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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#111

Post by eldavido »

whimsicalism wrote: post #107
astrange wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely it is, and anyone in denial about that can look at European GDP growth, GDP per capita, youth unemployment, firm valuations, or about 20 other economic metrics to back it up.

You can't start a company there because all this social spending makes it super hard to get going. I think the US is heading this way too now, toward lots of big companies with fat required benefit packages the little guys can never match (even if they eventually go on to become huge).

I wish people who would being so starry-eyed about Europe. One of the 10 biggest companies in Italy is the post office. Lots of industrial power, that.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#112

Post by lmc »

donohoe wrote: post #73

Is it fair to say that MapBox is moving into auto services? Or to put it another way, is it not a good idea for me to move to a different provider for basic mapping services?

> Is it fair to say that MapBox is moving into auto services?

It seems so

https://www.mapbox.com/fleet

https://www.mapbox.com/dash

https://www.mapbox.com/navigation/

Perhaps that's just their 'thing' for now and their core mapping/viz work will continue - I hope so as it's great tech and still relatively open compared to other cos.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#113

Post by rhodysurf »

urschrei wrote: post #43
iamleppert wrote: post #28

Blame your leadership for creating such a bloated company that the only thing to satiate investors was to sell out completely to auto companies. I interviewed at Mapbox at one time, a ridiculous 3-day interview at their SF office where lots of PM's and managers were buzzing around hosting meetings, giving the perception of getting stuff done when in fact it was even clear to me, an outsider, that nothing was being ac…

I can’t speak to the organizational problems you saw, but when you consider the quality of software that Mapbox was producing before the failed union drive – Mapbox GL JS, Rasterio, Shapely – what you’re saying is nonsensical. The latter two libraries have of course left Mapbox, along with their creator, and continue to see high-quality new features, but Mapbox GL JS is still so much better than anything else that I…

Yeah mapbox gl js is sooooo incredibly good I will continue to pay for it as long as I can at this point, technically it’s so far ahead of competitors for building customized spatial viz

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#114

Post by aikinai »

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 certainly does not have higher car ownership than the US. It depends on the source you use, but the US is somewhere in the 90s and Japan somewhere in the 60s. Plus they just use them a lot less as you mentioned.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#115

Post by erlich »

This is such a crazy and enraging read. If you don’t like your job, go join another company. It’s not as if devs don’t have plenty of high paying choices out there.

Especially for a startup that had struggled to find market fit, the last thing they need is a union.

Companies are not democracies and setting up a union is a hostile action. It basically says: here are the things we want and if we don’t get them we all stop working. If you want to run the company differently go setup your own company or buy some shares.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#116

Post by mistrial9 »

eldavido wrote: post #110
woevdbz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Most people hate change and will fight it as hard as they can, seeing all layoffs as "bad" and "evil".

this does not take into account the other side of the ledger -- the behavior, movement and dispersion of Kapital. Is there a shortage of profit in the last forty years, that requires creative destruction at every turn?

Perhaps the secret ingredient would be something called "stability" that includes accounting for the real system-level costs of luxury resorts, massive sports franchises, excessive personal medication and single-use plastics?

Am I seriously proposing that the German Auto Industry is good the way it is for the next 200 years? no.. is California a model for the world economic growth in the next twenty years? you tell me

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#118

Post by erlich »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #40
jenny91 wrote: post #34

I'm saddened by what happened to Mapbox. It's such a recurring pattern of organizational transformation: from a small "mission-driven" group building cool shit that starts taking money (and pressure from investors) and slowly erodes their past core values, changing into a faceless money-making machine subservient to some huge market or industry. In that process most of the original opinionated crowd will slowly rotat…

Unions and Mapbox is a very sore topic and now the subject of a NLRB lawsuit for firing the union organizers. https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/mapbox-sued-firing-union-... But the union drive came far too late to help the larger problem. The big change happened in 2017 when Softbank invested $164M into MapBox. In retrospect it was far too much money with too many expectations. And with the ugly side effect of salti…

Why do people always think it’s a good idea to unionize when a company is fighting for survival?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#119

Post by astrange »

siraben wrote: post #109
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.

Looks like I remembered it wrong. Still, it’s quite high and more than Australia/Canada.

https://internationalcomparisons.org/environmental/transport... (2015)

The UK having the highest transit mode share (in 2014) is a bit surprising.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#120

Post by erlich »

slively wrote: post #6

Here is the same story again. Sorry to hear about the inevitable ending, but glad they got to experience a good work culture for a time. At some point I hope we can shift the union discussion from just benefits and wages (which are not the biggest problems for SWE), to workers having a say in how a company operates. The idea that investing money garners complete control of a company is not healthy for the company or…

Most startups fail. Why burden them more? There are plenty of stable jobs out there at big boring companies. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
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