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New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#551

Post by kergonath »

lucianbr wrote: post #402
cool_dude85 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just cause" provisions are about an inch away from arbitrary termination, they are hardly "the other extreme."

That's really nice if that is the case. My understanding from the comments was that this prevents people who don't do their job from being fired, as long as they don't set fire to the servers or something. If I misunderstood, then the union is being nicer than they have to.

> My understanding from the comments

That is your problem right there. You cannot trust comments to give you an accurate idea of what actually happened. The linked source is marginally better (but keep in mind that it is close to one side of the story, even though it is more independent than some people here seem to believe).

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#552

Post by casey2 »

lallysingh wrote: post #450
gruez wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Why would anybody trust a NYT article about internal drama at the NYT? Does HN not understand bias?" >links to a blog post from the union

Descriptions from both sides are now included, what did you want here?

People are claiming they want 3rd party reporting would you be happy with NPR? Why do you think any for profit newspaper wouldn't be biased against unions? Do you think the WSJ has ever published a pro- or even neutral union story? Or will you get fluff like someone, in quotes, implying the NYT will have to shut it's doors if they are forced to pay some of their record profits to their employees.

And before you start. The problem affecting article quality in reporting ISN'T a direct conflict of interest, it's bias. A direct conflict of interest just implies bias.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#553

Post by slg »

themacguffinman wrote: post #471
lallysingh wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Descriptions from both sides are now included, what did you want here?

A neutral source from a third party news outlet. Do you think bias is a one-dimensional tug of war that cancels each other out when combined?

> Do you think bias is a one-dimensional tug of war that cancels each other out when combined?

Ironically, the NYT's apparent belief in this exact thing is the main reason I'm no longer a subscriber.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#554

Post by kjksf »

drawkward wrote: post #401
mediaman wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring consistently high performing employees is not a solved problem. Making it hard to fire low performers results in low performing teams, and there are no reliable solutions to this.

One wonders if it is not solved simply because of at will employlemt? Almost like firms are lazy, and unwilling to go beyond the bare minumum required by law.

If you ever went through interview loop at Google or a similar company, I doubt you would call those companies "lazy" wrt. hiring.

An interview is at least 4 people, each grilling you for an hour, asking hard questions.

Their hiring bar is high and they optimize for avoiding bad hires (which of course is pissing off the commenters who want to be hired and therefore would prefer lower hiring standard).

In Europe they make it harder to fire people and guess what happened?

First, companies have probatory period (2-6 months, depending on the country) where you're hired but can be fired at will. This is to minimize chances of being stuck with a poor performer.

Second, EU economy is about the size of US and China but software industry (and the tax / employment riches associated with it) is largely in US Chine. Might be a coincidence but I think there's causality between over-regulation and stagnation of the economy.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#555

Post by fallingsquirrel »

tssva wrote: post #503
bko wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds good, but in my experience bad employees were known to everyone. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly why they were bad or toxic, but pretty much everyone agreed. If you gave them some benchmark they would need to hit (e.g. close tickets, be on call, etc), they would be able to do so. So creating a documentation trail is difficult, especially if its based on people saying they don't think he does good wor…

If they are meeting the metrics set to judge their performance how are they bad employees? If the metrics don't properly measure whether the job is being done then change the metrics.

What metrics do you propose that aren't susceptible to Goodhart's law?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#556

Post by School-Cotton »

miltonlost wrote: post #496
csallen wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that extreme? If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? If you work a job, why shouldn't you be able to quit at any time? I don't think it's great that our society tries to treat work like it's family, and jobs like they're some guaranteed long-term relationship. It sets people up with the wrong expectations. Your company will lay you off or fire you once they run out of mone…

> If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? Because that is bad for the individual worker. We live in a society, and society should look out for humans before corporations.

> Because that is bad for the individual worker.

Not necessarily. Sure it is better if every other factor is held equal, but it's not: everyone benefits from living in a more highly economically developed society where industry is more successful. So you have to weigh pro-worker concerns against these other benefits.

If your argument were valid then its logical conclusion would be that all profit from the business has to distributed to the employees (as in most traditional strains of far-left thought). In practice systems like that have major flaws.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#557

Post by abletonlive »

drawkward wrote: post #427
bloomingkales wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me correct you, this will be election month at minimum. The NYT kind of brings this kind of heat on itself because it has shifted from being just the paper of record over to an institution to the current definition of progressivism. You can only really do this union kinda stuff against self-important institutions. Which developer is ever going to attempt this on Accenture? They are straight up and honest about th…

> the current definition of progressivism It's a fairly pro-business paper, certainly not very critical of Israel, and you appear to have completely missed all of its somewhat trans-skeptical reporting and opinion. (The latter pervasive enough to rankle many of its own employees about the tone and tenor of NYT coverage of trans issues.)

I like the implication that being "trans-skeptical" is "non-progressive" and therefore to be a progressive you have to buy into the ideology without questioning anything. That does align with my current views of where progressive ideology is headed

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#558

Post by joenot443 »

tssva wrote: post #503
bko wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds good, but in my experience bad employees were known to everyone. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly why they were bad or toxic, but pretty much everyone agreed. If you gave them some benchmark they would need to hit (e.g. close tickets, be on call, etc), they would be able to do so. So creating a documentation trail is difficult, especially if its based on people saying they don't think he does good wor…

If they are meeting the metrics set to judge their performance how are they bad employees? If the metrics don't properly measure whether the job is being done then change the metrics.

Like in the cases of US courts defining obscenity or fair use, there isn't necessarily a set of metrics which can be used to perfectly taxonomize something.

Imagine I sent a manuscript to a publishing house and they rejected it for being bad. I wouldn't expect they got to that conclusion by comparing it to a set of metrics, I would assume they have people in authority whose judgement is the decider on whether something is "good" or "bad".

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#559

Post by MisterBastahrd »

sonthonax wrote: post #513
lallysingh wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also Tech in NYC. The average salary ($190k) is low for that market, so they're asking for an easier work-life balance. Why they have 600 people is a question for management, no? Kafka's not exactly hard to set up, especially for simple configs for low event rates. The justification from the link you posted: > On the other side we have a wide range of services and applications that need > access to this publi…

If it's low for the market why choose to work at the NYT? Being a tech worker isn't like being a steelworker where you're kinda screwed if the plant shuts down. You're fully capable of moving job if you're dissatisfied. > Why they have 600 people is a question for management, no? It's a question for everyone at the organisation. If you're joining a firm with a massively bloated headcount you need to think if you're g…

They have a union. They don't have to "move on." They get to negotiate. That's why they have a union. If more companies had unions, then more companies would be forced to treat their employees like people.

There's no data to support the idea that they have a massively bloated headcount. Just because you don't know the extent of what they do doesn't mean that they aren't doing it anyway.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#560

Post by SalmonSnarker »

bloomingkales wrote: post #441
drawkward wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the current definition of progressivism It's a fairly pro-business paper, certainly not very critical of Israel, and you appear to have completely missed all of its somewhat trans-skeptical reporting and opinion. (The latter pervasive enough to rankle many of its own employees about the tone and tenor of NYT coverage of trans issues.)

I want to believe you, but my hunch is your reply is similar to someone suggesting "Well, you see, you forgot all the pro liberal coverage that Fox News has been doing all year". Does NYT not have a reputation or am I truly out of touch here? I went through some of their podcasts recently and it's all quite one-sided, for example.

> am I truly out of touch here?

Yes, you are absolutely out of touch. drawkward gave you three incredibly specific examples but you just kept on sticking with your hunch.

A paper that is the "epitome of progressivism" probably isn't going to have multiple conservative opinion columnists heavily featured and isn't going to have recurring problems with fawning interviews of white supremacists over barbecue.

I suppose if you're any further than center-right, a paper that is narrowly center-left is going to appear to be the "epitome of progressivism", but many years of critique would probably suggest otherwise. politely, i don't think this would be something you'd get tripped up on if you'd paid attention for a few years longer than a singular skim of the podcasts recently.

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