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How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

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Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#191

Post by friendlybus »

ardy42 wrote: post #190
friendlybus wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take the same rules about hollywood union rules forcing lighting technicians and camera crew to have roles, even though the big expensive and hot lights they used to safeguard are long since gone. Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could save by moving to LED lights and cutting the mandatory crew requirement and run small films at affordable prices. Everybody thinks th…

> You can take the same rules about hollywood union rules forcing lighting technicians and camera crew to have roles, even though the big expensive and hot lights they used to safeguard are long since gone. I don't know. That reasoning sounds a bit like saying you don't need software engineers anymore because your application runs on a microcomputer, not a mainframe. I'm sure there's more to a lighting technician's r…

It was once a useful role and now is not. Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that?

Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point.

My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned.

The pareto principle and distribution of wealth isn't going to change, some unions are going to be paid off for how much discontent is felt. Which has some virtue, and not enough virtue.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#192

Post by ardy42 »

friendlybus wrote: post #191
ardy42 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can take the same rules about hollywood union rules forcing lighting technicians and camera crew to have roles, even though the big expensive and hot lights they used to safeguard are long since gone. I don't know. That reasoning sounds a bit like saying you don't need software engineers anymore because your application runs on a microcomputer, not a mainframe. I'm sure there's more to a lighting technician's r…

It was once a useful role and now is not. Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that? Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point. My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned. The pareto principle and distribution of wealth isn't going to change, some unions are g…

> Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that?

Because they could make it easier for those workers. It's not like the business that laid them off is going to do a good job of that, if it's not compelled to, and retraining can be expensive and perhaps unaffordably so for someone who just lost their job.

>>> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could save by moving to LED lights and cutting the mandatory crew requirement and run small films at affordable prices.

>> Bosses don't like unions, and if you take the perspective of a boss, you probably won't like them either. What else is new?

> Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point.

No it isn't. I'm sure there prosecutors that have plenty of complaints about defense attorneys. Maybe some guilty people do get off free because of them, but we don't oppose defense attorneys because they make things hard for prosecutors. Unions serve opposing interests to bosses, so bosses' gripes should not be the main focus.

> My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned.

My view is that unionization is underpinned by the fundamental imbalance between unorganized workers and organized business.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#193

Post by friendlybus »

ardy42 wrote: post #192
friendlybus wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was once a useful role and now is not. Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that? Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point. My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned. The pareto principle and distribution of wealth isn't going to change, some unions are g…

> Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that? Because they could make it easier for those workers. It's not like the business that laid them off is going to do a good job of that, if it's not compelled to, and retraining can be expensive and perhaps unaffordably so for someone who just lost their job. >>> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could s…

The point is dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand or minimizing it down to complaints means you are missing when valid points are being made.

You are not showing a desire to discuss specific, measurable, realistic and timely issues. You and most unionists here have a view of a utopian union that is above criticism and does not need examination.

Which supports my view that this is about feelings and not about the problems people proclaim to want to solve.

What problem of unorganized workers? Healthcare? Retraining? Okay lets campaign for healthcare and lower college fees. Lets pick up the debt jubilee ticket some economists are calling for. Lets make government pay for code bootcamps and have corporations underwrite months of health insurance out of work.

No none of that will work because it does not give totalitarian control of workers to unions. Nor will it allay feelings of jealousy.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#194

Post by dantheman »

heavyset_go wrote: post #170
username90 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with 46 employees voting in favor of the move and 37 opposing it. 37 people voted against unionization of kickstarter, that is 37 people who were forced to join a union against their will. "Nobody is forcing you, except if a majority of your colleagues wants to force you of course..." isn't a good argument. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/technology/kickstarter-un...

46 vs 37 is most colleagues. Nobody is forcing you to stay at a job where management makes decisions that you don't like, and similarly no one is forcing you to stay at a job where it's your coworkers making decisions you don't like. This is what democracy looks like.

Business isn't a democracy and it shouldn't be one.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#195

Post by chillacy »

sanxiyn wrote: post #8

This seems US-specific. #1 internet service company in South Korea is unionized: Naver union. Ditto for #2, etc.

It doesn’t help that tech salaries outside the US are so low. I don’t know if that’s union related but relatively high salaries lead to higher contentment.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#196

Post by sershe »

matsemann wrote: post #13
gedy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of it is that in-demand, well paid workers don't have patience for the BS work rules that unions are notorious for. It might be unfair characterization, but "you can't change/test that code, that's role X", and other such bureaucracy can be really draining.

Are unions in the US really like that, or is it a one-off being used to spread fud? Or could it be like a judge in sports, you only notice it when the judge makes the wrong call, but all the correct ones are ignored? My union in Europe doesn't really do that much in my day-to-day work. As a skilled worker in demand we're generally treated very well. But for the broader questions they are nice to have. For instance th…

They are worse than you can imagine, at least from my anecdotal experience. Someone I know is a teacher and wanted to do clean up invasive plants overtaking some parts of the school grounds with kids, as a field trip for Environmental Science where they were studying invasive species. Alas, they cannot do that because the union of whoever is supposed to do that will not allow it. Only they can do it. Of course, they themselves haven't done it in years and have no plans to start.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#197

Post by sershe »

abeppu wrote: post #3

I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…

Unions seem to be great for generally interchangeable workers. Where there's room for personal achievement (or non-achievement), I cannot imagine any good use for them.

E.g. I'd like to do more work and be paid more and rewarded more, with none of the union pay grades BS. I'd like people to be fired based on incompetence, not seniority.

The only situations when I can imagine my outlook changing is if I become incompetent at my job, or lazy and useless (e.g. I've coasted at a job that I disliked for 6 months or so once, and then left; I imagine for some people it might be cool to coast for 6 years instead under union protections)

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#198

Post by anthuswilliams »

username90 wrote: post #147
TT3351 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I see "meritocracy" used like this, my hair stands on end. From Wikipedia: "Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term "meritocracy" is relatively new. It was used pejoratively by British politician and sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his 1958 satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy, which pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (me…

Meritocracy starting out as leftist satire doesn't mean the concept doesn't have merit.

Yes, it does. Unless its defenders have shown good reasons as to why the points raised by the satirists are inapplicable. Which they haven't.

The assignation of "quality" in people is a corrupt and folkloric reflection of the preferences of those in power, and that phenomenon is becoming ever more pronounced as industries consolidate.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#199

Post by ardy42 »

friendlybus wrote: post #193
ardy42 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that? Because they could make it easier for those workers. It's not like the business that laid them off is going to do a good job of that, if it's not compelled to, and retraining can be expensive and perhaps unaffordably so for someone who just lost their job. >>> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could s…

The point is dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand or minimizing it down to complaints means you are missing when valid points are being made. You are not showing a desire to discuss specific, measurable, realistic and timely issues. You and most unionists here have a view of a utopian union that is above criticism and does not need examination. Which supports my view that this is about feelings a…

> The point is dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand or minimizing it down to complaints means you are missing when valid points are being made.

I'm not "dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand," but observing that you can't make everyone happy all the time. Bosses will be unhappy with unions, because oftentimes unions go against their interests and reduce the power differential when they deal with individual employees. However, there's more than just the bosses' interest at play, so it's a mistake to focus on that.

This may not be a win-win situation, and it may be just for shareholders and business owners to lose a little.

> You are not showing a desire to discuss specific, measurable, realistic and timely issues. You and most unionists here have a view of a utopian union that is above criticism and does not need examination.

No, that's not true. I don't have a utopian view of unions, but rather an objection to their out-of-hand rejection based on a couple of cliched complaints about specific instances of the type. That's also a double standard, since if we'd applied a similar standard to corporations, that concept would have been rejected long ago. I think innovation in the area of unionization is possible and welcome, but I don't have all the answers.

At this point, were at the step of merely trying to get the idea of unions put back onto the table. It is not reasonable to insist that an idea (in this case tech worker unions) be fully worked out before the first step toward it is made.

> What problem of unorganized workers?

To be blunt about it: capital is organized. When a worker deals with it, they're almost always dealing with some kind of institution, not an individual, which means they're almost always in a greatly weaker position, with all that implies. Why is it such a problem for workers to have institutions of their own to create some balance?

> No none of that will work because it does not give totalitarian control of workers to unions. Nor will it allay feelings of jealousy.

Attributing desires for worker organization to "jealousy" is a far worse dismissal than anything I did in my comments.

Re: How tech workers at Kickstarter formed one of the only unions in the industry

#200

Post by onion2k »

twblalock wrote: post #181
Apocryphon wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$403k per employee. https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/08/research-rev... Not just their devs, but all of their workers.

Based on that data, most FAANG engineers are already paid more than the profit their employers make per-employee. Yes, a lot of engineers at FAANG make more than $400k total comp. People seem to have a hard time believing that, but it's true. And according to that chart, only two companies actually make that much profit per employee.

a lot of engineers at FAANG make more than $400k total comp

This is the problem as I see it: $400k sounds like a good compensation, but we have no idea if that's as high as FAANGs would go. Maybe all those engineers could be on $800k if they'd negotiated better.

We don't, and can't, know the answer to this problem. And frankly it doesn't matter if those engineers are happy with $400k, and FAANG companies happy paying them that, then everybody comes away feeling like they've won. I'm just wondering if, as a whole, engineers are actually leaving a lot of money on the table because using the 'market rate' is really the average of all the negotiations that have come before, and if the average engineer is bad at negotiating that means everyone is basing their salary expectation on lots of previous low offers that people shouldn't really have accepted.

This is really a pricing problem, and everyone knows pricing is hard.

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