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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

#861

Post by next_xibalba »

stego-tech wrote: post #118
impish9208 wrote: post #80

From the WSJ’s reporting on this: > Most employees in the tech union receive pay of more than $100,000, and average compensation, including bonus and restricted stock units, is $190,000, according to a Times spokeswoman. That figure is an average of $40,000 more than members of the Times’s journalist union, she said. > Times leaders have also bristled at the nature of some of the guild’s requests. The union previousl…

When I see people critique those numbers as being “too high”, or demands for additional compensation “unreasonable”, I can’t help but think those people don’t understand that $100k is very much the new $45k of the 2000s, and has much less purchasing power than the latter did at the time. Truth be told, for the present cost of living in the Northeast in general, you’re looking at a family income of $300k to be “comfor…

Interesting that you didn't address the demands over pet bereavement and the scents of cleaning supplies. It makes sense that you chose to, of course. It's these types of demands that give away the underlying absurdity of these unions and their demands.

> grossly underpaid relative to the current cost of living

This is just very, very out of touch. The vast majority of the world lives just fine on far, far less than what the median worker at NYT currently makes.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#862

Post by _bin_ »

slg wrote: post #564
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 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. Isn't this just a sign of bad management? If employees are capable of doing the work when their job is on the line, it isn't a question of skill or ability. It is a failure of the company to properly motivate, challenge, and reward them for their work.

...crazy that pro-labor has gone for "reasonable wages and hours please" to "there cannot possibly be a lazy employee." Sure, sometimes there's a lousy manager or exec. But honestly people aren't expected to be particularly "motivated" beyond salary, incentive pay, etc. Like what do you want, the kindergarten-style pizza party tactics? The cringey corporate slogans? Are those actually motivating anyone? There are garbage managers who de-motivate people but that's something of a different problem and hits the whole team rather than just one person. When there's a bad, lazy employee, or when there's that one guy who's just a jerk, fire him. Contracts that say you can't do that are dumb, and they are bad for the majority of workers.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#863

Post by _bin_ »

quandrum wrote: post #408
stickfigure wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

No, I want management to develop a system to determine who is low-performing, document when those workers don't meet the standards of performance, and reference those documents when they fire someone. It's just asking for due process.

Except there are people who are extremely good at passive-aggressively dragging their feet specifically such that it's hard to quantify. Metrics are entirely gameable and people know this. In development, this could be the guy who always somehow grabs the easy tickets then says "Hey I closed like 3 tickets yesterday I'm performing." Or he consistently overestimates his stuff - how much time should a busy manager spend assigning everyone's story points just in case they have to build a case to fire someone later?

There are also people who are technically performing but in practice but are jerks. And please don't start with "that's what HR is for" because I have never - not once - seen HR solve, or even significantly help, this sort of problem. Plus everybody hates dealing with them.

Just let people fire lousy workers man. This isn't that hard. Or, employees should push for employment contracts where the commitment is reciprocal: employers promise to keep them on for a few years and they promise to stay on for a few years.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#864

Post by slt2021 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #791
slt2021 wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>According to the study, Black tech workers at the newspaper make 26 percent less than white workers >>women, who make up over 40 percent of the Tech Guild, earn 12 percent less on average than men claims like these always irk me, like did you just compare averages by race/gender? Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity? its like the famous "gender pay gap" c…

> claims like these always irk me, like did you just compare averages by race/gender? Probably not, the striking union is the one that contains all the data analysts at the NYTimes, so they have some experience with sociology data. > Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity? As explained in the article, the data analysts union mad this claim, it's even explicit…

did you actually read the research you cited?

because it DOES NOT control for hours worked nor experience, and lumps up narrow specialties with wide specialties together in a single "finance".

There is a huge difference in finance as a "bank teller" and finance as a "investment banker at Wall St".

This is a problem of large scale population level wage research, it misses very important confounding variables and lumps up everything they failed to explain as some magical gender pay gap.

This is the epitome of how low replicability social sciences research is done: download dataset from JSTOR, load it in Stata/Matlab, run some regressions and call it a day.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#865

Post by coldcode »

WalterBright wrote: post #705
lc9er wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old enough to remember a time when people in tech were called 'wizards' and there was an air of mystery that surrounded the industry. A large subset of this group really seems to have bought into the idea that working in tech makes you 'special'. It does not. It's a skilled profession that is trainable and attainable by large swaths of the population. Working in tech does not make you special (Yes - you) and the…

Back in 1978, when I worked as an electronics assembly technician, the company (Aph) decided to take us to a local electronics convention in Los Angeles. We showed up and got in line to get our steenkin' badges. I was in front, and was asked what my job title was. As I was soldering boards together, I said "gnome". The clerk laughed, and said "no, seriously". I said "seriously, gnome". We argued a bit, and he capitul…

When I was at Apple (before Steve returned, when it was going out of business), the employees got to pick their titles. Most were approved, but one woman wanted to be "Madonna of the File System", I think that was not. She did, however, know that code inside and out and deserved to get it.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#866

Post by csallen »

p_j_w wrote: post #586
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? If you're a worker, why shouldn't you be able to band together with your fellow workers to not allow this?

For the same reason companies shouldn't be able to band together with other companies to not allow raises. They're anti-competitive practices, which eats away at the entire point of having a market, which is for competition to force parties to offer better prices, bid higher amounts, and produce better products/services, which benefits everyone. For example:

- Landlords should not be able to collude to keep rent prices high. They should be forced to compete against each other, either by offering lower rent or better premises and services to tenants. The result is that over time, society gets better and better places to live, that are nicer, updated, and safer, at cheaper prices.

- Healthcare providers shouldn't be allowed to collude to set uniform prices for services. They should have to compete on price, quality of care, or access to treatments, ensuring patients can choose better or more affordable options. The result is that more and more people can afford healthcare services, which themselves become increasingly effective over time.

- Internet service providers shouldn't be able to divide territories or coordinate to prevent competition in specific regions. They should have to compete, driving down prices or increasing service quality for consumers.

- Software companies shouldn't agree to not hire each other's employees to keep wages low. This prevents employees from negotiating higher salaries and better benefits, hurting workforce dynamism and innovation.

Etc.

Capitalism is simply a collection of laws and regulations that blocks all means of profit other than simply offering a better deal or better services. The goal is for those to be the only real ways to profit. The side effect of workers and companies all competing to do this in order to profit is that society benefits by having a ton of innovation to make better and better things, at cheaper and cheaper prices. Which is the central reason why, today, the average person can have a cell phone, a TV, the internet, amazing healthcare treatments, and an almost infinite array of options for clothing, food, entertainment, etc.

Allowing people to profit in ways that disrupt competition gunks up the entire functioning of the market. Maybe you get some short-term benefit, but ultimately you end up with a system that doesn't create nearly as much wealth and prosperity. Because why go through the trouble to create great things for your customers (as a company), your employers (as an employee), or your employees (as an employer) if you can instead benefit by simply banding together with others and colluding, or monopolizing some essential resource, or fixing prices, etc.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#867

Post by yieldcrv »

njarboe wrote: post #832
slt2021 wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>According to the study, Black tech workers at the newspaper make 26 percent less than white workers >>women, who make up over 40 percent of the Tech Guild, earn 12 percent less on average than men claims like these always irk me, like did you just compare averages by race/gender? Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity? its like the famous "gender pay gap" c…

Employers generally would prefer to pay people less. If you don't ask for a raise you often don't get one. If you ask for a raise, you generally need to consider quitting if you don't get so kind of raise. Men are generally more aggressive about asking for raises. From a certain perspective when one sees a "pay gap" you could think, "Women need to risk more and fight for higher pay. They are bringing wages down for e…

Some recruitment firms had some reports that corroborated that. HIRED’s annual report showed that too.

In person, I’ve seen many women colleagues do things at odds with the competition

For example, being worried about how to move up in their organization without coming across as “too bitchy”, as if it was a unique phenomenon to their gender

When the competition is:

- losing opportunities for being too cocky, and they keep trying until they find a different organization “looking for someone to make the hard decisions”

- emphasis on a different organization. the competition is coming in at a higher level by bluffing and trying, not focusing on going up the corporate ladder, or worried about being married to a company

its a widely replicated experience that changing jobs will get you 30% pay bump and the same level of responsibilities, while trying to move up gets you a ton more responsibility and single digit percent compensation increases

if many women are adverse to doing that, it would be a significant factor in some industries

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#868

Post by UncleMeat »

slt2021 wrote: post #771
ceejayoz wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity? You get that "all the black people are in lower roles or somehow all deemed less productive" is worse, right?

Deemed “as less productive” by whom? We have a free labour market, if it was true that NYT underpaid Black workers for the same productivity, they could easily jump ship to other company and make more $$. What is stopping “black people” from escaping the supposed inequality at NYT and making more money elsewhere ????

I think it is interesting that people are so quick to understand that measuring productivity is difficult when it comes to software engineering metrics or how promotions can be scuttled by things like internal politics but when it comes to macro scale things suddenly we assume that populations are being accurately evaluated for productivity.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#869

Post by makeitdouble »

senko wrote: post #636
quandrum wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I want management to develop a system to determine who is low-performing, document when those workers don't meet the standards of performance, and reference those documents when they fire someone. It's just asking for due process.

Hello from Europe. Tried that, didn't work. It's incredibly hard to quantify "low-performing" for white-collar workers, because any measure is either easily gamed, actually creates roadblocks and bad incentives, or both. Now companies are wary of hiring people because it's harder to fire.

On the hiring side, I felt US and Asian companies were a lot more wary and had tougher "on the paper" requirements to enter.

For comparison most French companies I've seen can hire an engineer within 3 interviews. I entered a company in the past in a single interview.

In comparison talking with an US company's HR, the plan was 4 rounds with a coding test, for an average of about a month to go through the whole process and there's still a probation period.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#870

Post by stubish »

zmgsabst wrote: post #807
SiempreViernes wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> claims like these always irk me, like did you just compare averages by race/gender? Probably not, the striking union is the one that contains all the data analysts at the NYTimes, so they have some experience with sociology data. > Whoever made this claim, did they control for other factors, like job title/level or productivity? As explained in the article, the data analysts union mad this claim, it's even explicit…

> finance and sales Weird that jobs with performance bonuses are the largest gap — but that perhaps suggests that the cause isnt sexism in the workplace, but yet more confounders they didn’t account for.

Who gets handed the best leads to the biggest fish? The people perceived as the best deal closers. Perceived. This is where you can hide the most sexism, along with other confounders, yes.
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