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Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

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Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#141

Post by luckylion »

akiselev wrote: post #121
luckylion wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples do you think of where unions do not/did not lead to more formalized, static, equalized systems, which somebody that likes having impact, being paid and promoted based on his work and not his time with the company etc does not want?

Bewildering syntax aside, that sounds like every big company, ever. Unions don't change the core nature of large organizations, just the power dynamics.

The company aggregates the individual contributions and makes them stable to the outside. A union would make workers more stable when interfacing with the company: you pay everyone the same, you get the same amount of hours, you don't negotiate with individuals but with union representatives etc.

That's not necessarily desirable for somebody that currently has a compensation package that's far above the average.

I've never seen or heard of a union that handles this differently, even if they are "democratic institutions", so I wonder if there are any examples where you bargain collectively, but you don't get the negative side-effects of equal pay for unequal work, promotions based on time spent instead of contributions, essentially tenure for underperformers etc.

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#142

Post by PixyMisa »

vore wrote: post #67
erik_seaberg wrote: post #18

Journalists are quoting Trump's statement as newsworthy. Everyone knows what he said. What's the point of censoring it ineffectually?

It's not about censoring or not censoring. It's about Facebook actually giving a shit about the state of the world it's in, and not just Mark Zuckerberg's incessant handwringing about "feeling disgust" but... doing nothing about it. Too long have abhorrent actions by Donald Trump gone completely unchecked by major platforms and, if Facebook won't even do the token step of doing something about a clearly racist and di…

So get a Facebook account and disagree with Trump.

That is up to you. It is not up to them.

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#143

Post by Kiro »

vore wrote: post #67
erik_seaberg wrote: post #18

Journalists are quoting Trump's statement as newsworthy. Everyone knows what he said. What's the point of censoring it ineffectually?

It's not about censoring or not censoring. It's about Facebook actually giving a shit about the state of the world it's in, and not just Mark Zuckerberg's incessant handwringing about "feeling disgust" but... doing nothing about it. Too long have abhorrent actions by Donald Trump gone completely unchecked by major platforms and, if Facebook won't even do the token step of doing something about a clearly racist and di…

Open your eyes and you will see a world filled with equally terrible or worse leaders. Once Facebook opens the box they need to draw an arbitrary line for every country in the whole world.

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#144

Post by [deleted] »

ipsum2 wrote: post #114
0zymandias wrote: post #52

Social media is a dead end. The results are depression and misinformation. Unless you believe truth can easily be determined, there is no tweak that Zuck and Jack can do to fix their platforms. At least Zuck is honest about it.

> Social media is a dead end. The results are depression and misinformation. Honest question. Is Reddit any different? Hacker News? Your average bulletin board?

[deleted]

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#146

Post by buboard »

edoceo wrote: post #4

I support this walkout. As a small business owner all I've been able to do was purge my FB page profiles. I'm proud of them for taking a bigger step than I'm able to make. Working people of all countries unite. Seize the means of production!

they are not interested in the means of production, they just want the salary

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#147

Post by hef19898 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #74
baskire wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us have been in unionized industries prior. It also lead to promotion based on years served. Pay scales. And the protection of low performers. Right now engineers have incredible leverage. What do they gain by a union. Don’t like what Facebook is doing. Quit and work elsewhere. There’s plenty of jobs available

> And the protection of low performers. Witness how many times the policeman who killed George Floyd had complaints against him and was protected by his union.

I'll go out on a limb, and say that the existence of police unions is not the most important factor behind police brutality, and the killing of people of colour by police, in the US.

As one example, look at training and employment. It takes three years to become a police officer in Germany or France. Once you are one, you are employed for life (after a probation period). A lot of the training is focused on legal work, de-escalation and so on. Is there still excesive use of force? Yes. Still racial profiling and protection of your felllow officers? Yes and yes. Do you have to be affraid of police? No. Does police have to be afraid of the population? No. Are there exceptions to this? Yes, as always.

Anohter, very big difference, between France germany and the US is, that in france there are two police organisations (Police and Gendarmerie), in Germany a federal one and one per state. All are follwing the same regulations with only minor differences between the states in germany, and differences in area of responsibility. Compare that to the US with city-based police departments, sherrifs departments, sate police and so on. The former makes it easier to implement common standards, the latter makes it harder.

But we divert a lot from the topic, don't we?

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#148

Post by renewiltord »

Apocryphon wrote: post #110
renewiltord wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'll make the connection which was obviously unclear because I skipped a lot of steps. Unions concentrate power. Concentrated power is easy to take hold of (cf. Coup d'Etat , E Luttwak). Lots of SWEs are incredibly xenophobic - can tell in any thread on HN and Reddit on H-1Bs. Xenophobes (of whom there are many) tend to be protectionist. Xenophobic protectionists are very good at holding power. Therefore, give…

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater, really putting the liberal in neoliberal. Never mind that existing efforts to organize engineers, such as the Tech Workers Coalition, mostly comprise those who often have leftist sympathies, and the caricature nativist union member is mostly an artifact of the 19th century, the above comment both ignores that most modern unions don't end up being xenophobic- are the Teamsters…

The problem with building a powerful weapon is that one day the weapon may be trained on you. Of course it isn't dangerous when it's just parts. But one day, when you've finished building it, someone will take possession of the weapon, and you won't control where they point it.

Jeremy Corbyn has taught me that closing borders and leftist sympathies are not in opposition. And what will you do when that weapon is trained on my friends? Apologize in shock at how your ideals have been usurped? Apologize and say that it was a trade-off that must be made? Say that your priorities have shifted? No, that's not nearly enough. The weapon must simply not be built.

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#149

Post by buboard »

idlewords wrote: post #5

Note that this so-called walkout consists of people already at home taking a personal day and changing their autoreply email.

thanks, i always wondered how these work. so people would normally walk out of the office, and go home? Do they walk down the stairs instead of taking an elevator? How far out do they walk? What if it's raining out? Would they answer emails before leaving? would they leave after lunch? do they leave all together? Do they use corporate buses to go home? I feel these are important subtleties

Re: Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow

#150

Post by vore »

humanrebar wrote: post #125
vore wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about censoring or not censoring. It's about Facebook actually giving a shit about the state of the world it's in, and not just Mark Zuckerberg's incessant handwringing about "feeling disgust" but... doing nothing about it. Too long have abhorrent actions by Donald Trump gone completely unchecked by major platforms and, if Facebook won't even do the token step of doing something about a clearly racist and di…

What's the common standard then? Does it ban leaders of countries that oppress homosexuals and other minorities as policy? Leaders who actually imprison political dissenters? Donald Trump is a bad president IMO, but there are far worse people (and their spokespeople) active on social media. The inconsistent standard makes this seem more like virtue signalling, which isn't quite "giving a shit about the state of the w…

So? Flag their messages too. You and I are both agreeing what Trump is saying is horrendous.

And, for what it's worth, I'm gay and a part of a minority and I am privileged to live somewhere where there's little repression for who I am. I absolutely want to see people pushing back on countries that have terrible leaders who would repress my life: if you're going to shrug then say "well that's just policy", that honestly sucks.

I'd take "virtue signalling" any day over whatever this response from Facebook is.

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