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New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

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Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close to comparable. Becoming a doctor takes many more years than becoming a programmer. They have legal ramifications if they make mistakes instead of “teehee oopsie all our data leaked sorry”. The vast majority of programmers have a bachelor’s degree or lower. It is actually laughable to me that you would compare programmers to doctors. In any case, we should aspire to follow the model of unions and not ca…

becoming a good engineer takes a lot of years too. your average 4 year college degree does not guarantee you become an engineer, plenty of new grads are without jobs. the best engineers I know have been coding since middle school and by the college graduation have 10+ experience coding at internationally competitive level. this is comparable to medical profession. if you ever meet an exceptionally good engineer - jus…

Has anyone studied career satisfaction among licensed doctors versus unlicensed software developers? It seems very common for doctors to feel locked into a choice they now regret. In equilibrium a barrier to entry benefits the marginal successful entrant not at all.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#453
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of what infographic makers declare, the NYT newsroom is not “left” leaning. Their coverage is much more complicated than left vs right, but one theme is they don’t question the loudest narratives, and they hold grudges when they perceive someone to not give them enough access. The right tends to be louder and more uniform and persistent in messaging, so that coloring often gets unconsciously added to artic…

Well here's a challenge for you, we can easily put your viewpoint to the test: Go on the NYT website right now and find me a single article currently on the front page that's negative about leftist policies or politicians, or a single article that's positive about rightist policies or politicians. I bet you can't find any. Repeat this experiment, any minute, any hour, any day, any year, for the last 10 years, and you…

Find me a single article currently on the front page that's negative about leftist policies or politicians,

Found on the front page of the NYT website, just now, after a few seconds of skimming:

  Kathleen Kingsbury
  The Question Kamala Harris Couldn’t Answer

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Women, who make up 41% of the Tech Guild, earn 12% less on average than men > * Black women and Hispanic or Latina women, who make up just over 6 percent of the Tech Guild, make 33% less than white men in the unit > * Black workers, who make up 7 percent of the union, earn 26% less than white workers Do they work equivalent jobs with equivalent experience?

If not, then that's also an equity problem. If the "dog jobs" are mostly offered to women and minorities, that should also be called out as a problem for employers to solve.

how do you know the problem originates with the employer and isn't supply side?

if above demographics aren't getting CS majors (or whatever other educational equivalent), there isn't much prospective employers can do about it

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re also incredibly non-diverse and complain about big tech being non-diverse.

Is big tech non-diverse? It seems to have a higher non-white population than the US itself according the numbers I've been able to find. If we count contractors and off-shore, it will become even less white. I'd bet tech has a higher proportion of LGBT+ people as well (without looking at numbers, admittedly, but I'd be surprised if I was wrong). Gender diversity is an issue; but not for lack of trying. Cis women are…

In my SV teams over the years, I'd say that the straight white male US born people were ~20% of the engineers.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think joining a union makes you a cog? Have the mass layoffs every single year taught people nothing? Newsflash, every company treats every single one of their employees as another replaceable cog in the machine. Even if you're the supreme grand wizard of space time and SQL at your FAANG job, you are still fully replaceable and will be if the business sees it as profitable to do so. For now SWEs have it good, but…

If you do not like working for a business, remember you have an option to start a business

And if you don't like treating employees with a modicum of respect, then you deserve a union to put you in your place. Good luck with the business when people refuse to be taken advantage of.

It's a two-way street, and the companies spend a lot of money and resources to make sure people don't realize it is.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it a little ironic that NY Times, and most east coast media, is very anti big tech and pro union while their own employees are protesting because of low wages? Who are they to judge how big tech treats their employees when they pay their own so poorly?

> Who are they to judge how big tech treats their employees when they pay their own so poorly? The journalists (and tech workers) don't decide their own salary. You conflated "they" as both management and the people being managed, to make it "ironic."

Are you saying that management doesn't have input on editorial direction? sounds pretty hard to believe

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feels like [feelings about dei] It's an issue of competence. Having cleared the lowest bar, society is demonstrably less racist than a century ago. The next bar is much more difficult; we may be less equipped than we were for the last one. We can measure some more nuanced outcomes of racism. Past that we are struggling to even qualify successes and failures. Instances & causes remain tied to systems & psychology th…

[flagged]

> the reality is much simpler than you're making it be. The present day issues aren't caused by skin color or race

This strongly implies that racism is no longer a meaningfully impactful problem. That would not be true.

> Core issue is not social, it's economical masquerading as social...

If this were meaningfully true, police & justice stats for poor white populations would be indistinguishable from poor black and brown populations - across the country.

> ...to divide and conquer people

Planned and coordinated division is most visibly on display when a marginalized group is suddenly, widely demonized. False rhetoric and tightly crafted language indicate that fascism is a factor.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#459
Awesome news.

In my experience, Mismanagement, both in personnel and compensation, seems to be commonplace, as corporations seek to lower costs in response to our changing economy. Corporations looking to find an advantage may shortchange employees, overwork them, and not train managers but rather expect everybody to "just work well together", deflecting responsibility.

Unionizing provides a relief valve where unions can strongly argue for better working environments. The individual no longer has to have a half-baked idea and be afraid to raise it, for fear of retribution or simply for fear of being proven to be an impotent cog mating to a very large wheel.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#460
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining the site, embedding rich media content in the site, managing dynamic elements including apis, ads, etc, managing the cms software, managing payments, building customer service infrastructure, internal tools for developing and launching, security personnel, all the games, tracking engagement and reporting business metrics, building software to manage the physical processes printing and distribution of a ma…

> building customer service infrastructure The effort here is not to be underestimated. It took years for them to implement a cancel button.

Solid burn
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