551–560 of 695 posts
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> It’s only adversarial because you want to get as much pay as possible out of them for as little productivity as possible. Or maybe pay that’s proportional to the value we provide
It’s always proportional to the value you provide. You just don’t like the proportion lol. What specific proportion do you think is fair? And how do you calculate the value you provide?
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This is overly simplistic. I don’t fault you for it, but it shows a lack of understanding how a business functions. There is a lot of overhead that goes into running a business, as others have mentioned. Taxes. Rent. Utilities. Licenses. Certifications. HR, testers, project managers, product managers, people managers, directors, marketing, customer service, sales, C suite, and on and on. I know right now you might be…
And yet you still turn a profit at the end of the day, i.e., money that's not going to 'overhead'. Let's not kid ourselves. Your interest as the owner is to maximize that profit and minimize expenses, and our interest as workers is to maximize our wage and minimize your profit.
To maximize the price you can sell your ‘product’ (you), you should be making career decisions that strengthen your offering. This can be taken too far (those that only look for promotions at the expense of real work), but it can be done ethically very easily.
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> I also think using the "it could be worse" excuse to avoid working for better conditions that are totally feasible isn't a great thing to do. Unions fuck up the incentives. Tenured positions are coveted and come with privileges that make the job easier and the position more cushy. New hires want those perks and will rest once they attain them. This is the opposite of what you want in a workforce: you want the top 5…
Overseas to countries with better labour laws? Like, it's cheaper to hire engineers in Germany but it's much harder to fire them.
It's the same thing that happens with industrialization.
This will naturally happen over time anyway, but unions will accelerate the trend.
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No, but that's what I'm saying though. I don't trust someone else, especially some credentialing body to administer leetcode style questions. I'm still going to want to have a candidate prove they can actually write code.
Do you perform interviews on potential doctors or lawyers you may choose to use? If you trust credentialing bodies for such important services why the distrust for something non-lifethreatening like an employee?
The phrase "get a second opinion" is so intrinsically tied to medicine that it's a little weird that you'd imply that any doctor will do.
I have a hard time with this pitch because I've watched people burn out working alongside me, on the same team, for the same boss, on the same problems, for entirely personal reasons. I've also been in shitty situations with shitty bosses that caused me a lot of stress, and it's hard to point to any clear lines that were crossed. I haven't heard any proposed union rule that would protect me in those situations, just…
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You do realize that this is immensely privileged and something that 99% of working devs can't do right? Especially the bit about making calls and instantly getting a job, that's something even famous engineers can't get too.
If you have worked at a few companies and left on good terms, it shouldn't be that hard to contact them so you can go back. Otherwise, previous co-workers will be able to help out as well.
I have a hard time with this pitch because I've watched people burn out working alongside me, on the same team, for the same boss, on the same problems, for entirely personal reasons. I've also been in shitty situations with shitty bosses that caused me a lot of stress, and it's hard to point to any clear lines that were crossed. I haven't heard any proposed union rule that would protect me in those situations, just…
The primary power of a union is the capacity to collectively bargain. It doesn't matter if you personally can't think of anything that you'd like to use that power for. If unionization is right for tech, others will. In the abstract debate it will always be abstract answers. Maybe those organizing a concrete workplace would be able to give you concrete answers.
Maybe that's why I've never seen anyone trying to unionize a workplace I've been in.
The abstract idea of a union has been enough to spark a lot of unionization efforts because workers knew exactly what they wanted to ask for. Safety equipment, overtime pay, health benefits, etc. Things they were already asking for but didn't have the power to demand.
So... we'll see, maybe someday someone will figure out what a union could do for me.
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Overseas to countries with better labour laws? Like, it's cheaper to hire engineers in Germany but it's much harder to fire them.
Overseas countries with worse labor laws. It's the same thing that happens with industrialization. This will naturally happen over time anyway, but unions will accelerate the trend.
This imbalance not only justifies the need for collective bargaining, but that there should be more regulations wielded against Capital to stop this imbalance.
A flourishing middle class helps a country prosper, a flourishing middle class means a strong labor class where Capital has limits and regulations on what they can inflict against civilians.
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X and Y exist right? Why can’t you divide them to make a proportion?
Among other reasons, because the employer holds all of that information and I'm not given access to it. It's an asymmetric information problem.
I am an engineering manager for a large team of developers. Part of my job is to estimate the cost and potential revenue of big projects. I have a spreadsheet of everyone's salaries (including bonus compensation, other perks). I've done the math at my own company: average developer salary is approximately $100k. Our largest teams have 10 developers, so about $1M in labor costs. These teams work on projects that bring…
I live in Europe and we are all unionized and I hate to break it to you but we're still creating much more value than we earn for someone else. Our work conditions may be significantly better - I work 40h/week with unlimited vacation (within reason ofc) and sick days - yet still burnout happens frequently and necessitates costly rehabilitation trajectories.
We deal with the consequences better, and I'm grateful for the conditions here, they may well be much worse elsewhere, but the core issues remain. Humans aren't built to work mentally straining jobs for 8 or more hours per day, and the fruit baskets and vacations only do so much. I believe a four day work week would help some of it.