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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#121

Post by erlich »

jenny91 wrote: post #38
tarkin2 wrote: post #30

It sounded like unionisation was an attempt at pushing back the ills of VC funding, especially taking back some control of the company’s direction, rather than concentrating on fairer pay and working conditions. I support unions but I’m not sure I support them controlling the direction of the company: most of the time the business people, frankly, know best about profitability. The whole story reinforced the idea tha…

Maybe there is a middle ground? Surely VCs will fight tooth-and-nail against it since it's clearly taking away control (and some ability to extract profit) from them. For instance in some countries with stronger unions and better labor conditions the union often has a board seat and so can advocate and don't have by any means control over the directio of the company.

VCs are looking for a big exit. They have targets for the investment to have been worthwhile. The founders agreed to this. They are not interested in a great company just breaking even and chugging along which is what the employees want.

I wonder how much additional stock the employees are buying with their paychecks…

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#122

Post by Tostino »

erlich wrote: post #118
NelsonMinar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because the people doing the work want a say in the overall direction of the company?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#123

Post by astrange »

aikinai wrote: post #114
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.

The main issue is people want to copy Japan by building high speed rail, but Shinkansen isn’t actually that useful - it doesn’t carry mail/cargo, can’t carry much luggage, and though pleasant to use it’s quite expensive. It’s closer to business class flights than anything else. Economy class flights inside the country are often actually cheaper if you don’t mind going to the airport.

Japan’s strength is that you can take yourself everywhere daily on a train or walking/biking, and there’s density and malls in the train stations.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#124

Post by aikinai »

astrange wrote: post #119
siraben wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

These stats all look wrong for Japan at least. I’ve done research specifically into Japanese transportation modes in Japanese using authoritative sources and the real stats are more in line with what you’d expect (i.e. more public transportation, more biking, less cars). I can’t grab the sources right now, but might try to come back and add them later.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#125

Post by aikinai »

astrange wrote: post #123
aikinai wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main issue is people want to copy Japan by building high speed rail, but Shinkansen isn’t actually that useful - it doesn’t carry mail/cargo, can’t carry much luggage, and though pleasant to use it’s quite expensive. It’s closer to business class flights than anything else. Economy class flights inside the country are often actually cheaper if you don’t mind going to the airport. Japan’s strength is that you can…

Yup! Totally agree with all of that.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#126

Post by astrange »

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.

There isn’t an issue with starting companies in Europe as much though - Skype, Nokia, Booking are examples. The issue is they don’t stay European owned. US companies buy them out because they run out of ability to grow.

FAANGs have European offices with work councils and all and aren’t considered unproductive, but they’re not the corporate headquarters because they didn’t start there.

Certainly some European countries prefer having a few old large companies because it’s easier to regulate. Asia has the same problem; it’s an everywhere except Silicon Valley thing.

edit: actually, ASML is an example of a European headquartered tech company where all the value is “actually” American. Not sure how that happened. Video game studios also seem a lot more international than other tech companies.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#127

Post by erlich »

pm90 wrote: post #90
tarkin2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah definitely. My comment came from my understanding of what the author wanted the union to do rather than how unions could operate. As an aside, I’m slightly skeptical about unions in the US. The US’s economic model seems to be based around innovation and unions arguably make making decisions slower and more difficult. If you look at Germany’s economic model, one with very strong employee protection, it seems larg…

Im not sure that “Unions slow innovation” is true. As a counter: in tech, its the workers that generate a significant amount of value by writing software and building products. Giving them more control and a seat at the table can be useful in encouraging long term investments in lieu of extreme short term thinking that VCs typically promote.

Google tried putting devs in charge and it didn’t work. It’s obvious too. Devs have such different incentives to owners. They want a nice place to work and play with fun tech and pad their CVs. They can leave at any moment too with zero concern for what happens when they’re gone.

Employee equity is usually not enough to be worth fighting for. It’s just the ability to pay less salary or get good people.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#128

Post by sclv »

erlich wrote: post #115

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 s…

Yes, companies are not democracies. That's why we need unions! That's the only way to exercise our collective power to negotiate with the employer on more equal terms. When we negotiate individually we also say "here are the things we want, and that is our condition of work." There is _always_ a conflict between what employees want, which involves wages and conditions, and what employers want, which is getting the most work while yielding the least in wages and conditions.

Unions in tech are as possible and necessary as unions anywhere else. Nothing about being it tech makes us "special" and the whole mythology it does only serves to keep us from organizing and solidifying our conditions and strength.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#129

Post by Apocryphon »

eldavido wrote: post #111
whimsicalism wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

Well, perhaps labor relations in the U.S. are just so acrimonious- its history is literally soaked in blood and violence- that it's just one patch of grass of Europe that seems greener on the other side. Certainly the idea of more cooperation between labor and management, perhaps the German model of labor unions, wouldn't be so bad.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#130

Post by admax88qqq »

mistrial9 wrote: post #116
eldavido wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"stability" favours people already at a comfortable place in economy at the expense of everyone trying to enter the workforce or level up their pay.

Growth creates new opportunities.

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