311–320 of 383 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would a tech union help in that case?
If the union was cross-company, it could have noticed the lack of "poaching" much sooner. Unions could also help in the world of game studios, to stop the deeply harmful practice of "crunch".
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Same in Germany, lots of unions in tech.
Why are their salaries so low then? I'm not seeing the advantage here.
But to answer your question: In Germany, what the company actually ends up paying is about 20% higher than what you have in your contract. The company pays part of your unemployment insurance, healthcare insurance and some other contributions/taxes employees don't get to see. Your own contributions are usually around 40%. If a company pays 100k in total you end up with ~50k in your pocket after taxes/contributions.
I also feel that tech salaries in some regions of the US are a bit disconnected from what is happening in the rest of the world.
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US unions are usually per company and forces everyone working in a specific area in that company to join or quit, meaning that anyone performing a specific job function needs to join said union. This leads to the "You can't plug a computer into a socket if you aren't in the electrician union" problem, the reason they say that is they think the company could oust the union by hiring people to do that work without prop…
The general term for everyone having to join the union is "closed shop". It was apparently outlawed in the US in 1947: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop so I'm not clear how that's still happening. It was declared illegal in the EU in 2006: https://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Employmen...
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
I think a lot of it is that in-demand, well paid workers don't have patience for the BS work rules that unions are notorious for. It might be unfair characterization, but "you can't change/test that code, that's role X", and other such bureaucracy can be really draining.
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Unions are just another idea that sounds great on paper, only if you don't consider second and third order effects. They don't serve the workers, they serve themselves (like pretty much any organization). Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders.…
Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. Yet doctors and lawyers and pilots have strong unions in all but name. What do you suppose they know that we don’t? Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders. What's good for shareholders is also good for a lot of tech employees. I’m sorry but thi…
Isn't it protection from patients/clients/passengers, not employers, because of how visible they are as individuals and how directly they affect lives?
I always find it hilarious that tech people think that a tech union would be like the teamsters or autoworkers union rather than the entertainment industry unions given that the latter already have provision for people with widely varying skills and compensation.
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
This is what you'll get with unions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5a_00YVVkQ&feature=youtu.be... My experience with unions. Monitor breaks at CES. Go get another, try to carry to booth. Get stopped because "only union people are allowed to carry equipment inside the convention center". Try to plug in some equipment. Get stopped because "only union electricians are allowed to plug in equipment in the convention cen…
The idea that unions should run the business is silly. Unions need to negotiate a good salary and healthy working conditions.
I always find it hilarious that tech people think that a tech union would be like the teamsters or autoworkers union rather than the entertainment industry unions given that the latter already have provision for people with widely varying skills and compensation.
Why would they have cause think otherwise? Do many tech people have exposure to the entertainment industry?
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Many reasons: - The typical 'pains' felt in the lopsided power relation between employer and employee were and often still are cushioned by the adequate compensation in a market where the sought after skills were in short supply - Tech attracts an atypical more autism spectrum biased employee pool. This correlates with meritocratic believes. - Tech culture is one that has always idolized 'passion', so objecting to ba…
That's quite a strawman. You're saying that those who disagree with tech unions are: - Autistic - Uneducated and naive ("real soon now," presumably said with a folksy twang) - "Very young" - Too cowardly or ethically naive to object to bad working conditions Here's a more charitable possibility: Opponents may just not see the need at this point. Or they may dislike union culture. Unionizing isn't all positive. There…
Our industry does have an (on average) well compensated and younger workforce than many other, that are both passionate and entrepreneurial.
Not being a native speaker I'm probably not sure which 'twang' I would sound like, but over the years I have met orders of magnitude more people in our line of work that had a side project that they were going to turn into a real business in the future, and that is a great thing, but sadly very few ever did.
The autism spectrum reference isn't at all meant derogatory, but has been observed and documented and also seems intuitively not entirely unreasonable in an industry were we have entire divisions that are expected to be passionate about manipulating abstractions in a meticulously precise symbol system for most of their waking hours.
To me it is normal that people that do not find themselves in a precarious position in terms of the the bottom rungs of Marlow's hierarchy of needs, and on top of that in a position that they see as transitory, will feel less compelled to organize.
I'm not saying unionization is some nirvana, nor am I saying it is to be demonized. I don't see why 'stifling innovation' is dragged in as countries with more worker rights, often the result of collective bargaining, do not seem less innovative. And as observed before, collective bargaining for companies do not seem to be vilified by those same people.
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> The facts are that white collar employees that are union members have higher pay[2], better benefits, more time off, and report higher life satisfaction[3] compared to their non-union peers. Of course they do. Because Unions drive competitiveness down, decrease efficiency, increase costs and so on. A lot of people would be very satisfied if they didn't have to work as hard and their paycheck would be pretty effortl…
I noticed how you switched up the stats here: Why are public teachers collectively not doing great job despite second in the world spending per student. US government spending on education is high. However, US average teacher salary is ranked 7th in the world (Canada pays better, apparently). You're trying to attribute this spending inefficiency to teacher unions, where the problem is poor government spending (educat…