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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#191

Post by slively »

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…

This argument that “if you don’t like it you can leave” is just too simple, and not in good faith. There are more options in the world than staying and going, and there’s more to it than not liking a job. I encourage you to stop thinking so black and white and have the courage to live in the grey area, because that’s where reality lies.

It’s amazing how easy it is for all of us to just take for granted that we are powerless at work and the only way to gain power is to create a company and disempower others.

Is it so hard to imagine doing it differently?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#192

Post by slively »

erlich wrote: post #190
slively wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Employees do not have a say, that’s the discussion. It seems like you are arguing that a startup has to have worse working conditions for employees than other companies.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#193

Post by slively »

erlich wrote: post #144
slively wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are sidestepping a massive amount of factors that allows somebody to create their own business. Even then, a company grows on the backs of its employees, and there quickly comes a time when a single person should not have complete control because it’s not just theirs anymore. I own shares in public companies and have basically zero say in how they operate and those shares are worth quite a bit. At this point it’s…

Money is paid for the employees backs and the business entity owns all the IP. Employees agree to this and can leave at any moment. They are welcome to start a co-op style company and give that a go. But would a VC want to invest in such a company? Prob not. People like to pretend we don’t live in a cut throat capitalist system and that it has worked out best.

Employees did not agree to the systems of corporate governance we have. There is no real choice, and not working means starving. Nobody is pretending we live in a different system, they are trying to change it. The level of defeatism you are showing is unfortunate. “It has worked out best” is a pretty amazing assertion to make.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#194

Post by andrewmutz »

erlich wrote: post #169
Apocryphon wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because the leadership is actively undermining the survival? From this case alone, it seems possible that the Mapbox leadership is chasing a hopeless strategy by focusing on the auto industry, which is dominated by other much larger companies.

And a committee of employees has a better strategy for profitability? I don’t see it. The employees have dramatically less incentive than the owners and management to earn the owners an adequate return on their investment.

The employees don't have a better strategy, but they think they do. This happens when trust and respect is lacking (in both directions) between management and workers.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#195

Post by andrewmutz »

cyphar wrote: post #151
afandian wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surely not that bleak (at least, not everywhere). And it doesn't have to be remotely about 'politics'. My old employer made the leap to employee-owned and they seem to be going from strength to strength. https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust

Having companies be employee-owned (which is commonly referred to as a worker co-op) is absolutely a political topic -- implementing policies to allow more companies to become worker-owned was part of the UK Labour Party's manifesto in 2017. Just because something is political doesn't make it bad.

What government policies are standing in the way of worker co-ops?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#196

Post by spamizbad »

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…

The thing is these companies use humanist language in their mission statements, recruitment pitches, and marketing. Every time someone says their startup is "going to change the world" or "revolutionize how we do X" they are tapping into the humanist well to promote their business.

I would be far less sympathetic to the author if Mapbox avoided humanist language in their marketing and recruitment of personnel. But that's the language the company chose. Turns out if you say shit like "We are using technology to better the world" people are going to actually hold you to it!

Anyway, I feel like there's sort of this culture clash going on in the tech industry between Gen-X cynicism - where all that flowery humanist language is delivered with an unsaid "wink and a nudge" and millennial earnestness, where they take people at their word.

If you're a founder seeking to avoid this kind of stuff I would recommend not gilding the lily and be very up-front about what kind of business you're trying to build. Strip out faux-humanism from your mission statement and avoid it when recruiting. If the people doing the purchasing of your product are under 40 however you'll probably need to keep it in your marketing however. Do this in the beginning and not when you've already hired hundreds of employees.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#197

Post by andrewmutz »

sclv wrote: post #128
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…

Yes, companies are not democracies. That's why we need unions! That's the only way to exercise our collective power to negotiate with the employer on more equal terms. When we negotiate individually we also say "here are the things we want, and that is our condition of work." There is _always_ a conflict between what employees want, which involves wages and conditions, and what employers want, which is getting the mo…

Why are unions necessary at tech startups? From my experience, these companies pay and treat their employees very well.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#198

Post by Dylan16807 »

erlich wrote: post #147
Dylan16807 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company is a group effort and people can quit whenever they want. The owner doesn't have complete say and shouldn't have complete say, and it's good for employees to talk to each other so that they can use their say together.

People can quit whenever they want which is the main point. Instead of banding together and threatening the management and owners with strike action it’s better that they quit because maybe there are other people who are happy to do the work without a union. I think the problem is most people don’t imagine themselves as owners/managers. If they did they would oppose unions too because they would not want their autono…

> Instead of banding together and threatening the management and owners with strike action it’s better that they quit

Why? It's pretty weird to say they should use the most extreme option without negotiation or do nothing, and that this is better than using intermediate options.

> because maybe there are other people who are happy to do the work without a union.

The main concern isn't the mere fact the union exists, it's to have a more even negotiating position, and I feel like everyone should want that. And I'm quite sure that the number of people that want that is much bigger than the number of unemployed workers, so that trade you suggest isn't even possible.

> I think the problem is most people don’t imagine themselves as owners/managers. If they did they would oppose unions too because they would not want their autonomy taken away.

Are you actually encouraging the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" point of view? How about an attempt at an objective view, that even if we look at it like a zero sum game, it's better for 20 workers to have more autonomy than for 1 employer to have more autonomy.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#199

Post by elil17 »

erlich wrote: post #158
roguecoder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty new development, and not necessarily true. Screen writing is pretty obviously creative, collaborative work, and they've been represented by a professional guild since 1933. I think it is more common for the umbrella union orgs to focus on industries either with high barriers to entry (like nursing) or huge employers, because they are going company-by-company & it's just more efficient. On the opposite…

What happens if a minimum wage is set but there are people prepared to work for less? Or under lesser conditions? And a company cannot hire as many people because they have to pay them more? Isn’t it fairer to rely on the free market to set wages? There are shortages and surpluses in many industries that vary over time. Unions seem to just distort the market. Reviewing employment contracts can be done by one’s own la…

A free market is only fair if there are many labor purchasers and sellers. But when employers hold power (they are a major employer and they control many jobs in an area, they control your recommendations, the switching cost of changing jobs is too high) they can use that power to deflate wages below their fair market value. Unions create a level playing field to workers to negotiate with companies.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#200

Post by Dylan16807 »

erlich wrote: post #165
Apocryphon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does (in your view) capitalism mandate that only owners hold management responsible, and that workers having a say would distort that process? Are you suggesting that class warfare is inevitable? (That's a Marxist concept.) Otherwise, why keep workers out of the decision-making process? Also, if in most tech companies workers are given equity, are they not owners also?

Workers don’t have same incentives. They can push for conditions that would risk bankrupting company, and if the company does shutter, they can simply get new jobs with no loss. Meanwhile owners lose their money.

An owner that's invested in multiple companies is probably more likely to push for risk than workers are. Losing a job is not "no loss".
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