[dead]
The Burnout Machine
61–70 of 695 posts
Re: The Burnout Machine
#62Why do you need sustainability when you're making 400K a year at $EvilCorp? Just work for 5 years and retire.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#63As an outsider, I'm astounded why workers aren't unionizing to a much higher degree. It's been proven to work [1] against the misinformation, discord, and wealth inequality that companies will, inevitably, cause. Despite the small union fee, the individual clearly stands to benefit[1]. Is it because people are cheap? Or not familiar with history? You'd think that tech workers were quite informed. [1]: https://nordics…
America != Norway. American labor unions have (had?) a reputation for corruption, dragging companies down with inefficient and parasitic practices and in some cases being controlled by organized crime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_T...).
Re: The Burnout Machine
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great. Show me examples of teams who took that bet and how it paid off.
Are you working 7 days a week in horrific circumstances? Do you have children as your colleagues? No? That’s due to unions and labourers fighting for the rights you currently have.
Heh, it terrifies me at times of how clueless of the past the general population is. We're already at the point in history where people like Bezos and Musk want to return to company cities with their own non-cash payment systems.
The 1800's were horrific. It was not the industrial revolution alone that made things better. People had to fight and die in the labor movement for better outcomes for us now.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#65This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies. If you only want to work at the flashy unicorns in downtown San Francisco, you are signing yourself up for exploitation. Like any career, if you get off the beaten path there are plenty of pretty okay jobs out there. Especially if you have a marketable skill. This is software, if you have a brain and functional hands - you already own the m…
A union doesn't have to be "workers for company X employees". It can be "web developers union" or similar - this is how the trades organize (see the pipefitters, and IBEW for some examples).
Neat thing about this type of organizing is that the union provides training and standardization paths. Both of those make moving between jobs easier.
They can also provide a standardized way of differentiating employee levels (e.g. union sets the standards for what a jr, sr, or whatever is). I'm not sure if that is good or not in tech, but it is a possiblility - and it's something that would definitely help employers too: rather than each company having to test each potential employee, a union certified X dev will have a certain skillset. Yes some X devs will be better than others, we're talking about humans here, but the minimum bars can be defined and the whole hiring process can become easier and more efficient.
Theres some interesting compensation challenges to get the idea of unionization more accepted in tech tho: stock based compensation and bonuses can get really tricky - something that I suspect is the real reason unions don't catch on more in tech.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St... pretty much every team in blue collar industries which have been able to negotiate better working conditions, better pay, and more time off.
But tech isn't a blue collar industry, and this is about tech unions.
love those flying goalposts. i guess "tech" is different enough from other kinds of labor that it's special? ok:
IFPTE, UAW, CWA (which just recently welcomed workers in the video game industry: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc...)
edit: Alphabet Workers Union under CWA, Riot Games under UAW, Tech Workers Coalition
Re: The Burnout Machine
#67I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me th…
IFPTE, UAW, CWA (which just recently welcomed workers in the video game industry: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc... )
Forming the union is step one of a long road before you actually reap the benefits. It can take year(s) to negotiate the CBA with your employer. Sounds like fear of layoffs was a huge factor, but the employer must agree to those terms, and that remains to be seen. So for now that's all rhetoric. Show me a team that has gotten to the other side with these terms in a contract.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#68I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me th…
> What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me this company.
South Korean search giant Naver. Union website here: https://www.naverunion.com/
Re: The Burnout Machine
#69I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me th…
I think a lot of people might consider taking a pay cut in return for an easier tech job. In theory working in an equally profitable company by lowering stress and comp for everyone and hiring more seems possible, but I'm not certain that it'd work out in practice because of increased coordination overhead etc.,.
I did just that about a year ago and regularly see people who work even less than me, i.e. not even 5 chill days a week, but 4 or 3. It works so far.
Re: The Burnout Machine
#70What Big Tech companies are demanding 80 hours a week?
Not demanding per se, but when you're stack ranked against people who ARE ...
A lot of these pro-labor-reg people argue (and I agree with them!) that the ROI on additional hours worked past 40 is pretty bad.
If this is the case, then someone working an extra N hours a week won't actually move the needle that much when it comes to performance ranking.
My experience has been that the people who choose to work super long hours do not actually perform much better, if at all, than those who don't.
Caveat is that this could, of course, be selection effects a la Berkson's paradox. Maybe those who work very long hours do so because they must to reach the expected output level for the firm they work at.