Kickstarter employees vote to unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#311

Post by codingmess » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

rolltiide wrote: post #196

commandlinefan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However you feel about unions (and I personally have many reservations), if tech workers unionize, management will have nobody to blame but themselves. They've had decades to listen to us, and they've responded with open offices, JIRA (or the equivalent) ticket quotas, unpaid overtime, whiteboard coding interviews and zero training. We're well paid but besides that, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a way we could coll…

> We're well paid but besides that, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a way we could collectively be treated with any more contempt than we already are. Relative to other wage workers yes, but nowhere close to the ratios between wage and housing last seen 30 years ago. There are opportunities to negotiate for that sort of compensation again. As long as annual compensation doesn't let you own a house outright in 5 years…

As if companies determine the price for housing. With Sillicon Valley wages, you could easily afford housing within 5 years somewhere else. It is not companies' fault that housing prices have gone up - it is politics preventing building of available housing. It is also an example that shows that no matter how much you pay the employees, housing prices will simply adapt if more housing is not being built.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#312

Post by luckylion » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #251

luckylion wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the case in Germany as well, there's practically only the DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, German Trade Union Federation) that has member unions that have very little overlap. Yes, there are some small, competing unions (e.g. there is another union representing police officers and another federation for people working in government organisations) and some non-members (e.g. a union representing airplane pi…

DGB is a choice though, you aren't forced to join it. Every worker at Kickstarter will be forced to join this union, so the situation is very different.

I didn't mean to imply one way or the other, just wanted to point out that "competition between unions" isn't really a thing in Germany, so "that's why it works that well in Europe" is questionable. I don't know how it works in France or the UK, so Germany might be the total outlier, but it would be an outlier of 80m people.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#313

Post by arrogantidiot » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #36

kirstenbirgit wrote: post #15

What's the benefit of being in a union for highly specialized tech workers that are very in demand?

Advocating for better working conditions. For example (not saying that these are specific to Kickstarter, I don't know that culture, but they do occur elsewhere in tech): 1) Better IP restrictions. Working on open source, side projects, etc. 2) Better treatment around oncall. 3) Limiting hours (no expectations of 60+ hour weeks) 4) Transparency in hiring, promotion, and review processes 5) Transparency in company per…

1) So adding no value to the company is the culture we want to encourage. Then salaries can go down as well.

3) The expectation finishes when you leave at 5pm every day. Don't worry, you won't get fired.

4) Which is none of employees business.

...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#314

Post by CJefferson » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

jaredtn wrote: post #221

I would love to understand the dynamic better, so please correct me here or chime in. Tech is has one of the best combinations of (lucrative + meritocratic) I've seen. Fields that pay similarly or better (law, medicine, investment banking) require either significant time-consuming credentials or significant time investment as an underlying (like IB analyst). The interview process does require intensive preparation to…

So, first of all, most people aren't "top performers", so it would make sense for 75% of developers to want a Union under your reasoning.

Secondly, in my experience it isn't the "top performers" who end up with the highest pay, it's the people best at spouting bullshit and sounding convincing.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#315

Post by mrlala » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

aty268 wrote: post #215

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you work in tech doesn't mean you can't get exploited. And just "go somewhere else" isn't possible for everyone.

And why would it not be? If I don't like my job, I get another one. It's easier to do this as a software engineer than almost anything else.

>If I don't like my job, I get another one.

Looks like someone doesn't own a home or have a family.

Or if you do, perhaps you have adequate savings where that's maybe not a big deal. Or maybe your spouse makes good money also to support for a while. But most people are not lucky enough to be in that situation.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#316

Post by jkaplowitz » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

maire wrote: post #61

echelon wrote: post #3

I really don't understand this. A career in software is one of the most pampered and lucrative ones I can think of. Due to the shortage of software engineers, we can go anywhere and get a job instantly. The only downside I can think of is ageism, but then again, I have colleagues in their 50s and 60s where I work. But I suppose this isn't universal. (I'm in Atlanta and we have a lot of older workers. Age doesn't seem…

The bigger issue is going from Salaried to Hourly employees. I assume (but don't know) that you need to be hourly in order to unionize. I have been at a bunch of companies that reclassified employees from salaried to hourly. This always came after a single employee filed a lawsuit. It almost never impacted developers, sometimes impacted QA and often impacted other development support employees. I have never seen an i…

You don't need to be hourly to unionize. Salaried employees can do that. The exclusion is based on meeting the definition of supervisor, not by the payroll category.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#317

Post by notyourday » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #245

jdkee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people across the U.S. benefit from collective bargaining, such as increased wages, health benefits and retirement security, yet one anecdotal off-topic post gets upvoted.

That’s not the correct comparison. Unions are a hedge against abusive employers when employees lack other options. They are a blunt instrument with many downsides. They make sense when the downsides are not worse than the abusive employer. This does not describe the situation with kickstarter employees, and any real union job would find this entitlement laughable.

Tech industry is full of entitled prima donnas living in an alternative reality valid only in their heads. US median wage according to data for 2016 was about $32k [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...]. According to Payscale Kickstarter pays its employees an average of $96,897 a year. Salaries at Kickstarter range from an average of $62,662 to $142,634 a year.

Deciding to treat tech management in an adversarial fashion or being more woke than the management while making 3x is going towards the mean, not away from it.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#318

Post by carapace » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #105

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just formed a company back in December. Super easy to set up an LLC, C or S Corp. But I wanted it to be a worker co-op like Mondragon. And there's no real guidance or help. Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. And trying to do it right from the ground up is high impossible. As a obligatory comment: are there any other in the HN-sphere that focuses on worker cooperative…

> Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. Democracy is a horribly inefficient system of government. Its only redeeming quality is that it seems effective at (so far) deterring tyranny and abuse of power. However, like I said, it's horribly inefficient. Changes that are easy to make under a dictatorship can be extremely hard to make under a democracy. Not exactly a quality y…

[In]efficient at what?

You've got to think carefully about your metrics when it comes to government.

Look it's widely understood that, if the dictator or tyrant is good at his (or, very occasionally, her) job then things usually go well.

The old women of Bhutan cried when the King decreed democracy.

It's getting rid of the bad ones that's the big problem, and so: democracy. "The worst form of government except for all the others."

Edit to add: the ultimate government is "full consensus", but it's incredibly expensive in terms of the time it takes to get everybody's input and consensus. However, once full consensus is reached it's the most efficient at execution: everyone works together in harmony to achieve the ends of the group in the mutually-agreed fashion.

Needless to say, this form of government is very very rare on Earth, but hardly unknown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#319

Post by bitwize » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

ditonal wrote: post #64

echelon wrote: post #3

I really don't understand this. A career in software is one of the most pampered and lucrative ones I can think of. Due to the shortage of software engineers, we can go anywhere and get a job instantly. The only downside I can think of is ageism, but then again, I have colleagues in their 50s and 60s where I work. But I suppose this isn't universal. (I'm in Atlanta and we have a lot of older workers. Age doesn't seem…

Why do people on HN constantly claim that companies are right to consider “a false negative is better than a false positive”, act like insane interview gauntlets are normal and desired, AND claim that people can easily change jobs? It’s not true. I live in the SF Bay Area, have worked as a SWE for 10+ years including at top companies like Google, and changing jobs is NOT easy and I’m sick of the implication it is. Th…

> Why do people on HN constantly claim that companies are right to consider “a false negative is better than a false positive”, act like insane interview gauntlets are normal and desired, AND claim that people can easily change jobs?

If you were fired today you could walk into a new job by end of week, if you were any good. At least that's what Hackernews keeps telling me.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#320

Post by pathseeker » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

Balero wrote: post #202

duxup wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with US unions was similar. They're just another layer of bureaucracy that is NOT required to respond to you as an individual in any way. I've had lots of poor experience with US unions protecting the lowest denominator at the expense of everyone else. They seem to focus on very specific rules that came up in specific situations applied to everything possible and end up just creating a web that is no di…

The experience I have had with UK unions is very different from this, and the other descriptions of unions in the US. I only had a few interactions with them (in a union capacity, the rep was a normal worker as well). These were things like: Getting some new equipment for the break room (kettle and mugs), pushing some new health and safety process (developed alongside the company), and then the yearly meeting, which…

>Whereas in the US there are many that have a more antagonistic relationship, which is just weird to me.

It likely stems from the fact that the birth of the unions in the US was a super violent affair (grotesque murders of both union organizers and union busters). All of the old unions born around that time were founded in an environment where the company was a hostile enemy you negotiated every minute thing with.