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Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

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Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#231
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the following is being referred to: Inside a company, the management/owners regularly talk together about how to minimize the cost of employees, including compensation. But employees talking together about maximizing their compensation is considered scandalous, harmful or even unethical. The practice is even given special names "organizing" and "unionizing" and is certainly considered unusual. Corporations…

Everyone who works for a company is an employee of the company, with a wage (or an hourly rate), and potentially some equity as well. Every employee should be considering how to make the company more profitable, which could be by accelerating a development schedule, overdelivering in a new feature/performance, or hiring and retaining key talent. The wages of these employees is not set by the company. It is set by the…

>Everyone who works for a company is an employee of the company, with a wage (or an hourly rate), and potentially some equity as well. Every employee should be considering how to make the company more profitable, which could be by accelerating a development schedule, over delivering in a new feature/performance, or hiring and retaining key talent.

Absolutely. And in a sufficiently abusive environment, none of that will happen. It is a terrible thing when executive staff destroy a company by creating a toxic environment. But employees would rather be improving the orginization since they need the company to survive and everyone would rather work with smart people than someone they have to carry.

But I know of cases where employee pressure in tech has slowed AI use in warfare and stopped physical abuse toward workers. I hear theory about it being bad but where has it made things worse?

>The wages of these employees is not set by the company. It is set by the market

If that were true then negotiating would be irrelevant. And previous salary would not be the primary determiner of your next offer. And there would not be formulaic pay raise percentages that rewards those people who changes jobs frequently over those who say on and so are in fact more valuable but less savvy.

More than that, labor prices have as much to do with housing prices as anything else (from which extra expense neither employer nor employee benefits). That is not the tech market.

So skill availability is only tangentially related to compensation. The market favors a set of behaviors other than technical skill such as negotiation and job hopping. And ironically for the job hopper, who is selected _for_ by this system, would have minimum interest in the companies success.

>Companies incorporate for the legal liability protection, for the ability to issue shares, for the ability to file taxes as a separate entity, etc.

Being incorporated has nothing to do with analogy. Or even to being called a company. It has to do with some communication being acceptable while other similar communication is not. It's also a specific description of the friction that emerges anywhere only a subset of people decide the allocation of revenue to the whole group including themselves. In this case, in a work place.

Which becomes more suspicious when the opposition to full participation in decision making is on moral grounds or is followed by implicit threats rather than showing how the arrangement is best for everyone.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#232
post #4

The countries with the best human welfare indicators also have the highest percentage of people in unions. It’s the only countervailing force against plutocratic power.

It’s the only countervailing force against plutocratic power. "Only?" It can itself, become a nexus of plutocratic power. The best antidote to corruption is transparency and the dispersal of power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

I’m talking about the Nordics at the top, with 70% of people in unions, followed by Germany/France/Benelux. Transparency doesn’t give create political power. Coordinating the interests of millions of workers takes organization, and a broad and politically active trade union movement is the only successful example in history of delivery widely shared prosperity.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#233
post #203

The tech industry today, is captured quite well by Rolling Stone's Victor Juhasz illustrations https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJO6ELjJT9/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJP9nlDA5c/ Thinking that unions are going to have an effect is like believing flies effect pigs.

Did you have an alternate proposal for course of action?

Save up and eject as soon as you can, and be realistic about what you are up against.

Thats been the MO for people at Big Oil, Big Pharma and Wall Street for a long time now. People are in deep denial about the state of affairs.

These are "too big to fail" systems with too much momentum built up behind them, for a trajectory change.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#234

I'm always amazed at the complete double standard between unions and companies. Look at the discussion here: lots of people arguing against unions, saying they're just plain bad, or they're good in some industries but not in tech, or we just don't need them, or whatever. And not to say that these arguments are wrong, but.... Hands up, how many of you think that it's a good idea to run a business with employees as a s…

> When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "corporation" and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do.

No, we call that illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, by expanding the industry - tech has been able to "eat" other industry, due to its inclusiveness. 20 years ago the internet was less than 0.01% of global GDP. Tech will continue eating industries that are structured unfairly.

> Tech will continue eating industries that are structured unfairly. Like how tech took driving a taxi from a job that (unfairly) paid a living wage to one that doesn't.

Most estimates place wages for Uber and Lyft drivers at roughly the same as taxis after expenses are covered. And if you factor in the six (or at its peak, seven) figure cost of a medallion, it's basically impossible to claim that traditional taxi jobs are better than rideshare.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is true, however these things can be negotiated with a union. All a union does is give centralized power to the employees. If employees need to be cut for survival or salaries need to be lowered temporarily than these are things that an employer can provide proof of to the union and together with employees as a union work something out. A union prevents the laying off of employees as a profit boosting me…

Someone else made this point elsewhere in the thread but I think it's a good one: As engineers, we have the opportunity to move into management and become entrepreneurs at a rate much greater than traditional industries. I've moved between high level IC and senior management a lot in my career. I've also started my own company. I don't think that profile is unusual for senior people in our industry. As such I'm likel…

> I don't think that profile is unusual for senior people in our industry.

This doesn't make much sense from a numbers perspective. If entrepreneurs and managers manage more than one person then at the very least there should be double the amount of engineers then there are leaders, meaning at best your statements apply to only a third of all software employees if managers all manage 2 people.

Usually this isn't the case. Managers manage up to 5 people so your statements apply to on average 1/6th of all employees.

>As such I'm likely to look at solving problems from all sides and negotiating with a union to "prove" that I need to lay people off sounds extremely troubling from an operational and efficiency standpoint.

The efficiency standpoint is equivalent to the corporate standpoint. There's an additional standpoint you failed to consider. The moral standpoint. A 47 year old father of 3 kids depends on his job as an engineer to support his kids then you come along and fire him to replace him with a kid fresh out of stanford because this kid knows reactjs and will code 12 hour days for half pay.

There is no question, the scenario above is more efficient but it is also ethically wrong. Managers need to take steps to help the employee improve and managers should have their power limited so they cannot fire a father of three just because they don't get along or the kid straight out of stanford is his cousin.

Engineers make up the majority and backbone of a company they are not sheep for you to herd, hire and slaughter based off of operational efficiency.

>As a high performing IC I'm never at risk of being laid off unless the company really is in existential danger.

Good for you. I admire managers who care about the people they employ over managers who are efficient. The best managers are the ones who take underperformers and make them great.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#237
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they never really exceed the corruptness of the corporate powers they negotiate with I'm not convinced that is the case, nor is it an either or (union or corporate powers). Your protection by the union depends on what the union negotiates... beyond that their ability to effect change pretty much stops there. Then you are again at the mercy of your employer. I've had first had experience with "oh yeah they can d…

What is the logic that can mak someone pro-business and not pro-union? Why is it good for management and capital to organize against workers?

[deleted]

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#238
post #115
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vocational training absolutely could be done in tech, web/app development is much closer to carpentry than it is to computer science in my view. Unions are definitely complex, it's not a silver bullet to solve issues in the workplace. But at its core it's a group of people negotiating as a unit: the rest is just the natural evolution of a group where some power has been attained. More members means more organization…

True, but one difference is that the market for carpentry talent is local. So, a company that is supporting a union in city X has a reasonable expectation of benefiting from its training. With remote work, computer science is much more global, so someone could easily be trained by a union and then go work for a company that doesn't support the union. Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions…

> Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions these days: That our city trains great carpenters, but then they are recruited away to non-union areas.

Why do they take the offers? I don't want to write anything bad about your father, but I think people wouldn't leave if they were paid well / felt good all around at their current job?

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else made this point elsewhere in the thread but I think it's a good one: As engineers, we have the opportunity to move into management and become entrepreneurs at a rate much greater than traditional industries. I've moved between high level IC and senior management a lot in my career. I've also started my own company. I don't think that profile is unusual for senior people in our industry. As such I'm likel…

> I don't think that profile is unusual for senior people in our industry. This doesn't make much sense from a numbers perspective. If entrepreneurs and managers manage more than one person then at the very least there should be double the amount of engineers then there are leaders, meaning at best your statements apply to only a third of all software employees if managers all manage 2 people. Usually this isn't the…

Honestly this is a pretty naive view of management. The moral solution is to do what's best for the team. It's also not ethical to keep someone due to their demographics. If someone is performing well, you keep them if you can afford them (and reward them well!). If they're not doing good, you let them go. That's the same if the employee is 21 or 51. Game theory plays a huge role in successful operations. Even from a ethical perspective, it's bad to make everyone suffer (or lose their jobs) just to save one poorly performing person.

> The best managers are the ones who take underperformers and make them great.

In my experience (successfully managing a large amount of people) you can't really turn around underperformers in most cases and expending the energy to do so is harmful to the rest of the team. You should focus on your best employees and let the underperformers go asap. As an IC I also appreciate this strategy as I strive to be a top performer.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#240

I'm always amazed at the complete double standard between unions and companies. Look at the discussion here: lots of people arguing against unions, saying they're just plain bad, or they're good in some industries but not in tech, or we just don't need them, or whatever. And not to say that these arguments are wrong, but.... Hands up, how many of you think that it's a good idea to run a business with employees as a s…

> When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "corporation" and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do. No, we call that illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

That's where the organizations themselves banded together. The companies involved in that lawsuit still collectively, within themselves, make hiring and firing decisions every day and we don't bat an eye.
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