Union now. Union tomorrow. Union Forever.
The Burnout Machine
121–130 of 695 posts
Re: The Burnout Machine
#122I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me th…
I'd be particularly interested in cases where unionization led to better products and processes. Like in a world where management just wanted to ship everything half baked, the union gave the workforce the voice required to insist on accurate and up to date documentation, comprehensive testing, proper dependency tracking and security practices, etc.
I feel like almost everyone I talk to in tech says that behind the scenes, their company's development workflow is a nightmare, so this doesn't appear to be a problem that's fixing itself under market pressures.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#123This seems overly-catastrophizing to me. I don't deny it rings true for many, but I think some of the statements here really depend on your team and company.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#124I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me th…
> I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems."
Damn you have a way different ear for people than I do. Unions actually have an incentive to please their constituents. Politicians generally don't (at least in america).
Re: The Burnout Machine
#125I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me th…
Half of those problems disappear in Europe, quality of life and happiness skyrocket. Sure, you won't have some carrot-on-the-stick IPO games but I don't need to, I am not on the verge of burning out, I have plenty of time for my family and kids and also myself. Kids education is free including top notch unis, (almost) so is stellar healthcare, no need to massively save up for that regardless of what can happen.
I had a big paragliding accident last year with both legs broken, tons of treatment, mris, various physiotherapies... still ongoing and cost 0 nothing, in even rural US those costs would be brutal. My (early) retirement is very well taken care of if all works out, we will probably have more money than we could reasonably spend plus some serious assets, all just our work from 0 in past decade and a half, both just employed at companies. Criminality is a topic on its own. I could go on for a looong time.
I couldn't care less about unions, I never felt oppressed or disadvantaged in any way in past 20 years across 3 different countries and many jobs, in contrary.
Good luck putting a price tag on such things, if you don't get it wait till you are older. Thats how advanced modern society should look like IMHO... the stress of being american with family and without massive cash reserves must be quite intense and relentless.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great. Show me examples of teams who took that bet and how it paid off.
Let’s take the NYT Tech Guild. They negotiated a new contract following a strike last November. Here are some of the things they won: > Enhanced job security with ‘just cause’ protections > Guaranteed wage increases for the first time of up to 8.25% (plus additional base rate discretionary compensation) that prioritize the largest wage increases for the lowest paid members over the life of the contract > Additional c…
As a fairly progressive news outlet attracting staff with certain sensibilties in the NYC area and selling views to people who are the same, the NYTimes board of directors has a vested PR interest in tolerating unions with the large amounts money they have to pay for the privilege. I'm not convinced the company is better served by unionized employees over the rest of the tech scene, which has to innovate to stay solvent.
Knowing someone in tech there who refused to join the union, I was told these guys aren't particularly the best or smartest colleagues she's ever worked with to put it mildly.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#127My company firewall blocked this for reason ()
Uh, huh...
Re: The Burnout Machine
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is tech not blue collar? Because you use your brain instead of your hands? You are closer to a plumber or an electrician than to Sergey Brin, griping that you should be working 60 hours a week to develop AI to replace you for Alphabet shareholders.
> You are closer to a plumber or an electrician than to Sergey Brin I'm also a lot closer to a lawyer or a doctor than I am to a plumber. And very likely on the Sergey Brin side of the distribution.
Doctors have unions [1] ("among actively practicing physicians, approximately 70,000 currently belong to a union, representing 8% of physicians" [2]), lawyers have essentially guilds. If your wealth is closer to Brin’s than the median, than you’re an outlier whom I would not expect to need nor value a union (congrats on your luck). Unions are for the median, not the very wealthy and lucky [3].
The median annual wage for physicians and surgeons in the US was $239,200 in 2023. In May 2023, the median annual wage for lawyers in the U.S. was $145,760, with the lowest 10% earning less than $69,760 and the highest 10% earning more than $239,200. Stats shamelessly stolen from the US BLS website.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/doctors-unionize-as-health...
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9616465/
[3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o...
Re: The Burnout Machine
#129Re: The Burnout Machine
#130Burnout? Yes. Overwork? Maybe. Unionize? Eh… The post reeks of privilege. Go work a manual labor job outside in the sun for a few weeks and tell me how bad tech employees have it. Most of non-tech America is not empathetic to our plights. They’ll probably cheer on the offshoring of our jobs.
On the other hand, your post "rinks" of a general ignorance of labor history in the US, where unions have (at least, historically) been able to support each other across industries and facilitate class solidarity amongst workers. Perhaps if you showed up to some picket lines in your city and worked to build connections with your fellow workers by providing support in their struggles, you'd find that they're supportiv…
Thanks for the spell check!