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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#261

Post by Apocryphon »

jjmorrison wrote: post #260
Apocryphon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to disruption, innovation, experimentation in this industry? What happened to move fast and break things?

Then start a company and choose to make that experiment. Don't shove it onto someone else's.

That's not how it works. If there's interest in a union in a company, the employees have the right to make the case for it, and then they vote on it. Sounds like the company in the OP tried to quash that right. Why do owners have the sole right to determine whether a company should undertake that experiment or not?

And beyond the legal and moral implications, you still haven't addressed my core critique: Silicon Valley tech startups claim they can change the world and disrupt everything. Yet when it comes to the subject of labor relations, they default to some sort of Victorian Era fear of workingman unions. There's an inherent fear that unions are unworkable and malevolent. That just completely clashes with tech's belief in its infinite innovation. Even if past unions didn't work in America, why be so afraid of building a new one?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#262

Post by int_19h »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #206
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.

A union can't fix that scenario. You need a coop with employee ownership to have any influence over the business.

You're right, but we have to take one step at a time to get there. Among other things, unions normalize the notion that employees also have a say in how the business runs, even if it's rather limited.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#263

Post by int_19h »

chobeat wrote: post #235
andrewmutz wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

free market policies. Proper Co-ops are designed not to exploit workers, local resources or destroy communities in order to create profit therefore have a hard time competing with ruthless profit-oriented companies in most markets. Co-ops create social value and are beneficial to workers and society alike, but they need to be nurtured actively.

Co-ops are doing just fine in a free market. In fact, the average lifetime of a co-op today is longer than that of a traditional corporation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative#Economic_stability

On the other hand, less free market - which is what you get when you allow monopolies and oligopolies to dominate it - is harmful to them, just like any other business that's not "big enough".

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#264

Post by int_19h »

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…

Companies should be democratic and worker-owned; every single one of them.

And yes, you're right - setting up a union is a hostile action towards owners of the capital. And we need more such hostile actions to give control over capital to the people who actually use it to produce wealth, as opposed to the moochers who collect economic rent from it by virtue of abstract ownership claim.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#265

Post by M2Ys4U »

Aeolun wrote: post #242
joecot wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Let's be real, the likelihood of that is, for all intents and purposes, zero.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#266

Post by Aeolun »

woevdbz wrote: post #251
Aeolun wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A "competitive advantage in the capital market" means something that VCs require from the companies they invest in, like "strong founder team" and "established product market fit". I don't see a lot of VCs demanding or preferring unionization among the companies that they invest in. Do you know of many VCs that have pro-union stances? Even if there are some, I think it's fair to say they're not the majority, hence it…

> it's likely a unionized business will not have as good of a capital-raising opportunity as a non-unionized business

I think a huge factor in this is that there are zero unionized businesses around in general. Chances of any of them being invested in by VC is therefore similarly zero.

If some marginally popular company unionizes, everyone will see that it’s not the big deal they make it out to be.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#267

Post by slively »

erlich wrote: post #243
slively wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lots of union and coop workers work more than 8 hours a day.

I think you mis-understand that unions and coops are about employees having a say. If the employees want to work more for less in exchange for equity they can. All unions are not the same, because the union is the workers.

You say working at a startup should be worse, but really it’s trading things. You get to learn and experience more. More equity instead of higher wages, and greater access to leadership. I work at one right now, I get it. I think this is what your saying, and workers know this. A union does not preclude this arrangement. Also the people that are willing to work at a startup tend to be more invested and want more of a say in the company. If the company succeeds I argue they deserve a seat at the table as they built it along with the founders more than any investor.

So many comments in this post setup imaginary straw men for what a union would do, then argue against that. The union is the employees, and employees at startups are not trying to kill a company and gate keep jobs.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#268

Post by Apocryphon »

erlich wrote: post #177
sclv wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The market sorts out wages and conditions. I will assume you are not talking about developers because they have so many choices at all different salary ranges that are higher than many other industries. Contractors in minimum wage roles would be the only candidate for unions.

You must not have heard about the situation at many large video game studios. Can be pretty dire there.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#269

Post by Apocryphon »

erlich wrote: post #239
elil17 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agree but tech is not like this. Especially with the rise of remote work. Unions can also hold down wages by reducing flexibility in conditions to suit different employees preferences.

A new tech union need not operate identically to the ones that came in the past. Heck, it might not even be called a “union”, given tech’s propensity to reinvent concepts under different branding. We have the benefit of over a century of historical expedience to improve how such an organization might operate. And already, not all existing unions are overly restrictive about their working condition stipulations.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#270

Post by Apocryphon »

erlich wrote: post #241
M2Ys4U wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Why do you jump immediately to forcing their way, you’re talking the language of class struggle. A seat to negotiate with would be a good place to start, and it would lead to more cooperation, not necessarily conflict.

All companies collect employee feedback. Much harder to act upon it. Yes, workers can leave- but not always!- but isn’t it easier if they had a mechanism to negotiate with power, to talk it over like adults, instead of having to resort to quitting?

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