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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#81

Post by roguecoder »

tiffanyh wrote: post #75
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s not drastic for a company to have lawyers” is probably the point that was being made. It’s not drastic for a company to have lawyers; it shouldn’t be drastic for a union—or in this case, a union organizing effort—to have lawyers as well.

If you feel like you have lawyer-up just to go to work, that’s probably a signal you shouldn’t be working there.

If one party doesn't have a lawyer look over legal contracts they are signing and the other party does, all they are doing is putting themselves at a disadvantage in a business relationship.

I see why that is advantageous for companies that get to employ workers at a disadvantage. I don't understand why it would be good for workers.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#82

Post by roguecoder »

tiffanyh wrote: post #56
roguecoder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unionizing isn't "drastic": it is the norm for most trades in the United States. Any individual union is basically just you & your coworkers crowd sourcing employment lawyers you wouldn't afford individually. Until Boeing got taken over by finance people, the Boeing engineering guild had spent decades being a book club. It is only when things go wrong that unionization significantly changes how we work.

> “crowd sourcing employment lawyers” How is that not drastic? You’re own words are saying unionizing is to bring in lawyers to be used against your employer. EDIT: to answer your question below since I can’t reply. No, it’s not drastic for a company to have lawyers. A company needs to ensure they are staying regulatory compliant, not breaking laws and de-risking company … that’s what the lawyers are doing.

They "de-risk" the company by making sure employees have as little power as possible, as few protections as possible, are as open to exploitation as possible, are paid as little as possible, have as little job mobility as possible, and have as little claim to their independent intellectual property as they can legally enforce.

That's what "derisk" means: it means the company is protected from your interests.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#83

Post by [deleted] »

roguecoder wrote: post #76
nightski wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as far as I know traditionally unions have existed in jobs where humans are basically robots (manufacturing, etc...). These jobs can be dangerous and also each worker is very easily replaceable giving the employer a huge upper hand. This is not the case in software at all. Skill levels can vary dramatically and the more experience you have with your company often the more valuable and harder to replace you be…

That's a pretty new development, and not necessarily true. Screen writing is pretty obviously creative, collaborative work, and they've been represented by a professional guild since 1933. I think it is more common for the umbrella union orgs to focus on industries either with high barriers to entry (like nursing) or huge employers, because they are going company-by-company & it's just more efficient. On the opposite…

[deleted]

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#84

Post by _9hey »

Key takeaway: investors ruin startups.

It’s that belief that still keeps me from going that route even while working through a regular career for several years. If the project succeeds, well you’ve already sold it to the people who ru(i)n the world. Bootstrapping is so expensive but you diversify power in tech. Don’t sell out!

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#85

Post by ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 »

iamleppert wrote: post #28

Blame your leadership for creating such a bloated company that the only thing to satiate investors was to sell out completely to auto companies. I interviewed at Mapbox at one time, a ridiculous 3-day interview at their SF office where lots of PM's and managers were buzzing around hosting meetings, giving the perception of getting stuff done when in fact it was even clear to me, an outsider, that nothing was being ac…

> where lots of PM's and managers were buzzing around hosting meetings, giving the perception of getting stuff done when in fact it was even clear to me, an outsider, that nothing was being accomplished

How could you possibly come to this conclusion while on an interview loop? Did you sit in on all these meetings?

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#86

Post by roguecoder »

reocha wrote: post #67

Does anyone know why tech companies tend to be so hostile to unions? I'm not sure if its due to the large amount of venture capital invested or other reasons.

Because unions could increase wages, stop the scams companies like to pull with options, and push back on under-staffed expectations of the impossible.

Companies benefit by taking as much of the profit for themselves as possible, rather than doing right by their workers. Some of that pressure comes from VCs or shareholders, but even in private companies it takes a rare founder to put a worker's interests ahead of their own.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#87

Post by nraynaud »

jenny91 wrote: post #47
tarkin2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah definitely. My comment came from my understanding of what the author wanted the union to do rather than how unions could operate. As an aside, I’m slightly skeptical about unions in the US. The US’s economic model seems to be based around innovation and unions arguably make making decisions slower and more difficult. If you look at Germany’s economic model, one with very strong employee protection, it seems larg…

I agree, too strict labor regulations around e.g. firing/letting employess go certainly would hinder some of the innovation hapening in the US and especially tech. Though maybe there is a flavor of unions that recognizes this and pushes for other things e.g. proper treatment of contractors, or osme slight input in direction, etc? I think the US is screwed for unions mostly because to unionize you basically have to jo…

there is this deeply unsettling thing about innovation: it's historically been driven by people who did not need to work and had free time to explore.

That means that innovators probably come with slackers, because they are secure in their standing.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#88

Post by pmyteh »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #20
slively wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the solution to a problem is have lots of money, it’s a solution for only a tiny portion of people, and not generally applicable.

Anyone can make their own company and their own shares and it’s practically free other than registration costs. The people with the shares get to set all the rules. That’s generally how it works. Otherwise the shares would be worthless.

The shares give you a claim on the profits. The rules are a combination of the corporate bylaws and the law. The latter does not let owners set all the rules: it imposes health and safety restrictions, taxes, and (yes!) unionisation rules.

The people who make the laws get to set all the rules. The shares are valuable anyway, because an economic interest in a profit making entity is valuable whether you have perfect control or not.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#89

Post by roguecoder »

woevdbz wrote: post #58

It sounds like OP wants to be a part of the kind of social change that fundamentally cannot exist independently of politics but trying to enact it without. A single company, especially one that is not generating monopoly/oligopoly profits and is still dependent on funding, is not really able to: unionizing creates a steep competitive downside on the capital market that is not offset by enough employee retention benef…

So your hypothesis is that VCs put their class interests ahead of making money to such an extent that it is impossible to exercise our legal rights without putting the companies we work for in their political crosshairs?

You may be right. It still seems like the easiest solution is for all the startups to unionize so they don't have any choice: they can either invest in unionized startups or they can stop being VCs.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#90

Post by pm90 »

tarkin2 wrote: post #44
jenny91 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is a middle ground? Surely VCs will fight tooth-and-nail against it since it's clearly taking away control (and some ability to extract profit) from them. For instance in some countries with stronger unions and better labor conditions the union often has a board seat and so can advocate and don't have by any means control over the directio of the company.

Yeah definitely. My comment came from my understanding of what the author wanted the union to do rather than how unions could operate. As an aside, I’m slightly skeptical about unions in the US. The US’s economic model seems to be based around innovation and unions arguably make making decisions slower and more difficult. If you look at Germany’s economic model, one with very strong employee protection, it seems larg…

Im not sure that “Unions slow innovation” is true.

As a counter: in tech, its the workers that generate a significant amount of value by writing software and building products. Giving them more control and a seat at the table can be useful in encouraging long term investments in lieu of extreme short term thinking that VCs typically promote.

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