Live data from Hacker News

Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

bloomberg.com

461–470 of 473 posts

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Force: do this or I will beat you or kill you or imprison you Not Force: do this or I won't give you something of mine

Also Force: do this or I will undercut you, bankrupt you, or sue you into oblivion

Suing is using force via the legal system. Undercutting someone is not. "bankrupting" someone depends on how they go about it.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those at Google are truly top-tier talent (which I think many are) and if they work in an industry and for a company that is all about disruption, why is this even a valid mentality? "This thing sucks, so let's just do business as usual." If they are truly talented disruptors, their mentality would be "this thing sucks, we can make it better and bring it into the 21st century."

Who says the company is all about disruption? According to Keith Rabois: https://www.quora.com/Why-have-so-few-successful-startups-co... "In addition, after Google became successful, the type of candidate who applied and was hired shifted from the entrepreneurial to the smart yet homogeneous type. (Shift was pronounced by 2005.) As I have observed previously, only disruptive people create disruptive companies. (State…

Well their moonshot (project X or whatever) companies/ideas say this. However, it is true that their a massive company and thus are less about disruption than start-ups. However, Silicon Valley and the people that work their seem to love to talk about "being disruptors," it seems to be quite the badge-of-honor even if your only knowledge of it is via HN.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever lived or worked in a third world country and seen people struggle to make ends meet? I mean really struggle. I have. It makes me wish I could drop my kids off in Afghanistan or a Syrian refugee camp for two weeks so that they can see just how good they actually have it when they curiously find things to bitch about. I have worked immediately next to a former South African military officer that now works…

Ok, but you haven't actually addressed the main point of my comment. If it's entitled for labor to demand better treatment when there are kids starving in Africa, why is it not also entitled for management to demand said labor do more work for less? Your comment is entirely orthogonal to this tension.

Those two things are highly subjective. If the treatment upon the labor could be improved then what are the problems worthy of addressing? It seems software developers at Google have it pretty nice.

As for management demanding more for less that is far more complex than it sounds. Does that imply pay reductions, improvements to efficiency, increased labor education, automation, something else, or a mix of various factors? Demanding more for less is perhaps one of the most solid ways a small shop can compete and take share from a giant titan.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://go.corp.google.com/percent Give us the stats.

The attrition rate is google-public, but not public-public.

Several approximations are floating around and none of them look good. Over 10% annual tunover is bad and Google is as far as anyone can tell well above that.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most worker-hostile perspectives I've read in a long time, certainly in a dismissiveness-per-sentence sense.

Ask yourself: after these allegations came to light, did people flee from these companies? We are still talking employees with massive bargaining power and opportunities. "Apple," "Google," and "Lucasfilm" carry a lot of clout; the wronged employees could probably have found work anywhere in the market of their industry of choice if they chose to leave in protest over this mistreatment. We're not exactly talking unsk…

This is pretty close to a Gish Gallop.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that if you make an argument in court that says "This law should be overturned!" as google literally did, then I am going to assume that this means that you think the law should be overturned. And I will judge you morally if I believe overturning this law is a bad thing. A company is responsible for it's actions. And if it's actions in court cause a good law to be overturned, as is their stated argument,…

The problem is that everything is always complicated. If employees use the company's email system to discuss politics, then the company's email system contains their policy views, which may not be the company's. Then the company gets sued by someone else who gets a copy of those emails and uses the employees' personal views as evidence of the company's official position. A solution to that would be to have the law be…

> What are they supposed to do then?

What they should do is follow the law, and not try to get rid of worker protections.

I don't care that it has negative effects on them. I am going to judge them morally, for trying to get rid of a good law.

The whole point of laws is to prevent companies from doing bad things, that might be in their interests.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask yourself: after these allegations came to light, did people flee from these companies? We are still talking employees with massive bargaining power and opportunities. "Apple," "Google," and "Lucasfilm" carry a lot of clout; the wronged employees could probably have found work anywhere in the market of their industry of choice if they chose to leave in protest over this mistreatment. We're not exactly talking unsk…

This is pretty close to a Gish Gallop.

A "Gish Gallop" with hours of gap-time between posts? Please.

If you don't want to offer counterpoints you are not obligated to, but it's rude to simply attach insulting adjectives to the message without trying to argue it.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#468
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do: I was. Admittedly, at the top end of that range, and so one might argue that inflation has hopefully made that statement not true now (I would hope Google's hiring salaries have kept up), but the person you're responding to is also discussing H-1B, and I would expect the salaries there are not as attractive as normal hires.

Salaries for h1b cannot be lower than salaries for others by law. And nobody gets a total comp under 100k anymore.

> Salaries for h1b cannot be lower than salaries for others by law.

Yes that is the law. And companies break that law all of the time.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because all these ideas (regulation, minimum wage, laborisation, etc) protect existing workers and harms lower skilled or newcomers, foreigners, minorities, etc Classic retcon argument, which sums up why we can't have nice things any more. Don't unionize it might hurt foreigners or minorities! Almost as good as Hillary Clinton's observation that breaking up the big banks won't end sexism or racism. So like ... why b…

Not talking about some abstract ideas. Me personally, as a foreigner, with an unrelated degree, with low language skills, shaky immigration status, flexibility to pick where to give up something to get a job benefited tremendously. To put it another way - being able to allow being exploited allowed me to secure a better future. Without this ability, I would unlikely to have a life as good as I have it now. Today I am…

What union actions have you been seeing that would impede this kind of onboarding story today?

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tech union seems inevitable at this point. It seems like there has been some false starts, but there is a "market need" that is being unmet. Silicon Valley has shown it's very good at meeting unfulfilled market needs.

While true, how do you do that and still maintain the flexibility of moving from lets say Javascript to Golang or Swift development? A Union would stifle or add friction for people wanting to quit your current job work with different technologies they want to work on professionally.

From what I’ve seen the unions forming in tech right now are way more fluid than the corporations they’re working inside. These are very decentralized federations of employees. It’s not some old Italian family who has been controlling the FORTRAN labor market in San Jose for 30 years.
Post reply on HN