61–70 of 313 posts
Kickstarter may survive since they enjoy near monopoly status, but otherwise how can they compete given that high performers in tech are allergic to unions?
If you read the highlights, they're just asking for documentation on termination and disciplining. Not at all unreasonable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does organizing mean you hate your workplace? Organizing means you want more power, more control. Also, there are many dimensions to liking or disliking your workplace. You may love the product your working on. You may really like your colleagues. You may also love the office environment. However, you may dislike the amount of vacation days, the lack of ability to work part time or the lack of paternal leave. Wor…
Part of being an Adult TM is separating emotions from work. Admittedly, I was able to work on some very cool shit at Amazon - however the job made me hate my life. Ergo - adult logical cycles were spent, decided to get a new job after leetcoding for a bit. The people who aren't skilled enough to get new jobs or improve themselves (also holds true in any industry) will always be some degree of fucked. I admit, some un…
Can you define that bar? That's the problem - there aren't any solid definitions without a contract, and it varies by company. The company can screw over people who are actually meeting the bar by simply saying the bar is higher than it actually is.
Definitely wouldn't want to be part of a union. I represent myself, thanks. Smaller and wide set of unions in an industry can be effective, but industry wide unions are effectively a monopoly on labor supply and bad for society. Look no further than the MTA in NYC. Terrible cost overruns and bad governance of the subway system, for what? So employees can clock extra hours and get egregiously overpaid? No thanks. Comp…
Have you worked at a company where you were treated unfairly, were lied to, etc? How'd that work out for you?
Badly run companies will get weak talent and become uncompetitive.
Love that someone in tech is finally getting unions in tech, don't love that it was kickstarter though. Their corporate culture is very toxic and I don't see them sticking around long term. It might be just me but my impression of kickstarter is that they are some of the worst offenders of 'maximum virtue signaling, minimum virtue'. That makes me inherently skeptical of a move like this.
> Their corporate culture is very toxic and I don't see them sticking around long term. I think they changed CEO recently, no? It seems like the ex-CEO, one of the founder, wasn't "a good cultural fit" after all. They had a round of layoffs a few years ago where some activist employees were weeded out, seems like it didn't work.
They fired 2 activists who were poor performers but not even the people leading the activism. The press made an enormous, outsized fuss over it. A bunch of non-activists left the company half out of disgust and half out of strong encouragement from their peers.
The company's culture is "very toxic" because 80% of the people there are moralizing to all of their peers instead of doing work.
This is fantastic. Kudos to them. Copying some things they won, for the non-clickers: - Minimum 3% annual CoL raises - Profit-sharing bonuses - Putting their current benefits in the contract, so management will have to re-negotiate if they want to make them worse. - Replacing at-will with "just cause", progressive disciplining, with criteria for performance improvement plans. Looking forward to more details & seeing…
Why would you be happy with a 3% raise any year in tech?
Love that someone in tech is finally getting unions in tech, don't love that it was kickstarter though. Their corporate culture is very toxic and I don't see them sticking around long term. It might be just me but my impression of kickstarter is that they are some of the worst offenders of 'maximum virtue signaling, minimum virtue'. That makes me inherently skeptical of a move like this.
Kickstarter also voted itself to become a Public Benefits Corporation [1] so you would hope they were already out in front of ensuring contributor rights are fairly represented in concert with other stakeholders. [1] https://medium.com/kickstarter/kickstarter-is-a-pbc-heres-wh...
Also a large chunk of the employees who didn't want to unionize (25-35% of their peak headcount) left the company over some of the tactics employed in the contested fight over unionizing the company.
Kickstarter may survive since they enjoy near monopoly status, but otherwise how can they compete given that high performers in tech are allergic to unions?
This idea that unions MUST be antithetical to the company or performance is silly. We have counterexamples on TV almost every day. Further, the idea that job insecurity is the best way to motivate people to perform also seems silly.
Love that someone in tech is finally getting unions in tech, don't love that it was kickstarter though. Their corporate culture is very toxic and I don't see them sticking around long term. It might be just me but my impression of kickstarter is that they are some of the worst offenders of 'maximum virtue signaling, minimum virtue'. That makes me inherently skeptical of a move like this.
Isn't a very toxic corporate culture the perfect reason for them to be getting a union?
Humanity is endlessly capable of finding ways to do anything (good and bad).
Unions and employers negotiate what kind of decisions are made and how, but they're hardly inclusive of every last thing.
Some of the worst employer's I've had were union shops. It's entirely possible to have the opposite experience too, but there's nothing about a union that prevents toxicity.
For the record I've zero experience with how Kickstarter is / this isn't a comment about how or if there are issues at Kickstarter with such things.
Definitely wouldn't want to be part of a union. I represent myself, thanks. Smaller and wide set of unions in an industry can be effective, but industry wide unions are effectively a monopoly on labor supply and bad for society. Look no further than the MTA in NYC. Terrible cost overruns and bad governance of the subway system, for what? So employees can clock extra hours and get egregiously overpaid? No thanks. Comp…
Yes, which is why unions are great.
Corporations bargain collectively by default; each is a large unit, with a lot of resources, composed of many people.
Unions allow individuals to bargain collectively, to match corporations in terms of leverage, because few individuals are valuable enough to even come close.