that's related to the company's area of business. If you write logistics software, the company will say "we own all logistics software you write".…

> If you write logistics software, the company will say "we own all logistics software you write". You can't create a competitor. But if you work for a logistics software company and decide to go write a video editor on your own time, the company wouldn't own that. The problem is there's no clear legal definition of what "logistics software" is. A video editor is a seemingly obvious example of what is not, but what i…

Yes, you're right. The common (lazy) approach for companies that don't give a shit is "we own everything because it might be complicated to introduce ambiguity and we own you anyway".

Having carveouts for obviously not-related software is easy. At a decent company populated by reasonable people, if you wanted to work on something you felt fell into the grey area, you would ask and get a written okay. Which is how it also works at many of the shitty companies! The difference is that the shitty companies there's never a route to do anything, however unrelated, without running it by HR. Because they think they own you.

> Imagine after Slack took off, that an employee claimed that because they had written Slack at least partly outside of working hours and it was not "video game software", the company didn't have ownership of the software.

On the contrary, using a nonzero amount of working hours to work on something pretty clearly makes it company property.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#105

Post by darkwater »

zulux wrote: post #103

I hate unions, but I've noticed they only form when there's some sort of abuse. Treat employees well, and this isn't a problem. Also, flip the hierarchy: a business that puts employees first and profits for owners last can often have a shit ton of profits for owners. Executing isn't easy and requires wisdom and work - but that's why owners are paid the big bucks. If owners can't hack it... Then it's a skill issue. Ge…

In other news, with common sense and widespread honor, dignity and honesty, every form of government can work beautifully well, from anarchy to plutarchy to democracy to dictatorship, either using capitalism, communism or any other -ism.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#106

Post by nsingh2 »

zulux wrote: post #103

I hate unions, but I've noticed they only form when there's some sort of abuse. Treat employees well, and this isn't a problem. Also, flip the hierarchy: a business that puts employees first and profits for owners last can often have a shit ton of profits for owners. Executing isn't easy and requires wisdom and work - but that's why owners are paid the big bucks. If owners can't hack it... Then it's a skill issue. Ge…

> a business that puts employees first and profits for owners last can often have a shit ton of profits for owners.

Owners can make 100x that shit ton if they put profits for owners first, so why wouldn’t they do that instead? Out of the goodness of their own hearts?

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#107

Post by baconsunday »

glasss wrote: post #97
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big assumption here is that the Union's interests are, in fact, aligned with You, the Worker. If they're not, then you're just caught between two powerful, unaccountable entities. You have to join the Union, after all. I see a lot of folks in Education who feel that the Union simply Exists and does not really help them (their employers being rather sympathetic as well). When they are, of course the Worker benefit…

I think on average it's a safer assumption that the union made up of your peers are more aligned with your interests than the owners of the company are. All of my friends that are teachers do admit their union has flaws, but also are very grateful to have strong contracts, benefits, and people willing to fight for them when the school system tries to screw them over.

Is that actually the case for the tech unions that actually exist, though? Historically, the people pushing for tech unionization were doing it for ideological reasons, not in response to the relatively recent layoffs, etc. and you can see this in their leadership.

I have a pretty simple litmus test for them: are they opposed to H1B hiring, and would they have defended James Damore when he got ousted from Google for basically being autistic? I think the answer for many of them is a resounding no.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#108

Post by bena »

ddtaylor wrote: post #30

WOTC has been on a downward trend since the Hasbro acquisition.

That was 1999. Invasion came out that year. Innistrad, Mirrodin, Ravnica, and other settings all came out after Hasbro's acquisition.

Every year seems to be the best-selling year so far. Magic: the Gathering is Hasbro's primary revenue source.

And look, I don't like the sheer amount of product they're pumping out every year now. But I realize I'm clearly in the minority opinion based on sales.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#109

Post by satvikpendem »

mjr00 wrote: post #92
satvikpendem wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about "all." High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average.

> High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average. High earners benefit from unions if union rules are made which benefit high earners. The most well-known example of a high-earner union is SAG-AFTRA an…

Tech workers are fungible while actors or athletes are not though, so they should better be compared to more blue collar worker unions and here it is the case that wages are generally normalized.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#110

Post by satvikpendem »

ryandrake wrote: post #89
satvikpendem wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc. As I said for tech workers it's a different set of reasons.

I think tech largely falls for the same anti-union propaganda as a great number of the rest of the USA. You'll see HN commenters in this article repeating much of this propaganda.

I'm not sure, this is a good way to dismiss anything one doesn't like as "propaganda," it doesn't really tell us much.
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