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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#181

Post by groby_b »

erlich wrote: post #172
groby_b wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In almost all cases where a company is fighting for survival, leadership has failed, often quite visibly. It's one of the few moments where rank-and-file folk realize they do need a say in where things are heading - because you start seeing that the leaders aren't somehow magic beings with perfect decision making qualities. And, at the same point, you get strong reminders that your livelihood is coupled to the compan…

”Your livelihood“ Buts it’s not. They can leave and find another job easily. I agree that management can often be shit and make bad decisions. But at the end of the day everyone is working to make the owners a lot of money, and if the owners cannot see how shit management is, why should employees bother? They don’t stand to gain, only keep working at a company they believe could do great things. See…the incentives fo…

1) Owners and management are, especially in the startup world, tightly intertwined.

2) Uh, yes, unions do have skin in the game. Again, it's the whole "keeping your livelihood" thing.

3) I'm not saying it's the best moment for people to start thinking about a union. They should've done that way earlier. Better late than never.

4) "What happens if they are wrong and it bankrupts the company" - I am sorry, do you have any idea what unions are and how they work? There are any number of vultures that'll fleece the body of a company before a union can "bankrupt" it. They happen to be all on the ownership side.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#182

Post by fomine3 »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #179
fomine3 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shinkansen is comfortable than airline, no annoying inspection, almost no wait, and utilization is high enough. So technically it should be priced higher than airline, but I also feel it's weird that high CO2 emission airline is cheaper than lower emission train.

For whatever reason (probably just inertia), JR has been highly resistant to adopt dynamic pricing, so Shinkansen tickets costs the same regardless of whether you travel at absolute peak or when the trains are rattlingly empty. This is starting to crumble at the edges a little bit, and I expect advance-purchase fares to plunge if they ever do make the leap.

Yes it's one of the reason to choose airplane for individuals. Govt's regulation for train is an another reason why dynamic pricing aren't done well but it's changing. Currently train+hotel Dynamic Package is available as a cheaper option, but it's not for single day use.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#183

Post by pm90 »

erlich wrote: post #167
pm90 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re gonna go with anecdotes, its been going pretty well as Valve with having no hierarchies (aka “devs in charge”). But that sort of conversation isn’t really useful. Study after study has shown employees’ job satisfaction doesn’t scale infinitely with compensation, other things start to matter after a certain income is reached. With many highly paid software devs, I would wager they are at or beyond that point…

Smart companies will provide conditions that attract and retain talent. Companies can compete on culture. The market will discover the necessary incentives to bring on employees. This has already happened. Look at all the perks companies offer without any union involvement. If management sucks and cannot listen to their employees then it’s better that they don’t get more capital/talent and their competitors suck up a…

> If management sucks and cannot listen to their employees then it’s better that they don’t get more capital/talent and their competitors suck up all their talent.

Except thats not how it works in practice at all.

Companies can run for a long while by brutally exploiting employees if they have captured the market (look at Amazon). They can exploit immigration laws to squeeze the workers. Unions can help prevent that sort of outcomes.

Theres also that little thing where companies dying due to poor decision making is just an overall loss of value for everyone involved in the short term. Why subject society to the vagaries of laissez faire capitalism when we have the tools to prevent that?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#184

Post by talos »

I'm curious what the split was in Mapbox union organizing interest between Engineering/Product/Design/Data and Sales/Marketing/other go-to-market roles.

Browsing the old union website (https://www.mapboxworkersunion.org/) almost all of the supporters of unionization were on the engineering side of the house, much more than I'd expect if you randomly sampled the org for job titles.

I wonder why that is?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#185

Post by erlich »

anamexis wrote: post #143
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…

I am curious what you find enraging about this article. He clearly didn't want to go join another company – he joined Mapbox because he shared its early vision, and thought that original vision was worth fighting for.

He provides no ideas that would help the company succeed and find profitability. Only vague mention of returning to open source and that focusing on cars is bad because it bad for the environment.

The company raised a huge amount of cash and needs to make money to survive. The mistake was probably raising too much money.

So somehow, he thinks that the projects his colleagues „believe in“ are going to be more profitable than what they are currently working on. Do they have a business plan? Have they spoken to customers? It’s just so naive.

And it’s important to note that while they raised and spent a huge amount of money, they sucked up all the talent and probably prevented other competitors from emerging in the space. So we shouldn’t feel so sorry for them. They were privileged to have so much money available to them when others didn’t.

But I won’t lie, it’s always nice to have VC money dumped into open source work while it lasts.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#186

Post by slively »

erlich wrote: post #120
slively wrote: post #6

Here is the same story again. Sorry to hear about the inevitable ending, but glad they got to experience a good work culture for a time. At some point I hope we can shift the union discussion from just benefits and wages (which are not the biggest problems for SWE), to workers having a say in how a company operates. The idea that investing money garners complete control of a company is not healthy for the company or…

Most startups fail. Why burden them more? There are plenty of stable jobs out there at big boring companies. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

I’ve gotta be honest here, I really don’t know what you’re trying to say. Workers having a say at their workplace is a burden? Working at a big company somehow solves this? Having a say at your workplace and working at a startup is too much entitlement, you can only have one?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#187

Post by Apocryphon »

erlich wrote: post #185
anamexis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what you find enraging about this article. He clearly didn't want to go join another company – he joined Mapbox because he shared its early vision, and thought that original vision was worth fighting for.

He provides no ideas that would help the company succeed and find profitability. Only vague mention of returning to open source and that focusing on cars is bad because it bad for the environment. The company raised a huge amount of cash and needs to make money to survive. The mistake was probably raising too much money. So somehow, he thinks that the projects his colleagues „believe in“ are going to be more profitab…

He does go into his anti-car personal views a bit much, but he also suggests that focusing on auto tech is a dead end because Google and Apple dominate that for the mapping space. Is he wrong?

> Do they have a business plan? Have they spoken to customers? It’s just so naive.

If things are going downhill, isn't it more naive to believe that the current people overseeing that have the right idea?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#188

Post by rexpop »

erlich wrote: post #163
Apocryphon wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that unions, or some other form of labor power, would burden startups? In fact, why do you assume that they might not lead to fewer startups failing?

Different incentives. If a company fails, employees would be disappointed but can go get another job pretty easy. For investors they lose a lot of money. Employees have less to gain+lose. A collective of employees is not going to make better decisions than management. And if there are some who would, then they should be moved into management. I only see the impact a union could have on improving morale and staff rete…

> I only see the impact a union could have on improving morale

There is literally no higher calling.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#189

Post by erlich »

pm90 wrote: post #183
erlich wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart companies will provide conditions that attract and retain talent. Companies can compete on culture. The market will discover the necessary incentives to bring on employees. This has already happened. Look at all the perks companies offer without any union involvement. If management sucks and cannot listen to their employees then it’s better that they don’t get more capital/talent and their competitors suck up a…

> If management sucks and cannot listen to their employees then it’s better that they don’t get more capital/talent and their competitors suck up all their talent. Except thats not how it works in practice at all. Companies can run for a long while by brutally exploiting employees if they have captured the market (look at Amazon). They can exploit immigration laws to squeeze the workers. Unions can help prevent that…

You touch on a common mistake with collective bargaining. It assumes the market and landscape stay static. That the entire industry will not go through huge waves of change and huge levels of innovation will be needed to survive.

If companies suck they should die. We should not have too big to fail. Look at blockbuster vs netflix.

Companies don’t have to fail completely but certain projects should be able to fail. We don’t want huge companies expanding into everything with their sheer sales networks. We don’t want monopolies and oligopolies.

Look at amazon. It has a terrible reputation. And a monopoly. What we want and need is more competition. And it will come.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#190

Post by erlich »

slively wrote: post #186
erlich wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most startups fail. Why burden them more? There are plenty of stable jobs out there at big boring companies. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

I’ve gotta be honest here, I really don’t know what you’re trying to say. Workers having a say at their workplace is a burden? Working at a big company somehow solves this? Having a say at your workplace and working at a startup is too much entitlement, you can only have one?

„Having a say“ = making demands / threats when you are unionized.

Employees already have a say.

Startups trying to survive don’t need the distraction and overhead of unions. What is the point of ideal conditions if the company won’t exist.

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