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Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

nytimes.com

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Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#251

Post by tptacek »

pvg wrote: post #165
tptacek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People disagree about open offices. Some people disagree about the option to work from home or hire remote. But it is hard to believe that ANY of us disagree about IP contracts or extended options execution windows. Are you a professional developer? Which of these issues do you think are non-issues?

I’m not entirely convinced IP agreements are that big of an issue. The rare horror stories that I’ve heard and read are mostly about really predatory employers (and usually a somewhat legally-unsophisticated employee). “I went to my employer with an exemption to my AoI and they said no” isn’t a thing you often hear programmers grouse about, at least, I haven’t.

It might be a bigger thing in my field. People go work for security companies (and security software companies) because they're interested in the problem space. The stuff the work on in their spare time might not be directly related to their day job, but it's likely to be related to security. People get in trouble over this stuff --- or, more frequently, have to abandon side projects they worked on at their previous employer.

But I mean, it's obvious, right, that not all these issues have to be universal for them to be nucleation points for organizing? As has been photographically established downthread, I don't much care about open offices right now. But I would not be shocked to see a team of developers organizing around getting quiet offices for their startup.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#252

Post by tptacek »

pvg wrote: post #250
tptacek wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, come on. If all my comments are going to be arbitrarily voted up at least I should be able to occasionally put that to good use.

What is the good use? The thing you're replying to is yelly and rude but 'I'm right because upvotes and you're gray' is just icky.

I'm not saying "I'm right because I'm upvoted". I'm saying that his argument that I'm out in the wilderness on this issue is wrong because of that. He has more than one argument. I'm just refuting that one.

It felt icky writing that comment upthread, but, I figured, what the hell, let's see what happens.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#253

Post by pfarnsworth »

tptacek wrote: post #248
pfarnsworth wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol come on Thomas. That is probably the most pathetic comment I’ve seen you write. Worthless internet karma is a validation of your ideas? Did all your upvotes for starfighter on hacker news actually turn it into a real business or was it a failure in real life? Why not try to publicize this ideaand see how much real traction you get? (spoiler alert: zero because most developers don’t want it)

1. Starfighter did not seem to me at the time to be beloved by HN. 2. Starfighter is one of 3 companies I've been involved in publicly on HN. The first one did pretty good. We're doing pretty good with this one. Thanks for asking! :) 3. There's an obvious difference between the question of whether something's a viable business (CTFs as contingency recruiters: probably not!) vs. whether an argument represents any kind…

I’m glad your first and current ventures are successful. Hardworking people should be rewarded. My point is HN love has no bearing on success. Starfighter was pretty popular and everyone on HN wants a new way to interview. But it didn’t translate to a success.

A converse example is Uber. Uber is despised on HN and every anti-Uber comment is upvoted. But HN sentiment has had no consequence on Uber’s success and growth.

“Most developers” don’t comment on HN. Most developers also don’t want unions otherwise we would have had one in the 50 years of industry, despite all your precious HN upvotes.

Also, your misrepresentation of “publicize” into “publication” is strange.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#254

Post by throwawaymanbot »

losteverything wrote: post #136

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective. Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not have extreme clout. Whatever the hot issues are - say hours worked in a 7 day period - and the desire is to place limits (say 4 twelve hour days amd 1 eight hour day) having a union attitude means your bargained (agreed upon) rules are enforceable. And you carry…

Statistically, Unions have (on paper at least) proven to be more stable and better for employees. Not to mention, its a natural counter weight to the Tycoon owner, who wants to behave like the Koch Brothers and Murdoch.

A paper without a union, is not worth vesting my time in reading really. As no one has any vested interest in its credibility or upkeep. And if no one has any interest in that, then I don't either.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#255

Post by ng12 »

pasquinelli wrote: post #235
ng12 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who does a lot of interviews: I don't care about a master's degree. Anectodally it has a very low correlation with programming ability. The market being flooded with CS degrees doesn't scare me, I'll start getting scared when it takes less than 6 months to hire for an entry-level role.

the pickiness of employers isn't itself a sign you should start getting scared?

That's not pickiness of employers it's a lack of qualified candidates.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#256

Post by tptacek »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #253
tptacek wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Starfighter did not seem to me at the time to be beloved by HN. 2. Starfighter is one of 3 companies I've been involved in publicly on HN. The first one did pretty good. We're doing pretty good with this one. Thanks for asking! :) 3. There's an obvious difference between the question of whether something's a viable business (CTFs as contingency recruiters: probably not!) vs. whether an argument represents any kind…

I’m glad your first and current ventures are successful. Hardworking people should be rewarded. My point is HN love has no bearing on success. Starfighter was pretty popular and everyone on HN wants a new way to interview. But it didn’t translate to a success. A converse example is Uber. Uber is despised on HN and every anti-Uber comment is upvoted. But HN sentiment has had no consequence on Uber’s success and growth…

Right, but no part of Uber's "argument" depends on the support of HN users. You can't say that, at least not cleanly, about organizing SFBA software developers.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#257

Post by Avshalom »

neuland wrote: post #153
chimeracoder wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought union shops were illegal in the USA. As I understand it, they can force you to pay dues, but that's about it. No, closed shops are illegal, but union shops aren't. An employer can no longer agree only to hire people who are already members of a union (that's a closed shop, which used to be legal), but they can force you to join a union after you are hired. If that's the case, if the union terminates your…

Right, this is what I'm talking about. I've mentioned this in another thread, too. If an employer chooses to require it's employees be members of a union, I think that's their right. But, I dislike (and think should not be legal) a group voting to unionize and then forcing their agreement onto other employees that don't want to be represented. To my current understanding, there are 2 stumbling blocks to that way of d…

"employer chooses to require it's employees be members of a union" and "a group voting to unionize and then forcing their agreement onto other employees that don't want to be represented."?

So you're cool with unions enforced by dictators but not unions enforced by democracy?

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#258

Post by tanilama »

tptacek wrote: post #249
tanilama wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entitlements from enormous privileges.

Is it? What makes you think the balance of entitlements between owners and labor in tech is the right one? It's not as if the owners seem to be suffering.

They paid top bucks, 2-4 times more than those journalists could make(around 40k bucks a year), that is surely something to put into the balance of the entitlements.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#259

Post by pvg »

tptacek wrote: post #251
pvg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not entirely convinced IP agreements are that big of an issue. The rare horror stories that I’ve heard and read are mostly about really predatory employers (and usually a somewhat legally-unsophisticated employee). “I went to my employer with an exemption to my AoI and they said no” isn’t a thing you often hear programmers grouse about, at least, I haven’t.

It might be a bigger thing in my field. People go work for security companies (and security software companies) because they're interested in the problem space. The stuff the work on in their spare time might not be directly related to their day job, but it's likely to be related to security. People get in trouble over this stuff --- or, more frequently, have to abandon side projects they worked on at their previous…

I didn't mean it as some rebuttal to your overall argument - I'm pretty sympathetic to it, for what it's worth. But you did put 'IP contracts' at the top of your chant and then used it as an example of something universal. It seems to have generated a lot of pushback, as well.

My just-so-story understanding of this stuff - if you are a full-time employee in some brainy job, your employer does have some sort of non-zero claim to some kinds of your intellectual output, even when you're not on the clock. To disambiguate this, a standard approach is to let the employer own everything while making it easy for the employee to explicitly exempt personal projects. The onerous-sounding AoI comes with an escape clause and the understanding the employer isn't going to be a butthead about letting the employee use it and that's pretty much exactly how it works out. That way, as your career takes you from a kitten subscription service to a dev tools vendor to Unicron, your npm packages for Pokemon eugenics optimization stay yours.

I can totally see how this might not work that well if you're a specialist in a specialized and funky field like security or how such agreements might seem like utterly evil overreach if you're reading about them on HN from your digital nomad space van parked in Auerbach in der Oberpfalz. But as a general [US/software/SFBA/etc] thing, they don't feel like a top-of-the-list issue.

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