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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#241

Post by erlich »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #237
erlich wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google tried putting devs in charge and it didn’t work. It’s obvious too. Devs have such different incentives to owners. They want a nice place to work and play with fun tech and pad their CVs. They can leave at any moment too with zero concern for what happens when they’re gone. Employee equity is usually not enough to be worth fighting for. It’s just the ability to pay less salary or get good people.

>Google tried putting devs in charge and it didn’t work. Putting devs in charge is not the same thing as giving them structured and respected input. It's a massive jump from "give devs a seat at the table" to "putting devs in charge", and one I frankly find hard to believe is made in good faith.

What has a union got to do with „give devs a seat at the table“?

By „seat at the table“ you mean a way to get what they want by force or against the will of the owners.

You don’t need a union to collect employee feedback. Smart management will do this and if they don’t then employees can jump ship to a competitor that does.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#242

Post by Aeolun »

joecot wrote: post #41
mikl wrote: post #17

> Over the next few years, Mapbox tried to find success in a variety of industries: journalism, social media, travel, ect. We never hit numbers that were big enough for our investors. In the process, we abandoned our focus on Open Source and Open data. Then, as is the case with many mapping companies, Mapbox shifted focus to the auto industry. My fear of loss of control fully materialized at this point. I’m a lifelon…

Once a company takes VC funding or a buyout, or makes an IPO, any ethical promise they've ever made is null and void. Later when choices are made outside of their control, they wash their hands and say it's not their fault. But the founders break those promises at the time they take that money, when they willingly gave up their control. And the point of VC funding is always a buyout later, where all founder control w…

> where all founder control will be lost anyway

Unless you are Facebook, Tesla or SpaceX?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#243

Post by erlich »

slively wrote: post #192
erlich wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

„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.

> Worse conditions

Yes I am saying that. They need more flexibility. Imagine a startup that cannot make employees work longer than 8 hours a day. It’s just detached from reality.

There are benefits that come from being early stage startup employee. More ownership, equity, etc.

Employees can chose if they want that and if they don’t.

My measure is if someone else wants to do your job for less pay with same conditions then they should have a chance at that job. Existing employees shouldn’t gate keep by inflating their wages and conditions.

Unions only seem to care about existing employees to the exclusion of those who are looking for work and would work for less pay or conditions.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#244

Post by erlich »

mch82 wrote: post #224
erlich wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have dramatically less incentive than the owners and management to earn the owners an adequate return on their investment. What has led you to this conclusion? I’ve observed the opposite to be true: employees have more incentive than investors to seek the long-term success of a company. Building a career within a company and industry requires an investment of time and effort. Career changes are slow a…

> Long term success

Employees concept of this is not aligned with investors. Investors need a return on investment. It’s not enough for them to have a moderately profitable company with happy employees. They need a big exit event that fits their investment characteristics.

And this is fair because then accepting VC money gives them an advantage over their competitors who might have bootstrapped. We shouldn’t feel sorry for employees of a heavily VC funded company, but by their bootstrapped competitors trying to compete.

We shouldn’t try to protect employees with high salaries at entrenched big tech companies. We should allow entrepreneurs to create new companies to challenge them which is better for society. It’s better to have less monopolies and it would be better if one high salary was split in two due with someone from a smaller competing company. This is better for the labor market.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#245

Post by Aeolun »

woevdbz wrote: post #58

It sounds like OP wants to be a part of the kind of social change that fundamentally cannot exist independently of politics but trying to enact it without. A single company, especially one that is not generating monopoly/oligopoly profits and is still dependent on funding, is not really able to: unionizing creates a steep competitive downside on the capital market that is not offset by enough employee retention benef…

> unionizing creates a steep competitive downside on the capital market that is not offset by enough employee retention benefit to be worth it

Citation needed.

Unionizing by itself does absolutely nothing, and if I, as the employer, genuinely want the best for my employees there will be little friction even with a union.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#246

Post by erlich »

Apocryphon wrote: post #212
simondotau wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without access to a parallel universe generator, I don't see how you could. All I'm asserting is that I think that you can't reliably say that management or workers/employees are consistently in a better position to understand the best path forward for a company. Either one can be overly focused on replicating past success; either one can be wrong about opportunities for growth.

It could be put to the test if more industries, such as tech, experimented with unions, or otherwise empowering employees to share in decision-making. It is rather strange that in a field where there are all sorts of autonomous movements such as open source projects or hacker collectives, there is still the hierarchical belief that the managers knows best. Ah, well FOSS always do have their share of Benevolent Dictat…

Employees can become managers. This class divide is so much less relevant today than it was due to startup culture. Funding is not that hard to come by.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#247

Post by Aeolun »

spamizbad wrote: post #196
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 th…

> I would be far less sympathetic to the author if Mapbox avoided humanist language in their marketing and recruitment of personnel

I think this is why I can still sort of respect Amazon. They’re very clear about who they are and what they stand for.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#248

Post by brailsafe »

grishka wrote: post #234
brailsafe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees should never feel like the company is theirs. Unless you have a real seat at the table, you should assume you have no influence over the business. That's what being an employee is (with no actual shares). You give up the risk by being an employee, and your only negotiating power is leaving.

> Employees should never feel like the company is theirs. Imagine you've put your soul into it, and some years later they tell you that you can no longer pursue your vision and respect your users, and you're now a mere executor. Your opinion no longer matters, and the fact that you have one at all is a nuisance for the new management. I personally don't work for the money, for me the money is very much a side effect…

> Imagine you've put your soul into it, and some years later they tell you that you can no longer pursue your vision and respect your users, and you're now a mere executor. Your opinion no longer matters, and the fact that you have one at all is a nuisance for the new management.

Ya, my argument is that people are absolutely naive to do this, for the reasons I mentioned.

> For me the money is very much a side effect of making the world a better place.

That's what they want you to believe. People sure as hell weren't clanging pots and pans for the software developers who instead of writing code all day in their ivory tower in downtown SF, only to leave and walk past human feces, needles, and suffering, instead got to go home and write that code from their $5k 1bdr apartment. If you can try to choose your industry more carefully, that's great, but don't lie and tell me you're paid so well because of your noble contribution to the human race.

People should try and be good to others, and if they can afford it, work for companies on products that don't actively harm people, but when they can't pay you or their stakeholders decide that's irrelevant, you can leave.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#249

Post by grishka »

brailsafe wrote: post #248
grishka wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employees should never feel like the company is theirs. Imagine you've put your soul into it, and some years later they tell you that you can no longer pursue your vision and respect your users, and you're now a mere executor. Your opinion no longer matters, and the fact that you have one at all is a nuisance for the new management. I personally don't work for the money, for me the money is very much a side effect…

> Imagine you've put your soul into it, and some years later they tell you that you can no longer pursue your vision and respect your users, and you're now a mere executor. Your opinion no longer matters, and the fact that you have one at all is a nuisance for the new management. Ya, my argument is that people are absolutely naive to do this, for the reasons I mentioned. > For me the money is very much a side effect…

I'm non-US, and English isn't my native language either. But I have been to SF and have walked around the downtown. That stark contrast of there being so many homeless people just across the street from the building where Google I/O was held, where some of the best IT workers from all around the world gathered, that was something very unusual to me. Something of a culture shock. It's definitely not the norm where I'm from for people to not be able to afford a place to live.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#250

Post by slively »

erlich wrote: post #240
slively wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Removing the profit incentive was pretty disasterous throughout history. I just can’t imagine a group of employees being able to veto strategic decisions can work. The system for this is startups which is working great. If you don’t like something, setup your own company and do things the way you want. But if employees always demanded things to be run they way they want, then you couldn’t have this level of experimen…

Nobody said anything about removing the profit incentive. Workers having a say can be setup in a lot of way, it does not require direct veto power. There have been and are many successful coops. The argument is these are not somebody else’s company, it is the workers company because they built it. That’s a lot of straw men you are arguing against.
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