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Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

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Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#31

Post by hiddencost »

legitster wrote: post #27

17 months of operating expenses are actually not a lot for a foundation. Especially one whose goal is to preserve something for a long horizon. Unions exist to combat the monopsony power of corporations. Corporations and unions can exist in constant tension with each other because ultimately both are bound by the market of their product. I don't think the logic holds up when you're talking about foundations or charit…

On the countrary, nonprofits need unions more than for profits. They exploit their workers more. They have fewer resources and exploit their mission to get more work from their workers.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#32

Post by ori_b »

roenxi wrote: post #29

Maybe I'm behind the times, but isn't Big Tech known as one of the best employers on the planet? I thought most of the tech workers were in the industry because the work is light, the conditions pretty relaxed compared to most jobs and the pay was high. Especially for an industry where anyone anywhere can just get involved and become a great coder.

Yes, why do you think there's so much emphasis on automating it from the management folks? It's more profitable if you don't have to treat your employees well.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#33

Post by bawolff »

anigbrowl wrote: post #20
nickff wrote: post #12

> "Wikipedia’s workers are fighting to unionize because the institution hosting the world’s encyclopedia has started acting like a regular employer at exactly the moment when the world most needs it to act like something better. > "The encyclopedia belongs to everyone. The labor that sustains it deserves the same protection." If Wikipedia has excess reserves, that money should be directed to a worthy cause, not just…

You make it sound like they're demanding multi-mmilion $ bonuses. FTA: The union’s demands are embarrassingly modest This is what Wiki Workers United is asking for. Transparency and accountability from leadership toward both staff and movement communities. Real staff input on annual planning before decisions are finalized. An end to inconsistent hiring, firing, and promotion practices. The ability to safely dissent.…

In what world is Bernadette Meehan a "wall street finance guy"?

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#34

Post by Wikipedianon »

Some English Wikipedia (enwiki) editors are striking. They are predominantly non-technical that are forced to maintain their own shadow IT-style infrastructure that Wikimedia (nonprofit owners of Wikipedia) doesn't provide. It is very difficult to be a productive editor without custom tooling at this point.

The reason why is because the laid off team maintained the Community Wishlist, the main way for editors to feature request for "professional" solutions.

The Wikimedia Foundation also deweighted popularity as a metric for tackling feature requests on the Community Wishlist. This pisses off enwiki as the largest editor base.

From the WMF's perspective, though, enwiki is a cash cow on the BCG matrix.[1] It has been in seemingly terminal decline for over a decade[2], accelerated by LLMs, yet still drives the majority of donations/clicks.

As a result, WMF prioritizes investing in emerging markets over enwiki. This means outreach to indigenous languages in the Global South and developing supporting infrastructure. e.g. "Abstract Wikipedia" which aims to use a language-neutral syntax that can be automatically translated into any language.

These currently form a tiny segment of the editor population but have much larger potential TAM and are growing. So it's the correct strategy even if it pisses off editors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth%E2%80%93share_matrix

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_is_Wikipedia_los...

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#36

Post by legitster »

hiddencost wrote: post #31
legitster wrote: post #27

17 months of operating expenses are actually not a lot for a foundation. Especially one whose goal is to preserve something for a long horizon. Unions exist to combat the monopsony power of corporations. Corporations and unions can exist in constant tension with each other because ultimately both are bound by the market of their product. I don't think the logic holds up when you're talking about foundations or charit…

On the countrary, nonprofits need unions more than for profits. They exploit their workers more. They have fewer resources and exploit their mission to get more work from their workers.

If I'm donating money to fight cancer, and the majority of the money goes to administrative staff, that's inherently a flawed charity. It's exactly what led to the downfall of the Susan G Komen foundation.

There's also a death spiral problem. If donations drop and administrative costs stay the same, that charity's ratings only get worse.

There's a reason most examples of successful non-profit unions all rely on steady streams of government grant funding.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#37

Post by keybored »

jmyeet wrote: post #19

My suspicion here is that there are deeper issues for which union-busting is a symptom and not the main issue. There's a battle to control what information gets recorded and distributed, an effort to silence anything that contradicts US foreign policy, basically. Wikimedia Foundation CEO Bernadette Meehan has very much a Beltway insider, working for the the US foreign service, the Obama administration (NSC), the Obam…

> Wikipedia has been the target of these influence campaigns too eg [4][5].

You need a Wasserman Schultz link just talking about [5] as well?

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#38

Post by dyauspitr »

roenxi wrote: post #29

Maybe I'm behind the times, but isn't Big Tech known as one of the best employers on the planet? I thought most of the tech workers were in the industry because the work is light, the conditions pretty relaxed compared to most jobs and the pay was high. Especially for an industry where anyone anywhere can just get involved and become a great coder.

I don’t know where you’re getting the work is light part. It’s long hours and incredibly stressful work. You’ll probably never hit this level of stress in years of trades work.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#39

Post by benmusch »

dyauspitr wrote: post #38
roenxi wrote: post #29

Maybe I'm behind the times, but isn't Big Tech known as one of the best employers on the planet? I thought most of the tech workers were in the industry because the work is light, the conditions pretty relaxed compared to most jobs and the pay was high. Especially for an industry where anyone anywhere can just get involved and become a great coder.

I don’t know where you’re getting the work is light part. It’s long hours and incredibly stressful work. You’ll probably never hit this level of stress in years of trades work.

it's pretty team/org dependent. on the aggregate i suspect big tech works pretty light hours compared to other jobs in the same pay scale

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#40

Post by roenxi »

ori_b wrote: post #32
roenxi wrote: post #29

Maybe I'm behind the times, but isn't Big Tech known as one of the best employers on the planet? I thought most of the tech workers were in the industry because the work is light, the conditions pretty relaxed compared to most jobs and the pay was high. Especially for an industry where anyone anywhere can just get involved and become a great coder.

Yes, why do you think there's so much emphasis on automating it from the management folks? It's more profitable if you don't have to treat your employees well.

> Yes, why do you think there's so much emphasis on automating it from the management folks?

... and are we pretending that automating tasks is some strange new idea that has just appeared? Software engineers have always wanted to automate everything. The advice has been "automate it!" for the last 30, 40 years.

It is different that the steamroller is heading for our own domain this time, but really. The industry isn't doing anything new or out of character. Of course management were going to automate software engineering at the first opportunity. Any software engineer would. One of the things I've discovered since Claude crossed 1,500 on CodeArena is I don't even like writing code. Waste of time, writing good-enough code is a machines job.

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