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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#51

Post by trgn »

deadmansshoes wrote: post #48
urschrei wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak to the organizational problems you saw, but when you consider the quality of software that Mapbox was producing before the failed union drive – Mapbox GL JS, Rasterio, Shapely – what you’re saying is nonsensical. The latter two libraries have of course left Mapbox, along with their creator, and continue to see high-quality new features, but Mapbox GL JS is still so much better than anything else that I…

Shapely was around long before Mapbox, and Rasterio too. Both are based on stalwarts of the open source geospatial world - GEOS and GDAL. Vector tiles, Mapbox GL, and Mapbox styling, and numerous other libraries however did grow out of Mapbox - the amount of geospatial developer talent they hoovered up must have made it pretty amazing to work at for a time.

Mapbox has had an incredible influence on geo software development for the web.

Hats off to everybody who made it happen.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#52

Post by roguecoder »

tiffanyh wrote: post #49

> A company like Mapbox hadn’t ever unionized before, so it seemed like an exciting experiment Call me crazy, but taking such a drastic move as unionizing shouldn’t be trivialized into just being an “experiment”. EDIT: why the downvotes? Why not simply reply with your thoughts so that we can have a thoughtful discourse.

Unionizing isn't "drastic": it is the norm for most trades in the United States. Any individual union is basically just you & your coworkers crowd sourcing employment lawyers you wouldn't afford individually.

Until Boeing got taken over by finance people, the Boeing engineering guild had spent decades being a book club. It is only when things go wrong that unionization significantly changes how we work.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#53

Post by blowski »

julianeon wrote: post #39
secondcoming wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means getting your monthly payslip. Not a minor thing.

I sort of disagree - and I think most VC's would too. The point of VC funding is not to pay salaries, really. If you squint it seems close enough, but it sets a terrible precedent that most VC's wouldn't want: looking at venture funding as how the company pays its bills. That's a natural way to read your statement - but also counterproductive & undesirable. The point of VC funding is to take a profitable business and…

> The point of VC funding is to take a profitable business and allow it to scale.

There’s a heck of a lot of VC money funding only the dream of a profitable business.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#54

Post by urschrei »

deadmansshoes wrote: post #48
urschrei wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak to the organizational problems you saw, but when you consider the quality of software that Mapbox was producing before the failed union drive – Mapbox GL JS, Rasterio, Shapely – what you’re saying is nonsensical. The latter two libraries have of course left Mapbox, along with their creator, and continue to see high-quality new features, but Mapbox GL JS is still so much better than anything else that I…

Shapely was around long before Mapbox, and Rasterio too. Both are based on stalwarts of the open source geospatial world - GEOS and GDAL. Vector tiles, Mapbox GL, and Mapbox styling, and numerous other libraries however did grow out of Mapbox - the amount of geospatial developer talent they hoovered up must have made it pretty amazing to work at for a time.

I am not claiming otherwise, having been a Shapely user since…2012? I’m talking about the work done by Sean et al while they were at Mapbox.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#55

Post by nightski »

elil17 wrote: post #35
nightski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I've had plenty of influence at the various workplaces I've been a part of. If a company is so dysfunctional it doesn't even take what employees are saying into account then I'm not convinced a union would help. Do you have concrete examples of unions succeeding in software?

Why does it have to be software-specific? It's a new-ish field and American unions have been pretty disadvantaged over the last few decades due to an increasingly conservative judiciary and some nasty anti-union lawyers. But you can't just ignore that unions got us weekends, OSHA, and 8 hour days. Now there is enough wealth in society to support three day weekends, and people are ready to fight to distribute that wea…

Because as far as I know traditionally unions have existed in jobs where humans are basically robots (manufacturing, etc...). These jobs can be dangerous and also each worker is very easily replaceable giving the employer a huge upper hand.

This is not the case in software at all. Skill levels can vary dramatically and the more experience you have with your company often the more valuable and harder to replace you become. Software developers are expensive, especially bad hires. This puts them in an advantageous position. In sum we are - In demand, scarce, hard (or at least expensive) to replace (skill & domain knowledge vary considerably). The exact opposite of what a union fixes.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#56

Post by tiffanyh »

roguecoder wrote: post #52
tiffanyh wrote: post #49

> A company like Mapbox hadn’t ever unionized before, so it seemed like an exciting experiment Call me crazy, but taking such a drastic move as unionizing shouldn’t be trivialized into just being an “experiment”. EDIT: why the downvotes? Why not simply reply with your thoughts so that we can have a thoughtful discourse.

Unionizing isn't "drastic": it is the norm for most trades in the United States. Any individual union is basically just you & your coworkers crowd sourcing employment lawyers you wouldn't afford individually. Until Boeing got taken over by finance people, the Boeing engineering guild had spent decades being a book club. It is only when things go wrong that unionization significantly changes how we work.

> “crowd sourcing employment lawyers”

How is that not drastic?

You’re own words are saying unionizing is to bring in lawyers to be used against your employer.

EDIT: to answer your question below since I can’t reply.

No, it’s not drastic for a company to have lawyers. A company needs to ensure they are staying regulatory compliant, not breaking laws and de-risking company … that’s what the lawyers are doing.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#57

Post by roguecoder »

danpalmer wrote: post #5
xyzzy4747 wrote: post #3

In my opinion you’re hired somewhere to work there and be productive, not to unionize. Workers who join companies and then try to subvert the entire system are a cancer to the org.

I agree that union organisation work is not _work_, it's not what people are paid to do, and it should therefore be done on personal time. However, employers are in a position of significant power over their employees, and unions represent a way to balance that power. I think this is a broadly positive thing that I think employees should be in favour of, and that I think the best employers would also be in favour of.

IANAL, but my understanding is that it is illegal to treat unionizing differently than other social activities. If a company wants to ban unionizing on company time, they have to ban all non-work related socializing. If people are allowed to talk about movies & video games, they are also allowed to talk about unions.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#58

Post by woevdbz »

It sounds like OP wants to be a part of the kind of social change that fundamentally cannot exist independently of politics but trying to enact it without.

A single company, especially one that is not generating monopoly/oligopoly profits and is still dependent on funding, is not really able to: unionizing creates a steep competitive downside on the capital market that is not offset by enough employee retention benefit to be worth it, and that alone creates existential risk for the whole company. Long term, it simply helps another competitor to come up without a union.

Systemic problems need systemic solutions. It saddens me a bit that people want social change so much but dislike politics so much more that they take up the wrong fight, and then retreat to something like making videogames, which frankly as an industry has an even worse track record than tech in terms of respect for its workers.

I hope OP changes their perspective and fights a wider fight, either on behalf of a party or of a larger union.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#59

Post by mulligan »

tschellenbach wrote: post #42

VC funding enables the high salaries in tech. You can definitely be bootstrapped and work 4 days a week, you'll just have a hard time earning your current salary.

VC funding enables the high salaries in startups and that is because those startups are competing for talent against high margin, highly profitable other companies which can afford to pay very well.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#60

Post by roguecoder »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #11
mikkergp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way conceptualize many companies is that they're just the id of senior execs measuring their genitalia against one other, why shouldn't workers get to participate?

The workers can make their own company if the terms of their employment don’t make them happy.

Or they can organize, as is their legal right, and renegotiate those terms together.

Even if you aren't unionized, it is your right to get together with your coworkers & advocate for better working conditions.

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