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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

#991

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

slt2021 wrote: post #908
jjmarr wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender pay gap disappears when you control for hours worked, job seniority, and experience. So, why do women work less hours than men and have less experience? That's still an issue even if it's not directly sexist. If we read some bullet points from your post: > Men are more likely than women to have more years of continuous experience in their current occupation. What crawls on four legs and causes women to dro…

> What crawls on four legs and causes women to drop out of the labour force? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motherhood_penalty progenity penalty is a societal issue, not issue between worker-corp. It is individual choice of a household to pro-create, and each mother's gender penalty is offset by father's gender penalty. one may argue that America should provide more incentives to working families, but I see it as a so…

Curious what you mean by father's gender penalty as the link you provide states "Men's wages are either unaffected or even increase after having a child."

Doesn't sound like a penalty to me? also it assumes parents stay together if one offsets the other

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#992

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

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 New research by Berkeley Haas Professor Laura Kray shows the belief that women don’t ask for higher pay is not only outdated, but it may be hurting pay equity efforts.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…

Yeah, supporting anecdote: only thing I got for trying to negociate my salary and benefits last time I tried, was my contract started over a month later so I technically lost that much pay, with zero changes to my contract. It just doesn't feel worth trying. Sure, you can blame me for poor negotiation skills maybe, or for not walking away from this job but contrast that to my partner's salary doubling without having to even ask... So it deeply irritates me when people say women don't get things because they don't ask. It is just a catch 22 situation.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#993

Post by throwaway2037 »

erulabs wrote: post #938
throwaway2037 wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. They have been negotiating for two and half years. That seems like plenty of time to me. Can you imagine a union nego taking that long in a country where labour laws are stronger? Seriously: Can you imagine Germany's IG Metall spending 2.5 years to negotiate (without success!) a new contract? It is unthinkable. One thing I have observed over the ye…

I’m never sure how to feel about arguments that take the form of “it’s obvious, just compare to ”. I’m not sure how many Americans in an average group of 100 are aware of the average union negotiation time of a specific German union, but I’d guess between 0 and 1? I asked my German wife and she looked quizzical and asked if I needed her to Google it. I’m not disagreeing with you but I’m not sure this form of argument…

I understand you sentiment. I was trying to offer an outsider's perspective. It's like talking a Swede about what happens when you don't have health insurance. They will look at you confused. "What do you mean 'don't have health insurance'? That is impossible in Sweden."

Also, according to Wiki, IG Metall is > I did some Google searches to find last few negotiations. It normally takes a couple of months. 2.5 years (NYT) is just... well... insane.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#994

Post by booleandilemma »

chrnola wrote: post #616
booleandilemma wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? How can we go from an HN comment to making this a reality?

This book[1] was a great read on the topic. [1]: https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/

Thanks!

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#995

Post by xpe »

dialup_sounds wrote: post #458
xpe wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As much as I am a bolshy union member and supporter, this doesn't seem too bad on the surface, the article doesn't make clear what the issues with it are? The linked article is the New York Times writing about a strike _against_ the New York Times. Factor this into your assessments.

If you're implying bias, consider that the news and editorial staff have been unionized since the 1940s.

Sure, this is also worth factoring in.

But factor in how? (rhetorical question) Understanding bias well cannot simply reduce to a high-school debate style of tallying arguments for and against. First, there are more than two sides. Second, reasoning under uncertainty (with probabilities) is essential. Third, the best way for humans to reason requires getting the complexity out of your head. So one way or another, if you want to win [1], you have write down your model (we're not yet doing this here, but at least we're laying out some of the moving parts).

Anyhow, I'm not making a "final" assessment of overall bias; I'm trying to (a) expand discussion of the moving parts and (b) promote a rational and probabilistic approach here.

[1] "Rationality is Systematized Winning" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ARtkT3EYox3THYjF/rationalit... but consider the counterpoint at "Rationality !== Winning" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3GSRhtrs2adzpXcbY/rationalit...

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#996

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

aguaviva wrote: post #508
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lots of experience hiring tech people. Most of the time they turn out to be just as good as we thought they would be. But sometimes they don't. It would be terrible if it was impossible for us to let those people go.

It would be terrible if it was impossible for us to let those people go. About half the people on this thread seem to be misreading that sentence. It's very clear that "just cause" includes cases of low performance. So no, it's not about making it impossible to fire these people.

also isn't that why trial periods exist? as in you have 3 month or so to change your mind after hiring someone/taking a job if it turns out to be a bad fit, for whatever reason, at either employer or employees initiative?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#997

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

WalterBright wrote: post #694
senko wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> companies are wary of hiring people because it's harder to fire This is another one of those obvious "unintended" consequences. The harder it is to fire someone, the correspondingly harder it will be to get hired. Companies will be unwilling to "take a chance" on someone.

That is why trial periods exist, with much more flexible firing/resigning terms.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#998

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

dan-0 wrote: post #708
z3ncyberpunk wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, if it costs you 300k to be comfortable then you are being suckered. When people are struggling to make it by on $30 and $40k and see these privileged propagandists complain about making six figures, no one has sympathy.

Sorry, I don't see a valid point in any of these salary arguments. In fact, they're down right insulting and ignorant. I did strenuous manual labor for next to nothing once upon a time. After about 8 years of that, on top of regular 60 hour work weeks, I spent almost every waking moment of 4-5 years to learn and better myself with about every sacrifice you could imagine short of divorce. I'm now making significantly…

You're "value" is entirely subjective and based on imaginary nonsense. Machine learning engineers making $500k are certainly not worth $500k just because its a hot trend right now. Gucci, Louis Vouton, etc, high fashion items are most certain not worth their price tags, much like diamonds. Eggs at Erawan aren't any different than likewise organic eggs elsewhere and are only $30 because someone decided they could rip off rich people and rich morons happily swallow it hook line and sinker. Value is entirely subjective and only quantifiable in the most abstract, opinionated manner and the richer people are the more often they are terrible at discerning any actual or reasonable value out of something.

If you think it's reasonable to pay exorbitant rent, food, gas, utilities, simply because you live in some concrete jungle then you are blind. It doesn't justify you actually deserving to make that much other than someone choosing to pay you that much.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#999

Post by mym1990 »

wiseowise wrote: post #804
ramesh31 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>10 years ago was a very different time... Indeed. When tech workers actually had some bargaining power. The rise of remote work, AI, and the flooding of the industry with bootcamp and CS grads has changed everything. We'll probably look back at the last 20 years as a golden age akin to the postwar manufacturing boom in the US, where a single person could reasonably provide for a family.

10 years ago it was “y’all will be replaced with cheap South Asian developers”, time is a flat circle.

As a developer that got into the industry in 2015, I did not feel that way at all. It felt like everyone was piling into to tech at that time.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#1000

Post by pokerface_86 »

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…

the problem is, god forbid that worker is a protected class, or else you’re facing a 5-20 million dollar employment practices claim
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