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United Wizards of the Coast

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Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#151

Post by northern-lights »

satvikpendem wrote: post #126
glance9835 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea it is odd. Bc then tech workers get fired on mass just to get a little boost in stock price. And yet many don't think we need a union...

I don't think a union would prevent them getting fired though, much less getting outsourced to areas without unions.

The point of a union is not prevent layoffs and role reduction in force. It is to make sure that the company has done its absolute best to find another solution to the problem (that they're trying to solve with layoffs) and ensures that the company is accountable for all their decisions.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#152

Post by margalabargala »

mjr00 wrote: post #122
margalabargala wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're right. The common (lazy) approach for companies that don't give a shit is "we own everything because it might be complicated to introduce ambiguity and we own you anyway". Having carveouts for obviously not-related software is easy. At a decent company populated by reasonable people, if you wanted to work on something you felt fell into the grey area, you would ask and get a written okay. Which is how it…

> The difference is that the shitty companies there's never a route to do anything, however unrelated, without running it by HR. Because they think they own you. "Shitty" companies have legal obligations to include these kind of clauses though, because investors and board members don't want to deal with a situation where there's exactly this ambiguity about what counts as "obviously not-related software". HR exists t…

> > On the contrary, using a nonzero amount of working hours to work on something pretty clearly makes it company property.

> How recently have you seen a tech employment contract where you were obligated to work exactly 8 to 5 with a 1 hour lunch break? Flexible hours means any hour is potentially a "working hour".

Not what I meant. In the Slack example, it was planned work within the company, made using company resources. Working on something for internal company use that the company has a Jira ticket for is pretty blatantly on the side of "Company time".

> "Shitty" companies have legal obligations to include these kind of clauses though, because investors and board members don't want to deal with a situation

Not wanting to deal with something isn't a legal obligation not to do it. I don't want to deal with filing taxes but that doesn't mean I now have a legal obligation not to file taxes. It's just laziness.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#153

Post by mjr00 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #147
mjr00 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those 8 and 9 figure employees are the exception that proves the rule ??? This doesn't make any sense. There's a hell of a lot more background actors, which you can call fungible, than there are Tom Cruises, but they're all covered by SAG-AFTRA. "Tech workers are fungible except for the ones that aren't" is tautological and doesn't support your argument.

Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate. I'm sure there are some very rich tradespeople but they have unions too for the regular worker. And as I said, it's more appropriate to treat tech unions like blue collar unions over specialized unions like actor or athlete o…

> Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate.

Because I gave examples of unions which contain and are beneficial to high wage earners, and you dismissed them as irrelevant because tech employees are "fungible" except for the ones who aren't. Except those unions also contain far more "fungible" employees (background actors, backups, practice squad players) than they do star actors and quarterbacks, so it's a close comparison. There's currently 2,314 members of the NFL Players' Association but only 32 starting NFL quarterbacks.

Fungible means all employees are the same, that's the exact definition of fungibility. If certain employees have a measurably different impact on delivery, that is the definition of non-fungible. Just because most employees deliver near-average performance does not change this--it's tautologically expected!

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#154

Post by satvikpendem »

northern-lights wrote: post #151
satvikpendem wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a union would prevent them getting fired though, much less getting outsourced to areas without unions.

The point of a union is not prevent layoffs and role reduction in force. It is to make sure that the company has done its absolute best to find another solution to the problem (that they're trying to solve with layoffs) and ensures that the company is accountable for all their decisions.

This just limits hiring in the first place as we see in European branches of (generally, American) tech companies. And regardless, what solutions can be found by the union?

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#155

Post by satvikpendem »

mjr00 wrote: post #153
satvikpendem wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate. I'm sure there are some very rich tradespeople but they have unions too for the regular worker. And as I said, it's more appropriate to treat tech unions like blue collar unions over specialized unions like actor or athlete o…

> Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate. Because I gave examples of unions which contain and are beneficial to high wage earners, and you dismissed them as irrelevant because tech employees are "fungible" except for the ones who aren't. Except those unions also co…

Nit picked, I suppose. Regardless of the word I used (maybe it's my mistake), my overall point does not change that tech unions will depress wages for high earners.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#156

Post by awesome_dude »

satvikpendem wrote: post #123
mjr00 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech workers are fungible while actors or athletes are not though Strongly disagree with this, and I'm in 'tech management' now so I'm not saying this out of self-preservation. Tech workers are similar to athletes in skill disparity IMO. A handful of superstars makes a massive difference. Look at those superstar AI developers who are allegedly getting 8 or 9 figure compensation from Meta etc. They're still technica…

Those 8 and 9 figure employees are the exception that proves the rule, as I am talking about the vast majority of tech employees who largely fall within the middle of the normal curve. Athletes as well are far fewer in number and simply cost less overall (less than 2000 in the entire NFL).

Athletes have a far bigger curve than you're aware of

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#157

Post by xboxnolifes »

northern-lights wrote: post #142
bwestergard wrote: post #83

I'm glad to see this. I don't work in games, but I am a software developer and a member of the Communications Workers of America. I've also taken leave to help workers in games organize. I'm seeing a lot of ideological takes that are disconnected from the reality of unions with software developer members today. If anyone has questions about the CWA or game worker organizing campaigns, I'll do my best to answer.

This thread is filled with so many anti-union takes that you have to wonder if they are paid bots. If you assume that most of the crowd that visits this website works in tech or tech-adjacent fields, how can you be against an entity whose main objective is to safeguard and work for your interests over your employers? Unfathomable that people are willing to do so much against their own best interests. Or...they are bo…

I don't think they're bots, since I've seen the sentiment on HN for a long time. Instead, it reminds me of the idea of people seeing themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". If you see yourself as being part of the capital class in the future and think strong unions hurt the capital class, one might be against them.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#158

Post by satvikpendem »

awesome_dude wrote: post #156
satvikpendem wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those 8 and 9 figure employees are the exception that proves the rule, as I am talking about the vast majority of tech employees who largely fall within the middle of the normal curve. Athletes as well are far fewer in number and simply cost less overall (less than 2000 in the entire NFL).

Athletes have a far bigger curve than you're aware of

And generally most make little money, while sometimes it's a net negative for them to participate and compete in their sport.

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/your-money-matters/going-for-go...

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#159

Post by advisedwang »

spullara wrote: post #36

I am skeptical there is any customer benefit from unionization and it makes me concerned that MTG Arena might not be around for long term. As a big customer, I am worried about my investment in the platform with this announcement. MTGO still exists, I wish it had a better client.

> I am skeptical there is any customer benefit

Unions aren't really there for customer service. Nonetheless, there's often times where the worker demand benefit customers too: Nurses fight for better nurse:patient ratios, benefiting patients too; teachers fight for the resources for them to teach well; starbucks baristas fight for a work pace that allows them to actually engage customers like the brand used to offer. etc

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#160

Post by mjr00 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #155
mjr00 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate. Because I gave examples of unions which contain and are beneficial to high wage earners, and you dismissed them as irrelevant because tech employees are "fungible" except for the ones who aren't. Except those unions also co…

Nit picked, I suppose. Regardless of the word I used (maybe it's my mistake), my overall point does not change that tech unions will depress wages for high earners.

> Nit picked, I suppose.

It's not a nitpick. There are some industries and jobs where employees truly are fungible. There's never going to be a security guard or Starbucks barista or janitor who does such an amazing job that they're able to negotiate significantly higher wages than their peers because of how much value they deliver. "Software developer" is not that kind of job, at least not right now.

> my overall point does not change that tech unions will depress wages for high earners.

And this goes back to the original point which is that unions only depress wages for high earners if the unions negotiate terms which depress wages for high earners. As has been pointed out in the thread there are many existing examples of unions for collections of high-earning employees.

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