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Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

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Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#141

Post by mandevil »

chroma wrote: post #24
freeone3000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So's operating a taxi without a license or running a hotel in a residential area. If you can get enough investor money to ignore the consequences, laws don't stop this.

You are smuggling a connotation in with your denotation. When most people think of "crime", they think of robbery, assault, and other violent acts. They don't think of disregarding various business laws or (to use an example I think you'd agree with) possessing and using certain drugs. To give another example: By the technical definition, Martin Luther King committed crime by violating the racist laws of the south. Y…

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr went to jail 29 times in his life for committing a crime. He definitely committed crimes and was willing to face the consequences of them.

And just as an observation, the comparison of the way that Kickstarter treats their employees and MLK is... stretched.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#142

Post by PorterDuff »

holy_city wrote: post #135
PorterDuff wrote: post #92

re: Unions If a software union only existed to deal with the following: . Pensions . Health insurance I can see the point.

It could use the Hollywood unions as a model, at least partly. The Screen Actors Guild for example doesn't limit actors' ability to negotiate salaries independently but does allow for freelancers to get health insurance paid through employment in a larger network. There are other benefits too. Elimating crunch without overtime.

That's an interesting point. I have friends in the movie makin' business and should ask how their unions work in terms of benefits, negotations, etc. The jobs all seems to be split into individual films as independent businesses so to a software contractor there would be a lot of similarities.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#143

Post by hysan »

nickjj wrote: post #70

I know close to nothing about unions or the KS story but I am from the US and myself along with almost everyone I know tend to associate unions with extreme wasting of resources. This is coming at it from a spectator's point of view (ie. not a union worker / not a unionized business owner). For example, I've witnessed an overpass taking over 2 years to finish (it was blocked off / limited access / under construction…

My father was the owner of his company. My mother was in the union whose workers he employed. I’ve grown up around both sides and understand quite deeply that there are no absolutes in this. You can have good and bad unions just like you can have good and bad companies in the world.

I don’t have much else other than anecdotes to add about the benefits of unions for both sides. What I would like to point out is that if you flip your post and replace union with company, it still holds 100% true. Just food for thought.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#144

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #85
manfredo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and why is collective bargaining any more useful and individual bargaining? Because when individuals rejects the company's offer, the total supply of labor is nearly unchanged. When whole industries reject the companies offer, the supply of labor drops to zero (or to the subset of workers that aren't part of the union). Collective bargaining gives employees leverage over employers by drastically reducing the s…

> why is collective bargaining any more useful and individual bargaining Because collective bargaining means that the party with the largest resources and the power, in this case the company, will have to at least take into account their ability to operate. > Collective bargaining gives employees leverage over employers by drastically reducing the supply of labor available to the company if their bargains are not met…

> Note that such niceties as workplace safety; medical coverage and 5 day workweeks were in large part due to union involvement.

Those things always get brought up but that's history from 50-75+ years ago. Got any more recent examples?

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#145

Post by dehrmann »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #3

Well that is gangsta. It's an unlikely coincidence that these three people had poor performance with such timing that led to firing in the same week or two. You gotta space out the firings to give the cover story more plausibility.

Regarding Moore,

> The company told staff that Moore had been on a performance improvement plan

He'd apparently been at Kickstarter for six years. Being on a PIP after that long seems unusual.

And Redwine,

> But current and former employees with knowledge of the firing told me that management didn’t establish a “performance improvement plan” for Redwine, despite her being told she would have one.

Not quite sure how to read the second. Was it being used as a formality so the firing looks genuine, or was she actually under-performing, and they just ripped the bandaid off?

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#146

Post by dehrmann »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #3

Well that is gangsta. It's an unlikely coincidence that these three people had poor performance with such timing that led to firing in the same week or two. You gotta space out the firings to give the cover story more plausibility.

Critics of unions would point out that under-performing employees are more likely to benefit from unions, so they're more likely to try to organize them.

I have no idea if this is actually the case. It certainly makes it hard to sort out what's actually going on, here.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#147

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

deogeo wrote: post #28
unions23143 wrote: post #9

Aren't Kickstarter salaries quite high already? https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Kickstarter-Salaries-E49199...

Ignoring for the moment the non-salary benefits of a union: Look at it this way - aren't corporate profits quite high already? Yet they still merge and consolidate and cut costs and try to increase them further. Why should labor not do the same? Also, this seems like a reasonable question (with source for the claim!), that no doubt many others would share. I don't think the downvotes are warranted.

> "Ignoring for the moment the non-salary benefits of a union: Look at it this way - aren't corporate profits quite high already? Yet they still merge and consolidate and cut costs and try to increase them further."

Imagine your waiter at a restaurant found out that you are a well paid programmer and tried to charge you extra on the bill for your meal because "aren't programmer salaries quite high already". Does that sound reasonable to you?

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#148

Post by claudeganon »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #138
daddylonglegs wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think German industry is a good example, it is strongly unionised and the unions have representatives in the board that supervises the running of companies. Apparently the result has been better cooperation between employers and workers: where the employers invest in and are mindful of employees and the employees in turn see the "big picture" and are committed to making sure their employer is competitive. My German…

Yes German unions work really well. I think part of it is that after WW2 the whole system was designed to be a market economy with social elements (“soziale Marktwirtschaft “).

And because the Nazis explicitly went after trade unions. Postwar, people understood that preserving democracy in the workplace was an equally important bulwark against the return of fascism. Nazism wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful and horrendous without its business allies (in both Germany and the US), which is why it was important to check their authoritarianism.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#149

Post by pteredactyl »

jacquesm wrote: post #112
nickjj wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Collective bargaining means that employers can no longer reduce negotiations by serially negotiating with one employee at the time, but have the negotiate with all employees at once. Now I understand why my original comment is the most down voted comment I ever made on HN in about 5 years. Based on what you wrote it sounds like union vs non-union seems very much related to a political topic of socialism vs capitali…

Unions are present in just about every capitalist society, in fact I'd wager they are far more effective there than they would be on the opposite side of that particular fence, simply because most capitalist societies have somewhat functional legal systems as well as democratic institutions. In other countries union bosses are found dead with alarming regularity.

I appreciate your sensible take on this. From what I've heard from a KS employee, it's been anything but sensible, from both sides.

To add to that. Said employee described the lack of product leadership (constant changing vision, wasted efforts, etc.). At this point I would not bet or invest in KS.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#150

Post by pteredactyl »

djrogers wrote: post #25

Not a big fan of this headline - it's inflammatory and incomplete. This is one (unproven and completely unsubstantiated) accusation from one side of the story, made in a handful of tweets. Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this: https://twitter.com/kickstarter/status/1172230162588536833 The problem with this type of link on HN is that it's not a 'story' - there's no investigative reporting - heck there's…

What you describe is what I've heard summarizes the state of KS. Both sides are entrenched and talking past each other while the actual product and company continue to slide into the gutter.

Seems to me both sides would rather plant their flags and signal allegiance to the outside world than come up with a real solution.

Kickstarter is on its way out.

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