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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

#941

Post by lmm »

bko wrote: post #447
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.

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…

> To think that employers are just randomly firing people for no reason has never struck me as being even remotely true.

Of course not. They fire people with different taste in music, or who don't listen enthusiastically to their complaints about other people, or who refuse them sexual favours, or...

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#942

Post by pempem »

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…

All the applause. Thank you for posting a comprehensive review of the information in the post (and then accurate guess of what was to come)

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#943

Post by lmm »

pc86 wrote: post #646
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.

It's not "just asking for due process." Everyone has interacted with a government office with an absolutely worthless employee who is just sitting around counting down the days to retirement where they can continue getting taxpayer money for doing nothing. Just because there's a process to get rid of someone doesn't mean it will ever happen. This is a ploy to make it harder to fire bad programmers. If I have to try t…

> Everyone has interacted with a government office with an absolutely worthless employee who is just sitting around counting down the days to retirement where they can continue getting taxpayer money for doing nothing.

Everyone who has interacted with a large company has met a more highly-paid negative-productivity employee than even the worst government worker.

> Just because there's a process to get rid of someone doesn't mean it will ever happen.

If managers aren't competent or motivated enough to follow a process, I sure as hell don't want those same managers firing people just on their say-so.

> This is a ploy to make it harder to fire bad programmers.

No, this is about making it harder for management to fire programmers who do pesky things like informing other employees of their rights, or refusing to work unpaid hours.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#944

Post by null0pointer »

bankcust08385 wrote: post #934
null0pointer wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When teachers or doctors or nurses strike regular people, the general public, suffer. In the case of the NYT tech staff nobody suffers except the NYT leadership. Oh no you can't read NYT during election week. Whatever, read something else.

The megacorps' refusal to negotiate or compromise is what caused the problem. They are the villains, not the working people being understaffed, underpaid, and hated on by selfish third parties who don't understand solidarity.

I agree. I’m just pointing out the reason why those other professions need to carefully time their strikes to avoid adversely affecting innocent third parties. In the case of the NYT the only people affected are the leadership so they can time their strike for maximum impact without regard for impact on third parties.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#945

Post by lmm »

kccqzy wrote: post #608
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.

Requiring management to document these decisions is already itself placing low trust in management. I do not want to work at any workplace where trust in management is so low that low performance needs to be documented with a paper trail. I'd rather work at a workplace where the management is consistently competent and people place high trust in the management; so that when management fires someone everyone else agre…

Most NYT-sized companies won't let you deploy a bugfix without a documented rationale and a second person's signoff. It's far from an unreasonable requirement for firing someone.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#946

Post by devjab »

acdha wrote: post #855
devjab wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? I can’t speak for these numbers, but when we do them we account for these things. Obviously pay isn’t going to be fair, but it should be less unfair than it is at many places. Part of the reason women get paid less where I currently wo…

> Part of the reason women get paid less where I currently work is because they ask less. Yes, and that’s because as study after study has shown they’re less likely to successfully get more and not have it held against them. > New research by Berkeley Haas Professor Laura Kray shows the belief that women don’t ask for higher pay is not only outdated, but it may be hurting pay equity efforts. Contrary to popular belie…

If you notice I spoke about my place of work. Not on the national or global norm. I’m sure times are changing, but it’s not what our internal metrics currently show at our company.

I personally hope it changes.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#947

Post by gield »

heraldgeezer wrote: post #363
insane_dreamer wrote: post #161

Have devs at any of the large tech companies ever tried to unionize? If not, why not?

I get that this is an american comment. But usually you are focused on each trades. In Sweden we have an "office worker" union. - https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen You can be in finance, hr, it, dev, engineering etc. Because we all want transparency, good salary, protection, 40h work weeks, overtime etc. A union is not going to be involved in specifics like if we use Linux or Microsoft, so why does it…

Indeed, I worked at Apple in Spain where the offices and stores are part of general unions. In my office, there were 2 unions present.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#948

Post by ConspiracyFact »

slt2021 wrote: post #735
crazygringo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much! That is a vastly more informative article. It seems like it's not so much the NYT is opposed to the contract's specifics -- they're opposed to having a contract at all because the union is new. The NYT has been stringing the union along without ever actually signing anything, so now the union has to strike to get the NYT to take them seriously. Key parts: > The Tech Guild won its unionization vote…

>>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…

What annoys me about the left is exactly things like this. Someone points out that an ideologically-motivated claim is baseless, and the talking heads on the left just repeat, over and over, in various ways, that bad-faith actors on the right are disputing the claim, but they’re wrong (and evil). They just do this until people get tired of arguing, and they refuse to give up the claim.

With the right, a lot of it is based on religion or irreducible moral sentiment, and you just accept that some people on the right believe crazy things and can’t be swayed. On balance their beliefs are more harmful (though not by as much as in the past), but they don’t bother me in the same way because they’re admittedly irrational. Many on the left start with a set of beliefs similarly rooted in feeling and then rationalize the hell out of them, and will (often literally) scream at you if you dare to point out that their evidence is ex post facto and just poor besides.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#949

Post by tightbookkeeper »

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…

> the striking union is the one that contains all the data analysts

You seem to believe a union in a negotiation would care about carefully drawing conclusions from data analysis.

The goal is to construct a political wedge which makes their employer look bad for not giving into their demands. The only mindset about data is “how can we use this to argue for what we want”.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#950

Post by [deleted] »

bojo wrote: post #355
legitster wrote: post #323

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull. That sounds like an anti-union stance to me. There's no better time to strike than when your opponent can't afford to look bad.

[deleted]
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