Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why top firms fire good workers

rochester.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 263 posts

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#251

Post by idiotsecant »

mlrtime wrote: post #207
triceratops wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you're just here repeating the lazy old anti-union talking points with 0 thought. I offered some examples that contradict them. The burden of proof is on you at this point. If not having unions leads to high wages and good working conditions, why aren't retail and fast food workers making bank? Why do they get treated like shit? Please tell us.

I could say the same about pro-union comments. They are repeated every week here and reddit. The only thing I see is that it works in Sweden, or it works here but in a very niche industry. I haven't ever seen one plan where it could work for Software Engineers, that is my point. So what is the plan?

Because it does work for software engineers. The PNW is full of places that hire software engineers that are unionized. It turns out software engineers are regular humans selling their labor to survive just like the rest of the peasants.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#252

Post by triceratops »

mlrtime wrote: post #229
triceratops wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mostly people didn't care I don't know what that means.

You asked if I heard of [the] hollywood strike, I have. I didn't care because most of what hollywood puts out is not worth consuming. The writers could go on strike for years, so what?

You don't have to care. None of the parties involved care if you care or not. On the other hand, if you had an open mind about this topic, you'd see that strikes work based on this evidence.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#253

Post by triceratops »

mlrtime wrote: post #230
triceratops wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So show us non-US countries without SWE labor unions that have high SWE salaries.

I don't know??? I'm an American SWE, I still haven't seen one good reason why I would want to be in a Union.

It's ok to not have an open mind. You can just say that.

You haven't given any good reasons why unions are bad that I and other people haven't already given counterexamples for.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#254

Post by triceratops »

mlrtime wrote: post #208
ryandrake wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so wild. So many HN commenters have this exaggerated caricature in their heads about what a Union must be: "Unions mean every worker gets paid the same!" "Unions mean I will make less money!" "Unions make it impossible to fire underperformers!" "Unions are run by bosses whose incentives are different than workers!" "Unions mean I can't plug in my own workstation!" "Unions reward seniority over everything else!"…

Because all those actually happen? Tell me why I should want a union for myself.

I can't tell you that because I don't know where you work or what you do. I can only tell you the reasons you gave us that make you believe unions are bad are all bullshit.

There may be reasons union membership is wrong for you personally. That's a valid position to have.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#255

Post by salawat »

mlrtime wrote: post #230
triceratops wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So show us non-US countries without SWE labor unions that have high SWE salaries.

I don't know??? I'm an American SWE, I still haven't seen one good reason why I would want to be in a Union.

Solidarity with the users of the systems you make. Collective bargaining is useful for more than salary and perk setting. It also gives you a front to push back against unethical project requests by management. Without a Union, you just get shluffed out of the way and the work gets handed off to the next sucker. With the Union, things like Google's "Don't be evil" can be more effectively enforced from the bottom.

Capital hates organized labor specifically because they have to worry about the risk of collective action, which changes the risk calculus to favor less extreme profit generating opportunities at the expense of minimizing poking the workforce the wrong way.

You alone can be ignored. You and your Union brothers, in great enough number, cannot be.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#256

Post by distances »

mlrtime wrote: post #158
distances wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your salary negotiation position is diminished by having some kind of a lower bound. Skilled employees should be able to get a higher salary if the employers value their skills, and that does happen all the time also in countries with strong unions, like those Nordics. Even without unions Europe wouldn't have US tech salary levels, those numbers come from other market dynamics.

So play it out with me. Use Faangs as an example please. Say all the engineers in all the top engeering companies by pay were suddenly in a union, how does the collective bargaining work on pay. You don't think pay would be lowered for high level engineers?

Sorry for the late reply.

Collective bargaining would not apply to any of these salaries. Collective bargaining as we usually understand it sets the lower bound for salaries in a certain field, think of it as field specific minimum wage. Indeed, some Nordic countries have no minimum wage at all because ~all fields are covered by collective bargaining -- regardless whether the employees are part of the union or not!

So no, pay would not be lowered. I don't understand where this kind of a misconception comes from. Collective bargaining does not mean that everyone gets the same salary. As I said earlier, you are free to negotiate a higher salary, and companies wanting to attract top talent will still have to compete through compensation.

In the top engineering companies, collective bargaining could be used to negotiate other perks, like paid leaves, hour banks where you collect all work time exceeding a regular work day, paid parental leaves, and/or whatever topics are important for the work force. I'm not the one to define that though.

Collective salary bargaining is efficient in fields where the workforce is highly interchangeable, and the workers' ability to produce higher value is limited. If factory workers, miners, or nurses are not unionized they are really placing themselves in a precarious position.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#257

Post by renewiltord »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #232
renewiltord wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I have no doubt it's miserable, and your story is pretty funny haha. I just don't think that a guy who has been dead for 75% of a country's existence is why something is a certain way. It's been 60 years without the fellow. It's not like he's an immortal god commanding you still.

It's the entrenched system built by that long dead British stooge. They just have to outlast each elected government of five years and they have a similar judiciary which protects them. There was a (feeble) attempt by the current government in their previous term to reform the judiciary (NJAC Act) and the entrenched judges ruled it unconstitutional. Unlike the US, judges aren't political appointees, they appoint each…

This is the same as the 'tech debt' argument, if I'm being honest. It's always too hard to change some crucial function of the entire code, everything depends on it, yadda yadda. Here in America, that was what people said about the majority of policy and then Trump comes to power and just writes executive orders that change how the country is run. It's a problem that his orders have bad effects, but you can't deny the fact that he has agency.

Unlike all those engineers who will say there's too much 'tech debt'. Everything is always "entrenched" and 'too hard to change' and shit like that. Then someone who is both interested in changing things and has sufficient will to change things shows up and it turns out it wasn't that hard after all. Seen it in eng orgs numerous times.

It wouldn't be surprising that India has no one like that. These people are rare. The US got one and it turns out you also need competence or the changes will just be totally bogus.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#258

Post by amitav1 »

sparin9 wrote: post #54
amitav1 wrote: post #9

TL;DR When workers start out, the firms know a lot more about their abilities than the clients do (they have an "information advantage") as the worker has very few ways through which to prove their abilites. Over time, though, as the employee's public performance increases (through successful cases, good investments, etc.) the information advantage the firm has becomes lower. Eventually, the firm lets the employee go…

I completely agree. I’ve actually had to let someone go in the past for this exact reason.

I was just summarizing the article. Your comment would probably work better as a top-level comment.

Re: Why top firms fire good workers

#259

Post by vee-kay »

b33j0r wrote: post #53
vee-kay wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one selling a lie here is you. You have clearly not worked in any major company in India, Or even other nations (since PIP is a common process worldwide in most companies). Any employee can escalate to the company Ombudsman if they feel they are being subjected to unfair treatment or inappropriate processes. It is the job of the Ombudsman to be neutral and do an thorough impartial investigation. PIP (Perform…

I got a PIP because my manager mistakenly thought I was stealing equipment, and he just kept adding agile story points until I failed. I was too pissed off to go to an ombudsman. It honestly didn’t occur to me. It just felt like “this guy hates me and wants me out.” He called me two years after I was fired to inquire about missing equipment that I never had.

You made the mistake of allowing PIP to be invoked on you for a fake reason given by your manager, and you made the even more serious mistake of getting fired because you "stole equipment".

If you were innocent of that dangerous charge, you should have fought hard against it, and ensured the top management, HR head and Ombudsman became involved in the investigation.

Being fired for theft or such serious crimes, can and will leave a permanent black mark on your employment record with the HR, and it may get pulled up during BGV (Background Verification) invoked by a prospective employer evaluating your candidacy for hire, thus seriously affecting your career and life.

I think you should now reach out to that company HR and clear the conspiracy and black mark against you. Perhaps, you can hire a lawyer who deals with employment matters, so he or she can legally get the matter resolved in your favour.

Post reply on HN