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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

#511

Post by gaws »

datavirtue wrote: post #340
devwastaken wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because software dev is a volatile market. It doesn't matter how "talented" you are, it's about your rank in the social circles and it shows in the product. There is now far more devs than there is work for them. This is a planned strategy to reduce salaries. If you're "talented". Make your money and get out asap.

This is what I preach to my kids. Get to work, live at home, save everything and invest. There is a huge difference between kids attitudes these days and those of the gen-x crowd. I loved my first jobs, they were so fun and people treated me very well. My children have dipped into the work force a bit and found it very nasty and hostile across various industries. My son trained as a machinist. A job that is very well…

> This is what I preach to my kids. Get to work, live at home, save everything and invest.

What are you telling them to invest in?

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

#512

Post by gaws »

devwastaken wrote: post #336
skapadia wrote: post #333

Highly talented software engineers are still hard to find. If you find one, pay them well and do everything you can to retain them.

This is because software dev is a volatile market. It doesn't matter how "talented" you are, it's about your rank in the social circles and it shows in the product. There is now far more devs than there is work for them. This is a planned strategy to reduce salaries. If you're "talented". Make your money and get out asap.

> it's about your rank in the social circles

How is this relevant to programming?

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

#513

Post by gaws »

delichon wrote: post #5

How does one refrain from crossing the virtual picket line of such a strike? Is it to not do business with any company with this union's workers, for the duration?

You may have to skip a few days, maybe a few weeks, of Wordle/Connections/Crossword gameplay.

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

#514

Post by gaws »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #297
DanHulton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of surprised it's _only_ 600 tech workers. They're a _huge_ digital company.

To run a site with 1B views a month or more you don't need many people. At my $day_job we have hundreds of millions of views per year and we're less than 100 _tech workers_, of which about ~ 10 do infrastructure and the rest are developers. In order to be successful you need to have quality, not quantity. But to answer your statement, 600 is a lot of people to have around in the tech part of the company.

> 1B views a month

Where did you get this metric?

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

#515

Post by gaws »

Manuel_D wrote: post #106
jawerty wrote: post #68

As someone who worked here seems odd they'd need a strike pretty good pay/benefits

Many media companies do not have particularly good pay, nor interesting work, for their developers. I spoke with someone who worked as a dev at Bloomberg, and he described his job as "hooking up javascript listeners all day".

I've heard developers for Bloomberg News, specifically, are some of the highest paid among their media peers.

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

#516

Post by School-Cotton »

ekianjo wrote: post #318
Larrikin wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones?

every employer that has quotas for non-white employees? that necessarily follows. not that its not limited to race. if an org wants more women they will actively select candidates based on gender first.

> every employer that has quotas for non-white employees?

Does any employer in the US have this? I'm almost certain it'd be illegal.

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

#517

Post by IshKebab »

darby_nine wrote: post #441
Workaccount2 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at past times these things are brought up; almost certainly not. Often things like part-time vs. full time aren't considered or amount of overtime hours worked (for hourly jobs).

This kind of thing is impossible to control for, though. How can you tell whether someone's success or lackthereof (including via degree of responsibility) comes from earnest evaluation of merit or social bias? I have a difficulty imagining trusting any kind of confident assessment of the bias at hand.

Yeah it's really difficult, but that doesn't mean you should just give up and take the average.

There was a case recently in the UK where Next (high street clothing chain) were paying their warehouse staff more than their shop staff for (apparently) similar work. The shop workers had a higher proportion of female workers than the warehouse workers (something like 70% vs 50%).

Next claimed this was because the market rate was higher for warehouse workers. They got sued by the female shop workers for discrimination.

They lost and have to pay back pay. Now... you might think 70% vs 50% is barely a difference - did the Next bosses really discriminate? Surely not. Well, that's what the court thought too. Apparently even though they accepted that there was no conscious or unconscious discrimination, the effect of the pay difference was in itself discriminatory.

I dunno how that makes any sense. The shop workers should have sued the IT department and then they'd be in for a serious pay day!

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

#518

Post by mplewis »

bad_user wrote: post #501
thierrydamiba wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just fyi the UN estimates 25,000 people die from hunger everyday and there are currently 50 million slaves around the world. Easy to forget but these things still exist.

Yes, in the parts of the world that are still not industrialized, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. It's also easy to forget that during 19th century, 90%+ of the population suffered from hunger and malnutrition. Right now that's around 10%, but it's less than 2.5% in the highly industrialized countries. IMO, the parts of the world still suffering from hunger could use more "corporate greed" and industrial exploitation.

They are dying of hunger because of corporate greed. Africa has many of the world’s most resource-rich areas, but they don’t realize the profits: Western corporations that extract the resources using local slave labor do.

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

#519

Post by mplewis »

WalterBright wrote: post #505
thierrydamiba wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just fyi the UN estimates 25,000 people die from hunger everyday and there are currently 50 million slaves around the world. Easy to forget but these things still exist.

Yes, in countries that are not free market countries.

20,500 Americans died of hunger in 2022.

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

#520

Post by codr7 »

smabie wrote: post #504
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think a Yale degree makes you better than someone with a community college degree. There's no magic at Yale. The education you get everywhere is pretty good now because of all the resources universally available to all students. But Yale basically applies a filter function and attracts the top 0.01% of high school graduates every year (plus some less elite legacy students and DEI admits). When you hire…

Your entire comment basically talks about how a Yale degree means you probably better tho?

Better at playing the Yale game, which is obviously useful in this society but says little else about the person.
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